Playbook, recruitment agency
Nobody got back to me, and the three complaints hiding in it
The complaint this trade produces more than any other is not about a service that went wrong. It is about silence after applying, from somebody who has waited a fortnight and is now typing in capitals. The assistant cannot see what happened, must not invent a reason and cannot make anybody call. It has one honest offer: the real shape of the process, and a route to a person who can look.
Why this is not the general answer
The handling pattern for complaints holds across every trade. What follows is the part that does not.
- The complaint is about an absence rather than an event, so there is no incident to look up and nothing that would settle it even if the assistant could read the system.
- Three unrelated complaints arrive in the same tone: a candidate who heard nothing, a temporary worker whose shift or site went wrong this week, and a client unhappy with who was submitted. They need three different people and only one of them can wait.
- A worker complaining about an assignment is complaining about somebody else's premises and somebody else's supervisor, so the agency is being asked to comment on conduct it did not witness.
- A client complaint inside the rebate period is a commercial conversation wearing a complaint's clothes, and handling it as a service issue wastes the chance to deal with it under the terms.
How it arrives
- i applied weeks ago and nobody has called me back
- why does nobody ever answer the phone at your branch
- the site sent me home after an hour and i was not paid
- the job was nothing like what was in the advert
- the candidate you sent us has already walked out
- who do i complain to about my consultant
What has to be indexed for this to work
| Your complaints procedure, with stages and timescales | Who receives it, how long a first response takes, what the stages are, and where it goes if the person is still not satisfied. Publish the timescale even where it is long, because an unacknowledged complaint escalates faster than a slow one. |
|---|---|
| What normally happens after an application, counted in days | When somebody would usually hear, whether unsuccessful applicants are contacted at all, and what silence actually means. Most of these complaints exist because nobody ever said this out loud at registration. |
| The route for a problem on a live assignment | The number a temporary worker rings when a shift, a site or a supervisor goes wrong, and who covers it outside branch hours. This is the only complaint here with a cost attached to the same day. |
| Who handles client service issues | A named route for a hiring manager unhappy with a submission or a placement, kept separate from the candidate complaints inbox. A client complaint that lands with the candidate team gets a reply written for the wrong person. |
The reply
I am sorry, that is a fair thing to be annoyed about. I have no access to applications or to anybody's inbox, so I cannot tell you what happened with yours or why nobody rang. What I can do is tell you what normally happens and when people usually hear [1], and put this in front of the person who handles complaints, with the timescale we publish for a first response [2]. Leave me your name, an email and which role you applied for and I will send it over.
The apology comes first and is not hedged, because a qualified apology reads as a legal position. The lack of access is stated plainly rather than dressed up, since anything vaguer invites the person to ask again in a worse mood. And it ends with a destination and a timescale, which is the only outcome this conversation can genuinely produce.
Where it stops
The trigger. Any complaint at all, and immediately where it involves a shift worked, pay, or conduct on a client site.
I cannot look into this myself, and anything that happened on an assignment needs somebody today rather than a form. Leave your name, an email and what happened and I will send it straight to the team that deals with it.
It stops answering before it guesses, says who will pick it up, and asks for the one thing that makes a reply possible. Nothing about it reads as a dead end.
Never say this here
Out of bounds
- Never explain why somebody was not contacted, because the assistant does not know and a guess becomes the agency's official version of events.
- Never imply an application was unsuccessful, since silence and rejection are not the same thing and the candidate will treat it as a decision that has been made.
- Never comment on a client site, a supervisor or another worker's behaviour, because the agency did not witness it and is describing a third party's premises.
- Never tell a client whether a placement falls inside the rebate terms while they are in the middle of complaining about it.
Questions
- Candidates complain about silence. Can it not just apologise and close it?
- It can apologise. Closing it is the failure. The person wants a human being to know, and a complaint that ends in a chat log with a sympathetic sentence is the one that reappears as a public review a week later.
- Should a pay complaint be handled differently?
- Yes, and the difference belongs in the handover wording rather than in a document. Somebody short paid this week needs the payroll route in the first reply, not after an exchange about the complaints procedure.
- Can it log the complaint formally?
- No. It collects a name, an email and a message and sends that to the address you nominate. Whether that opens your formal procedure is your decision, and the assistant should describe what it has done rather than imply a case now exists.
Keep reading
- Everything for a recruitment agencyTwo audiences on one website. Process, payroll and compliance questions are answerable, application outcomes never are.
- Handling complaints in generalThe job is to route, not to resolve. Acknowledge without conceding, name the escalation route, and get it to a person fast.
- Two buildings, and one of them is not the agency'sA branch you control and a client site you do not. What a recruiter may say about access, and where an adjustment request has to go.
- The lockout that costs somebody a week's payA temp who cannot log in on the evening of the cut off has a deadline, not an inconvenience. What an assistant can honestly do about it.
- Which login is it, and which address is sitting on itA candidate area, a timesheet system and a client approval login all look alike from outside. Getting the reset pointed at the right one.
Try it on your own material
Upload a document or point it at your site, paste one line of HTML, then ask it something only your business could answer.