Feedback from outplaced candidates suggests they are increasingly unhappy with the level of service they receive from recruiters, says the regional head of ManpowerGroup's outplacement business Right Management, Bridget Beattie.

In a controversial address to the RCSA Conference in Fiji yesterday, Beattie said a survey of all jobseekers who went through Right Management's outplacement program in 2012 showed that just 18% of Australian and New Zealand respondents found a new job via a recruiter.

This was down 8 percentage points compared to 2008, she said, and added that the figure fell to 13% among executive candidates, and 16% among professional candidates.

According to feedback given to Right Management consultants, Beattie said some candidates saw recruiters as "the most significant source of frustrations in their job search".

Some candidates felt that recruiters had "no concept of the strategic value of the long-term relationships" they could be building with highly skilled professionals, she said.

Beattie added that what Right Management was hearing from many of its candidates was that "the stars in the recruitment industry are highly differentiated because most are so poor".

Beattie said the company recently had to discontinue its group workshop for candidates on how to work with recruiters, due to a lack of interest.

"We now deliver it in one-on-one sessions.

"It seems candidates either think they already know what they need to know about how to get the most out of working with a recruitment firm, or it's not a channel that they want to focus on [in their job search]."

Beattie said the findings from the survey were "alarming", but they presented recruiters with an opportunity to set themselves apart from their competitors by improving their candidate care.

Recruiters dispute findings

The presentation sparked hot debate from the crowd of recruiters.

Scott Recruitment founder Rosemary Scott challenged one of the survey's findings, that a surprisingly high proportion of Right Management executive candidates (25%) found employment through print media.

"I question that figure and therefore I question a lot of the other figures," she said.

Firebrand CEO Greg Savage said he was unsurprised by the feedback on recruiters, and there was an inherent problem with the dynamic between recruiters, candidates and clients.

"One [contributor to the problem] is the way we pay our recruiters. We pay them commissions and bonuses, which drives them to act in selfish ways – in fact we encourage that," he said.

"The second thing... is that we take orders in competition [with other agencies] and that means we're driven to perform on the basis of speed instead of quality, and as a result at the very bottom of the food chain is the candidate."