ConSol Partners slips into full-blown crisis ? James Cook ? The Kernel

Further revelations about ConSol Partners have prompted The Kernel to revisit the controversial recruitment company?s business practices, revealing an outrageous litany of fraudulent behaviour. Tongues are wagging all over the London tech scene.

We reported in May, prior to our extended report on London recruitment firms, that London-based recruitment firm ConSol Partners?had been caught ?lying and fabricating? emails in what was described by a trusted Kernel source as ?outright deception?.

?Not only are [recruiters like Consol Partners] damaging the reputations of the companies they place interviews with,? wrote Milo Yiannopoulos, ?They?re also damaging the employment prospects of the people they are supposed to be representing.?

Today, The Kernel can reveal an even more explosive and appalling litany of questionable business practices from the firm. ConSol Partners, we can disclose today, is operating a web of fake companies and non-existent employees in order to deceive companies and candidates.

?This is done,? according to a source within recruitment, ?in order to get information from candidates and clients without them finding out you?re a recruitment consultant. A common practice is to give the name of someone you worked with at your last company.?

The ConSol trail begins with this extraordinary email exchange. Here?s an email sent to someone in London?s technology scene:

From: [redacted]
Sent: Monday, May 16, 2011 10:19 AM
To:?[redacted]
Subject: Contract Developers ? Urgent!

GTS are now offering cash and reward incentive schemes to all .Net developers who work in the contract market.

If you have recently interviewed for a contract opportunity in Europe and have either been unsuccessful, rejected an offer or contract extension you have the opportunity to be rewarded with ?1000 or a weekend away for 2 to any major city in Europe.

By replying back to this email with the details of a company you have interviewed with in the last 2 weeks, the role and the hiring manager you met you will become eligible for the reward scheme. *(Most contractors have multiple interviews and can?t always remember the hiring managers name ? But don?t worry! If you get back to us with just a company name we can still send you cash reward of ?500!)

If GTS make a placement off of information you have provided to us, you will be notified by our consultants who will be able to issue your preferred reward.

You will receive a confirmation email from us after submitting your previous interview details. This confirmation email is for you to use as written proof of our commitment to reward scheme.

We look forward to hearing from you!

[redacted]
GTS

The reply:

Why don?t you try actually working for a living like the rest of us? Ever wondered why you have no loyal clients, maybe its because they can spot a useless snake like you from a mile away. All I can say is that as a contractor and a hirer of contract staff I am getting sick of having to deal with this crap. Be assured you and your company are off the list of people I will work with and I will be passing this on to my friends so they know to avoid you too. One day you are going to push us too far and we are going to replace you with some snazzy AI software. You?re nothing but a parasite.

Please take me off your contact list.

The recruiter?s response:

Thank you for wasting your time with a lengthy response which?generated great laughter throughout the office, your joke of an email?definitely compensated for the bad weather!

Please keep my details on file, I would love to receive another?hilarious rant from a jumped up geek who is part of a community which?put just over ?85,000 in my back pocket last year and paid for my Audi?TT AND 4 week travelling trip across the USA.?

Thank you again [redacted], thank you for making a ?parasite? feel better about himself and for also making yourself look like an absolute mug with empty insults to a successful 19 year old you know nothing about?- You?ve made my day!?

P.S ? You?ve just pissed off a VERY well connected ?Snake?. Let?s see?how easy it is for you to pick up your next contract.

Have a great week

Strange tactics for a profession that depends on introductions. So who was responsible for these remarkable words?

The above reply purported to be from Lewis Austin, who works for a company named Global Talent Search. But was it really? Beause a WHOIS look-up?on their website shows our old friends ConSol Partners as the registrant of that domain.

When we first contacted ConSol Partners about GTS, they claimed merely to have ?a business relationship? with the company. This morning the story changed: now ConSol says GTS ?was a business idea we considered as part of an executive search function but [we] never did this and the site lay dormant?.

The website may have been ?dormant?, but ConSol employees have emailed candidates and employers posing as GTS representatives, according to a dossier of evidence The Kernel has seen.

A source familiar with ConSol Partners told us that no such person as ?Lewis Austin? exists: it is a fake name, backed up with a fake LinkedIn profile, created by ConSol Partners to solicit new business.

ConSol confirmed this morning that it has never employed anyone of that name and that the Lewis Austin LinkedIn profile was set up by a previous employee.

The Kernel is now in possession of a list of fake names and businesses used by ConSol Partners to deceive potential applicants.

When we asked a recruiter about the practice of creating fake identities to gain business, he said:??I know some dodgy consultants, even they shy away from doing it. Companies get shut down for letting their staff do it. It?s getting out of hand.?

Faking the names of employees is a practice that?breaks the guidelines of the Recruitment and Employment Federation,?the trade association for recruitment companies, and could lead to ConSol Partners being thrown out of the organisation.

Well, it would do if they actually were members of the REC. ConSol previously displayed the REC logo on its website, but when reportedly threatened with legal action by the REC two months later, ConSol removed the logo.

A spokesman for ConSol said he ?doesn?t recall? any threat of legal action being made but confirmed that ConSol was displaying the REC logo on its website while not a member of the organisation.

In this cast of villains, one figure rises head and shoulders above the others: Marc Cohen, director of ConSol Partners, whose name crops up again and again in correspondence from candidates, sources and technology start-ups.

At the The Recruitment Industry Conference 2012 he gave a talk?about ?winning new clients and revenue streams?. Our sources inside the recruitment industry suggests that some of the techniques he uses to gain new business are best left unspoken.

For legal reasons The Kernel is unable to repeat the contents of a quote given to us by one attendee of that talk. But even others in the recruitment industry are scathing about Cohen and ConSol?s business habits.

In a revealing interview (PDF)?in the September 2012 edition of The Big Issue, Cohen complained about how recruitment is ?perceived in the marketplace?. But he praised the industry for offering 21-year-olds ?the chance to earn over ?100,000?.

It is becoming increasingly clear just how such sums are made. ?[ConSol] can?t afford to train their staff in the workings of the industry, so they take advantage of desperate university graduates or cocky young school?leavers,? says one source.

?They let them get away with murder, all in the name of a quick buck.?You go into a room with about fifty other people?your age, and?over the course of about four hours they whittle it down?to fifteen of you, and then from that they?ll hire maybe four.

?The final test is explanining to Marc Cohen why he should hire you.?

The Kernel took a straw poll of twenty London technology businesses this week. Of the fifteen who had heard of ConSol Partners, eleven told us they would not consider using the company to find candidates for upcoming vacancies.

Of those eleven, eight reported a negative experience with the firm in the past, with one, a venture-funded consumer start-up, saying: ?Thank you for this. ConSol is, without question, the most disreputable recruitment company I have ever encountered.?

Consol Partners told The Kernel today that the person responsible for the emails above had been disciplined and was no longer with the company. But the company also claimed that Global Talent Search, the company from which ?Lewis Austin? was emailing employers, ?is not a trading company or division of ConSol and has never launched.?.

As is so often the case with ConSol and Mr Cohen, the claims simply don?t add up ? a fact that more and more contractors, jobseekers and employers are realising all the time.

Source: http://www.kernelmag.com/features/report/4092/consol-partners-slips-into-full-blown-crisis/

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