Worst recruiters: Huxley?

[fina]

I've dealt with a few recruiters, they seemed ok and at least seemed to have a working relationship with a firm or two and knew something about the role. One was actually very knowledgeable, did a detailed read of my resume etc another quizzed me on the phone detailed c questions!

Huxley called me and miss X goes:
"uummm, ok, can you tell me about c++ and like what you specifically did with that?"
--(i briefly describe my CS background.)

"but can you tell me a bit more, uumm, what like the things you did with c++ were, like in great detail"
-- (sure, as it seems they just want to hear if i can speak in a manner thats not comprehensible)

"libraries, have you worked with libraries, like which libraries have you worked with?"
--(should of said the bronx and queens public libraries)

"the role is at a BB, the guys like you know are really smart, they want a high caliber and those libraries with c++"
--(unlike this recruiter as she didnt even know the group at the bank thats recruiting)

So which other recruitment companies should we STAY FAR FAR AWAY from?
Can you force a recruiter to delete your resume, not send it anywhere and not call again?

 

[DominiConnor]

Actually Huxley are one of the best recruiters on the planet. Only this week they wrote to me to inform me that they have once more won the Best Recruiter award. http://hereisthecity.com/2011/07/27/huxley-associates-best-hr-recruitment-firm-2011/?z=07213

It must be true. I wish to say on the record, that I have absolutely no reason to in any way doubt the integrity of this result.
None.
You clear on this ?

As a director of a recruitment firm, and one who drew the short straw of dealing with compliance requirements, I have to say that basically you don't have the right to have your resume deleted.

If you're in the USA, you have hardly any rights over your personal data at all, unless they are lying or it is being used for credit scoring.

If you're in Europe or Britain than you have a right to a copy of personal data, which in this situation is pretty much useless.
You also can oblige them to correct data that is wrong, which basically means you can force Huxley to update your old resume with a new one.

Also, one of the things I had to do when given evidence to the Parliamentary legal forum was explain that you can't delete resumes.
Unlike the fine Huxely recruiter fina spoke to, I have coded C++ libs for money and I will share that you ought to realise how hard that would be.
Any competently managed database is backed up regularly and kept far away on tapes.
"Deleting" in recruitment databases, as in so many systems is actually marking a record as not to be included in SQL queries that have been written not to include records with this flag. I'm being precise here, since in SQL if you don't explicitly include a condition for a field, that record is included.

Also the point of a backup is that you will restore from it at some point with the possibility that changes in between backups will be lost.

At the start I say that I get mail from Huxley. Given that I like to think that most people know what I do for a living, you might ask why ?
Yep, somewhere around 1998 they got my resume. Nothing I can think of will stop them sending me mail about jobs. I am confident that when I finally fall off my perch somewhere towards the end of this century and my grandchildren have to sort out my affairs, there will be thousands of jobs in my inbox from Huxley.

 

[Andy Nguyen]

Yep, somewhere around 1998 they got my resume. Nothing I can think of will stop them sending me mail about jobs.

Isn't the UK equivalence of the US CAN-SPAM Act went into effect in 2003? Every piece of email should have an opt-out link at the bottom. I maintain a newsletter here and the service provider has strict rules on compliance. We use double opt-in, provide our business mailing address at the bottom of each email as well as provide a way for people to update their profile or remove their email from our newsletter completely.

We also routinely purge our list of subscribers who haven't opened our newsletter for awhile. So having a small group of people who expect and want to read our newsletter is more important to us than just spamming everyone like what other businesses seem to do these days.

Huxley is a big business so I would be surprised if they don't comply to this spam rule.

 

[DominiConnor]

As someone who both writes for as well as reads The Register, I would draw your attention to the first line of John's article, where he shares that few think it will be of any use and to the best of my knowledge no-one has actually been prosecuted under it.​

The Reg doesn't have an "editorial stance" as such, but it is fair to say that I don't think anyone who writes for it genuinely believes that the ICO is really equipped to do its job.​

Huxley isn't spamming me, I find it mildly amusing if they think I want to be a quant developer at Deutsche Bank, but to be fair I think that about DB in general.​

Effectively, regulation is by the industry. If someone spams using your service, it means legitimate users also get their content blocked.​

That's why Andy's service provider is strict, and it is generally accepted that spam is in decline http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/06/30/spam_volumes_shrink/​

There exist various trade associations for recruiters, who occasionally get delusions of grandeur and refer to themselves as "regulators".​

P&D doesn't belong to any of them, but if you care to think of the firm that you personally think are the very worst, you will find they are fully paid up members of at least one.​

BTW I don't recall getting the news letter, might it be flagged as spam ?​

 

[warrior_js]

I agree with DominiConnor

As he has described Huxley has the most dumb User Oriented policies of all. (remember I am in Sydney, Australia)

They don't care for user privacy, and client loyalty means nil to these people. I was recently in touch with a huxley agent who was
1. Too pushy
2. Arrogant
3. No concern for client opinion.
4. Highly passive on answering about the plans of employer.

And top of it, this person ended the communication very abruptly, and accusing me of not truthful about stuff in my Resume.

All in all Huxley will be the last one on my list.

Now these people are sending me mails from Bombay India about Employers in India.

-RIP my faith in a huxley associate.

 

[vincegata]

@warrior

THX for sharing.

 

[mzamfir]

I know this thread is very old, but I feel the need to chime in with a contrarian view of Huxley.

I can't speak for the whole firm since I've only interacted with one recruiter working there (out of their Asia-Pacific office). But this particular lady was actually quite good at her job. She took the time to get to know me. She knew exactly what the role was about, she personally knew the hiring manager and so had a very good idea of what kind of candidates he was looking for.

Also, with every position that she suggested, she would first discuss it with me, and made sure I was 100% on board. None of the 'carpet bombing' practices I've seen at other places, where your resume is sent to every possible firm without your consent. And the positions we did discuss were genuinely all with top tier firms (I know, a HH's cliche).

On top of that, she even took the time to give me some really helpful insights about another role I was interviewing for, that was not through her agency.

Anyway, I'm sure every recruiting firm has some good, and some not-so-good recruiters. But this particular recruiter was what I always imagined a great headhunter would be like.

 

[mhy]

Your recruiter is probably the exception, not the rule and I think you have hit the jackpot. You should definitely keep in touch with her and keep her in mind if you're looking again in the future.

Every time I worked with any recruiter and told them I was interviewing somewhere else, they would get super agitated and on the verge of anger. One of them was so persistently annoying that I actually had to tell them to fuck off.

I've gotten 15+ emails from various recruiters at Huxley over the last year or so. None of them appeared to have read my profile, none of the roles they sent me were of any interest to me (Ruby on Rails? QA automation? Job in Australia requiring fluent Mandarin? Really?), and they've even added me to some internal mailing list they have that periodically spams random job postings. When I asked to be removed, I got no response so I just put them in my spam filter.

Ultimately many of the recruiters I know are like real-estate brokers in NYC; Spam everywhere and everyone you know, hope a few get caught in the bait, and hope one of them ends up with you getting paid. 99% of them are scum but the 1% that aren't are truly excellent.

 

[Karol Karolczuk]

Don't go there, it's just wasting your time. My friends actually warned me to don't go there because they don't have any position available, except few for advertising. Well I went to Luxembourg office, and took all my papers with me, including the diplomas scans and filled up forms. After one hour interview, and all possible questions ... lady in the office told me, We don't have any position in Luxembourg available. By the phone it was plenty of them. I was asking " you are sure you have something for me " ?, because my friends advise to not go there. To summarize, don't waist your time, go straight to the company, and try to avoid Huxley and their recruiters.​

 

[ebimayo]

I recently had some experience with Huxley in Japan. At first they contacted me on my company number instead of just sending me a LinkedIn message. As we have an open plan office I obviously cannot talk to a recruiter with my boss sitting just about 5 meters away.

Then they introduced me to a position and provided almost no information. So I send them some questions and never got a reply.

Then one agent asked for a meeting in person. I did not mind, because they said, they would come to a Starbucks close to my work place. We had an appointment in the evening. In the morning they told me that, another important thing had come up so we need to reschedule. I told them that I don’t really care anymore and never heard from them again.