I feel sorry for traffic wardens. Apart from the fact that they’re out and about, I can see little satisfaction in doing a job where pretty much everyone loathes you. But there’s arguably a worse job even than that – and you don’t even get to be outside. I’m talking about recruitment consultants.
My interaction with recruitment consultants is now fairly minimal, due to the launch of my copywriting consultancy, We Write Copy. These days, prospective clients approach me directly. But I do vividly remember the days when I used to carefully put pen to paper – or fingers to keyboard – to carefully construct my covering letter and tailor my CV…all for a job that either went to an internal candidate or, worse still, didn’t actually exist. Oh, and the recruitment consultant might not actually bother to get back to me at all, of course.
Unfortunately, this situation hasn’t changed. In fact, it’s got worse because now, to my horror, even creative and communications agencies are jumping on the “only joking” bandwagon. A case in point is my friend Steve.
A fairly new-to-the-scene copywriter, Steve is on the lookout for a permanent position. As it happens, he had been working with a communications agency and he happened to notice that they were advertising for full-time copywriters on their website. His rapport with them was, he felt, very good – at least, the feedback had been excellent – so he was surprised that they hadn't mentioned this to him. He dropped them an email and re-attached an updated CV.
Fishing for talent
Steve was more than a little surprised at the response. They explained that they weren't actually looking for full-time copywriters at all; they were just putting out feelers "to see what came back”. The ad stated that they wanted to see examples of previous work, so they wanted to check the calibre of the applicants. The lucky ones would get onto the agency’s freelance books.
So why didn't the agency just come clean and state in the ad that they wanted to build up their bank of freelancers, rather than give false hope to people who would doubtless have felt that they had a shot of getting hired?
The assumption that people wouldn’t make as much effort to get onto the freelance books of a well-known agency is surely erroneous. Arguably, if anything, you're more likely to attract better candidates that way because these are people who care enough to make sure that their work is top notch to earn themselves a place on someone's books IN SPITE of there not being the promise of a guaranteed permanent job.
Work for us for free and we might contemplate thinking about considering you
I’d be surprised if there isn’t a law to prevent agencies form advertising a job that doesn't exist. It would be hard to prove, I grant you. But even if there isn’t, that doesn't sound too ethical to me. It would have been even worse if the agency had asked the potential “employees” to work on a live brief for free; and that’s something that goes on all too often.
But on the flipside, let me just play devil’s advocate for a moment: is that such a bad thing, if the agency is up front about it? I know of at least one famous advertising agency, for instance (and doubtless there are many more), that offers formal internships for 4-6 weeks. During that time, these juniors are let loose on live briefs – but they’re mentored along the way by experienced creatives. From the juniors' point of view, it's a valuable learning process and a great experience; and from the point of view of the agency, it sorts out the wheat from the chaff, plus they may land themselves with a top-notch creative-in-the-making to boot.
How far would you go?
The reality is, in an ever more crowded marketplace, young creatives are increasingly prepared to do this to get their foot in the door. But where is the line? Is it drawn in the sand and does it keep being moved until it’s blatant that agencies are taking advantage of those wanting their big break? Is this simply the way of the world? What would you be prepared to do, based on a flimsy promise?
Ashley is a copywriter, blogger and editor
