1. "You're one of 200 people I'm cold calling."
It might seem flattering to receive a cold call or email from a recruiter about a position they're trying to fill. However in order to get a few candidates into an interview pipeline the typical recruiter had to start by contacting 200 or more people with the right keywords on their bio. While it may seem you were one of a chosen few that had just the right background of what their client is looking for, you're actually one of hundreds that had the right keywords their recruiter searched for to start their interview funnel.
2. "You're being interviewed to make my other candidates look better."
If you've ever purchased a house you might have noticed that the house you wound up purchasing wasn't the first house your real estate agent showed you. It was probably the third or fourth. That was no accident. The first few houses you were shown were carefully staged in order for the house the agent thought you may like look that much better. Recruiters often use the same technique.
Hiring managers rarely have a detailed understanding of what their ideal interview candidate is and generally do not want to make an offer to the first person in the interview process. Recruiters know this and therefore insert into the interview process "calibration candidates". These are interview candidates that the recruiter doesn't believe are the best fit for the job, but will help make their chosen candidate look that much better when they are interviewed by their client.
3. "I get measured by how quickly I fill a job opening."
Larger companies often employ a staff of in-house recruiters, many as temporary contractors, to fill their open positions. The metric most often used to measure an in-house recruiter's performance is the average number of days to fill an open position. The quality of the people hired is not easily measured until long after the newly recruited individual is on the job. So the recruiter is motivated to bring in the lowest caliber interview candidates that are just above the bar for hiring over spending the much greater effort to find truly exceptional candidates.
4. "I'm using your confidential resume to market my firm to new companies."
Contingency recruiting firms market themselves to new corporate customers by showing them a select group of resumes of people they "represent". However they might not actually be representing them at all. The next time you agree to send your resume to a recruiting firm they might be turning it around and using it to market themselves to new clients. I initially learned of this technique after agreeing to give my resume to a recruiting firm and later discovering they were using it as a sales tool to prospective clients. In no way was this firm "representing me".
5. "Last month I was selling subprime mortgages."
Recruiters are sales people. They sell candidates to hiring managers and new companies/positions to candidates. While the top retained search firms employ highly skilled and experienced professionals, many contingency recruiters jumped into the field from some other sales domain - timeshares in Florida, brokering subprime mortages, .....
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Why are you portraying recruiters in such a bad light. There maybe some recruiters out there that are dishonest as in any industry, however your blog discourages the use of recruiters. In this economy when jobs are tight a candidate should be seeking the help of a recruiter.
6. I save a lot of money by using a 10 year old CRT, and clip art on my blog postings.
I'm a recruiter so I have a few responses to your thoughts.
1. This isn't a secret, but when I tell a candidate that based on their bio they could be a great fit, that's genuine. I don't waste my time calling candidates I know aren't right. You say "cold calling" like it's a bad thing. How would you suggest we do it?
2. That's a lie. We often present a range of candidates give the client a good idea of what the market place has to offer. On occassion, I'll recommend a candidate who might not be exactly what the client asked for, but it's not to "make my other candidates look better". Often the client will fall in love with that type of candidate.
3. Not a secret. Ask a recruiter and you'll get this information. You charge that this means quality suffers, but I challenge you to present any evidence of this.
4. Your confidential resume is not being used with your name on it. It is common for recruiters to use a resume with personal information removed to demonstrate to a client that the firm has contacts and expertise in a particular field.
5. You've got a major beef with recruiters apparently, but I challenge you to get one of this country's most coveted jobs without going through a recruiter. Recruiting is a service industry and I'd love to explain the full service approach to you.
What do you suggest to avoid they pretend to be representing us as their candidate?
i'm worried this posting has some huge misconceptions. as a corporate recruiter myself, i will say -
re: # 1) the scenario you give is impossible for me to imagine - to starting with a list of 200 to cold call? it's likely 20 at most. otherwise, the recruiter is a dud if they couldn't narrow it down to less than 20 to call. if there are really 200+ of the profile of the person the recruiter is seeking, s/he can probably just post the job and see who comes in.
re: #3) it is true that some corporate recruiters are measured by the time they take to fill a job - however imagine, if a recruiter continually just plugged holes with mismatches, then the person(s) you've plugged probably won't last... and then they leave or are forced to leave which creates a vicious cycle because there you have another opening... you can't think recruiters like that, can you?
i think it's also important to distinguish between in-house recruiters who work directly for the company they are recruiting for, and those who work for agencies. those who work for agencies may very well fit the issues you outline in #4 and #5... but hardly ever the corporate recruiter.
thought i'd share my two cents, for what it's worth!
Wow! This is a pretty amazing article but not entirely accurate given the wild generalizations put forth.
Five Things Your Recruiter Won't Tell You
1. "You're one of 200 people I'm cold calling."
KFD - Maybe. If you are Joe Helpdesk, you may be one of 1000 but more often than not, a recruiter has a target list of solid potentials he or she has spoken to in the past. If you are Joe VP, then you are probably one in 20 or one in 10.
2. "You're being interviewed to make my other candidates look better."
KFD - This might be true of some recruiters but this is a crazy over-generalization. You don't know exactly what the client wants because they are human just like you and me. Some value personality more than pure job skills so you put different mixes in front of the hiring authority. Secondly, if that recruiter puts you in front of the hiring authority, aren't you his or her candidate too?
3. "I get measured by how quickly I fill a job opening."
KFD - Yes and no. It's true that some companies do use that as a metric. I have a couple clients where HR does this but the actual person who is hiring for his or her team has told me 99.9% of the time that it is more important that the candidate was a solid fit rather than how speedily he or she was found. I'd rather get it right than get it fast.
4. "I'm using your confidential resume to market my firm to new companies."
KFD - I am not sure how it was presented to you but I have candidates who want me to do that. I don't usually have to because I have a nice group of clients that I like working with but if I have a really great person who I like and they don't fit any of my clients, I tell them that I will market them to other companies outside of my regulars. It is confidential and it does expose them to some great opportunities. I am not sure what your experience was but something sounds a little fishy here.
5. "Last month I was selling subprime mortgages."
KFD - this could be true but it is up to you to find the good ones. There are tons of really strong and solid contingent recruiters out there who do a great job - many times much better than retained search firms. I know there are good bloggers and there are bad bloggers. I don't know that I could make the assumption that all bloggers are bad after reading a few bad blogs.
I find this article offensive- you are really painting a negative picture, all to just promote your service. a bit of a smear tactic, really.
Recruiters can be just as shady as used car or insurance salesmen. My company had big layoffs last week and i'm getting cold calls nonstop now.
It always pays to research their "opportunities" in depth before you get too excited by the promises they make.
Let me add one more. This employee is 'under the radar' and I'm sending him to you first.
What that means is that they have a criminal record.
True story!
A second opinion (also from a recruiter):
1. Perhaps. I rarely call more than 40 or 50. Head hunting is more strictly defined as identifying one single target for one single role. So 200 may be the exception.
2. This is effectively true.
3. Certainly for internal recruiters. Third-party recruiters are motivated to move quickly but generally because they earn commission. Speed in and of itself isn't rewarded.
4. I don't share a resume with a client until I've met with the candidate and received permission. The temptation to do otherwise can be strong. I can't speak for everyone.
5. I've heard that third-party recruiting is the industry with the highest turnover rate on the planet (perhaps outside of certain manual labour positions). Yes, third-party recruiters are sales people in reality.
There's nothing wrong with using a recruiter, and they do offer real value for their clients. For candidates, whether they're hired through an internal or a third-party, it's probably mostly irrelevant. There are cases where things go wrong, but a third-party can also serve as a good candidate's champion. I've pushed clients to interview candidates even when they've turned them down initially, and ended up matching a great candidate with a great opportunity.
Related to your #4: I'm not that interested in helping you, I just called to get more information on your former job (now open) at the company you just left.
10 points for adding a pincture of a ginger-haired twat to the article!
Allows me to focus my rage more. I despise these fools... almost as much as estate agents. Guess it's just another job, but still. It helps to see the bigger picture.
Wow,
some of what you wrote is just plain wrong, but for the stuff you did get right...
You just figured all this out? Frightening that you thinking this is somehow enlightening...and I say this as a veteran.
BTW, you did serve right..this come from your own time in the service correct? Please tell me you aren't yet another jackass who never served "telling us how it is" in the service?
I implore you....
Don't get me started on recruiters! They are all shysters, well a lot of them anyways.
I've has the following happen to me...
- Having my CV edited to make it look like I could do something I can't.
- Having a dozen different recruiters market the same job to me.
- I've had to explain simple technical concepts to recruiters who were supposedly technical speciialists. "This job requires good PHP skills, by the way, what's PHP?"
-'Interview Coaching' that encouraged me to basically lie and not be myself at all.
I recently started a new job that that didn't involve going through a recuiter. I told all the agencies I dealt with 'Thanks for the assistance, but I'me now happily employed'. Even with that they refuse to leave me alone! There are some good recruiters out there, but a lot of them are well dodgy.
Beware of the old 'Are there any other companies you're currently being put forward for so we don't send your CV to the same place?' line. If you tell recruiter B which company recruiter A has just arranged an interview for you at, you can be fairly certain you'll find yourself suddenly in competition with an additional interviewee put forward by recruiter B on the day of your interview.
Oh...and try to make sure that they get you a job somewhere else before they begin lining up replacements for you at your current place of employment. Nothing says 'D'oh!' like the fax machine spitting out CV's of people to replace you before you've told your employer you're thinking of leaving.
LOL, Good ones, I never did like head hunters.
www.online-privacy.cz.tc
I understand that you have dealt with a bad recruiter or recruiting firm but we would not be in business if we performed in the way you described.
There is a great deal of ethical and trusting recruiters out there. I'm one of them.
Mary Riley
http://www.linkedin.com/in/marytheriley
Great article!!!!
I feel this might be a overly negative view of the recruitment world! Yes there will be cases of all of that, but as an individual that works in search i can assure you that is very rarely the case. Search recruitment is about long term relationships and networks if you choose to use the methods you have stated we would be unlikely to surivive! I certainly know that i dont have time to approach 200 candidates for each post and would doubt others do to! I guess like all industries there are coyboys and professionals. So as we currently live in a world of negative news how about we start by being abit more positive about different industries :)
I've been recruiting now since 2003 out of college and either you've never recruited or you've tried to piece the puzzle together on your own with info you pulled out of your ass (no offense).
Your first "insider" tip is correct and any candidate should be aware of this. We do call into a great number of people in a day. Sometimes on the same job we call you about. While you may get your hopes up on any particular job, you're very likely to be up against 5-6 other people with possibly 2 of them submitted from the same recruiter you spoke with.
The rest of your "insider" stuff is just clueless trash.
The reason being #2) I would never send anyone into a client I didn't feel 100% about. If I put ANY candidate into a client that isn't quite up to par, I get heat from the hiring manager for it and it makes all future submissions less substancial and trustworthy. I've never heard of any recruiter with the gall enough to try this poor tactic out and even if this were true, it would end up killing them in the end.
#3) Do recruiters have quotas? Sometimes in some instances. Though again, if your payroll is based on getting HIRES, then the last thing you want to do is just slam people into the client. Because as I said previously, you'll kill your reputation with the company. The ONLY instance where this may be true is if you worked in a staffing company where you had a boss who watched your submissions in a day very closely. But even he (or she) will want you to perform quality. Again, not sure what you're smoking.
#4) I've heard of some instances where India Staffing vendors have gleamed resumes from a job board such as Monster or Dice and claimed to have spoken with a person, when they really haven't. Again, this is a rare instance. Any sane staffing company will speak with the individual to determine 1) your desired salary or rate and 2) if you are interested. Otherwise, you'll be digging your own grave when the client actually wants to SEE one of these people. Uh oh, now you've got to explain why you didn't talk to them initially.
#5) It is partially a sales job, though I've seen the majority of my colleagues in various companies come out of nursing, psych backgrounds, real estate, actual IT Development or QA / BA work, managers. The diversity is pretty big, though I do tend to see a lot of Psych majors in the field. Try not to generalize in your statement.
I don't trust you'll leave this comment up, so I direct it to you, the owner of this blog and ask you do you research before you post something like this in the future.
While the author makes many valid points, I would like to point out that ALL recruiters do not behave in this way. Some companies (like mine) do measure success by the fit of the hire rather than time to fill a job. The best recruiters are truly focused on relationship building, and are not transactional. I love being a recruiter because it allows me to focus on building relationships. My candidates would never accuse me of any of these behaviors, because I don't approach my job this way.
OH NO! you mean people are being treated like products? packaged & marketed by salespeople? you mean marketing is misleading and people are commodities? what's the world coming to???
oh wait...
It's refreshing to see someone telling it like it is; cold calling/emailing is indeed a widely used approach, any candidate will tell you about the countless irrelevant messages he get just because one (1) keyword on the resume matched the offer.
Recruiters are indeed interested in filling up the positions as quickly as possible, especially given the fact that most companies use a limited number of recruiting agencies.
"Last month I was selling subprime mortgages." is so true and no, I don't think that a subprime mortgage seller is qualified to place a biologist.
I agree that there may be a few decent recruiters but the majority is made up of clueless salesmen/women who would do very poorly as psychology anyway.
I have yet to meet an IT recruiter/headhunter who wasn't the scum of the earth.
They lie like rugs, beg you to lie, lowball you on money, cry and whine about they only make 2 dollars per hour off you, etc.
They are just pond scum.
101. English is not my native language.
Haha, it all makes sense now. Nothing I didn't already suspect.
Anyone who feels this article portrays recruiters in a bad light has clearly never dealt with recruiters on an extended basis.
If the worse elements amongst them could restrict their half-arsed, lazy, incompetent and unprofessional behaviours to those described here the working world would be a better place...
Q: How can you tell when a recruitment agent is lying?
A: His lips are moving!
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