Recruitment industry professionals, I don't think so.

The company where I work, must get 20 call a day from recruitment agencies trying to place temporary staff in the warehouse.

We tend to field the calls in the office and quite a variety of ploys are used to try get to the DECISION MAKER

I took one such call yesterday and this over friendly type, calling me mate etc was obviously on a fact finding mission, telling me he'd forgotten the name of the person he deals with, tall man, dark hair. I knew who he was on about, but wasn't giving anything away and he went though a list of names, Gary, Ian etc, despite the fact I had told him I don't give names out.

Still wasted five minutes of my time before he went away. Ten minutes later, I heard a colleague answering very similar questions to those I has answered. When she finally cleared the call I described the caller, over friendly, lots of questions, describing the person he's looking for... Yes, that was him said Hayley.

I'm sure a sales manager somewhere is revelling in his mentoring skills, teaching such tenacity in a young pup of a salesman, when in actual fact, he reduced his chances to zero of ever capturing any business here.

To employ such underhand tactics at the opening stage of a business relationship, certainly tells anyone being sold to, that the integrity of the seller must be questionable and the likelihood of trust is wafer thin.

Diverting for a moment, I had some woman pitching insurance to me on the phone, who rather bossily told me to go look on the wall, where I'd find the insurance certificate, so I could give her the details from it with expiry date. Bade her a good afternoon.

Yes, sales is tough especially recruitment and if you don't like being told to fuck off albeit politely, then get out of sales or start acting more professionally. Say who you are, where you're from and what you want in plain fucking English and maybe you'll politely stand out from the line of bozos who called before you and your professionalism will earn a result.