It’s Not Me, It’s You! 4 Reasons A Recruiter Won’t Respond

As a recruiter, most of your day is spent dealing with resumes and people looking for work. I’ve worked at a few different shops. Some were small niche recruiting firms that handled compliance searches, while others were what I call the behemoths who handled everything from general purpose front desk work to executive roles.

But the main thing you’re going to encounter as a recruiter are the endless resumes. You’ll see them all day every day. Some will be amazing; some will be terrible. Behind each resume is someone looking for a job.

I get it, sometimes it seems like you send out your resume to a recruiter, you call them, you email them, you do everything besides hang around outside their office.

But believe me, there are good reasons why a recruiter won’t respond to you. Sometimes it’s a minor thing that you can fix, sometimes it’s more of a major problem that you need to be aware of before you continue the job search. Either way, it’s better knowing what the situation is before you spend more time wasted.

So, if you want to know exactly why your not hearing back from a recruiter, just look at these 4 reasons because it very well might be one of them.

You Can’t Help Them, So They Ignore You

The most common reason why a recruiter won’t respond to you is that you can’t help them.

So, what does that mean? Well, it means that your resume doesn’t line up with any roles that they are working on.

When I was a recruiter, if I was trying to fill a role for a Jr. Publicist and I had a resume for someone who was a bookkeeper, then there was no reason for me to contact them.

Sure, I’d file the resume for the bookkeeper away in the system, but there would be no reason for me to spend time on the phone with them.

When I was working on a role, which was all of the time, my only goal was to connect with and recruit people who were an exact fit for the roles I was working on. Nothing else was on my priority list.

So, if you are not hearing back from a recruiter it could well be a case of them simply not having a role for you.

Damage Control: You Have a Bad Rep Around Town

Another reason you might not be hearing back from a recruiter is that you could have created a bad reputation in the area.

I know, I know, that’s impossible.

But really, think about how you’ve acted on job interviews with recruiters in the past. If you’ve ever blown off a scheduled interview, walked out of a job without notice, or done anything else unprofessional, then odds are that you’ve been flagged and noted by a recruiting agency.

What does that mean? Well, it means that you’re noted as someone who is a problem candidate. Someone who should be dealt with only with extreme caution, or else not dealt with at all.

And people don’t understand that reputations travel. If you burn a recruiter who works at a company, sure that recruiter will note it in your system, so you expect to maybe not work with that firm again.

However, recruiters often switch agencies. There is a high turnover in this industry. I’ve had friends who have worked at a half dozen firms by the time they’re 30.

And one of the things recruiters never forget is a candidate who burns them. So, if they see that resume in a new companies applicant tracking system, they go ahead and they flag it and add notes to the person’s profile.

In this way, people who are bad candidates get known in the industry.

You Are Unprofessional

his dovetails into the reason mentioned above. If you’re someone who is unprofessional, then you will have been noted by the agency. Perhaps your resume wasn’t sent in the right format and can’t be read, or maybe you spoke to someone on the phone in an aggressive manner? Even if you spoke to a secretary in a rude tone, it’s likely that they noted it.

Perhaps you showed up to a job interview wearing jeans? Maybe you were extremely late for a job interview? It could be anything that would be constructed as rude.

If you were unprofessional, then that unfortunately is one of the reasons that you might not get a response from a recruiter.

While no one wants to think of themselves as unprofessional, it might be that someone else has thought of you as. And if that’s the case, then it will get noted.

The best way to get around this is to try and correct your behavior and attitude in the future. You want to be polite and courteous to everyone you deal with.

They Don’t Know You Exist

Here’s a less stressful one because it doesn’t have anything to do with your behavior.

Sometimes recruiters don’t respond because they don’t know you exist. It’s as simple as that.

What is most common is that the recruiter just never saw your resume. I know that at every agency I’ve worked at, that was a common situation.

Resumes would be sent in to the firm, either by their postings on-line, or via a slew of different submission methods. But recruiters almost never saw the vast majority of resumes.

The resumes were filed away into database and then they were only highlighted if a recruiter did a search of the database.

So, you see why someone who is a chemical engineer would never come across the radar of a recruiter who was working on pharmaceutical sales rep roles.

All  of these issues might be the cause, or none of them.

But what I’d like to close with here is a simple thought.

If a recruiter won’t get back to you, move on and forget them. It’s not worth your time to obsess on finding the perfect recruiter who will get you the perfect job. Because it’s not real. There is no magical recruiter who will place you into that dream job.