I am writing in response to the online Personal Development article by Lindsey Symes from Capita (’Handling damaged goods: how to deal with candidates let down by previous employers’, recruiter.co.uk, Personal Development, April).

This is all well and good, but it’s a bit like shutting the door after the horse has bolted. While there’s nothing wrong with the content of the article, I find it ironic that Capita’s recruitment arm - as well as many, many other recruiters - add to this feeling of discontentment when they offer rejection of a different kind, when going for a role.

Over the years, and working with coaching clients who are currently redundant, I’ve lost faith in almost all recruitment consultancies because they are just so poor at providing decent advice and their feedback is normally non-existent.

It’s not just employers who are capable of making their employees feel worthless - recruiters can do a pretty thorough job as well. And incidentally, if you do get a disengaged, bitter employee, that usually tips the balance in terms of being rejected - and the problem just gets worse. Recruiter feedback to the employee might be - literally - life saving.

I am coaching some people who are currently unemployed and they have lost count of the times that they apply for posts, and then are rejected without decent feedback (ie that people can use to improve) or their application is barely acknowledged other than the standard email saying ’thank you for your application’.

This is a far, far cry from the standards that most recruiters lay claim to, promising a personalised and professional service, but treating potential employees as a commodity. How this can show that the recruitment process is fair is a mystery to me.

This article talks about disengaged employees, and usually, they get to be disengaged through the actions of their employer. When the recruiters choose to continue in the same vein - as mentioned above - it is likely to make employees even LESS engaged with businesses generally, which is when it turns into cynicism.

And cynicism is more damaging to both the employer and the employee, for whom there are potential health issues.

Karen Dury, partner, fe3