It simply doesn’t happen, does it? Recruitment agencies never advertise glamorous-sounding jobs that don’t actually exist just to top up their files with quality CVs, do they?

A consultancy would never offer applicants less attractive ‘real’ appointments instead, to make a fast buck. Deception simply doesn’t exist in the profession. Does it?

Let’s suppose for a moment that it does. That some unscrupulous agency saw fit to stray from the path of professionalism and ran a ‘phantom’ appointment ad. What would the legal consequences be?

The Advertising Standards Authority regulations are there to prevent anything ‘misleading’ appearing in a recruitment advertisement. For a start, the rules of confidentiality would be broken. Candidates who submit personal information to an agency marked ‘confidential’ do so on the strict understanding that the person on the receiving end will both respect their confidentiality and also be aware of, and uphold, the Data Protection Act.

You could be sued if you use the information sent in by an applicant for a specific job to fill another appointment. You must only use their information for the job for which they have applied – unless they expressly give you their approval to use it for other recruitment purposes too.

Worse still, there is also the legal risk from the ‘Tort of Misrepresentation’. This means that if someone accepts a job on the basis of information provided by you – such as a job description in your ad – and the job turns out to be different from the one described, the unhappy recruit can claim for damages. Which could involve some very large pay-outs.

There are three types of legal action and damages available, depending on whether the deception was ‘fraudulent’, ‘negligent’ or ‘innocent’. You’d probably have an uphill struggle trying to persuade a court that you’d innocently or accidentally advertised a non-existent job.

Anyone who accepts a job that has been misleadingly ‘glamorised’ by an agency has a strong case for taking legal action.

So, my advice to recruitment agencies is don’t do it. It might be part of recruitment industry folklore but it certainly isn’t legal.