Can a Recruiter Find Me a Job?

Anyone who is in the job market is going to sooner or later encounter a recruiter. Whether you seek out a recruiter to help you find a job or you get approached by one, they are everywhere.

The big question that many people have is whether or not a recruiter can help you find a job. Or are they just a big waste of time.

The truth is somewhere in the middle. Recruiters are helpful, and in some cases necessary. However, not all of them can find you a job. The way I put it is that you help yourself find a job and use a recruiter to do so.

If you’re not proactive and smart about it, you’re not going to get to your goal.

Pros and Cons of Using a Recruiter to Find a Job

Let’s first look at some of the pros and cons of using a recruiter to find a job.

First, the pros:

A recruiter will often have access to jobs that are not publicly posted. There are many reasons for this, but just know that sometimes an agency recruiter will be able to get you access to a company that is not posting jobs publicly.

Oftentimes what occurs is that a company has a role and they have exhausted their efforts trying to find someone to hire, so they turn to a job agency. At that point, they stop posting the job online and let the agency handle the recruitment efforts.

Other times, a company might never publicly post the job online. They might know how futile it is to post a job online when thousands of unqualified applicants will flood their inbox with resumes that are totally useless. So, they task an agency recruiter with finding the person to hire.

Now, the cons:

The main con when dealing with recruiter’s is the difficulty in determining whether or not the recruiter has a real job available.

Many times, recruiters are working with a limited number of open positions. However, a recruiter is not often going to be that transparent with you. So, if you are seeking a job as a Project Manager and the recruiter does not have that role (or worse, if they don’t ever handle these types of jobs).

The other con when working with a recruiter is transparency. They are a middle agent between you and the company. In some cases, such as in direct hire situations, that is not a significant issue.

However, when you are working as a temp through a staffing agency and dealing with a recruiter, understand that the firm that the recruiter works for is paying you a lower salary than the company is paying the firm. Much of that is tired up with the burden aka the cost of employing someone. However, some agencies are predatory and pay people as little as legally possible.

So, you might be working for close to minimum wage and the staffing firm that the recruiter works for is billing the company three times your hourly rate. It’s not unheard of in major saturated markets like Chicago, Boston, New York City and Los Angeles to have a person making 16 dollars an hour as a temp and the company pay the staffing agency 40 dollars per hour.

Finally, as you can see from the briefly discussed markup situation, it is in the best interest of the staffing agency that the recruiter works for to keep you on indefinite temp status. This is why so many staffing firms refuse to ever place people permanent. They just make more money keeping you on as a full time temporary worker.

The downside to this is obvious. Staffing agencies, for all their promises, do not pay insurance. They don’t contribute to a 401k. They don’t provide anything besides hourly work. Having worked with dozens of them over the years, and having known and worked with hundreds of recruiters, the story is always the same.

What Kind of Recruiter Can Find You a Job?

The question needs to be rephrased to be understood. Some recruiters have access to job requests that they are trying to fill. If your work experience happens to line up with their current needs, then it might be a perfect match.

However, if your work experience doesn’t line up with the roles that the recruiters are working on, then you are not going to have any luck. That particular recruiter can not find you a job.

Remember, recruiters are not your personal job counselors. They are there to do a job and satisfy their paying client, they are not commissioned to work for you. A recruiter can’t guarantee you a job.

As far as what kind of recruiters you can find work with, both agency and in-house recruiters can help.

Again, realize that they can only find you a job if they have a job that fits your specific need.

So, for instance, if you are seeking a marketing direct role, and an in-house recruiter for Nike is working on a Marketing Role, then it would be a good idea to connect with them.

And if the agency recruiter is working on a Marketing role for a Fashion brand, then likewise.

The tricky part is finding out what jobs an agency recruiter is working on. In-house recruiters will post these jobs online on corporate websites or connect with you via LinkedIn. Agency recruiters are usually tasked with more private clients that do not want as much exposure.

Agency Recruiters vs Internal Recruiters: Know the Difference

Before we move any further in the discission, let’s review for a moment the difference between agency recruiters and in-house or corporate recruiters.

This is one of the most misunderstood aspects of recruiting. And if you don’t know the difference, you’re going to be disappointed and also waste a lot of time. Let’s make it simple.

If a company is doing their own hiring, they are using in-house recruiters. These might be simple Human Resource admins who are reviewing resumes pulled off of indeed or the companies Greenhouse setup. Or it might be an in-house specialized recruiter who is charged with filling hard to place roles.

If a company is outsourcing their hiring and recruiting duties to an agency, then you’re dealing with an agency recruiter.

Both types of recruiters can find you a job as long as they are currently working on filling something that you’re a good fit for. They are the main point of contact between you and the hiring manager, so you are going to have to interface with them regardless.

Can a Recruiter Find You an Entry level Job?

This totally depends on what type of entry level job you are looking for. It also depends upon your credentials and skill set. What college did you go to? How many internships do you have on your resume? Things like that.

But the answer is, yes a recruiter can find you an entry level job. However, not all recruiters have access to entry level roles.

Many people think that recruiters have an infinite amount of roles that they can pick from. Well, they don’t. And many times the roles while entry level might not pay as much as you would like.

The general rule is that the more entry level the role, the lower the pay. And the more fancy the job is, the tougher the interview process and the more hoops you will have to jump through to land a job, even with a good recruiter.

Be aware that many entry level jobs can be temp or temp to perm. This is not always a bad thing and not necessarily a dead-end job. I cover this extensively elsewhere, but the rule of thumb for people seeking entry level work is to take anything as a career gap is something you really want to avoid on your resume.

Temp agencies still exist and they can be a good place to find entry level work as long as you are open to taking a modest salary and are not looking to jump into a high level role that you’re not qualified for.

How To Use a Recruiter To Find a Job

First off, you should use as many recruiters are you want. You are not limited to using a single recruiter, no matter what you are told.

And don’t waste your time with recruiters who don’t call back. Keep moving and stay with those who are responsive.

If you are looking to find a job, use several recruiters as long as they are working for different agencies. There is no reason to use multiple recruiters at the same agency —this can actually cause problems and prevent you from getting a role as they will fight over who gets commission and you might be classified as a problem candidate.

What you should do is find agencies that recruit and staff for the types of work you are interested in. So, if you want to work in finance, you need to search for staffing firms and recruiting agencies that place people in financial firms.

Check the firms websites, read glassdoor and yelp reviews. Check the companies reviews on Google. All of these combined will give you a good picture. None of them taken by themselves is enough. Staffing firms hire SEO agencies overseas to write positive reviews, so you need to be aware of how to differentiate the fake positive reviews from the real reviews.

Also, connect with as many recruiters that you can on LinkedIn, especially if they work in the field you are searching in. If they see your face on LinekdIn and can connect a name and face with a resume, they are way more likely to follow up with you.

The Larger Picture: Recruiters For Different Job Levels

It’s important to think about where you’re at in the job world. If you’re someone who has been in the workforce for several years, and you primarily have done retail work, or manual labor, or something outside of “corporate” or medical work, then you need to know the type of recruiter to use.

There are recruiters who work placing people who don’t have a college degree, or who have never done office work, but these recruiters and those agencies are much different than the agencies that work with long time executive assistants, or software designers.

There are:

College Recruiters- They recruit for entry level work in fields like Accounting, Computer Science (IT fields), entry level marketing, and at elite schools IB (investment banking).

Medical Recruiters- These recruiters focus solely on medical roles. So, if you’re not a nurse or other medical staff, don’t waste time with them. Likewise, if you are a nurse or medical professional, someone who works in corporate America will have no work for you as a rule.

Labor Recruiters- Warehouse, Truck Drivers, Manual Labor, etc… These recruiters help to fill roles that companies need and if you have experience in these fields, or if you are in need of fast money it does help to connect with them.

Executive Recruiters- These are recruiters who focus on hard to place mid and senior level roles including C-level positions. They normally won’t have entry level roles, so trying to get to talk to them is often a waste of your time.

The obvious point here is to make sure you’re connecting with and using the right type of recruiter. Some recruiters can find you a job, but only if you are seeking out those who have the jobs that are in your field. The process begins with you.