Company Proactive Technical Recruitment (nGAGE Specialist)

The worst recruitment agency in the world

NA - London - 27-Jan-2017

I wish that I could give this agency negative stars! They caused my husband so much grief that I had to leave this review to worn people to never work with ProActive! My husband was offered temporary work over the Christmas weekend (2016), the hourly rate was very good and that was the only reason that he took it and missed out on valuable time with his family. The consultant who contacted my husband with the job offer, E.T., caused most of the issues. First, she offered one hourly pay rate, then a few hours later she changed the pay rate, and this continued multiple times until she apologised that she was confusing my husband with another worker, and that the first offer was still valid. All correspondence with my husband was via email. The job was based outside and he was freezing and got really ill (but this is not ProActive's fault, but rather their client's fault). After he completed the job, he was told that he had to sign up with an umbrella agency (ICS) and after the Umbrella agency subtracted employer's tax, employer's NI, and the Umbrella agency fee, my husband was basically told that he would earn minimum wage per hour. ICS told him that the high hourly pay rate that he was offered was only to uplift ICS' margin costs and the company's employment costs. Obviously he was furious, because he was never told beforehand that he would be paid by an Umbrella agency rather than ProActive's PAYE payroll, and he never agreed to it. My husband complained, and E. replied only after the holiday period saying that there was no problem and that she would make sure that he would be paid via PAYE at the rate previously agreed, as she had dealt with these kinds of complaints in the past. A few days after that, E.T. sent another email saying that they now could not pay my husband via PAYE and he would have to sign up with the Umbrella agency. So why on Earth did she offer the PAYE option in the first place? She also said that she had called my husband and that he had agreed to the Umbrella Agency. SHE NEVER CALLED MY HUSBAND! She must have been confused again like the first time. She doesn't seem to know what is going on at all? I don't know how she does her job? After many back and forths, my husband contacted the director, A. J., directly. A. J. is one of the rudest men I know. Not only did he tell my husband that he had no choice and that the only way he could be paid was via the Umbrella company, but he refused to look into the complaints about E.T. and her many confusions. Had he read through all the correspondence, he would have realised that his employee E.T. was at fault and therefore that he should sort out everything for my husband. He would not reply and did not handle the situation like a director at all. After more than 2 weeks of arguing with E. T. and A. J., my husband eventually gave up as and accepted his money from ICS Umbrella, as he was forced to. He signed up with ICS, and they were actually very nice and offered to remove the Umbrella agency fee for this one time. But then my husband was told that ProActive had not given ICS his hours and so he could not be paid! Again my husband contacted E. who said that he had to log his hours on the ProActive portal and that he should have done so already - THIS WAS THE FIRST THAT MY HUSBAND HAD HEARD OF THIS, why on Earth would E. T. not have mentioned this in the beginning? Your guess is as good as mine... It took ProActive another week to give my husband login details to log his hours and then it took them another 3 days to give the hours to ICS Umbrella. Needless to say my husband was only paid on 25 January 2017! It took ProActive over a month and my husband still lost out. He would never have taken the job and missed out on the festive period with his family for minimum wage and he certainly will never ever work for ProActive again. Please do yourself a favour and avoid ProActive Technical Recruitment like the plague!