Your headline on Friday 11 November reads: ‘Royal Mail remains very confident in Angard’. May I suggest that this, at best, is misplaced?

I attended a recruitment event by Angard for a temporary position with Royal Mail, York leading up to Christmas. The event was not well organised and many people I spoke to went away disappointed.

However, I was told that I was accepted for a five-day a week shift commencing 6 December at 6am subject to checks on my status being satisfactory.

This was followed up by an email and text from Angard saying that I was accepted and they would be in touch regarding an assignment date. I was then contacted by phone by Royal Mail, York asking if I would be turning up for a shift on 29 November. Unfortunately, I could not make this due to medical arrangements made on the strength that I would not be needed until 5 December, so I was told that Angard would be notified and they would see me on the 5 December.

When I arrived ahead of shift start time at Royal Mail, York, I chatted to other recruits and found that three or four of them had been told to turn up on 29 November and then been subsequently told that a mistake had been made and they were not required until 5

December. A Royal Mail member of staff then arrived, 10 minutes late, and gave the 15 or so recruits an Angard mobile telephone number “for any problems arising”. A register of attendance was then passed around and my name was not found on it. The Royal Mail employee then looked and found an Angard security tag had been prepared for me but were perplexed as to what to do with me so went to check with ‘management’.

After five minutes, they returned and I was told that they could only accept for induction those people listed on the register so I was requested to leave. At least one other person was also asked to leave and he told me that this had also happened to him on 29 November, so it was his second rejection. I believe that others also left after I did.

The people being recruited are generally unemployed with very limited income and Royal Mail are exploiting them in that these people, including myself, have had to waste unnecessary expenses on unwarranted journeys because of serious mismanagement which is being played down.

R H Redwood, Askham Bryan, York

When things look black, try positive thinking

In response to your story, ‘Do not talk UK job market down says Hadley’ (28 November), I’m very much inclined to agree with Tom’s [Hadley] comments, however I believe it’s a message that needs to go much, much wider.

I appreciate that this is a recruitment magazine but surely — since we’re entrenched in so many different markets — we, as a group, can start to use some of the influence we have to stop talking everything down.

Over the past four years I don’t think I’ve heard of two financial or economic ‘experts’ agree on what is best to do to help get the world out of this situation, yet whenever people do come up with a plan the reports we get are of those who are opposed.

All we seem to get is why things won’t work and I, for one, am sick of it. Every time there is negativity reported throughout the media the markets suffer; when there is more positivity in the media the markets start to stabilise. How many times recently have you heard the phrase “the markets have reacted to today’s news”?

Surely we need to get more positivity out there as we can, and as the effervescent and ebullient characters that we recruiters need to be, surely we can spread a few happy words?

James Ranson