Can a Recruiter Guarantee a Job

Absolutely not. A recruiter cannot guarantee you a job. If they tell you this, they are lying. Or they are just a recruiter who is delusional.

The simple fact is that an agency recruiter cannot guarantee anyone a job. Their role within the hiring process is to headhunt, interview, filter through applicants, and set up interviews with the client. The client is the one who decides who will be hired.

Even if you’re dealing directly with an internal recruiter, it’s not a guarantee that you will get a job. Why? Because even in that circumstance the internal recruiter isn’t the one with the power.

We’ll discuss this more below. The main takeaway though, is to never believe that a recruiter can guarantee you a job. They can assist in getting you a job, true, but it’s not in their power to ever get someone a job.

So, approach working with recruiters with the understanding that they are not there to get you a job, they cannot just guarantee you a role by snapping their fingers.

Understanding How Recruiters Get You A Job?

In order to understand why a recruiter can’t guarantee you a job, it’s important to understand how recruiters actually do get you a job.

First, recruiters are not the arbitrary of who will be hired. Unfortunately, it’s more involved that that.

Recruiters are tasked with finding appropriate applicants and sending them to a client company for interviews. The hiring manager at the company will conduct the finals interviews and decide who they want to hire.

If it were as easy as a recruiter interviewing you and hiring you, then many more people would work as a recruiter as it would be a simple job. However, it’s not. It is incredibly difficult. The job of a recruiter requires an enormous amount of skill and effort, so it’s not as simple as interviewing someone and placing them in a role.

Here’s the short version of what a recruiter does:

• They get a Job request from the client company.
• They begin searching for people who fit the job description requirements.
• They try and connect with the potential applicants and then interview them.

If the person is a good fit for the client company, then the recruiter will try and schedule an interview.

The recruiter will organize and set up the details for the interview, if one is requested.

After the interview, the recruiter will try and obtain feedback on how it went.

Finally, if the client wants to hire the candidate, the recruiter will help with negotiating the salary and terms.

Do Recruiters Lie About Their Power?

Sadly, yes. It’s not uncommon for recruiters to lie about how much pull they have. It doesn’t make sense, and in many cases is counter intuitive.

Most experienced recruiters will be totally transparent about their role in the hiring process. There is no positive benefit from deceiving a person you’re working with. At best, they will think that you have more power than you do and they will in turn be angry when you don’t get them a job. This is why it’s not beneficial for a recruiter to lie.

The downside to a recruiter lying, from their point of view, is that it can oftentimes infuriate the jobseeker. If someone is told that a recruiter can definitely get them a job, well, they will get really angry if that job doesn’t manifest.

The only reason a recruiter would want to lie about their power is to impress someone. That might be a candidate who they really think is a great fit for a role, but who is giving them the cold shoulder. Or it might be a colleague, or a potential employer.

However, an experienced recruiter knows that it’s not beneficial to bluff about how much sway you have. The likelihood is that it will only result in bad feelings should the person not be able to get a job after talking with you. That’s all too common a situation in recruiting anyways, so it is best to avoid the situation all together.

Would A Recruiter Prevent Me from Getting a Job?

Alright, here’s another question that oftentimes gets brought up when discussing recruiters and their ability to get someone work.

There is no reason why a recruiter would want to prevent you from getting a job. In order to understand why that’s the case, it helps to understand how a recruiter is compensated.

Recruiters only make money when you are put to work. If you don’t work, a recruiter and the staffing agency won’t make money. It’s as simple as that. Their profit comes from putting people into roles where they can make money.

So, it is better to think of the relationship as a partnership. Recruiters are going to advocate for you and try and get you work.

If, for some reason a recruiter isn’t coming to you with work, it is likely because there are no relevant job opportunities available. For instance, if they have an opening for an executive assistant, and you are a IT tech, then they won’t contact you.

Can a recruiter prevent you from getting a job?

No, not really. Look at it this way, recruiters want you to get a job so that they can make a commission and their staffing agency can make money.

The only reason that a recruiter might not approach you with job opportunities is that you are not a good fit. That can mean several things:

You don’t have the relevant experience

You are an unprofessional candidate

Your references are not good

In most cases a recruiter is not really “preventing” you from getting a job. At most, they are not telling you about roles that you’re not qualified for (such as not informing a marketing executive about a role for a Nurse manager).

Only in very special circumstances where your behavior is completely unprofessional would a recruiter not approach you with jobs which you are qualified for. So, for instance, if you’re a administrative assistant and you conduct yourself in an unprofessional way (such as yelling at the recruiter, or calling them over and over relentlessly and demanding work) then they might see that as a major warning sign. In these cases, it makes sense to protect the client from an unprofessional employee.

Should You Pay a Recruiting Company to Guarantee You Get a Job?

Here’s where there is some debate. In certain circles, it’s not uncommon for people to pay a recruiting company to assist them with finding work. However, it’s not common for high end search firms.

There are different ways in which recruiting companies make a profit, and the bottom rung are the ones that charge a fee. I always advocate that people be very cautious about any staffing agency that wants to charge a fee to find someone work.

The only acceptable fee is a percentage taken from the person’s salary. In those cases, it is a legitimate way for a firm to make money. The important thing to stress here is that the fee should never be paid up front. The fee for a job should only be collected once the individual stats working.

In the majority of cases, it’s better to have that fee taken directly from the client end.

Recruiters, to be precise, never charge a fee. The fee is charged by the staffing agency. The people who run the staffing agency tend to be hands off with regards to recruiting. They are the back office and are involved in invoicing clients, paying workers comp insurance rates, and fighting to keep people from collecting unemployment.

So, a recruiter will never directly ask you to pay them a fee. There might be paperwork that a recruiter sends you that will be involved with their parent agency, but the recruiter themselves is never going to be involved in collecting a fee.

If you ever do connect with someone who requests a fee, be extremely cautious and proceed accordingly.