You are so right. They are a bunch of self serving waste of time people who have no value in the industry. We won't waste time and money on them any more and I suspect a lot of other agencies feel the same way. You are better off approaching agencies yourself. Offer to work on a freelance basis, on a sale or return basis, just to get in so that you can strut your stuff. If you are good, then you can show them what you are capable of.

Offer to work for a month free and if your work gets sold, then ask to be employed. If you wait for headhunters, you are going to starve. Get out there and make it happen.The headhunters will still be phoning around in the vain hope of making a placement. They work on a numbers approach. Throw as many candidates as they can at a job and hope that one fits. Grrr.

Like Viv Gordon Placements!

I have been actively marketing myself for the past few weeks, i've been innundated with calls from all over the country (i'm based in Cape Town) i've been for several interviews. The thing that gets my goat most, is the complete and utter lack of communication from the agencies. I've even noticed that sites that log your applications reply with "rejected", "regretted" and "expired", when you call the agencies concerned, you're told that this indeed not the case and that there is a "system" error.
I do believe that there is work to be had, but feel that if the agencies focused more on individuals that DO have the cirteria for the job, opposed to having a 100 people on their books that don't, perhaps we'd have a fighting change!

Most of them advertise for positions that do not really exist. They just want to get you on their books and then they hope that a company will buy their books when the need arises in the future.

The problem comes in that you may now be on the books of several recruitment agencies, so when the position does come up
1) The employer receives dozens of copies of your C.V. from several recruitment agencies all wanting to claim commission or benefits as the introducer.
2) You are actually expensive to an employer to take you on, than if you had to approach the company independently without the use of an agent, since the employer has to pay the agency quite a bit of money for taking you on.
3) The agency is not loyal to you, and if they hear of a position, they will unload a dozen of like-qualified job applicants that they have accumulated on their books. You also don't know if they presented your CV for your dream job and the feedback from the employer - in other words you are losing control of your job search and kept in the dark.