How to find a good recruiter
I’ve been reading a lot of stuff on these here Internets lately about how recruiters are the enemy, they drive down salaries, they don’t know anything about the jobs they’re trying to fill, they’re non-responsive, blah blah blah.
So clearly, it’s time to defend my noble profession, no?
First of all, yes, there are a lot of crap recruiters out there. In any profession, there are going to be bad practicioners, but because there isn’t really a professional license for recruiters, there are people who think just anybody can do this kind of work. And believe me, good recruiters hate bad recruiters even more than you do, because they make it much harder for good recruiters to gain the trust of their clients. In fact, the firm I work for has a rather extensive training program for new field staff, and in it they spent quite a bit of time drilling into our heads that people HATE their staffing / Internet recruiting firms. It’s not news to me that people hate us, mmmkay?
But why exactly do people hate recruiters so much?
Recruiters drive down salaries. Complete and utter bullshit. We do no such thing. The market determines salaries. While it’s true that we charge fees for our services and that money has to come from somewhere, our talent know- or at least ought to know!- what their skills are worth on the market and are under no obligation to accept any below-market offer. An employer using a recruiter still has to make an offer a candidate will accept- they can’t lower a salary enough to cover a direct-placement fee without being noticed. And only a tiny fraction of positions in the market overall are filled by recruiters- we lack the market clout to drive salaries down overall.
IT Recruiters don’t know anything about technology. Unfortunately, this one is true far too often. But why do clients and candidates continue to work with them? Why not interview a recruiter before agreeing to work with her? If you’re contacted by an IT recruiter, ask what his or her background is in IT. People who don’t have a background in IT have no business placing IT professionals. It’s not that you have to be a programmer to place programmers (programmers generally don’t make good recruiters), it’s that you ought to have some practical tech experience if you’re going to understand what your clients and candidates need.
Recruiters send you on interviews and then you never hear from them again. Look. Putting people to work is how we make money. No one wants you to work more than you do, but right in line behind you is your recruiter. If we send you out on an interview and then you don’t hear anything from us, it’s probably because the client hasn’t said anything to us. We work with people who are too busy to do their own hiring- sometimes our clients leave us hanging for months, completely oblivious to the fact that candidates are out interviewing with other companies. If you want to hear from us so badly, why are you not calling us? Why are you waiting around? We’re juggling 20 different placements at once- demand our attention.
It comes down to this- Recruiting is not a zero-sum game. When done right, the employer, the candidate, and the recruiter all walk away happy. If you’re working with a recruiter who you don’t trust to represent your interests along with her client’s, then you’re working with the wrong recruiter. It’s that simple.