London - Is cold calling/emailing an effective way to get a job?

I'm sick and tired of recruiters. I'm wondering if "cutting the middle man" would be a more effective way to go about it.

I'm curious to know if there are many success stories with cold emailing/LinkedIn texting working to land a decent role. 

Many thanks 🙏 

 

The current economic climate isn't ideal for recruiters, they aren't as helpful as before (unless you are tapping a hidden or contract role, in that case you'd need them).

I would say..

...direct application with the firm
...application through job portal that gets forwarded
...LinkedIn networking
What really helps is an internal reference at the firm you are applying at. Since almost everyone on here should be in the 500+ league, chances are high that you know someone, somewhere. Use that contact.

I am not sure if cold calling would help. Most of my UK colleagues are quite reserved and not always into open networking.

 

To be honest, I never felt that they were adding any sort of value. Even when job vacancies were booming in 2021.

Thanks for the above recommendation !

 

They add value if the role isn't openly advertised, i.e. executive placements, specialist roles, or competitive hires, or similar. But those are headhunters, not just "recruiters". The line can be blurry at times...

In rare cases a role in our industries can be advertised as a contract position (i.e. maternity cover, headcount allocation missing, budget issues, ..). For the billing and governance to work out, you'd have to work through a recruiter. Even the corporate/internal HR arm for purchased services is often legally separate from their own firm.

 

Head-hunters probably add value for firms on the governance/internal resources side of things and/or to recruit very specific profiles as you describe. But I really struggle to see how they add value on the candidate's side (especially recruiters that deal with "vanilla" roles). So far I have dealt with individuals that have a very poor understanding of the roles they were selling as well as a distorted vision of reality and disingenuous approach to their job. Every search goes through their bias and it probably makes them disregard candidates that firms would be glad to meet or vice-versa because they're just terrible at what they're doing. 

 
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