Alarmingly, we've spoken to an increasing number of confused and concerned candidates who have been put forward for roles without their knowledge. Recruitment is of course a competitive sector, and more often than not it's a case of who gets to the best talent first. However, this competitive nature can lead to recruiters not doing their due diligence and cutting corners, with top talent no longer feeling in control of where there CV ends up.
How can you ensure that your CV is ONLY being submitted with your permission, for the roles you're interested in? And what can you do if your CV is submitted without your prior knowledge?
Explicit permission
Ensuring that recruiters you work with ask for your explicit permission to share your CV with clients is crucial. We go out of our way to make sure that we have the permission of our candidates, down to even asking for written permission to share their CV with a specific client. The specificity is key also: a recruiter may ask for your permission to share your CV, and take that as an overarching "yes" to sharing your CV with all the vacancies they feel suit you, whether or not you have expressed an interest.
This has an incredibly negative knock-on effect for candidates who are actively searching for a new role, as they quickly lose track of their applications. Often times, the first occasion that candidates realise their CV has been shared without their permission is when they apply for a role independently and are told that they had already received their profile weeks or months prior. This underhand practice has a serious negative effect for the candidate as they are unable to make desired changes to their profile/CV in line with the role, write new cover letters or specify their interests in a specific role.
Giving candidates time to make adjustments to their CV is key to ensuring their success when applying for roles which require specific experience. When recruiters submit CVs without permission, candidates miss out on the opportunity to ensure that their CV highlights the skills which are most relevant to the individual application, increasing their chances of successfully progressing to interview. In a climate in which hiring managers take 20 seconds on average to review a candidate profile, the importance of making sure that your CV efficiently shows-off your most relevant skills cannot be understated.
What to do if this happens to you
Ask who submitted your profile and when:
This will give you an idea of which recruiter shared your CV and whether it was a recent submission.
Challenge this behaviour:
By challenging this behaviour, you not only regain control of your job hunting process, but also (hopefully!) save other talent from experiencing it with the same recruiter.
Send a statement/evidence to the client/your preferred recruitment consultant:
This is perhaps the most important step. By sending a statement (if you do not have written evidence) to a client or to the recruitment consultant you did give your permission to share your CV, then you make the client aware that the recruitment partner are not using best practice to source their candidates.
Agencies know that this practice not only upsets top talent, but also disrupts their recruitment process, as they often have to discount profiles and disappoint candidates who believe that they are submitting a profile for the first time.
Work with Us
We make every effort to ensure that our candidates feel fairly represented by us- whether taking the time to understand their goals to ensuring that we have express permission to share your profile.
To work with a search partner, not a recruiter, get in touch with our team today.
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