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Not to name names, of course, but some of these teaching recruitment agencies really drive me nuts. One of the agencies, whom I really got an impression of professionalism and with-it-ness, ends up having the worst security department. I’ve signed up with a bunch of agencies now, and only the first one I registered with in the U.K. asked me to get my Criminal Records Background check. Fair enough. Since then, I’ve been allowed to use that same one from 2011 to register with these other agencies in 2012. The “professional” agency, however, required that I pay another £44 to them to have a CRB check done. Now, I know that it use to be that all teaching agencies required a CRB for each business but that’s not the case anymore. What the “professional” agency was concerned with was that you are supposed to have a new CRB done if you haven’t been in a school for three months. Since I hadn’t worked at all in 2011, I needed a new one.
I checked this information online, found something about it, so, okay, fine. Paid the £44, heard from the agency often about how they wanted to send my resume to various schools to find teaching work. One time they wanted me to go to an interview on the morning of my driving lesson which I couldn’t get out of because they were pre-paid and I needed 48 hours notice to reschedule. Of course, “professional” agency said the school wasn’t willing to budge on the time slot, and it wasn’t that great of a school anyway.
Last Friday, I got a letter from the teaching agency’s security main office in another town. They had sent it to the wrong address, and Steve just happened to find it in the junk mail magazine racks that our overseers put in. The letter said “opened in error” across the front because, sure enough, the teaching agency security deputy hadn’t bothered to check that she sent it to the correct address. Inside the envelope was supposed to be an ID card. What I got was a photo that I gave them, a little blank, white business card to fill in, and a plastic sticky wrap.
I called the agency, telling them that my “ID Card” is M.I.A. and it was sent to the wrong address anyway. “Oh, the correct address is on file. You need to send us the photo back so we can do the ID badge.” I send it back (and waste one of my perfectly good London 2012 stamps in the process, by the way…something I’ll get to later.) Today I got another letter from “professional” teaching agency’s security deputy saying, “Sorry about sending to the wrong address. Here’s your ID card.”
I have the photo I gave them, returned (twice now), a sticky piece of plastic, and a blank business card that I have to fill out and sign. Seriously? Apparently this “professional” agency as a “do it yourself” policy.
Plus, what if a neighbour or someone else had gotten that letter? Couldn’t they just put any ol’ photo in there, sign it and no one would be the wiser? Doesn’t sound very secure to me, security deputy.
It drives me up a wall that these places can’t even be bothered to put an ID card together properly (they wouldn’t accept a digital photo, by the way, like every other agency does.) It’s terrible how they treat people who are in need of jobs as if they’re disposable because they have jobs – why should they care? They work on commission, get people on file, get paid. Meanwhile I’m trying to get into schools to get experience so I can get any kind of job but doors keep getting slammed in my face.
It seems like everything here is three times harder to get done. Not that we don’t have our share of people in the U.S.A. who plain won’t do their job or are just all-around incompetent, but I even had a Post Office worker here condescendingly “explain” to me that I can’t use the London 2012 stamps on oversees postcards because, “there’s no monetary value on them.” Sure, that’s why every stamp that was ever given to me for postcards (and large oversees packages too) never had a money value on them. I was even given London 2012 stamps specifically for my America-bound postcards at another Post Office.
But I digress. Things are good, really, I just had to vent a bit about my customer service run-ins. As we all do from time to time.
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