Some time ago I was approached by a recruitment consultant. The usual call. They had a terrific opportunity right up my street and wanted to know my availability. So we had a meaningful conversation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The job was working for a certain Stuttgart-based manufacturer whose name begins with M and ends with ercedes. The gig was remote working (based at home), but with occasional trips to head office in Stuttgart, maybe twice a month. It was a long-term contract (12 months) and paid a rate of \u20ac[redacted] per day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A flurry of emails followed to confirm the basic details of the job, and after a week of shortlisting and consulting with the client, the offer of a Teams interview was made and accepted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Weeks passed. A serious amount of weeks passed. I wrote the job off because this is sometimes how things go.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And then, out of the blue six weeks later, I got a call. Can I make myself available for the aforementioned Teams call? I said yes I could. On Saturday afternoon?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This obviously took me back a bit, but I was feeling mellow and I had nothing much going on that lockdown Saturday afternoon, so I said yes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I had a nice, professional job interview, via Teams, with a guy based in San Francisco but at the time of that call, he was working in Ohio. He was working for a consultancy who had been engaged by the German company, to deliver a global programme, for which the role I was being interviewed was a key component. He concluded the call by saying he was putting me forward for a second interview. Nice!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Less than a week later I had a call from the recruiter, the second interview had been dispensed with. I was in! When could I start? I revisited an earlier conversation where I said I had to give four weeks notice, which I would gladly do just as soon as the contract of employment arrived, I’d checked it over, and had signed it. The recruiter said fair enough.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Then there was nothing. A week passed. Then a fortnight. Then a (whatever term is for three weeks). Then a month. During this radio silence I emailed the recruiter a couple of times and got static back. I called and left voicemail.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In week five I got an email asking if I could start work in a week’s time. But there was still no contract. So in a bid to streamline things I sent my top three questions to the recruiter and said words to the effect of ‘I really need to see the contract of employment and I really need the contract to answer these three questions.’<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For a fortnight I got nothing back, just more radio silence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Then, in the middle of the third week of this bout of radio silence, I got a call from the recruiter saying they were just waiting for a purchase order to be raised, and then they would be able to release the contract to me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That was so many weeks ago I have actually lost track of how much time has passed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It just seems like an odd way to run a business (whether it’s the recruitment agency, the consultancy in the middle, or the Stuttgart-based manufacturing company).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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