This is a guest blog from Amy Goldstein. Amy is the founder, principal contributor, and editor of Expat Essays. Originally from Ann Arbor, Michigan, Amy moved to Buenos Aires, Argentina in 2005, where she lived for over three years before moving to New Zealand in 2009. She hopes that readers, especially other expats, benefit from her notes, stories, advice, and experiences.

I have published this, as I will more of her work, as sometimes we get so buried in recruitment that we can forget the candidate’s perspective.

“I hate to say this, as I’m not one to generalize, but all recruitment agencies look the same to me. That may sound awful, but it’s not necessarily a bad thing. One of the benefits of applying for a job through an HR consultancy is that you know exactly what to expect.

A few years ago, a friend of mine responded to an advertisement for an Event Planner published directly by the employer. The person who phoned her to arrange an interview mentioned that he was impressed with her qualifications and experience. My friend arrived to the interview confident and prepared. Her interviewers, on the other hand, arrived unprepared and arrogant. With no HR Department, the company sent two twenty-something hotshot executives to conduct the interview. Neither brought a notepad, but both had a latte.

For the next thirty minutes, they drilled her on international media and business. She had come ready to talk about guest lists and seating charts. They were clearly more concerned with showing off for one another than with getting to know her. She was horrified and humiliated. Since then, she’s found all of her jobs through agencies.

No one ever got ambushed by an HR consultant. The process with agencies is always the same: email your CV everywhere, call after 1-2 business days to follow-up, go in for a skills test and interview, wait for the best offer. In the event that you do have to meet with a potential employer, there is comfort in knowing that the employer is predisposed to liking and hiring you. My current manager spent the better part of an hour asking me for South America travel tips.

Even at their worst, recruitment agencies are reassuringly predictable. You can expect to be strung along or ignored by at least one consultant. You can count on being told that the “the economy is slow right now, but we’re optimistic it will pick up soon.” And you can be sure that when you do accept a position, all the other consultants will ask you with a mixture of jealousy and resentment for the name of the agency that found your opportunity.

That’s not to say that there are never any surprises. Another friend was recently job hunting in Auckland. She is no stranger to office work, having temped in England, Australia, and New Zealand. She signed up with agencies, and for weeks, was glued to her phone like a prisoner awaiting a last-minute presidential pardon. Finally, after sufficiently harassing her consultants, she got a response: “The truth is,” began the consultant, “we don’t trust that anyone will hire you, because of your nose ring.” My friend now works at an eco-lodge in the Coromandel.

When I lived in Wellington, I registered with an agency that specializes in promotional work. Jobs were highly paid but infrequent, and delegated on a first come, first served basis. One day while on the way to the gym, one of the consultants called to offer me a three-day assignment. I was also working part-time at a bookstore and didn’t know my schedule for those days; so I asked her to give me an hour to confirm. Forget the treadmill, I literally ran across town to the store to check my hours. Still panting, I rang to say that I was in fact available. “Sorry,” she sang, “I just gave those shifts away to somebody else.” That’s when I decided it was time for a full-time job.

It was the height of the recession, and prospects were bleak. I submitted my CV to multiple agencies, hoping the law of large numbers would be on my side. It wasn’t. I was in the process of deleting a series of automated rejection emails when I received a phone call from a consultant who was, “really excited by my CV and would just love to have me come in.” Gushing: another thing you can expect from a recruitment agent.
“But your agency just sent me an email saying you weren’t interested.”
“Oh. Did we?” Eventually, we determined that my CV had landed on the desks of two different consultants (obviously, one more talented and intuitive than the other). By then, it was too late – I was already on my way to Auckland.

I fared much better in Auckland, signing up with and receiving offers from a number of agencies. As all of the opportunities were more or less the same, I went with the consultant I liked best. This consultant actually listened to me and to my story, taking into consideration my needs and aspirations. She treated me like a person that needed help finding a job, rather than a potential commission. Her honesty and reliability were refreshing: if she said she was going to call, she did. When it came to selling me on the job, she confessed that it was neither challenging nor exciting. However, she convinced me that the relaxed office environment and the security of a steady paycheck were what mattered most, given the current climate and my personal situation. Of course, she was right.

Before the holidays, my consultant dropped by my office unannounced to deliver me a present. We chatted for a few minutes about my plans to travel before my visa expires in February. Even though we had just finished discussing my imminent departure from the New Zealand job market, she invited me to meet her for a cup of coffee in January. As soon as she left, I forwarded her email address to my flatmate, who is currently in the market for an HR consultant. It just goes to show that when searching for a job, it’s the individual agent not the agency that defines the experience.”

Thanks for your blog Amy – I look forward to more

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