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16/12/2010
The secret life of the care sector jobs board


Martin H Fischer once wrote that knowledge is a process of piling up facts; whereas wisdom lies in their simplification. So this simplification of knowledge is our gift to you this festive season. Put your feet up, grab a brew, and prepare to learn a secret that the recruitment world would rather you didn’t.

We’ve all been there: the festivities are over; the bin men have been; and the cuddly reindeer is back in the attic for another year. All that’s left is to upload the CV on a few jobs boards, then relax.

And right there was your first mistake.

Let’s back track a bit here…

Adding your details to a jobs board gives you the best chance of landing the best job, right? Umm… actually, no. Not by a long shot. What it does do is open up a world of stress and hurt.

January is named after Janus - the God of the Doorway- for good reason. Come the opening few days of the New Year, the doors to a new job are well and truly open at any decent recruitment agency in the land. Our clients are screaming out for staff and the way our phones light up …well, it would make Blackpool Illuminations blush.

Okay, I know what you’re thinking: "So you have jobs available. Big deal. Why shouldn’t I go to a jobs board too?”

Maybe a metaphor would help here…

Let’s say you want a car and have £10k to spend. Now there are many garages out there selling and auctioning new and used cars of all makes, models, ages and the rest of it. Then there are websites, magazines, the local rag …well, let’s agree that the supply of cars for that price is not an issue.

Posting your CV on a jobs board is the equivalent of posting a message to a website seen by every car dealer in the UK that says "Looking for a £10k car. Please call me.”

These jobs boards are seen by almost every recruiter in the country. It is a honey trap and recruiters twist and turn, waiting for the next victim to fall in. The moment you hit the ‘enter’ button, you details pop up like big flashing pound signs on computers everywhere.

Yes, you will get phone calls from 20 new best friends.
Yes, they say they have the perfect opportunity that fits in with most of your requirements.
Yes they want you to pop in and have a look.
Yes they want you on their books. Yes, you will feel pretty wanted …for the first few days.

One of our candidates, JH, put it best:

"It gets a bit repetitive. Then very repetitive. Then annoying. Then just plain ridiculous. I got calls from with every recruiter I knew and many more I’d never heard of. I repeated the same information over and over again and was bombarded with offers for the same job, or others that made me wonder if they’d even bothered reading my CV.”

Well, quite…

Like JH, you may end up sitting there without the job you want, with the phone still ringing, wishing that you’d never turned the computer on in the first place.

Remember: be it a car or a job, a sales person or recruitment consultant, once they know you are in the market, they will do everything they can to beat someone else to the sale. More often than not, it is something that fits in with their requirements, but not necessarily yours.

Surely there should be a way to tell one person the information just the once, and let them go away, do the hard work and come back only with jobs that actually fit? After all, that’s what they get paid for, isn’t it?

Just like Google. Just like Ebay. Just like insurance comparison sites. Just like Completely Care.

Like other leading ‘search and find’ brands, we stand in front of you with a great big stick, warding off the irrelevance. We have built our business success by trawling through a mass of opportunities to find the right person for the right job for the right client. And we do it every time. That’s why candidates return time after time. That’s why employers return with the best jobs over and over again.

But we actually go one stage further.

We know the industry inside out and have developed strong relationships with every relevant employer in your area. That means we understand the job, the work environment and the client’s culture. So we don’t just show you jobs that fit with your basic requirements; when you get a call from us, you can rest assured that it will fit you like perfectly manicured fingers in the silkiest of silk gloves.

Now we aren’t saying it is easy at our end, and quality is always more time consuming that quantity, but you should expect nothing less from your recruitment agency.

So when the festivities are over - when the bin men have been and the cuddly reindeer is back in the attic for another year - you will probably feel the pull of the online jobs boards. Please, pretty please with tinsel and mistletoe on, think of your sanity, and try to resist.