Ahhh Robert Half, I do actually have good memories of you. I had been working with Robert Half since moving to Sonoma County 4 years ago. There were some good experiences here and there, and there were some wonderfully helpful people. For the good opportunities that they helped facilitate, I must be thankful(at least, to the people who worked there at the time) But latter half of 2017 and all of 2018 were so disastrous, I think I need to speak up on some very unfortunate and frustrating experiences.
1) Robert Half tried to arrange a contract to work for an automotive-related company that required a RIDICULOUS and TIME-WASTING background check that took an enormous number of hoops to jump through. It dragged on for weeks over the most minute details for a job that would barely pay minimum wage. The red flags were omnipresent, and they should have dropped working with said company altogether if they were going to make the candidate process that arduous for something that pays probably less than an In n' Out Burger.
2) Robert Half sent me on a filing project at a car dealership which was a completely cluttered mess to begin with. In fact, this was a mess nearly 20 years in the making......I'm talking rooms upon rooms of utter paper chaos. I repeatedly told both the dealership and Robert Half that they should hire more temps to make the process more efficient and expeditious. How bad was this file room fiasco? A mechanic who worked there are actually attempted to organize these documents when he was suffering from an injury and barely made any headway. He relayed the same concerns that I had and was astonished why they hadn't tasked more people for the job. When a person who repairs fairly complex machinery for a living is skeptical about something like that, I'm inclined to believe them!
3) Robert Half sent me to work for an alarm business who treated me very poorly and dropped me after a day. The staff were extremely unpleasant people and their professionalism was nonexistent. I later found out that said company has NO online reviews that are ABOVE ONE STAR. Not one of their client reviews on Yelp or Google had any good things to say about them, and rightfully so! Again, as I said in my first point, such a company with such obvious warning signs and red flags should be avoided at all cost.
4) Robert Half sent me to work at an insurance company that asked me to cover for an employee who was leaving on the second day of the assignment. I was meant to cover only a few of her duties. These were things like issuing visitor badges and arranging the chairs in conference rooms. I was dropped during the second day. You see, the employee who was I supposed to be covering for had something like 3-4 separate going away parties being that it was her last day. Someone had the audacity to complain to Robert Half that I was forgetting certain things, despite the fact that it was my SECOND day and the person who is supposed to be training me is busy eating cake in different offices. Call me crazy, but perhaps it would be better to give someone a few more days of training as opposed to a day and then half a day, memory retention often works differently with different people. Oh, and finally.....this company barely gave me anything to do. During the 3rd or 4th going away party for the departing employee, all requested assignments ground to a halt. There were none of the duties that I was being trained to do, I was at complete loose ends and wasn't receiving ANY instruction. But hey, thanks for dropping me anyway :)
On top of that, Robert Half often put me in positions which I SPECIFICALLY requested to avoid because they did NOT pertain to my skillset. I found myself working jobs in things like accounting or customer service despite my own open preferences. They really really REALLY need to take into account the skills and shortcomings of their clients.
Oh well, it's been nice Robert Half, but I just had to air my grievances. Sorry..... read more
