Love this post because it’s a spot-on description of too many recruiters out there. Aside from having experienced them as a job seeker in the past, I personally know several that ‘found recruiting’ after failing (or doing really poorly) at some other crap job or in college. It’s unfortunate that so many candidates have a negative opinion of recruiters and the industry as a whole because there are obviously great ones out there who get it, like yourself. A few job seekers we know have already shared the post and are happy to see that there are ways to negate crappy recruiter behavior and not get taken advantage of.

A

This is a great post. There are few slimeball craptastic recruiters who make the rest of the industry look bad. Companies (hiring managers) need to ask the right questions and know that if something looks to good to be true, then it probably is. The same holds true for a candidate. They get taken advantage of. It’s important to seek out the best recruiters to work with. These are not necessarily the most visible ones but the ones like you who have a blog with posts like this. You are hands down one of my favorite recruiters who isn’t afraid to tell it straight which you also do on your blog.

Jessica

@blogging4jobs

ASK any recruiter for 2 candidate references at your level (wait until the recruiter gets excited about you first)…then call them

Helping candidates differentiate between good and bad recruiters is an important learning…whether they are in the firm itself or 3rd party/agency folks trying to represent you to the firm.

As a job seeker, getting up to bat is hard enough but with both lousy internal and external recruiters in play, it is a mitigated disaster.

My favorite story is about a top engineering manager who was distressed at his inability to get up to bat for a great opening in a fortune 50 firm despite knowing from an internal referral that he had all the exact key requirements in skill, knowledge, experience, previous companies, school ties etc. (Should have at least had a phone screen.)

I had the means to investigate and it turns out he had been ‘represented’ 6 months prior for a totally wrong job by a 3rd party recruiter who wasn’t on the firm’s ‘preferred vendor list’ and had never made a placement with the firm (that he claimed was a client).

Worse- the internal recruiter handling the ‘old’ assignment and desperate for candidates accepted the 3rd party recruiter’s pile of paper (all of it, about 100 resumes).

You can guess where this is going.

The firm’s expensive ATS had this cool feature to automatically advance or suppress the ability of the the company recruiter to see resumes based on a weighting of source criteria. So, resumes previously submitted by 3rd party recruiters for example could be suppressed for 1 year to avoid paying the fee…no matter how well they were matched. (In this company after the audit I sparked, they found about 4000 candidates suppressed for jobs they were matched to. Dumb policies. Dumb recruiters. (we could spend an hour detailing 60 ways how to this better) Everyone got what they deserved…except the qualified candidate who was not dumb…just ignorant.

I have a similar list about how to work with 3rd party recruiters. I’ll share 2 for the moment:

- NEVER work with a 3rd party recruiter with less than a year in the business. They are simply too desperate and any company that is working with them is even more desperate.

- ALWAYS limit your permission to represent you to a company as follows: state in an email that you must be informed of the specific name and title of the person in the company that the 3rd party recruiter is representing you to. State the title of the job and limit the time for representation to 30 days with an option to renew for an additional 30 days if you like. Finally, request the 3rd party recruiter click reply and state “i Agree” in order for you to go forward. (and that is with folks who can prove they actually have made current placements in that specific firm).

I think there is an infographic in here someplace

You’re right that a seasoned wrangler/recruiter should be able to generate flow in a reasonable period of time but engagement and coming in for interviews has many variables. For those who don’t know him Randy works heavily in financial services which has it’s own dynamics with respect to employee movement – recruiter success is a function of sector, available talent pool, etc. all which cross over each other and sometimes produce dangerous flooding that is difficult to navigate through.

But I won’t put the blame on one side or the other – both have their bad recruiters and each has it’s own challenges and objectives that typically run counter to the others. The best recruiters live on both sides and maintain relationships with great people whom they can tap into at a moments notice.