Recruiters don't just work in IT. No idea why you would be getting calls like that if you aren't in the IT industry. That seems really really odd to me.

But I am also sure that there will be recruiters that work in film and some of them will specialise in sound. I was working on the premise that you were getting a call to talk about your line, not something totally random. Hence not understanding why you would yell at them.

I would hope that if you got a call along the lines of "Hello iluvcapra, My name is Harlequin80 and I specialise in the recruitment of sound specialists in the TV and film industry. Have I got you at a time you could talk? The reason for my call is your name was given to me by, (someone you actually know who has given me your name), or I came across your background on LinkedIn and your experience appears to match what I have been asked to find." You would at least be polite in telling me you weren't interested.

It's one of the reasons I didn't stay in IT recruitment. It is almost impossible to judge the skills of a candidate.

At least in engineering, if you were a Structural Engineer on the Gateway upgrade I know that you have at least some skills. And what's more I know the manager on that job so I can ask them what they thought of you.

I guess it is more of an art than a science.

Couple of generic points (and these are guides rather than set in stone)
* Good people work with good people.
* Good people tend not to boast
* Good people are willing to say they can't do something or that it would be a challenge for them
* Good people are specific in what they want
* Good people tend to have longer stints in each company

On top of that I have been in the civil engineering space for a long time. And while I couldn't design or build a bridge I can hold a conversation about what is involved in doing it. So when someone is talking to me I can get a feel for if I am being spun a line or not.

Finally, after 10 years in the same market I am close friends with a number of the managers in the consultancies and have long working relationships with many more. One of them will know you or of you.

I normally don't post about work on here so try to keep it separate - send an email to harlequin80@mailinator.com and I will email you directly with my contact details.

Except that finding the person the job is by far the biggest part of the work load. To put it into perspective for you I will, on average, place 1 person a week. And, believe it or not, that puts me in the top %s of recruiters for specialised skill sets.

To place 1 person I need to organise 5 interviews between a company and a candidate so I am pretty much organising an interview a day and to do that I am on call 7 days a week and usually work about a 60 hour week. I am often talking to people at 8pm on a friday night, or taking a reference at 2am because that is the international time difference.

So when I do have a job offer for someone it is worth me taking the time to negotiate the best possible outcome. What's more is that the negotiation process takes very little time or effort. I may have to invest 30 minutes of telephone time across a week. I lose more time making coffees.

There is no risk because I have never ever lost a placement through asking for more money during the negotiation phase. This is one of the biggest advantages of using an agent. I have no emotional involvement. I won't get insulted by an offer and say something stupid. Don't forget I don't get to accept the role on your behalf. I advise a company and I advise you. You are the one making the final decision. I can tell you whether I think you are pushing too far. And I can tell the client whether I think they are trying to go too low.

In reverse order:

3. Not in IT, Not in the states. I have no idea what any of those clauses or things mean other than the bitching I head about H1B visas on here.

2. I don't believe I ever mentioned salary or pay levels. These are important factors but fall far down the list. I believe I said I spend all day talking to candidates finding out what their ideal job looks like and where they want to go in the careers.

1. Completely disagree. Any service is an operating expense, some things though are cheaper to do internally and some are cheaper to do externally. Recruitment costs are a cost of doing business. Same as lawyer, accountancy or other sub-consultancy costs. Believing you are astute and thinking that recruitment costs means you are paid less actually points to you being naive. Companies pay recruitment costs because it is CHEAPER than doing the recruitment themselves. Otherwise why would they use a recruitment company. This means that a recruitment spend frees up capital that could be used somewhere else. Maybe it will be used to pay you more money, maybe it will be used for something else that the company determines is more valuable.

I agree with most of what you have said. The total cost factor can come in to it when looking at who is the most expensive contractor but I have agreement with my clients that sees the transfer fee reduce over time. So after a while my contractors shift across to direct contracts. This tends to be the norm here in Australia but was not the process in the UK. I don't know about the US.

The other comments you have put tends to be the actions of less experienced agents. I don't advertise at all. I lose more time to calls from people applying for jobs then it generates for me as an income. Also the name dropping like that is very very dangerous. LinkedIn is quite often out of date and calling up and saying I see Hax4Bux has just left when you moved 6 months ago is a fast track to being blown out.

Most of my contractors have been long term with me. I've even been to a few of their weddings. But I am an old dog in this industry at nearly 15 years.

Why?

So someone calls you to find out if you would be interested in something that could benefit you, at no cost to you and you decide to yell at them. Couldn't you just be polite and say thanks, but no thanks?

Time to get flamed out of existence.... I am an agent. Though I would argue there is no difference between an agent and a recruiter or a headhunter. They are different skillsets of the same job.

To a "candidate" the primary service I provide is I spend all day every day talking to companies and hiring managers about their projects, their workloads and what they see as the main challenge to delivering their projects from a manpower perspective. I also learn what their capabilities are vs their competitors. This means when I speak to you and you tell me your skills, your motivations and what you want in a future employer I, hopefully, will be able to say company A, C, and X are actively looking for someone of your background and companies B, V & Q want to know about your type of skillsets when they come on to the market. Because I do this all day everyday I will know this information, where as you, doing what ever it is you do, will not.

From a Company perspective, the service I provide is that I spend all day every day speaking with candidates, about what their ideal job would be in the future and where they want to go with their career. So when the company asks me for a particular skillset I will know 20,30,100+ people with that skillset that would be tempted by what they as a potential employer would offer. Again something that they can't do themselves because they need to be doing what ever their real job is.

Now as for fees and charges. If I find you a permanent job the company pays me a fee based on your salary. If I find you a contract job the company pays me a fee based on your salary on an hourly rate. The IT industry in particular sees that as me taking a cut of your wages, but I don't negotiate with you about my rate. I negotiate with the company about what they are going to pay me for my finders service. What I don't see is two people working in the same job in the same company with the agency guy getting less take home then the direct guy, as a general rule. In my market sectors the lower paid person will just leave.

So if you want to look at it another way, given I am paid a % markup, I want you to get paid the most I can negotiate for you.

Just as an aside I don't recruit in the IT space. I recruit for civil engineers. I did have a brief stint in the early 2000s in IT recruitment but I left that sector as fast as I could as it is extremely difficult to determine if someone can do what they say they can and the general attitude from "candidates" is extremely hostile to recruiters.

Finally, I would like to add that recruitment is a very difficult job that most people can't do. Not because it is technically difficult (it's really quite simple) it is however very difficult emotionally. There is a reason most recruiters only have a couple of years of experience, it is because most people just can't keep doing the job. Most of us try to do the right thing, we are in the end normal people. But for most of us this job is thankless with companies telling us to go jump and candidates thinking we are ripping them off. You will however find that if someone has done this for a long time it is because they have found their niche and they are respected by both their clients and the candidates.

Not to mention that Brisbane keeps investing in public transport (as well as standard vehicle infrastructure) Assuming it gets built the BAT project (underground Bus And Train) will fix a fair number of the current public transport black spots around Brisbane.

I am a gamer and I won't pre-order any more. Major games seem to always be full of bugs the day they are released. Whether that is the game itself or some authentication server creaking under the load.

The other thing is I generally don't trust the games to be any good. In particular remakes of old games. The original AvP games were excellent. Not so much the new ones. XCOM was terrible compared to the originals and Omerta was just rubbish.

The other factor is there is usually a steep discount applied to the games within 6 months UNLESS they are awesome. Sure I may not get in with the cool kids on day one but I have a life that prevents me from playing that many games so it doesn't really matter.

Go back to the 80s and look at London and the rest of the UK. The IRA was threatening all sorts of bloodshed and people made a point of still going out and living their lives. It was promoted that to not live you life as normal was letting them win. To me it felt like 9/11 changed that attitude world wide.

I agree completely but fear and being seen to do something to protect people from that fear wins votes. It is essentially "won't someone think of the children" writ large at a national scale.

While not a justification of this information collection, when ever you check into a hotel in Europe you have to provide all of this information. This is almost real time uploaded to interpol. This is far more invasive and complete then the flight information.

I did a 10 week motorcycle trip around Europe with my now wife. We camped our way from Spain to Greece and every where in between. In Greece I got horribly horribly lost and asked for directions from some construction guys upgrading a road. When I couldn't understand their directions due to language barriers they jumped in a car and said follow us. They drove 20 minutes out of their way to get me to the next town.

In Hungry I broke the charger for our digital camera. I walked into an electronic shop and mimed if they had a replacement. The answer was no but they wrote an address on a piece of paper and gave me rough directions. I followed the direction, starting to feel I was getting off the beaten path and stopped an elderly woman walking the other way. I spoke to her in broken German and I showed her the note, she walked me to the shop.

In France I needed new brake pads for my bike. I asked at the reception of a hotel if they knew where a motorcycle shop was. The concierge drove me to a shop 5 minutes away, and explained to the dealer what I needed (he spoke perfect English, my French kinda sucked). Then drove me back.

In Italy I asked a group of older gentlemen sitting playing Chess on the water front if they knew where a campsite was near by. They turned to a younger man, I'm guessing a grand son, and asked him. His response... Looked me straight in the eye and said "F&ck off". Kinda came as a shock that one.

Not saying my experience is anything other than anecdotal, but after going through 22 countries the ONLY negative experiences we had with people were in Italy (there were a couple of others but this post is long enough already).

I have been to Prague twice and loved it each time, though this was back in 2003 & 2004 so times may have changed.