How to Work with Recruiters
Description
Recruiters are often on the ‘inside track’ – they know who is hiring and for what positions many times before it’s publically announced. Making a positive impression and working well with recruiters is essential to your job search. Learn how to accomplish this. Visit http://www.crossroadscareer.org for additional FREE career resources, including an 80-page career guide that provides 6 steps to helping you walk through a crossroads in your career.
Transcript
In looking for a job, one of the consideration is do I use a recruiter? What does a recruiter do? How could a recruiter help me? And so let’s just talk a minute about recruiters and how they can help you. First of all, there are basically two kinds of recruiters. One recruiter actually works for the employer they are an employee of the employer and they only represent the jobs that that employer has. And so they are very mission minded, they are very clear about what they are looking for and what they have to offer. So in connecting with a recruiter with an employer is gold, so you want to be sure to be alert for look for opportunities to connect with in better relationships with corporate recruiters, with employers that you would like to work for. So that’s one. But then there are thousands of recruiting firms and staffing firms that have recruiters that represent employers so that—I’ve been a recruiter since 1976, so over that period of time I’ve represented a hundred different companies and ministries in recruiting for key positions. So that being said, I know something about the company and I know what the jobs are and I know how to connect you. So that’s the value of these other recruiters whether they are with staffing firms or temp agencies or sometimes they are called executive search firms. Regardless of what they call them, these people can be very, very helpful. Not let me just put a little asterisk next to these recruiting firms. There are some firms that when you work with them, if the employer does not pay a fee for you to be hired they’re going to look to you to pay the fee. So I don’t want to frighten you but they just mean that as you are beginning to work with a recruiter you want to ask the question if they ask you to sign something then you want to have somebody in addition to yourself. Read the detail of what your responsible for financially. My bottom line recommendation is if you personally have to pay a fee or finding a job through a recruiter, do not with that recruiter. Only work with recruiters that get paid by the employers. Now, how do you find these recruiters? They’re probably like anybody else. Some are good and some are bad or some are ugly and nobody wants to deal with the bad and the ugly. So to find good recruiters you think about recruiting god recruiters and you do that best by talking to others who know you, talking to people on your job search that say, “Who are the good recruiters that you’ve worked with? Are there any that specialize in…” all recruiters really wind up specializing by some particular occupation or some particular industry because they didn’t know a lot of people in that category. In fact, that’s just one of the biggest advantages if you’re trying to move in to a new career, a new occupation even to new location or you’re just running out of contacts and you need more contacts then you want to consider using a recruiter. So, you find the recruiter through personal referrals and you use that referrals name to call the recruiter and say, “Bill Smith said you’re really great and I’m looking for a job can you talk to me?” And so you have a conversation over the phone, maybe you go in and talk to them in person but you’re looking to build relationship not just to sell yourself but also to get to know them to decide do you really want to with them. Finally, if you find some good recruiters, you want to build a relationship when they’re looking for people for jobs maybe jobs you would be interested in, help them be appropriate, build relationship because over time they could easily deliver. Meaning they have the job, they do the introduction, they help you get ready for interviewing and maybe even help negotiate the final salary and all the rest of that, they could be invaluable. But their only part of the equation but they are very part—important part of that equation. So good luck in recruiting recruiters!