I just need to get two references ...

[eek]

Why would the job centre want to generate leads?

Because any client willing to work with Psychocandy could plausibly employ any of the other dole loving people they deal with.

[CheeseSlice]

A fishing story:

Agent rings up this morning and immediately pursues details of my last clientco, it took about 25 seconds for him to start suggesting possible manager names at me.

Told him I've had a lot of timewasters calling lately, asked him for the jobspec, to which he replied "err, there's a few I'm working on at the moment". This guy wasn't even trying to follow any kind of script. Clearly he needs to go back to agent school.

I didn't sleep very well last night and I was a bit grumpy at this point, but I shocked myself by telling him to forget it and hung up on him.

The reward was that I received an apology email from him after the call

[blinko]

The easiest way to handle this is ask them to email the details through.

Although on another note. If a contractor gets you a gig and then asks for references would you feel more obliged/willing to provide references

[psychocandy]

Had agent ask me for two references yesterday. Sounded well fishy.
He promised me hand on heart that they would not be contacted yet, only if offer came, and he definitely would not use it for sales calls.

So I stuck a mate of mind down who I worked with a few months ago. Told agent he was team lead and warned mate what might happen.

Yep, you can guess. 15 mins after me giving agent the details, mate gets a call. 2 mins asking about me, then onto the 'so do you need any staff at the moment?'


******* bellend.....

[northernladuk]

Had agent ask me for two references yesterday. Sounded well fishy.
He promised me hand on heart that they would not be contacted yet, only if offer came, and he definitely would not use it for sales calls.

So I stuck a mate of mind down who I worked with a few months ago. Told agent he was team lead and warned mate what might happen.

Yep, you can guess. 15 mins after me giving agent the details, mate gets a call. 2 mins asking about me, then onto the 'so do you need any staff at the moment?'


******* bellend.....

Aren't you the bellend for giving him a reference that he can follow up so making the whole process worthwhile? (in his mind anyway). Stick to your guns, and either say no thanks or giving him your past agents details, which has been said a million times, and he won't bother and hopefully the practice will die down.

While morons continue to give them leads that are not another agent they will keep doing it.

[psychocandy]

Aren't you the bellend for giving him a reference that he can follow up so making the whole process worthwhile? (in his mind anyway). Stick to your guns, and either say no thanks or giving him your past agents details, which has been said a million times, and he won't bother and hopefully the practice will die down.

While morons continue to give them leads that are not another agent they will keep doing it.

Agreed. Which is why I gave them my mates name so I could get some clue as to whether this was a genuine role or a sales call. Now I know it wasnt.

If by some stroke of luck it had been genuine, then I might have ruled myself out by being awkward.

[Boney M]

Had the fortnightly call from one of the ROC Search cretins asking me if I worked with so so at clientcos I had previously worked at. I find Roc Search are the worst of them at the moment.

[craig1]

Aren't you the bellend for giving him a reference that he can follow up so making the whole process worthwhile? (in his mind anyway). Stick to your guns, and either say no thanks or giving him your past agents details, which has been said a million times, and he won't bother and hopefully the practice will die down.

While morons continue to give them leads that are not another agent they will keep doing it.

Has there ever been a case in known history where an agent has managed to get work from spamming a "reference"? Would the conversation go like this?

Agent: "Hi, I was talking to Numpty Contractor earlier today, he gave me your details and told me you may be looking to hire new staff. Can we help at all? Obviously Numpty wouldn't have given me your details if he didn't think we were the best agency ever..."
Client: "You know, I have got this pile of unfilled positions on my desk and I was hoping some agency would call me about them. I haven't passed them onto my PSL agents yet as for some reason they're not picking up the psychic messages I'm sending out to them."
Agent: "Ah, in that case I have 20 candidates who can start immediately. They're easy to remember as they're all called Bob and share a small bedsit owned by us."
Client: "You're a lifesaver and not a spammer at all!"

[jmo21]

Has there ever been a case in known history where an agent has managed to get work from spamming a "reference"? Would the conversation go like this?

Agent: "Hi, I was talking to Numpty Contractor earlier today, he gave me your details and told me you may be looking to hire new staff. Can we help at all? Obviously Numpty wouldn't have given me your details if he didn't think we were the best agency ever..."
Client: "You know, I have got this pile of unfilled positions on my desk and I was hoping some agency would call me about them. I haven't passed them onto my PSL agents yet as for some reason they're not picking up the psychic messages I'm sending out to them."
Agent: "Ah, in that case I have 20 candidates who can start immediately. They're easy to remember as they're all called Bob and share a small bedsit owned by us."
Client: "You're a lifesaver and not a spammer at all!"

You'd be surprised.

The dev team lead here is a bit of a dimwit and quite often fields speculative calls from agents in ear shot of everyone else.

Always seems happy to drone away to them, giving them other permie's names "Joe Smith is in charge of the project managers, so he'd be the one to speak to about that...." etc

[Ticktock]

Has there ever been a case in known history where an agent has managed to get work from spamming a "reference"? Would the conversation go like this?

Agent: "Hi, I was talking to Numpty Contractor earlier today, he gave me your details and told me you may be looking to hire new staff. Can we help at all? Obviously Numpty wouldn't have given me your details if he didn't think we were the best agency ever..."
Client: "You know, I have got this pile of unfilled positions on my desk and I was hoping some agency would call me about them. I haven't passed them onto my PSL agents yet as for some reason they're not picking up the psychic messages I'm sending out to them."
Agent: "Ah, in that case I have 20 candidates who can start immediately. They're easy to remember as they're all called Bob and share a small bedsit owned by us."
Client: "You're a lifesaver and not a spammer at all!"

You've really simplified things there. That's like saying Estate Agents call random householders and say "Wanna sell a house?". Yes, they do spam with leaflets to generate inbound calls, but spending time on calling actual vendors is generally driven from market intelligence - one job I had was gathering property details from agents, identifying the house and the address, then using the electoral roll to find the occupiers details. This is the same as the agents looking for references - they are looking for people who already use contractors, and then trying to demonstrate how they can provide an advantage over other agencies.

I'd presume the call to ClientCo would be from a sales-focussed individual, more along the lines of pitching the benefits of what their agency could provide over and above other agencies, and how it would be more cost effective for the client. How much of that would be true is another matter, but that's sales for you.