SINGAPORE: A Singapore jobseeker has questioned why some recruiters appear to pressure candidates into giving their consent within minutes, before they have even had time to properly assess the job they are being offered.
Taking to social media on Saturday (Aug 8), the jobseeker recounted an encounter with a recruiter who allegedly told him he had just five minutes to respond to an email after receiving a job description.
“I received a call from a recruiter, and she said after the call she would send me an email with a JD. I will need to reply within 5 minutes with a template reply given by her, stating that I give her the right to represent me to her client and declaring that I have not applied for the same role with other recruiters.”
She also reminded him to quickly reply to the email first without looking through the job description, adding that he could “spend the time over the long weekend” reading through it.
The jobseeker said he found the request suspicious and decided not to rush into giving his consent.
“I still went ahead to read through the JD first, as I don’t feel safe by just replying immediately. Then I realised I have applied to this company before, although I didn’t get any reply from them.”
He subsequently informed the recruiter of this, but said she could still proceed with submitting his profile if she was comfortable with that.
After that, he said, the recruiter stopped responding.
“She ghosted me after that,” he wrote, appalled by her behaviour. “My question is, why are recruiters like her always rushing candidates, which in my case, don’t even want me to have a chance to read the JD first before replying?”
“The motivation is always money”
Some commenters reckoned the urgency may have had less to do with the candidate and more to do with the recruiter’s own targets.
One Reddit user speculated that the recruiter could have been working against a deadline or trying to meet an internal KPI based on the number of candidates submitted.
“She needs to meet a deadline to clock her KPI for candidate pool size; that’s why she’s rushing you to agree to sending in your profile. Recruiters do this very regularly now as they are exploiting a mountain load of candidates in a poor job market. I understand that recruiters do not care about candidates at all, because it is the hiring company that pays them, not you.”
Another commenter suggested the recruiter may have been competing with other agencies for the same vacancy.
“The role is given to several agencies to fill, and this recruiter doesn’t have the exclusivity. Time is money.”
A third added, “Same reason insurance agents rush you to sign ILP and property agents rush you to sell your house ASAP after MOP. The motivation is always money.”
In other news, a new father took to social media to share that he was “slapped with a PIP” as soon as he returned to the office from paternity leave.
In a post on the r/askSingapore forum, the father said he was called in by his managers shortly after returning to work and told he was being placed on a Performance Improvement Plan (PIP). According to him, they tried to soften the blow by telling him to “treat it like a new job scope.”
Read more: ‘The whole world is crumbling down’: New dad says he was put on a PIP after paternity leave
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