Recruitment agencies are wasting company time by sending
unsuitable and under-qualified applicants for interview. Research
by Sophos, the UK's largest anti-virus specialist, found the direct
approach yielded five times as many successful candidates as those
put forward by recruitment agencies.
In an exercise to compare direct applicants with recruitment
agency candidates, Sophos personnel staff found the agency success
rate to be 1 in 60 against 1 in 9 of those who sent their CVs
through directly.
Almost half of the rejections made by Sophos were due to
exaggerated applicant capabilities from agencies. One, for example,
highlighted extensive C++ programming skills on a candidate's CV
which turned out to be a two week course at university.
"We know there are dynamic and qualified people out there, it's
just a matter of finding them," said Paul Ducklin, head of research
at Sophos. "I'm sure competent recruitment agencies exist, but
unfortunately our experience has been one of time and effort
wasted. We urge candidates to send their CVs directly to us because
we can be much more confident that it is all their own work and
that they have a genuine interest in the job they are applying
for."
"Agency commission can be as much as 20-30% of the candidate's
first year salary, and is, from our experience, generally
undeserved," added Ducklin. "For this amount, surely you have the
right to expect more than a faxshot of a few dozen candidates whose
CVs contain a couple of keyword matches with your job
advertisement?"
Other problems emerging from the survey include a lack of
presentation and preparation advice given to interviewees. One
agency also re-arranged an interview four times in one day without
informing the candidate.
Sophos recently announced an expansion programme to create 100
jobs over the next few years.
More than 100 million users in 150 countries rely on Sophos as the best protection against complex threats and data loss. Sophos is committed to providing security and data protection solutions that are simple to manage, deploy and use and that deliver the industry's lowest total cost of ownership. Sophos offers award-winning encryption, endpoint security, web, email, and network access control solutions backed by SophosLabs - a global network of threat intelligence centers. With more than two decades of experience, Sophos is regarded as a leader in security and data protection by top analyst firms and has received many industry awards.
Sophos is headquartered in Boston, US and Oxford, UK. More information is available at www.sophos.com.