More or less simultaneously today, at least 3 of our SEOs received an email direct from a recruitment agency who claim to ‘represent two digital agencies in Leeds who are looking for SEO professionals‘.

Hmmm.

On a personal note, I feel pretty slighted because I wasn’t apparently deemed good enough to be “headhunted” in this fashion, but on a wider level this kind of thing sucks. Firstly, the emails were sent directly to @bronco.co.uk email accounts – our day to day work accounts. Clearly then, the company don’t have any personal details of ours beyond what’s available on our website.

And as a point of fact two of the lucky recipients – Carla and Zoe – are the most recent starters here so are the people least likely to want to move anyway.

In short, this was a scattergun “here’s an SEO company and I can work out their email addresses through the power of putting their first names before the @bronco.co.uk bit” approach not based on any considered merits or stated interest in leaving. So the suspicion has to be that It Works Recruitment (North West division, no less!) aren’t actually “representing” anyone at all – but are going to try and winkle someone into applying for a job through them.

The use of work email addresses is also bloody diabolical for other reasons. A lot of companies monitor their employees’ emails (I assume Bronco don’t – given that I haven’t been sacked or reported to the Feds) so can you imagine the trouble that could land someone in with a suspicious employer who noticed emails coming in from recruitment agencies?

Another thing they could be doing of course is using LinkedIn. LinkedIn is (as I have said elsewhere – NSFW!) becoming hopelessly corrupted by recruitment agencies who are using it as a hunting ground for potential candidates rather than as a way for actual people to connect through shared business interests. Indeed, at the foot of the offending email is a big LinkedIn logo. Social Media sites struggle to fend off misuse (MySpace and Bebo were wrecked by spammers, Faceparty by sex offenders) and LinkedIn is in serious danger of going that way.

The worst of it is that had they approached us through LinkedIn then the emails would have gone to our personal accounts and Rory would never have had the chance to read it aloud to the office and set Dave off ranting about recruitment agencies – one of his favourite light-blue-touchpaper-and-retire subjects. Like, duh!

Finally, the SEO community in general is pretty small. Word gets around – and a quick flick through the back pages of this blog should reveal that we’re not exactly a timid company when it comes to calling out anyone we think is f***ing things up. You screw up something like this you never know who might blog about it and where it might go.

Would you use a company like this to recruit for you if you knew they were going to be so cackhanded?

[Also: nice work with the page title guys - "IT Works Recruitment - Welcome - it works recruitment ltd, itworks, it recruitment lancashire, it recruitment north west, it recruitment preston, ifs, agresso, sap, npfit, choose and book, choose & book, rio, crs, pas, itil, veritas, it public sector, epicor, scala, business objects, i-pm, i-cm, ncrs, clinical coding, systmone" A sure-fire winner in the SEO stakes!]