Why you should always be polite to recruiters
Look, guys, we know. We know that we interview candidates we then aren’t able to find work for. We know that it costs a lot of time to meet with recruiter after recruiter, only to not find work through them. We get it. Believe it or not, it frustrates us too.
But when a recruiter you havent heard from in a while contacts you to see what your status is, you should at least be nice. I checked in with a talent about a month ago who we hadn’t talked to in a while. We hadn’t been able to find him work, but I had some freelance opportunities that might have been a good fit for his skills.
In response, I got a nasty and completely ungrammatical email chastising me for having not contacted him sooner and complaining that he had lost all faith in recruiters and didn’t want to hear from us anymore. I raised an eyebrow, wished him luck, and went on my way.
The other day, I get an email from him saying that HE wants to give US “one more chance” because he’s still looking for work. Right.
First of all, the reason he’s still looking for work is because he’s looking for jobs that don’t in any way fit his skills- he’s a good developer, but he’s looking for design work. Secondly, if this is how he conducts his professional correspondence, I’m sure that also contributes.
Fortunately, I’m on vacation so I didn’t have to respond. Stephanie handled it, and explained, in her trademark polite-but-firm fashion that we have development opportunities when he told us he wanted design, and that our previous correspondence with him had caused us to doubt our ability to represent him effectively, and perhaps he should seek representation from our competitors. Heh.
The moral of the story is that recruiters are people too, and we’re generally less likely to want to work with people who don’t know how to be NICE. Why do we want to send rude people to our clients? Why do we want to open ourselves up to personal abuse if we can avoid it?
Always be polite when the recruiter contacts you, even if you’re not interested. Even if we know you’re irritated with us, we’ll appreciate your professionalism. That’s important, because you never know if you’ll need us later.
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