Recruiters have escalated their complaints about The Guardian’s foray into candidate representation to the Department of Business Innovation and Skills (BIS, formerly the Department for Enterprise and Regulatory Reform), according to media recruiter Rupert Wallis of Media Contacts.

Wallis, chairman of the REC’s Marketing, Media and Creative Sector Group, told Recruiter he has alerted group members to newspaper and online service The Guardian’s move to select top candidates from those who apply to ads on the Guardian Jobs site and then market them to potential employers.

He said that the REC’s legal team told him they have since contacted BIS. However, BIS told Recruiter that they have not yet seen a complaint.

One of the issues Wallis is raising is whether or not The Guardian is complying with regulation governing employment agencies that require them to, among other points, meet candidates and check their rights to work, under the Employment Agencies Act.

“The Guardian is effectively competing against us, their clients,” Wallis said in his memo. “I am vigorously pursuing this with The Guardianand they have confirmed that they see recruitment as an area of expansion.”

Fellow media recruiter John Reilly of Reilly People told Recruiter that one benefit of the controversy is that recruiters have started to talk with long-time competitors to discuss the situation and their options.

“I’ve never known anything to unite the recruitment industry like this,” Reilly said.

In a statement released last week, The Guardian said it had advised major advertisers, including recruitment agencies, of the test programme. However, to date, Recruiter has not been able to find an agency advertising on the site that was told.

The Guardian has declined to comment further at this time.

(For more on this story, see the 10 June issue of Recruiter.)