How to work with Recruiters effectively
A recruiter usually has around 50 to 100 open positions that they are trying to fill at any given time. This means that they can never have enough candidates, the more the better I always say. The problem is that most candidates don’t understand how a recruiter thinks and functions.
A recruiter cannot find you a job!
I really want to emphasize this point because most candidates don’t get it. It’s actually the company or the hiring manager that ultimately makes this decision. The essential function of a recruiter is to facilitate this process and make it as easy for the hiring manager as possible.
Often recruiters work with vague job description or none at all written by people who have no idea what the job really entails. This makes it hard for one to find candidates. The other side of the problem and this is that candidates really have no idea what type of job they want or what type of position they are qualified for.
This is exactly why I have written this in depth guide on working with a recruiter. Following this guide you’ll be able to understand how you can make sure that the recruiter markets your resume above the 1000’s he/she has at any given time. Let’s get to it.
1) The Recruitment Process
If you plan on signing up with an agency and working with recruiters you must understand how they market you in the first place. Let’s go through an example
A company contacts the recruiter and tells them they have a need for an administrative position at a tech startup and they would like to have somebody who understands excel fairly well, somebody who can do presentations in Visio and handle all reporting needs for several different departments. Additionally they want somebody who can update their Social Media and somebody who is very outgoing.
This of course is very vague because 90% of candidates fit this mold so the Recruiter has to have a candidate where he can highlight the main aspects of this vague job description.
An ideal candidate would be somebody who has handled social media or has some marketing experience, preferably somebody who has one to two years’ experience as an admin at a tech company. He wants to make sure that they understand Excel, Visio and have a grasp on Reporting.
After interviewing a few candidate, he will send them a few tests measuring their excel skills, he will ask what their experience with Visio is and if they have done any reporting before. He will then check their references and after discussing the wage and the length of the contract with the candidates he will go ahead and present three resumes to the company.
If the company is interested they will schedule an interview. Assuming that the interview goes well the company will tell them if they would like to go ahead with this hire. If so the recruiter will call the candidate and let them know the good news, hoping that the candidate will accept.
Both parties are happy at this point, he will give the good news to the company and pass on the first day instructions and other details to the candidate.
This is essentially the process a recruiter goes through, so why is it that so many people sign up with a staffing agency but never get a call back or mysteriously fall through the cracks? What could possibly be the reason?
2) Managing expectations and being flexible
Often a recruiter works under tight demands from the clients and the recruitment agency he works for. This means that he/she has to find a candidate who is willing to take on a short term assignment for sometimes an undesirable wage
Wage: Discuss the wage with the recruiter and don’t be afraid to disclose what you really want and what wage you won’t accept. A recruiter will be thankful trust me, this makes our job much easier.
If you don’t want to work for $10 an hour don’t say that you are flexible and will work for $10 an hour if needed. Think about how this could damage our credibility and keep in mind that the companies pay a recruiter all the services are completely free to you. So let’s just say I present your resume for a position that is at $10 dollars because you agreed and then later you tell me that this is too low for you. In this case I have to call back the company and cancel the interview or even worse let them know that you are not interested. I have to go back and find somebody else, this whole process can make the client cancel the contract and #$%#$. Recruiters will probably not call you again and this can really damage the relationship.
So the advice is to be honest and upfront and place a clear worth on yourself. If your minimum is $20 then say its $20 per hour because that is what you need to make ends meet. We understand this, I would urge you to be flexible because it will increase the amount of positions we may have for you.
Availability: Being available for interviews and job assignments on short notice is crucial.
Recruiters work under tight deadlines meaning a company may call us up and request candidates the next day. Recruiters have to deliver to their clients so we will do everything that is possible to line up a few interviews by tomorrow even if that means working 12 hours to make things happen.
If we give you a call or we arrange an interview being available not only helps us but it helps you get that job. If you decline because you have an appointment it can be very hard to reschedule at times and you may lose the opportunity to interview for that role.
Declining an assignment is fine, however declining a few in a row or only being available for interviews after 4pm or only on a certain day will make it impossible for us to schedule something. If you are planning on working with a recruiter, make sure that you are available to interview on short notice, and also being available to start work on short notice is also very crucial.
3) Recruiters have trust issues
Any good recruiter has been burned by candidates to many times, consequently we develop trust issues. A good recruiter will go above and beyond to very your technical skills and really qualify everything on your resume.
We test technical skills. Most agencies use testing software to determine skill levels and the majority of staffing agencies use Kenexa Prove It, there are literally 1000’s of different tests that we can send to a candidate ranging from basic Excel to SQL
Scoring well on these tests is essential for getting a good job with a staffing agency. When a recruiter markets your resume he/she will usually point out your test scores to the client. We wills say something like “Jane has deep technical skills scoring 98% on Excel and 100% on Visio.
This is what our clients hire us for to make qualify our candidates and only send them the resumes that meet their criteria which makes their job easy.
All agencies, we’ll all professional agencies will usually test you on Excel since this seems to be the number one requirement for nearly all positions.
Since I’m such a nice guy here is how you score 100% on Kenexa Prove It Tests
Simply watch this video a few times, all the questions are nearly identical in the test and this will make sure that you score very high even on the power user test.
4) Keep in touch
At any given day I had to pick from a pool of 200 candidates to present just one or two for a given position. People who kept in touch with me I was more likely to present because I knew they were available and that they really wanted a position.
A simple phone call every week or just an e-mail stating that you are available and still looking for work can really mean the difference between being presented or simply forgotten.
I can’t tell you how many candidates signed up with me and then never, not even once e-mailed me or gave me a call. I had some down time on a Friday before going on vacation so I wanted to update my candidate list so I e-mailed and called nearly 300 people that day.
I found out that some got jobs (Thanks for letting me know), and what was really surprising is that the majority of the candidates were still looking for work. Some that I completely forgot about keep in mind that I constantly keep my pipelines running, meaning that I’m constantly looking for new people and I do roughly 10 to 20 interviews per week.
Keeping in touch is essential, if you land an interview somewhere else let us know this will only develops that relationship.
5) Help us help you
A recruiter is essentially a sales person a marketer of resumes as I like to call it. We have such a big diverse range of job openings that even the smallest skill set can really be the difference of your resume being presented.
I once had an urgent position to fill that required proficiency in Sales force, after calling my candidates I found out that at least 16 had used Sales force and some even did analytical reporting for upper management using Sales force. This was not on their resume, I didn’t call everybody but I always wonder how many more could have being hired for this position.
If you don’t tell us that you are proficient in HTML or SQL then how will we ever know?
Write up a list of all your achievement, offer reference letters, your LinkedIn profile, the books you have read
Tell us what type of companies you would love to work for, what your ideal position would be.
I once had a candidate who was a recent grad and was working as a tax analyst for T-Mobile just having about 1 ½ years of experience. Her goal was to be a business analyst and I let her know that she had to learn SQL to become one. A few months later she called me and let me know that she took a course on SQL and was very good at it, she even used it at her work since learning structured query language. I was then able o get her a position at Amazon as a Business Analyst, she is still there and enjoying a great career making more money than me many times over.
The last point I will make is that recruiters are a great source of information and great for building experience and creating a solid career path for you. I hope this helps you understand how we work and I hope that many of you can leverage this knowledge to find positions in the future. Any comments would be very appreciated.
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