Having dealt with a lot of recruitment agenicies as a candidate over the years I was not expecting…read moremuch, as they all seem to do the same, either contact you and then ghost you or get you an interview and then ghost you. Clare Love at Jivaro is not your usual consultant. Did things that I have never had the experience of a recruitment consultant do for me. Having stayed in touch over the course of 8 months, finally let her know I was looking for work and she organised a first meeting to actually know what I was looking for, even before I applied for a job. That was the first wow moment, this person is actually doing their job. She gave me a couple of opportiunities that she had, then set me up for an interview, gave me loads of tips and help. Then followed up afterwards with a phone call. Everythnig went well, but I wanted more money so we moved on. Normally that's it, I've never had a return call from a recruitment company. Never. But as I said before, Clare is not your usual recruitment consultant, so wow moment number two she gave me a call a couple of weeks later as she had a position and she thought it was a good fit for me. So same thing again, had three interviews, Clare gave me heaps of info, not just about the company and job but also tips for the interview. I called her after the first and third interview to give her my feedback (which she requested), the second interview I was lazy and did not call her, however a couple of hours after she actually called me to ask how it went. There is your wow moment number three. Clare was a great person to deal with, she knew what she was doing and actually made me feel valued and that she was really trying to help me, not like other recruitment companies that just want your details to boost their client numbers. And the fact I stayed on her radar even after the first position I went for, its amazing. Cannot recommend her highly enough!

not the best of experiences to start. very little call backs. ended up using a professional resume…read morewriter (www.resume-solutions.com.au - see my review). Experience improved a lot after this. I do find agencies in general needed to treat employment seekers with a little more care.

Having been selected to attend a ProGrad training day, I was full of expectations and nervous…read moreenergy. ProGrad put us through interviews, speeches, business case studies and games. The founder gave a speech or two on the interview process and organising a resume which was both insightful and very useful. 4% of 500 graduates each week who apply make it through to ProGrad's books where each successful graduate is effectively managed by a staff member who 'hooks' them up with job offers and interviews. As a candidate who was one of the successful 4%, I have been inundated with interview requests. The staff at ProGrad are very helpful and constantly follow up on how your interviews went. The only drawback of ProGrad is that most of the companies have job offers in sales only. They do however have hundreds of successful companies both large and small from Dow Jones to Caterpillar.

They have a bad habit of making up figures to show off how 'good' they are(That 500 figure…read morealternates between 500 and 1000 for no real reason, sometimes within the same sentence), they make you take tests that they never check, and they act like they are better than you despite their employees often being uni grads with 2 months experience. While I did get through, I have found them to not have many relevant offers and haven't gotten much through them. So in summation, they will lie to make themselves look better, but they will find you a few job offers.