Somebody...please regulate this sector!

Those who know me well will be able to testify to the fact that I am not the most wholehearted endorser of regulation per se.  Regulation appears to put the costs of delivering a service through the roof, stifles competition and innovation, misses the obvious big-picture risks (by a mile) and is largely self-perpetuating.

And yet, recent encounters with the 'professional recruitment' sector leaves me desperate to see it regulated.  A steady increase in 'phone calls from individuals purporting to be clients of our Members (they are not) or representatives of the FSA (ditto) leads me to one firm conclusion - there are businesses out there which will masquerade as any plausible entity just so long as they can thereby extort contact details from us.

In some cases, we have traced these calls back to recruitment agencies - but some are very adept at covering their tracks.  Thankfully, our staff are well-briefed, not to mention extremely protective of our Members' data, and whilst we are happy to collect contact details, we don't give any out.

Which made me realise just how far we have come as a profession.  The kinds of ethical and professional standards which we now pretty much take for granted in financial services, even in those firms which tend to pay lip-service to them, would form the equivalent of a foreign language for many practitioners in the recruitment sector.  Impose the equivalent of the FSA's higher-end principles and you would see many recruitment firms out of business overnight.