The purpose of this website is to help demystify how recruiting works and how recruiters can be of assistance to you. The recruiting business can be vast, and because there are so many different types of recruiting agencies and recruiters out there, it can be difficult to navigate and understand what is involved in the process.
Recruiters are professionals who work on filling job openings. Agency side recruiters are hired by companies to find hard to find candidates. Internal recruiters work in-house and fill open jobs: often times the more easy to fill roles which don’t require extensive searching.
A recruiter can help you find work because they are able to schedule interviews with hiring managers faster than you can. The recruiter’s sole job is to locate and vet potential candidates. It’s in their interest to make placements, so if you are someone who has the skill set and is a professional candidate, then a recruiter can oftentimes fast track you into a job.
One way recruiters can help you find work is if they send your resume directly to a hiring manager. The recruiter would do this is you have the exact experience that the hiring team is searching for. In that case, you can get an interview and the entire process is expedited.
Working With Recruiters: Pros and Cons
The major benefit of working with a recruiter is that you might have access to jobs that are not publicly advertised online. The reason that recruiters are able to work on private jobs is that many companies do not want to advertise publicly.
There are prestigious firms that are looking to hire employees, but they simply do not want to let people know that they are hiring. This might be a public relations reasons (not wanting to alter public image) or they might not want a current employee to know that they were thinking of replacing them.
So, you can often times gain access to jobs you might not otherwise know about when you work with a recruiting firm.
The other upside of working with a recruiter is that recruiters can assist you with the interview process. Many times the hiring team for large companies is quite scattered, there might be multiple people who are assigned the role of interviewing people. This leads to confusion. It’s not uncommon for people to show up to companies for an interview only to find that the person they are there to meet is not on site.
Recruiters can help to streamline this process by coordinating the interview times with the company and ensuring that staff will be on hand to make the interview. Also, recruiters can handle the follow up with the company to see the result of the interview.
There are too many cases of people interviewing for a role and then never hearing back from the company. Often it is a case of the company simply dropping the ball. The hiring team might even had liked the person, but perhaps they failed to inform the internal onboarding specialist and that means the interview was pointless. Recruiters stay focused and follow up on interviews. This eliminates the need for the jobseeker to continually call and email everyone they interview with to see what the story is. That can be aggravating and also off putting to the hiring manager.
The process of actually finding work with recruiters is a bit different for each person. It will depend upon your skill set, your industry and how professional you are. If you are someone who works in the corporate space and are seeking a role in a Hedge fund, then you’re going to have to work with a particular sort of recruiter. The recruiter who handles Hedge Fund roles isn’t going to be a recruiter that works with entry level accountants or medical personnel.
The best approach to working with recruiters is to make sure you know the type of industry that the recruiting firm handles. If you approach a recruiter who does not work in the field that you do, then you might not get a call back.
The downside to working with recruiters is that many recruiters are simply salespeople. They will try and sell you on whatever role that they are working with. A common complaint that people make against recruiters is that they ghost them or never return their calls. However, this is not the biggest problem. If a recruiter is not returning your calls, then they don’t have work for you. It’s that simple. The real problem with working with recruiters is that you might get pressured into taking a role that you’re not set on. Worse, some recruiters lie about the role or the salary. These are huge problem issues and recruiters develop bad reputations if they do this. This is why it’s important to research recruiters and make sure that they don’t have a bad rep.
Finding Work Without Recruiters
It is possible to find work without a recruiter. There are many people who never speak to recruiters and have had long and successful careers.
In some job fields, recruiters are not important. For instance, anyone who works for a municipal employer will spend their entire career never interfacing with a recruiter. Likewise, many people in unions never speak to recruiters.
Recruiters tend to be more important in the corporate setting. Some industries, such as Tech, have a huge tendency towards recruiting. Other fields, such as finance, marketing, P.R. and other corporate fields all utilize recruiting agencies as a part of their strategy.
If you are not actively using recruiters, it’s still possible to find work. Some areas, such as Non-Profit and Medical work, often use internal recruiters or personal referrals.
It is still possible to find work without recruiters, it will just mean more work on your end. What you will need to do is utilize a personal network, as well as apply to company websites and job postings online.
Most people who find work without recruiters or extensive job applications are finding work through a network of family and friends. While nepotism is much maligned in the business world, the fact is that many in-house companies only hire friends and family. This is much to the chagrin of agency recruiters who are unable to place people in these roles, yet it is a reality to contend with.
Agency Recruiter vs Company Recruiters
When searching for work, it’s important to know the difference between an agency recruiter and an in-house (company) recruiter.
Agency recruiters work on role across a wide spectrum of businesses. They might work on a Hedge Fund analyst role at the same time as a director of paid advertising for a Media firm.
In-house recruiters only work on a single companies’ roles. For example, if you are contacted by a recruiter from Toyota, then they are only working on roles for the Toyota company. If you’re a marketing executive, and the role at Toyota isn’t a good fit, the internal recruiter isn’t going to be able to help you find work at GSK or some other unrelated business.
Agency recruiters can. They specialize in working on multiple positions for multiple companies all at the same time. Agency recrutiers work on commission, unlike internal recruiters.
If you’re interested in working for a specific company, it’s best to try and connect with the internal recruiter for that firm. You might try connecting with them on LinkedIn, or you might simply apply to the job postings that are found online.
Deciding On What Type of Recruiter to Work With
Anytime you begin the job search you need to determine what sort of recruiter you should work with. It’s not a good idea to simply cold call random recruiters. As we have discussed, recruiters all work on different roles. If your industry isn’t one which that recruiter works with, then it would be pointless for you to try and contact them.
So, spend time researching the recruiting firm and if possible, the recruiter. See if they are on LinkedIn, ask them to connect and ask them if they work on a particular type of role that you would be interested in. If they don’t they will tell you, it’s in their best interest to not waste time.
A wise plan of action would be to research a number of recruiting agencies, as well as connecting with individual recruiters on LinkedIn to see who might be working on projects that you are interested in. By connecting with the recruiter on LinkedIn you will also see how responsive they are. A non-responsive recruiter is of no use to you as a job seeker, so it is a good way to test them out before beginning to work with them on applications.