Throughout my career in rail, I have had approaches by recruiters. Almost always, they have failed to properly read my CV.
I retired from railway work at the end of 2019. Having lost Mrs L, my heart went out of having to travel around the country. The last contract I was on involved spending several weeks back and forth to Belfast. I enjoyed the work, but the travel and staying away was too much, so I decided it was time to call it a day.
I still get the occasional email, though, and today I had another. Apparently, I’m a shoo-in for an operations manager. Decent salary and perks. Well, it does sort of fit my background…
Hi Mark,
I came across your profile on LinkedIn, and you’re experience looks like it could align well for a Senior National Operations Standards Manager opportunity in the Rail industry…
To be fair, I struggled to get past ‘you’re’ but I read on.
You must also be a vocationally competent train driver to be considered.
And if you had read my profile properly, you will see that I am operationally competent (or was) in signalling.
Sigh…
Recruitment droids are the same sort that sell kitchens or double glazing. Just a different kind of product to flog on. Nothing that requires telling the truth or caring in anyway about the outcome.
My experience is that the recruitment firms collect CV’s like a schoolboy collects stamps (or whatever schoolboys collect nowadays). Any enquiry from you about a job is stonewalled with “Send a CV”. It is like a Pavlovian response from a parrot.
That way if someone contacts them requiring a hunchback dwarf, fluent in Serbo-Croat, a fully qualified deep sea driver that can ride a camel, has at least 10 years and a qualifications in toad sexing (important for toads, I should imagine) and prepared to work on a contract in Antarctica for minimum wage, they can reach into their database and come up with the goods.
I have met only ONE recruiter that was professional and she wasn’t successful in placing me due to the potential employer being unrealistic about so many things.
“That way if someone contacts them requiring a hunchback dwarf, fluent in Serbo-Croat, a fully qualified deep sea driver that can ride a camel, has at least 10 years and a qualifications in toad sexing (important for toads, I should imagine) and prepared to work on a contract in Antarctica for minimum wage, they can reach into their database and come up with the goods.”
That reminds me of the old Not the Nine O’clock News sketch:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SsdCGV0cY0s
I’m thinking of the Mitch Benn song ‘All The Small Stuff’ which is all about life’s minor anoyances.
“Y O U apostrophe R E is a contraction of you are,
The possessive form of you is one word spelled Y O U R,
It’s really not that hard,
It’s really not that hard,
It’s really really seriously not that fucking hard.
https://youtu.be/_i_tpaQ4v68?si=ctOBWEDnsO6yn5ZZ
It’s not just recruitment agencies – my bank has just informed me they will stop sending paper statements, yet still manages to post frequent letters trying to sell home insurance. Considering some details of my house (all publicly available information) used in the quotes are wrong, I’m not inclined to take them up on the offers…
If the Mail is to be believed (clearly not a given), then Nat West are currently busy analysing customer data, where transactions are made and so on, in order to advise customers on how to be ‘greener’.
I guess it’s currently optional.
But I wonder how long before it can be a useful peg upon which to hang the cloak of debunking.
I am 100% certain that if I banked with them, I would now be looking to remedy my error and go elsewhere.
I got offered my own job! They told me it was my perfect job. As it’s long hours, low pay, money grabbing owners who don’t care for their staff I feel rather depressed.