Should I apply through an agency or go direct?

Neither route is safer. They fail in opposite ways. Through an agency you get somebody whose income depends on you succeeding, and you land on a shortlist of about three people who are all genuinely relevant. Direct, nobody argues your case, and your CV joins several hundred others where being missed by accident is a real mathematical possibility.

Most candidates pick a route without knowing they are choosing between those two failures.

What does an agency recruiter actually do with my CV?

An agency recruiter is a salesperson, and in this case that works in your favour. We are paid a percentage of the salary when you get hired, typically in the range of 10 to 30%, so the interest in your success is genuine rather than performed. Nobody is chasing a hiring manager on Friday afternoon out of goodwill.

That produces things you cannot get by applying alone. Insider information about what the manager actually wants, a briefing before the interview, and a covering argument attached to your CV so it arrives already explained. Your application does not enter the queue as a document, it enters as a recommendation.

So why am I still competing?

Because the shortlist is small. Most agencies work to a shortlist of roughly three candidates per role, which means the two other CVs going in alongside yours are also relevant. That is the point of a shortlist.

Then multiply. If the employer has engaged four vendors, and each sends three, the manager sees twelve people who have all been pre-argued for. The advocacy is real. It is just not exclusive.

What does representation actually commit me to?

Once you give one agency permission to represent you for a role, no other agency can put you forward for it. That protects the fee, and it is standard.

The bad practice sits in what happens next. Agencies sometimes take on more candidates than they can submit, and hold the surplus as backup. So you are held in place: your own agency has already sent their three and is waiting on feedback, or would rather you sat still than went through a competitor. You are not rejected. You are not submitted either. You have agreed to be somebody's plus one, and if they decide not to go, you are not going.

And if I apply direct?

No middleman, which the employer likes, because there is no fee attached to hiring you. In a tight budget that matters more than candidates realise.

The cost is that you arrive in the pile. Several hundred CVs, no advocate, and a first pass measured in seconds. Rejection there is not always a judgement. Volume, tiredness and an ATS reading the document badly all produce the same outcome as being genuinely unsuitable, and the email looks identical.

Why does the agency recruiter chase me daily while the company goes silent?

Different clocks. The agency recruiter is paid on an outcome and chases until it is clear you have no chance. Internal recruiters work to SLAs and chase too, but the chasing happens inside the business, where a corridor conversation replaces a formal update. Responding outward to a candidate or a vendor takes more care and therefore more time.

Here is where I was wrong. As a headhunter I read delay as an agency problem, mine or somebody else's. Once I sat internally I found delay was the normal condition, and hardly ever anyone's fault. Managers wait to see if a stronger candidate appears. Someone is mid offer with another candidate. The manager is overloaded, travelling, on holiday, or an internal referral has jumped the queue. Even with a small pipeline, things did not move at the speed I had assumed from the outside.

Which one should I choose?

Both routes end at the same desk. The hiring manager, or the technical team, reviewing you properly. Everything before that is only about how you get there.

So the real question is not which route is better. It is which failure you would rather risk: being one of three good candidates with somebody fighting for you, or one of three hundred with nobody. Choose deliberately, and never give representation to an agency that has not told you when they are actually submitting you.