I had an idea a little while back to put together a small site that allowed for the rating of recruitment agents (and their firms, by aggregation); basically to help identify/avoid/shame/root out poor working practices in order to improve the quality of engagement that contractors get.
During this round of going to market I've noticed an increase in the usual grimey practices previously documented on this forum and I would have found it a better use of my precious bench time to engage with highly rated agents who are more likely to have a genuine, busy desk and are not otherwise trying to put one over on their candidate base.
Previously I've kept my own notes on agents but it's difficult to keep up with the influx of new recruits and the obvious solution seemed to be to crowd source the intel.
There are similar sites for other professions (Professors, Doctors, Teachers, etc.) and I wonder whether it would help to self-regulate the market a little bit if it had some active participation from contractor kin.
Keep in mind the focus of this would not be to witch hunt agents (clearly some process would be needed for reporting abuse), but instead promote good practice and highly rated agents whilst having the by-product of starving the bad ones out or at least into remission. Also to note is that agents keep a detailed history of interaction on their candidates (I recently had a conversation with an agent about a contract I'd turned down over 2 years prior).
Aside from contractor rating/reviews of agents I can see a couple of other potential opportunities; integration with LinkedIn (for authentication, profiles, connections) and matches to JobServe/Site/etc. for current linked vacancies.
So any thoughts from the community? Has this been tried before or is there something like this already out there?
During this round of going to market I've noticed an increase in the usual grimey practices previously documented on this forum and I would have found it a better use of my precious bench time to engage with highly rated agents who are more likely to have a genuine, busy desk and are not otherwise trying to put one over on their candidate base.
Previously I've kept my own notes on agents but it's difficult to keep up with the influx of new recruits and the obvious solution seemed to be to crowd source the intel.
There are similar sites for other professions (Professors, Doctors, Teachers, etc.) and I wonder whether it would help to self-regulate the market a little bit if it had some active participation from contractor kin.
Keep in mind the focus of this would not be to witch hunt agents (clearly some process would be needed for reporting abuse), but instead promote good practice and highly rated agents whilst having the by-product of starving the bad ones out or at least into remission. Also to note is that agents keep a detailed history of interaction on their candidates (I recently had a conversation with an agent about a contract I'd turned down over 2 years prior).
Aside from contractor rating/reviews of agents I can see a couple of other potential opportunities; integration with LinkedIn (for authentication, profiles, connections) and matches to JobServe/Site/etc. for current linked vacancies.
So any thoughts from the community? Has this been tried before or is there something like this already out there?
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