In its written ruling published today, the ASA said that “because we had not seen evidence the roles”, posted in ads by Developing Your Potential Recruitment, “were genuine, we concluded that the ads were misleading”.

The ads for teaching assistant roles in various locations were posted by the agency on www.monster.co.uk and www.totaljobs.com, and tweeted out in August and October 2017.

However, Leicestershire County Council Trading Standards believed that the jobs were not genuine but “the advertiser was inviting applicants to interview to determine the applicant’s eligibility for a training course run by the advertiser” and made a formal complaint to the ASA.

In response, Developing Your Potential Recruitment told the ASA it had an agreement with a number of schools to introduce those seeking permanent employment to those schools, and that involved contacting schools when they had a quality candidate in the area. 

The company said its practice of contacting the school and offering the candidate to work with them with a view to permanent employment “was a very common practice within the recruitment industry because it was an effective way of creating relationships with new clients”.

It said that when a candidate responded to an ad, this began a four-stage process that might or might not lead to a job. It said the fourth stage was to offer unsuccessful candidates the opportunity to attend its optional training course.

The company said it couldn’t provide evidence that the vacancies were genuine “because many of the teaching assistant vacancies had a transient lifespan”.

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