Any chance you can contact the employer directly?

Win/win ... save them the referral fee, tell them directly how awesome and well suited you are?
*

PN – if only it was that simple (it should be really).* I am kind of trying that through someone I know who works there but you have no contact point so you can’t really do a direct approach.* This is the way it works – is nonsensical, if you think about the aims of recruitment (matching the right people with right jobs) but works well in preserving income stream for agencies.

You see an advert from a recruitment agent (this arena has its own ecosystem of recruitment it seems – is not like the way Adecco, Hudson etc. work), it give zero details about the company and the location (if you watch the adverts and do your homework enough you can have a guess) – you phone up the agent listed in the advert – they try to suss out if they want to divulge who the client is to you (mainly this means they talk about the job spec but don’t divulge location or company right until the end),* if they decide they will, you have a bit of a conversation but still not that much detail.* Then they send you an email which you have to reply to stating you agree to be solely represented by them for specified position, then you can get the job spec and then you send them a CV tailored to the job spec – then they decide if they will put you forward (they write a bit of blurb a bit like a cover letter about you – given most have zero practical experience in the field the value of this is doubtful).* You only ever find out any details of the hiring manager once you have an interview.* (Even in the interview you are not meant to exchange any contact details – because everything should go through the agency – so I have had an interview in the past where interviewer is handing out their business card to you ‘under the table’ like some sort of drug deal!).* Given that the software system I work with is only used in relatively big organisations actually locating the hiring manager without some sort of inside track is virtually impossible. **If you do go outside the normal paths you risk the wrath of the agencies (in the past I went for a job through an agency, and then inadvertently ended up speaking to the hiring manager directly and it turned out that the agency didn’t have the authorisation to be advertising for that position anyway – and I was the one who was accused by the agency of being unethical!!) which can affect future job prospects. Also companies are often may not be that keen because supposedly the whole benefit to them of going through the agency is because they don’t have the time to spend on doing the recruiting – so you have to be a little careful from that angle on direct approaches also.


The whole thing is shonky, people tell me you just have to learn to “play the game” – but I am just no good at it, all the half truths, secrecy and ulterior motives really bothers me. *I am not unusual in my perspective on how dodgy it is in this particular ecosystem but other people are better at just accepting that it is the way it is and you just have to go along with it, and learn how to play the game.