My recruiter hell

Related tags:

Graduate recruiters wield an awful lot of power when it comes to getting you the job of the dreams. But what do they actually do, and why do some of them make your lives so difficult? We get an exclusive insight into the working life of a leading graduate recruiter.

While most of my friends spent their summer holidays partying in Portofino or hiking in the Himalayas, I had the great misfortune to be tasked with hand-holding 20 “green-around-the gills” students during our company’s annual summer internship.

I don’t know whether it was because I have been in the recruitment game for too long now, or if it was just because standards really are falling in our country’s universities, but this year’s group of hopefuls seemed to be more useless and dim-witted than ever before. You’d think that after all the CV-sifting and psychometric testing, we would have weeded out all the no-hopers. Alas no, there were a fair few characters who had me reaching for the vodka/tonic come home-time.

Take Mr Birthright. On paper he ticked all the right boxes: good university, very good academic qualifications, super sporty and lots of extra-curricular interests. So why did he wind me up so much? Perhaps it was because of the audible sigh he uttered every time a piece of work was passed his way. I don’t know if he really expected to be let loose on our clients the moment he arrived here, but you’d think he’d have some idea of what he would be expected to do. Instead he stood at arm’s length from the photocopier, as if it smelt as bad as something he’d found on the sole of his shoe. Within moments of meeting a new member of staff he made it very clear that his father was very well-connected in the City, and that he expected to be buying his first Porsche a few months after graduation. (I didn’t have the heart to tell him there wouldn’t be an insurance company in the land which would insure him at his age and with his arrogance.)

And let’s not forget Ms Incompetent. Again, a super high-flier academically, but without a modicum of common sense. For two weeks she used the men’s toilets, because she was too embarrassed to ask where the ladies’ were. Even the simplest of tasks seemed to flummox her: like when she was asked to update a very basic spreadsheet. She managed not only delete three months’ worth of data, she also caused a massive printer malfunction by accidentally requesting 10,000 copies of the (now) skeleton spreadsheet. But to top it all off, she managed to get steaming drunk one night and make a pass at one of our managing directors. Note to all future interns: this is no way to get a job offer.

Now autumn is here, but there is no end in sight on the treadmill that is graduate recruitment. As if I hadn’t suffered enough, I now have to start attending the seemingly endless tour of careers fairs across the country. If this summer’s interns are anything to go by, it looks like I will need to pack an extra-large bottle of vodka to keep me going.

Add to