Apollo Transitions - www.apollo-transitions.co.uk

These people trawl the web looking for people who may have recently left a role. My call came only a week after being made redundant. Feeling vulnerable I went along to the 2 free sessions they give you. They sold me a story about the fact that 75% of roles are never advertised and that they could help me through their network to tap in to this unseen market. At that point they ask for £3k! You get 6 sessions which focus on career goals and they do help reconstruct your cv, give advice on hook letters for prospecting and interview tips. All quite useful, although my revised CV came back with typos and when I testes it against my own version, mine won hands down in terms of interview ratios. At that point you get the marketing relaunch as they call it. An account manager is supposed to start helping with the search. BUT trust me there is no hep with any unadvertised jobs market. All that happens is they send your new CV around to all the usual suspect recruiters whom you are almost certainly already registered with. This only serves to cause confusion as you get a call from said recruiter asking why someone they have never heard of has sent in a different version of your CV. Your weekly calls with your account manager will be an embarrassment as they make blindingly obvious suggestions and flounder around to try and give the call some veneer of structure.

You will do better to trust yourself engage friends and try to work your own network something they advise strongly post you giving them £3k as they dont have one. when I complained they gave me 3 unqualified leads for there very small uninteresting companies in my area - none of whom were remotely interested in speaking to me. SO i warn you all DONT DO IT save your redundancy and spend it on some retraining. These people WILL NOT introduce you to anyone interesting which was the hook I believed in and got caught on. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED

The following is a true account of events …. my conclusion … DO NOT ENGAGE IN ANY WAY WITH APOLLO TRANSITIONS.

Following a family bereavement and a long break from work, I felt I needed some support in finding my next job.

And purely by chance I was contacted by Apollo Transitions at that time.

So I agreed to meet them.

I met Director – Apollo Transitions at their office near East Midlands airport who gave an encouraging view of how Apollo – through their extensive network of employers and recruiters – could assist me.

He told me how Apollo would help me gain a better understanding of what I wanted and, more importantly, introduce me to the ‘unadvertised job market’.

There was of course a catch; a price tag.

I wasn’t quite ready to commit, as there were still family issues.

But a few weeks later I decided to meet him again when he convinced me that he would find me that all elusive job and I signed up.

I had a series of meetings in which I met a Senior Consultant who was okay so I won’t mention his name.

He asked all the right questions to help me understand what I wanted and helped me write a shorter and perhaps more effective CV than I had before.

From here it fell apart.

I was provided with a ‘Campaign Manager’ who was pitiful at best; Operations Director – Apollo Transitions.

Over the course of two months he provided a number of names and email addresses he had sent my CV to.

Strangely, he could not provide direct or mobile numbers, just generic office numbers where I was generally vetted and fobbed off without being able to speak directly with the named introduction.

I truly believed that given the personal commitment to me these would be solid introductions; personal networked contacts of Apollo Transitions.

How wrong I was!

Of the several contacts I was provided, I had the kinds of response:

"I received the attached emails from Apollo recently but have no idea who they are and what they do."

"email introducing you to me says he took my name of our website. I haven’t heard of Apollo"

"Your message [email protected] couldn't be delivered."

"I have added your CV to our database / community so you will be informed if we have any suitable programme level roles."

"I no longer work for Xxxx & Xxxx, please direct all recruitment enquiries to the UK Recruitment Team"

And so on …. NOT A SINGLE INTRODUCTION.

I will stress that my commitment to Apollo Transitions was based purely and solely on what I believed to be an equally sincere commitment by the Director to work with Apollo Transitions’ network of employers and recruiters; there would be little value in paying for their services without this. This was his unique selling point to me.

I was becoming increasing concerned and agitated.

I had paid good money for introductions to solid networked contacts and access to the unadvertised job market and had received absolutely nothing.

All my so-called Campaign Manager was doing was trawling job sites for the names of recruitment agencies and an email address.

I was not introduced to a single person who knew him let alone Apollo Transitions.

My attempt to get any form of refund has been rejected with them quoting chapter and verse of the contract; more fool me.

I am annoyed with myself for being so trusting of the Director: his words are hollow So, based on my own experience, I can only suggest you think long and hard about engaging Apollo Transitions to help find you work. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.