Exclusive: Leaked email

The following article about a leaked email was published today on Square Mile

If you are one of the thousands of workers in the City confused as to why your, your mistress and your plumber’s CVs have ended up on every desk including your own, the leaked email below may explain a few things. 

A recently graduated recruitment consultant in a well established firm recently sent this email to a colleague.

(Being a recruiter, or severely dyslexic, his diabolical grammar and spelling (or txt spk) has been rectified for your comprehension). 

Mate, I’ve promised a candidate I won’t send their CV anywhere without their permission. I've got their permission to send them to three live roles. 

An urgent briefing has just come in from a new client and I know this candidate's CV is perfect. 

The client has given me a strict deadline of 4pm for all CV's. I’m not able to speak to my candidate until 6pm.

Sending this CV, which will convert to an interview, will allow me to hit my target for the week. 

If I don't hit the target my whole team will be let down, losing out on the internal competition. My team leader will be all over me again.

I’m sure I can send the CV out  then sell the role to the candidate afterwards. If I don't the guys at XXX will!!!! What should I do?

The response was simply: “welcome to recruitment...send out all CVs on your database to every single hiring manager you connect with on LinkedIn (every single day) and pray something sticks so you can pay for your rent...and hair gel”!

Annoyed? Join us at the Church of Moderate Capitalism for Sunday Mass where we will pray: “Dear Lord, regulate (or abolish) the recruitment industry”!

Fred Bayr: Diary of a loner- The Networking Event

No matter how hard I try the isolation of delusion keeps my frown firmly cemented in place.

            Last Monday evening I attended a networking event for entrepreneurs. I am not an entrepreneur nor do I have any realistic aspirations of becoming one. I went because the winds of loneliness forced me. I figured people proactively talk to each other  at these events so finally I could have some company outside of my working hours. I put on my best shirt and tie, gelled back my hair and thought if I stood in a corner with a certain look in my eye then for the first time since the recession somebody would talk to me. No one did.

            I stood, one hand holding a glass, the other sweatily clenched in my pocket. After twenty five minutes of feeling like the victim of a Paul Daniels magic trick I decided to “network” with others.

            After several dull conversations it became clear to me I was not on the same wavelength with anyone in the room. The length of a football match had passed by.I was down 2 nil: I looked like a complete loser amongst these bright ambitious go getters. I decided to leave.

            As I was walking out I somehow managed to pluck up the courage to speak to the most beautiful girl in the room. She had smiled at me. A friendly smile; perhaps inspired by sympathy. Perhaps she had seen me drowning alone in the sea of networkers and decided to throw me a raft. No. That would never happen to me. I thought I had imagined her smile but proceeded nonetheless.

            I immediately lowered my expectations. I saw a distinguished gentleman by her side complete with handkerchief in his suit jacket’s breast pocket. I assumed he had a pocket full of business cards displaying the words Private Banker or Fund Manager or even Fred Bayr’s Dream Crusher. But as I embarked upon my approach, somebody tapped his shoulder and led him away. I felt a wave of relief knowing  my crap jokes, ugly looks, Tesco Value prawn cocktail crisps breath and nervous twitch could go unchallenged. I didn’t know what to expect but I began to feel confident.

            I wasn’t in this for anything other than a conversation. Seriously.

            We talked. She worked in venture capital but wanted to set up a cosmetics business. She asked me what my business was. Without pause and without knowing where the idea came from I told her it was under construction. I could say no more as I hadn’t secured the patent. The lie created an air of mystery. After years of working in sales lying is second nature to me. I am not proud of this.

            She gave me a look that made me wish we were alone and stepped closer to me pointing her index finger. She began stroking my tie and complimenting my sartorial choices.  I was making an emotional connection but then out of the blue, at the peak of my excitement, she said she needed to leave. I knew it was all too good to be true. Before she left she pulled out her phone and demanded we exchange numbers before we part. My fate was suffering from bipolar: down one minute, up the next.

            The next day I called her to suggest we meet for a drink. She apologised three times before I could complete my invitation. She was tipsy the night before and “totally out of character”. I was a “really sweet guy” but she was “so busy with work and stuff” that she would have no time “ for the next few weeks”. She did suggest I “could call her then” by which point she will have undoubtedly changed her number. Expectation is a bastard.  I felt like a kid tied to a chair and forced to watch his best friends munch his chocolate birthday cake down to the last crumb only to have it all vomited out on his face.  To express myself honestly, I felt like crying. Everynight  since,before I fall asleep, I try to figure out why she smiled at me in the first place...

         

How to escape a life in recruitment

The day you received a letter of acceptance from London South Bank University to study Hospitality Management your life was doomed.

You were always two grades above the class dunce but in the three years of debauchery during which you forgot how to spell, multiply and divide, he excelled through his plumbing apprentice and stepped onto the property ladder. You, after bar work in Buenos Aires and  lazing around a ski resort in Switzerland , decided to “get a real job”. To further prove your lack of brain cells you assumed this to be a job in recruitment.

It started out well. You billed easily, earning as much as the lawyers and doctors who left school with five A’s. You were partying on the continent every third weekend and drunk off free booze on the last Friday of every month.

Now the saturated market has slowed down and you can barely afford to pay your rent. You want out from this soul destroying trap but there are three problems: you have no other skill set to survive a life outside of sales; you don’t have enough savings (or intelligence) to pursue new qualifications; and you don’t have the guts (or ideas) to set up your own business.

Regardless, you come to work every day intending to hand in your notice but become incontinent whenever your boss asks: “so what did you wanna talk about”?

Then a bulb lights up. You will get yourself fired! You will do something so bad that no consultancy will want to hire you again and you will be eternally free from life as a phone monkey. You will sign on and experience something far more stimulating; watching This Morning every day as your mind turns to an even softer, smaller mush.

The problem is - if you were ever unfortunate enough to be half decent - it is easier to get hired than fired in recruitment. Consultancies know idiots who sacrifice their autonomy to do their boss' dirty work (because they are “money motivated”) only come along every second day. As the tuition fees hike comes into effect next year and the number of new graduates from polytechnics decreases, the gold rush of naïve weasels willing to bash phones will fall. Performing or not, your employer needs you as a punching bag.

You can, however, try the following.

1 Get you company kicked off a major PSL

The best way to do this is to blatantly headhunt from such a client. Send out a mass email about a "fantastic opportunity" at a specified bank to all contacts at this account including hiring managers and HR staff.  Follow up with phone calls every hour to the mobile of hiring managers. Ideally you’ll end up pestering one whilst on their summer holiday

.2. Verbally abuse the global head of your practice area at a major account

Simple

3. Turn up late every day

Be creative with your excuses on this one. Try everything from “the sleeping pills were too strong” to “I had an interview with a competitor”.

I speak from experience when I say it is unlikely these will work. If not, tell your boss you slept with his wife. If your boss is single there is no way out!

Three preposterous responses to interview questions

This article was published on SQUARE MILE today.

If you are one of those people for whom interviews are daunting, fear not. Unless you are so thick that your only hope of earning a living is to work in product control, you can shine through with the right advice.

            If you got the interview through a recruiter chances are he’ll be begging you to visit his office for some “interview prep”. Be careful. There are some brilliant recruiters out there and some rather nefarious ones. The latter might get you interviews but that doesn’t mean their industry insight is credible. As a person of high intellect do you really want second hand advice from a residual of New Labour’s gruesome objective of “making university accessible to all”?

            Ensure you take advice from experts. Otherwise you will find yourself at interviews thinking the following responses will give you a hope in hell of securing the job. Believe me, these are horror stories some hiring managers have heard from ill advised candidates.

1. When asked: “Give an example of a time you had to think on your feet at work”, one product controller responded: “I once had diarrhea. I needed to use the toilet but all cubicles were occupied and the autistic IT support guy was approaching the disabled one. I thought on my feet, grabbed a bin liner, ran to the basement and emptied out into the bag. I then sprayed the room with air freshner”.

2. When asked : “What is your greatest achievement to date?”, another product controller said: “Meeting George Michael...” It would have been bad enough if he stopped there. But he continued... “in Hampsted Heath”.

3. When asked (last Thursday) : “ If you were a newspaper which one would you be?”, one dim witted product controller who never reads anything unless its a spreadsheet, replied, “News of The World”.

Guys, either be careful or avoid product control!

Email RecRehab; financechange@gmail.com

Follow FB on Twitter @Fredbayr

Connect on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/fredbayr

What happens when you date a recruitment consultant?

Research has shown having a photo on a LinkedIn profile can increase responsiveness to cold invites. It can also make life a little more interesting for recruiters; if they are recruiting supermodels.

In the lonely world of recruitment, particularly middle office recruitment, the most attractive photo one will come across will be of a four eyed four foot dump who resembles Mervyn King in a skirt and uses the same razor to shave both her armpits and above her upper lip. (Yes, this will be visible to the discerning eye).

Because most recruiters don’t have a life outside of “power hours” and LinkedIn, a vast number have started using Lovestruck.com to find attractive love.

Unfortunately Lovestruck is being forced to ban recruiters because those who date them complain of “strange behaviour”.

Basically, a typical date with a recruiter goes as follows.

1.Recruiter (male) meets date (female) in dodgy Bangladeshi curry house where waiters with poor English continuously use the word menage when they mean manage.

2.Recruiter orders cheap wine.

2A).Before it arrives he starts asking open general questions.

(In his mind he has a methodology of questions which will result in her accepting his “offer”).

3. Recruiter struggles to open bottle. Waiter arrives, points at recruiter and his date and says “you, you, menage; you need me”?

4. Date vomits at the thought of this miscommunication and prepares to leave.

5. Recruiter says: “but wait you haven’t let me probe you yet...” (See 2a- this is genuine recruiter lingo, not an immoral physical act).

6. Date, subjected to this further miscommunication, leaves.

7. Recruiter gets dunk on cheap wine and makes some cold calls.

8. You, an accountant, receive an inarticulate pitch at 9pm about a job that is of no interest.

9. Life goes on...

10: and on... and on...and on...

Hope for former News of the World editor

Embattled former News of the World editor and current CEO of News International Rebekah Brooks need not fear calls for her resignation. A number of London’s notoriously unethical recruitment companies are keen to employ her.

“With such blatant disregard for ethics she’ll be a huge success in this game”, said Sir Vy Ver, Director of RedHead Recruitment.  “Alongside lying to candidates she can help us hack the phones of HR managers and discover vacancies before competitors”.

Brooks told us “cold calling  IT developers and accountants is a bit below the belt. I wouldn’t be able to sleep at night”.

  

In related news, The Guardian has been accused of hacking the phones of NOTW investigators to reveal the above hacking scandal.

In other news: The Independent has been accused of hacking the phones of  The Guardian investigators to reveal the above scandal.

In further other news: ITN news have been accused hacking the phones of The Independent....

WE LIVE IN A DEMOCRACY

Objectivity is important in democratic society. Rec Rehab has been contacted by a number of recruiters who claim we are biased against the industry. Thus, we are opening up the blog to the higher end of the recruitment market. If you or your company want to have your news/opinions/analysis published email FINANCECHANGE@GMAIL.COM

Alongside highlighting credible recruitment companies, for the benefit of the tens of thousand of candidates who visit us daily we will soon compile a short list of recruiters to avoid. Candidates- keep sending us stories of your bad experiences to financechange@gmail.com

Thank you for all emails to date.We will publish them soon.

Education secretary announces new white paper

Education secretary Michael Gove has announced the coalition’s most ambitious policy to date. In an attempt to raise success rates across high schools in England, Mr Gove proposes GCSE pupils visit recruitment consultancies in the City of London to witness the fate of academic failures.

“Seeing these spiky haired gum chewing monkey’s battle for crumby commission will instill fear into our teenagers”, Gove will enunciate in a speech later today. “ If they don’t read Shakespeare and study Toynbee they’ll realise they will end up with no value to add to society and no fulfilment to derive from their daily existence. They’ll spend their lives skimming LinkedIn profiles, leaving voice mails and re-writing CV’s for accountants who have the grammatic ability of dyslexic BNP thugs".

We attempted to ask deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg for his opinion but during our conversation he was repeatedly disrupted by cold calling recruiters asking if he knew any idiots stupid enough to take mind numbing product control jobs. “Try Osborne”, is all we could get out of him. We’re certain he wasn’t talking to us.

The world’s most successful loser

Judging by the reaction to my efinancialcareers article, I am the most talked about person in the Square Mile; albeit for being the world’s most successful loser.

Success is success as far as I’m concerned and as one reader commented I “reek of it”.

See here

My life long ambition can now be achieved. I am officially cool enough to wear sunglasses indoors. I walked into my office today with a pout, jacket over shoulder and a mysterious aura that would make Johnny Depp look as unassuming as George Michael asleep behind the wheel outside any given Snappy Snaps.

None of the girls turned their heads. That changed when my discounted pointy ShoeZone loafers got caught in the phone cable extension. I crashed onto the ground with my trousers in a twist revealing my aura destroying white sport socks. (My washing machine is broken).

Life is not good for some no matter how hard we try.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have accountants to be rejected by.