Fake Job Ads

This one is a Whirpool forum special - I doubt you can go 48 hours there without someone claiming recruiters are posting fake job ads on Seek. Now given Seek ads cost quite a lot of money, and recruiters only get paid when they place real people in real jobs, I've always been somewhat mystified by the logic behind this, but let's explore two of the more more frequently cited theories around this:

(1) Agencies want my CV so they can harvest information about my previous employers and also build a database.

If that was indeed an agency's aim, it's an amazingly convoluted and expensive way to go about doing it. You can access LinkedIn for free, and get a nigh on infinte stream of information about companies, the technologies they use, the people that work for them, where they tend to hire people from, etc. And for a few hundred bucks you can access an online database such as LinkMe or Career One and access several hundreds of thousands of resumes.

(2) I apply for heaps of roles on Seek and never hear anything back from the agencies. Therefore the ads are fakes.

2 + 2 = 5.

I desparately want my ad response to be great - it's the easiest way to find people. The reality is though the bulk of ad response is from candidates who just aren't up the job. If you got loads of great people applying for jobs, no-one would ever use an agency.

If you're applying for heaps of roles and never heard back from the agencies I would suggest you are either applying for a lot of roles that don't suit your experience and background, are in a very competitive sector of the market or you have a very poor CV. Suitable people with good CVs get called back.