I worked at CFS on the East Coast for a number of years and eventually left for a new, exciting opportunity. Being in the new role has reinforced all of the things that I brushed under the carpet while I remained there.
As mentioned above, I had a great manager but management was in another location. This left me working with a number of people who were not always pleasant in our 'satellite office'. I will list the cons for easy reading:
- Favoritism by upper management means that unbearable employees will continue to get away with unacceptable behavior toward direct colleagues. This is a commission based environment, so the claws will come out. 'Fairness' doesn't win in the end.
- There is no rulebook in place. When you're working in a commission based sales environment, you need best practices. There are none. This means that is there is a dispute over who brought in the business or candidate, the final decision will often come down to a 'he said she said' situation. The person who barks the most almost always wins.
- I did not like the manner that candidates were brought in. As is suspected in the staffing world, the candidate is not the client. The candidate needs to be 'sellable' for them to get attention. Unless they tick all the boxes, they would likely not hear from anyone.
- The temporary group does post ads for nonexistent, or not yet existent jobs to have 'inventory' for when (hopefully) the right job comes along. Overall, the goal is certainly to have jobs to hire people for BUT in slow times this doesn't always happen.
- There was some highly unprofessional behavior from some recruiters. People need to learn how to face conflict in a respectful and professional manner. Having a screaming match is not the way to work out a disagreement over commission.
