Jeremy Johnson has a new guest blog post this week on why you don’t want to be the person that recruiters try to avoid.
Jeremy is a recruiter in Kansas City for EHD Technologies, a recruiting, staffing and managed services company serving the IT, Engineering and Automotive industries.
You can also follow him on Twitter at jsquaredkc
Don’t Be the Person Recruiters Try to Avoid
If you’re a job seeker looking to work with a recruiter or already working with one, it’s in your best interest to build trust, understanding and open communication – basically, a relationship that’s mutually beneficial. Building a positive relationship with a good recruiter can be key to landing the right job and, conversely, failing do so can put up unnecessary roadblocks in your search.
I’m fully aware that if you’ve worked with recruiters, the deck is stacked in their favor. They seem to control all the communication and information. But, you can build a good relationship with a good recruiter that puts you higher on her radar and more proactively trying to find something for you.
You can also be that person that a recruiter won’t have anything to do with. And I can almost guarantee you won’t know why, except that now you stop getting calls and emails returned. DON’T BE THAT PERSON!
Here are some things to keep in mind to avoid being avoided:
Don’t Lie – Lying never, ever works. All it does is burn bridges. The reason recruiters usually ask so many questions is because there are so many question marks for us during the process. We’re trying to eliminate as many as we can. If a candidate’s lie puts a recruiter in a bad place with his client, he will never trust that candidate again. If someone lies to me, I’ll never know how many question marks are still there or how many more will pop up. I just won’t risk it by continuing to work with that person.
Don’t Psycho Dial – I get it: no news isn’t good news when you’re looking for work. And, it’s definitely not good news when you’re waiting for interview feedback. I tell candidates I work with that if they haven’t heard from me, it’s probably because I haven’t heard from my client. In that type of scenario, we’re both waiting! But, I will tell them if they haven’t heard from me by such-and-such a date, to call me. What will drive me into hiding, though, is a candidate calling me every day or 5-6 times in a single day. I’ll just stop answering the phone. Don’t be the person whose phone number a recruiter begins to recognize on sight. That’s never a good thing, given the amount of phone numbers we see every day.
Don’t Try to Strong-Arm Them into Submitting You – If your background fits what my client has asked me to provide, and if I think you’ll represent my company well, I have a SELFISH motive to try to get you in front of them (because we don’t get paid until someone goes to work). Though I enjoy helping good people get good jobs, I really don’t have to have their best interests in mind to really……..have their best interests in mind. But, I first have an obligation to my client to give them what they ask for, otherwise, they’ll just use someone else. You may want the job, and you may be able to do the job, but the first consideration the recruiter has to make is this: Is yours the particular background and experience that the client company wants to hire for that specific job. If it’s not, the recruiter can’t submit you. And remember, again, if you’re the type of person the company would actually hire, and the recruiter DOESN’T submit you, he’s just taking money out of his own pocket.
Don’t Go Off Because They Haven’t Found You a Job Yet – It’s not a recruiter’s job to find you a job. It’s a recruiter’s job to fill her client’s position with the type of person that the client asks her to provide. Yelling at a recruiter because you expect him to find you a job while you just sit back and wait isn’t just rude and counterproductive; it’s a sign of a misunderstanding of a recruiter’s job. And recruiters don’t create job openings; their clients do. So, a recruiter may very-well not even have a job available at that time for which she could submit you. Even if you’re frustrated in your job search, don’t take it out on the recruiter. The better approach is to ask how you can help them to help you.
Don’t Talk Their Ear Off – If you’re the gregarious type, or someone who can stretch a 2 minute conversation into 30, please be mindful of staying on-point when speaking with a recruiter. Time is very precious to us; it’s our biggest challenge. So, if I think about calling you and have only 10 minutes, but my prior experience with you tells me I’ll be on the phone for 45, I probably won’t make the call. I once worked with a candidates who, when I asked how many years’ experience he had with Lean manufacturing, went into a history of Lean, Toyota Production System, Six Sigma, manufacturingbased continuous improvement, and 15 minutes later, I still didn’t have a direct answer to my original question. And that was only one question.
Don’t Be Vague – Recruiters have to sell a candidate’s fit to a client. It’s a part of the job. So, when candidates won’t give specific information – from certain job experience, salary requirements, etc – it makes it impossible to confidently present that candidate to a client. Salary is probably the biggest issue here. Recruiters want to know salary information, though, for different reasons than the client company does. The company wants to hire the candidate while saving as much money as they can in the process. Recruiters want that candidate to get as strong an offer as possible within the budgeted range (I say within the budgeted range because we don’t want a candidate “shooting the moon” and then get dismissed out of hand for being too expensive – then all my recruiting work would have been in vain). So, when I ask a candidate about salary requirements or needs, it’s to target the best offer we feel would be accepted, while using past salary history to justify the request.
Don’t Knowingly Let Them Double-Submit You – If a recruiter calls you about a job that sounds like something you’ve already been submitted for, tell him that. There still persists the misconception that the more times you’re submitted for a particular job, the better your chances of getting an interview. Unfortunately, that’s not the case. The first submittal is accepted. All others get rejected. So, don’t let a recruiter submit you to the same position you’ve already been submitted for by someone else. It will be found out, and when it does, that recruiter will have wasted a lot of time for nothing. And, he’ll worry that now his client thinks he isn’t vetting candidates properly (i.e. he’s not doing his job).
Don’t Act Rude, Unprofessional, Arrogant or Indifferent – Even though a recruiter isn’t the actual hiring manager or even the hiring company, you should still treat her like she is. Remember that a recruiter isn’t hiring on just hard skills. She’s also evaluating soft skills – the type of person you are. If you’re rude on the phone, the recruiter will think, “Do I want to put a rude person in front of my client?” If you won’t engage on the phone or act evasive or indifferent, the recruiter thinks, “This person would absolutely bomb an interview. He doesn’t even act like he wants a job.” Really, what the recruiter is saying to herself is, “This person is going to make me look bad. I’m going to find another candidate.”
Recruiters can be potential resources that make your job search easier. But that can depend on if they feel you’ve the type of person that they can work with. Don’t be the type of person that they want to avoid.