Quite a lot to be honest. When I reflect on my time there I think it quite greatly impacted my mental health, and I left each day feeling quite drained and unhappy. Very dog eat dog and cut throat, they expect you to peak really quick but without offering you support to get there. Had several meetings with Senior Management about how to 'grow my business' but no real solution was offered to the challenges I was facing. They don't take into consideration that people's industries and desks are different. In my opinion if you can do the basics which is sell and pitch with confidence, and find good quality candidates, the rest of it is just pot luck. No amount of presenting the client with your 'recruitment methodology' and spending 10 minutes explaining your process (which is the same as every other recruitment agencies) is going to convince the client, if they have an internal recruitment team in place or don't have the budget for your fees (which is quite often the case). I do believe that if a person comes across likeable and good at what they do, a client will buy into them, but only if it's feasible to use an agency, they of course always try to do it in house. Some people happen to get lucky with the desk they have, as if it's a niche area that's candidate short, they will be more likely to use your services. This of course could be considered a con of recruitment in general, instead of just Hays, but how it fits in with Hays is that they champion and favour these lucky individuals with the good desks, whilst everyone else is treated like rubbish and made to feel a failure. A common comeback from many of my clients was '"What makes Hays better than any other agency, other agencies offer your process for cheaper" and quite frankly i didn't know how to answer that and felt the point was valid, but instead of helping me answer this, senior management/trainers made me feel like I was stupid. Unless you are one of the top billers, you're treated as a number not a person. Long days- as expected in recruitment. They reckon they offer flexi time, where you can change normal hours of 8:00-17:30 to 9:00-18:30 or 7:00-16:30, but you have to negotiate this with your team and once the favourites/top billers have picked their time of work you're left working at the original time. I never got to do the flexi hours because of this. You would think it would work on a rota system that gives everyone a fair chance, but as I said they use blatant favouritism. No option to work from home either. Training is meant to be excellent but all I found is that they teach you to be robotic and churn pointless facts out such as 'we are the number 1 recruiter in ANZ" and "we are the most followed on linked in". I agree these facts are good for credibility, but 1. they often aren't accurate facts, I have worked at another agency since and we also call ourselves 'number 1', we clearly can't both be, and 2. I find clients buy into me more when i'm coming across human and honest, not churning out a pitch of facts. Many have said they're buying from the person not the company, so the training would be more beneficial if it taught how to sell as opposed to how to recite Hays facts. Also found the training to be very draining, it often involved a lot of on the spot role plays, repeating said facts in an attempt to 'sell', where criticism would often be based upon the facts we'd forgotten. I never realised a career in recruitment would require a memory test! A lot of people got nervous and some even cried with the pressure placed upon us, in a very unnatural situation. Was also told by the trainer 'you are of no value to Hays until you are making at least $15,000 a month, until then you are costing us money!". Appreciate it's a business but what a way to put it. Also place too much emphasis on client side and BD when essentially the candidate side is more important, as the candidates are the product. Progression is very structured with little room for movement, and each time you have to do a presentation to prove yourself. As if recruitment consultants do not have enough pressure already. Would rather be promoted naturally on improvement instead of having a structure where it's seen as pass or fail. All in all I just find it a tough environment to work, very draining, long hours, lack of support and patronising management who favour people. Very cliquey as well.
