Is There any Ethical Responsibility of Recruitment Agencies?

Recruitment Agencies exist almost in every part of the world after HR has evolved much better in last 5 years. Credit goes to Social Media platforms; from where organizations got linked with one another and their HR professionals too. But there is a big problem here which this HR world has not yet catered to.

I have come across lots of people who lost their jobs due to really normal reasons such as company or one of its units closure, moving back to home country or any other reason that is normal in this world. What happens in other fields such as Real Estate is that both the buyer and seller can contact the Real Estate Agency for property matter and get their task done at a reasonable agreed commission.

The same principle had to apply to Recruitment Agencies to which both the job seeker and employer could contact and get help in securing a job; except taking commission from job seeker as an ethical responsibility. But only one side of this is being attended to and that is Employer Side. Majority (almost all) are only interested in building a pool of candidate profiles and they come useful only when the employer asks for a specific profile. Now, this does not sound bad and there is nothing wrong in it.

But where has the role of recruitment agencies gone when a job seeker approaches them and these recruiters simply collect their resume to add one more to their database? - Many job seekers have a complaint with recruitment agencies that they do not attend immediately to people who are jobless or they have no plan to play this ethical responsibility to help jobless people.

After coming across lots of jobs seekers, I have come to know that recruiters have no plan as part of their SOP to keep a space for jobless people; so that they can be part of this ethical responsibility. Almost all are involved in pleasing employers, which has to be improved.

There was one decent/well dressed guy in a Masjid. After Isha Prayer, he attended the Bayan and at the end started asking for help in securing him job. Masjid Imam scolded him badly that begging in Masjid is not allowed; he should go out and ask for help if he wished; and, it's true that most of the people are big drama makers; but what if he was really in need? - I, at that time, felt what role recruiters are playing or if there is any platform to which these potential job seekers (jobless people especially) can contact and take help in securing a job.

This act of selfishness (by recruitment agencies) is really pushing people towards begging. Linkedin is full of posts that come up with jobless people asking for help or it would be very difficult for them to run a family.

Employers too are also to be blamed at the same time. Majority of organizations are not interested in people above 50-55+ of age and many of them are lately retired people who got retirement upon 60 crossing or early retirement as golden handshake. In this way, there comes an extreme need of Part-Time help system which can accommodate such people on contractual employment. But, unfortunately, employers want young generation. It's OK, but why not hiring baby boomers on contract as part time for lots of work domains that exist in the organization such as Document Management or Administrative Tasks?

One of my contacts lost job due to poor law and order situation of city (especially the location of factory). He approached one of country's largest Recruitment Firms. He sent his resume to their common email address and never got the call. He, thereafter, succeeded in securing an interview call after he used one of his references. He met the recruitment team; spent hours; they served him with special tea and told him he would be informed if any matching job comes up. It has been more than 6 years, he never got the call. Fortunately, he is on job and good position through other resources. But what role did that recruitment agency play?

If things go this way and recruiters do not understand their ethical responsibility, then soon many recruiters will come into existence who will help jobless people on a specific commission from Job Seekers (which they would like to pay too) like Real Estate business. And, I would not mind that too if currently existing Recruitment Firms do not understand their ethical responsibility.