Reading all these replies and - what the hell? Are recruiters really that common? Are bad recruiters really that common? I wasn't aware this was even a thing.
Recruiters are quite common in cities with a lot of jobs going, and industries with a lot of demand.
In terms of bad recruiters: A recruitment agency will often get a fee of ~20% of an employee's first year's salary - meaning they are extremely motivated.
That high level of motivation has some benefits - for candidates, they'll happily take care of any BS like entering your details into different companies' candidate tracking systems, writing carefully customised cover letters for each job, following up with companies after interviews and so on. And for employers, recruiters will deal with grubby business like cold-calling candidates and will often have access to more candidates.
It also has a bunch of disadvantages - recruiters will happily post fake high-salary jobs to gather resumes, add lies to candidates' resumes, help candidates cheat on work-sample tests, send generous 'gifts' to hiring teams that take their candidates, apply high-pressure sales tactics to wavering candidates, call candidates they placed after a year or two and encourage them to move jobs, and copy the contact database any time they leave a job.
Having been in the software business for nearly 20 years I can state that from my own experiences, recruiters are overwhelmingly bad.
The thing is that there are big incentives for the recruiters. Where I live (Dublin) the recruiters finders fee would be around 30% of the candidates salary. In IT that could be a fair whack of money. That sort of incentive can cause some peoples morals to loosen a bit.
Here are some of my experiences...
Recruiters editing my CV to make me look more skilled or possessing skills I don't have.
Editing my CV so that it contains the right information, but the formatting has been destroyed and it looks terrible.
Costing me a job opportunity when I applied direct to a company and because I was on a recruiters system they demanded a fee when they learned I was made an offer. Because the recruiter threatened legal action, the company withdrew the offer.
Calling at me at work. Even on occasions calling me via the company switchboard.
Arranging interviews without my consent.
A recruiter shouting at me for cancelling an interview because I was running a 39 degree fever.
Taking my LinkedIn profile data and creating profiles on their own systems. I added a fake job to my profile to weed those ones out.
Individual recruiters taking my data from one company to the next when they themselves changed employers.
Refusing to delete my data from their systems forcing me to go to the Data Protection Commissioner.
When I went self-employed they started calling me asking if I would hire one of their candidates. Even though I said I was a one man operation and would stay that way - they kept calling.
One recruiter calling my wife when I blocked their number.
Of course different peoples experiences may vary, but in my case I can honestly say I have never had a good experience with an IT recruiter.
Interesting in the UK every agency I have directly dealt with has asked first and got my verbal permission to represent.
Sounds like the employer is a shitty as the agency here, if I had had an offer like that withdrawn I would have sent a stiff letter from a lawyer wanting a "compromise agreement"
Prior to the GDPR I was only ever formally asked a few times for permission to represent. Since the GDPR the few recruiter I've dealt with always asked. I think the GDPR scared them a bit.
As for the offer withdrawal, until the contract is signed they had every right to do that. To be fair having seen it from the employers side, when an agency does something like that it can be messy. You may be the best candidate ever, but if the company has to drop a five-figure sum on solicitors and legal stuff then you may be more of a hindrance to them.
yes, even on larger agencies, you can find shitty recruiters that think their work is to move meat around.
once a recruiter made me run trough 5 interviews. I had a full time job at a time, with a decent pay, and explicitly stated my requested salary upfront. after the whole charade, which burned a significant amount of my vacation days since I was working at another city at the moment, they just came out and said the budget for the position was less than the asking price, but feel convinced it would have been a great opportunity for me.
goddamn scum.
oh, and the "opportunity" went into bankruptcy forced liquidation two years later.
Bad (external) recruiters are absolutely the norm. I'm sure a good one exists somewhere but I've never interacted with one. They are shady, they lie to you, they edit resumes, they are rude, they waste your time, they don't listen, they have no attention to detail, and they berate you if you even consider not accepting an offer.
Many small companies use them anyways for some reason.
Recruiters who work for the company they are recruiting for are normally pretty good.
