Academy crewing agent service feed back

When was the last time you were at an academy or academy career fair? The deep sea fleet is minuscule, not enough jobs for the graduates, so the schools now push towing and offshore jobs as well. Small vessel companies are also well represented at career fairs.

Probably any company with enough hiring needs to recruit on campus wants to do it themselves and maintain a personal relationship with the school. Most companies include some of their employees who are alums of a particular school in the process on an ongoing basis.

I can see why large quality companies with only a few vessels might prefer to use a good headhunter rather than use their own generalist HR people, or employ their own maritime HR specialists to hire just a handful of mariners. But why would they use an aspiring headhunter who is not already on the industry’s A list?

Most good companies pay headhunters, and will not even talk to a headhunter that charges mariners a fee. The smaller gippo [spell checker doesn’t work on that] companies won’t pay a headhunter, but they may let a mariner pay them. However, the gippos usually just hire whoever walks through the door with the right piece of paper in is hand on the day that they happen to need someone.

In general, I don’t think most mariner’s need to or should spend their own money on headhunters. Yes, I have paid headhunters a reasonable fees a couple of times in the past. Once it was well worth it and once it was a waste of money. I simply would never pay the ridiculous fees that most charge-the-mariner headhunters ask for. Nor would I ever authorize a company to take anything out of my wages for a headhunter. Normally, I would expect any decent company to pay the headhunter. If I were going to pay a headhunter, I’d only do it with a credit card. If bank doesn’t trust a headhunter enough to open a merchant credit card account for him, I wouldn’t trust him either. Most credit card companies do a half decent job of resolving consumer complaints if there is a problem. If a headhunter is not able to accept credit cards, its probably because there have been too many complaints about him and the bank has suspended his merchant account.

I’m not a career services director at an academy, but if I were I’d talk to anyone about hiring my school’s grads. Then again, I’m a lot more ambitious that most career services directors. Most of the ones I’ve seen are just going through the motions and collecting a very small paycheck for their meager efforts. I would really pay attention to the established A list placement agencies and invite them to career fairs, but I would not let a headhunter into a career fair who is not well established with a good reputation, unless he is an alumnae starting out that shows some promise. No career service director in his right mind would let a headhunter who charges mariners into a career fair.

If I aspired to become a maritime headhunter, I would go to my own school and ask them for a job in the career services office, or to help me find an entry level position with a good maritime placement agency, or in the personnel office of a good maritime employer. In other words, if I wanted to be a headhunter, I’d make an effort to actually learn the business and develop some expertise before I tried to charge for my services.

[QUOTE=Capt. Phoenix;70229]When was the last time you were at an academy ?[/QUOTE]

That is what I wanted to ask, but it would have appeared critical or chastising. I keep hearing a squeak. eelher would you go grease the relative bearing.