I’m a typically demanding in-house recruiter. I am also a particularly good recruiter who stands no nonsense from my adorable line managers or the creatures known as ‘Recruitment Agencies who call themselves Consultants’. Consultants — pah! Most of them couldn’t consult their way out of a paper bag, but more about that at a later date.

Having just started as an in-house recruiter in the European recruitment team of a US company I’m busy getting to grips with the suppliers they use. Oh joy of joys — not! Most are unfamiliar to me, which was not surprising considering I have joined a totally new industry.

So how does the well-networked recruiter get to know their suppliers? A bit of research, of course. From experience I know that finding their websites, if they have them, is a waste of time, so straight to LinkedIn.

As I was cutting and pasting names into the search engine I thought I might as well add them to the address book on my beautiful BlackBerry phone. The best thing about the latest versions is that you can add photos too, so that you can see who is ringing you as well as hear. So cool — I love it, and so handy when you are meeting your supplier for the first time — or as a focus of hate if they are pestering you with yet another rubbish candidate.

I pasted in the name at the top of the list into the LinkedIn search engine. Result! A hit first time and the company matched too. There was also a decent summary of the person and the company as well. I think I could work with this person, she sounded very professional. A bit of cut and paste, and the contact card was almost complete. Drag and drop — brilliant! A photo too.

Now I was on a roll, so on to the next name. No name matches. “That’s odd,” I thought, “why wouldn’t a recruiter be listed on LinkedIn?” Everyone who is anyone is. So on to the next name — a hit. Oh no! A dormant account showing two contacts and an obviously out-of-date profile. So on to the next one, and the next and the next. I was absolutely amazed; out of 37 names on the preferred supplier list (PSL), seven had no profile at all and a further nine had obviously dormant profiles. Very few of the profiles had more than a few hundred contacts.

This was a list of what were supposed to be the best recruiters in the industry; the suppliers who were to provide me and my lovely hiring
managers with the best candidates. Yet some 40% were obviously not networking. I worked out that the 37 PSL contacts were linked directly
to less than 1,000 people. I am personally linked to over 5,000! Yet I am being asked to pay money for these people to find me candidates. How does that work? Where is the value to me? Perhaps one of the socalled ‘consultants’ could explain to me why I need to pay them when they are obviously taking me for a ride?

Now that I have started my new job, you won’t be surprised to read that I am working with my manager to review the PSL, and the company is giving me a new BlackBerry.

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