Finding a job in medical or healthcare fields is more difficult now than ever.

There was a time, not so long ago that when you decided to look for a new job you picked up the paper on a Thursday or a Sunday.  If you really wanted to make sure you didn’t miss any jobs you also contacted a Recruitment agency or maybe two.

Then it changed a bit.  The online explosion of the web led to the creation of job boards.  In Ireland the biggest of these were IrishJobs, RecruitIreland, Monster and Loadzajobs.  All of a sudden it was no longer even necessary to buy a paper, you could surf jobs from your couch at home (or often from a computer at work).

Job sites made finding a job easier.  Job boards charged companies and Recruitment agencies a lot of money for the privilege of using their services to advertise their positions.

For a while it worked well.  But now finding a job is more complicated than ever.  There has been an absolute explosion of job boards.  Which one should you use?  To add to the complication recruitment agencies and even companies themselves are increasingly turning to social media for their recruitment.  So much so that CPL have just dropped IrishJobs. Simply because they no longer provided them with the value for money that was available elsewhere.

Social Media, Web 2.0, Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, Blogs.  New buzzwords are appearing all the time.  Recruitment agencies are reaching out over increasingly diverse online media.  Twitter alone is awash with job advertisements.  The popularity of Twitter is beyond the understanding of most of us born in an era when most companies did the books on paper and nobody had a PC at home.  So why would recruitment agencies use it?  Because it is popular and it is free.  Marketing and job advertising on social media cost little more than the time and effort to do it… and even that can be automated. Clearly it works for job advertising and job hunting.  It is all about connections.

Where does that leave the bamboozled majority?  I’ll explain it.  Social networking is about just that.  Networking (the social part has been hijacked by recruitment agencies and business in general).  The old saying holds true, “It’s not what you know it’s who you know”.  In the world of Linkedin and Facebook that translates to “It’s not what you know it’s who you linked to, and who they in turn are liked to”.

If you build a good network, you can find just about anything you want, including a job.

It is worth getting involved.  The more links you build the more people you are connected to.  When it truly was “Social” media, it was about linking to your friends over the internet.  Now it is much more than that.

A word of warning though.  Be careful what you post, and what your friends post.  If you are linking to anybody who you may be a potential employer, or at least help you find a job, then you do not want them to see from your profile that your CV is a work of fiction, or that you had the worst hangover in the world (again) and had to call in sick after yet another great night out with your mates.  Set up separate accounts for job finding if you can’t trust your friends not to write something incriminating on your wall.

So do you have to get involved in social networking now?  Not at all.  Recruitment agencies still perform the same function that they always did, the papers have less jobs advertised now though, so perhaps they are a better option than ever.  When it comes to medical jobs, chose a good agency.  Chose several.  Remember, finding a job does still involve people (even when it’s over the internet).  The internet is just a big newspaper.

So, you are in the job market.  Where do you start?  You could use a recruitment agency.

Let’s face it though.  Recruitment agencies have not got the best of reputations.  Here are 5 reasons not to use a recruitment agency.

Do not use a Recruitment Agency if….

1. You have years of experience in writing CV’s or are willing to pay someone to work on your CV for you. - A recruitment agency will not only give you advice on your CV, but will make it specific for the job you are applying for.
2. You don’t like interview feedback beyond the very basics. - A recruitment consultant can ask for more detailed feedback from an interview than you can.  This can give you a head start at a second interview or tell you where you went wrong for next time you get called for an interview.
3. You don’t need any career advice. - Recruitment agencies are full of career advice.  They can tell you how to upskill and what areas you need to work on to make yourself more attractive to a prospective employer.  If you do not need any career advice, then a recruitment agency may not be for you.
4. You know the jobs market very well and have good contacts in all the companies you may wish to apply to. - Recruitment consultants livelihood depends on building good connections like this.  If yours are as good then you may be able to do without a recruitment agency.
5. You are not intending to change your job.

The list may be a little flippant, but the reality is that if you use a reputable recruitment agency they can help you find your next job. More than that they can give you valuable advice on what your career options are.  Importantly they will do this without charging you for it.

You do need to pick your recruitment agency well though.  Read through this advice on dealing with recruitment agencies before you start the job seeking process.  That is a suggestion but it probably should be a requirement for anybody who is entering the jobs market.

I just read a press release about a new directory of recruitment agencies.  At first I thought “not another recruitment agency directory” but I had to go and look at it anyway.

What a surprise.  Yes it is just like other lists of agencies in some ways, but it is also different too.

The advice section is great.  So great that I’m going to provide a link to it right here. Recruitment Agency Advice.

Read the advice well if you are currently job seeking or are an employer using a recruitment agency.  The advice for job seekers section is very close to the advice on Jackie Brown Medical, which was probably the first site to show such open and honest insight into the world of recruitment.

Needless to say we signed ourselves up straight away.  I loved the fact that you could search for a recruitment agency by speciality as well as location.

The site has an associated Recruitment News section, some of which may be of interest to readers of this blog.

Medical Recruitment in Ireland is undergoing somewhat of a shake up.  As the economic depression plants its roots firmly in Ireland recruiment agencies in other sectors are being squeezed.  The multitude of recruitment agencies that sprang up to support the construction industry for example are in deep strife.  The clever ones started preparing for the decline several years ago and are now becoming well established in the market in other countries.

Other Recruimtent agencies have not been so fortunate and we have already seen more than a handful of agencies fold.  the figures are startling.  25% of Recruitment Consultants employed in 2007 are no longer working as recruitment consultants.

For those recruitment agencies that are at risk of going bust as their markets dry up Medical Recruitment looks like an attractive market that may save their companies.  This is because medical recruitment has not been subject to the same level of decline as other sectors.  The bottom fell out of financial recruitment.  Pharmaceutical Sales remained strong.  There have been shocks over the past 12 months in Medical Recruitment.  Pharmacists and in particular Pharmacy technicians have had a rough ride.  Overall though, the medical industry has held firm when compared with nearly all other sectors.  IT is the only other sector that still performs well, but even in IT there have been setbacks.  Dell announcing the winding up of it’s manufacturing base in Ireland has already led to rumblings of bad news from Intel and more can be expected.  Software remains one of Ireland’s strongest exports though.

Because Medical Recruitment has escaped fairly lightly to date we are seeing a huge rise in the number of recruitment agencies that now offer Medical Recruitment.  I even saw a recruitment agency that previously specialised in Catering now offering Medical Recruitment Services - an interesting mix.

While nobody likes to see businesses fail, the sad truth is that we are going to see a lot more recruitment agencies vanish before the end of this depression.  During the ‘Celtic Tiger’ years recruitment agencies were blooming, with new agencies opening up regularly.  The economy can no longer support the number of Recruitment Agencies that we have in the country.

There is a plus side to all of this for both Client Companies and Job Seekers.  The focus of the remaining agencies will have to shift more towards providing better service if they want to stay in business.  Larger Recruitment agencies will be able to sustain themselves through varying periods of decline, but for smaller agencies it is quality of service that will be the defining factor in giving them a fighting chance of being one of the survivors.

This is particularly true of Medical Recruitment.  Experience in the medical field is vitally important.  All recruitment consultants need an in depth understanding of the industry they are recruiting in. Nowhere is this more important than in Medical Recruitment.  However without providing a good service to Client Companies and Job seeking candidates, knowledge of the industry is worthless.

We are about to enter a phase in which the very best Medical Recruitment agencies will rise to the top and those who do not make the grade will be relegated to the dole queues.