Experiences with Recruiters

I had coffee with a friend this week (and I truly thank her for all the help she has given me in building this blog and I hope I have reciprocated) and we were talking about what leads/interviews she had recently in the marketplace. This topic lead to her experiences with retained search people. This was not a good discussion and my personal experiences didn't add anything positive to it either.

Well, a recruiter sends out a query on a job through an email blast. How many people respond you can only imagine. The big question is how many people heard back from the recruiter after they responded to the email with all their critical information and job history. The even bigger question is after the job seeker calls to follow-up how many of those people ever received a return phone call?

So if you are in the relationship market as most retained search people are why wouldn't they respond even if they were inundated with email responses and why wouldn't they return your phone call. That is not relationship building and I'll tell you one thing, it is a game that if they worked for me they would be fired immediately.

The problem is job seekers spend a large amount of time trolling the Internet for leads on positions, they do it with the idea that someone will respond. Human resources people are suppose to be people friendly and servants to the people they support. The same goes for recruiters. If you don't want to serve then find a job where you are an individual contributor and you do not have to speak to anyone. Just do research only. I was told by someone and supported by a blog I read recently that the 3 things a recruiter will not tell you is:

1. he/she is not working for you at all
2. he/she has a real hard deadline to fill a position, if there is one to fill, and
3. he/she is just trolling to build a database

Something good finally came out of our discussion over coffee though. A recruiter did return her query by email and said to call him. So she did and he told her the number of applicants he received, how he was going to cull it down to a reasonable number by a certain date, that he would call the first pass people by a certain date, from that pass and telephone screen, he would cull those numbers down to 20 or so by a certain date and present 5-6 candidates to the company he was representing by X date. This was all laid out to all the applicants so they know where they stood at any given point in time. The recruiter had a plan and communicated it effectively to those applicants. GREAT FOR HIM AND HE SHOULD RECEIVE A GOLD STAR FOR HIS WORK. The others, you fail miserably.

So share with me your experiences at wgstevens2@gmail.com or comment to this blog.