RIGHT RECRUITING

As a rule, 25% of people seeking new jobs exclusively use recruiting firms to generate interviews and 25% of candidates seeking jobs exclusively contact companies directly. The middle 50% use both methods. Interestingly enough, whenever I have surveyed people, the determining factor in this choice was not whether they had a good or bad experience with recruiters in the past. Unexpectedly, the common theme was if the person’s current employer used recruiters or not. It would appear that a professional’s choice of employment tools was based on the processes they themselves saw at their prior employer while on the other side of the interview process. People whose employers used agency were more prone to contact an agency when looking for a job and people whose prior employer never used recruiting firms avoided them, even when out of work. To a certain extent, this highlights how our environment can create behavior patterns in us as people, patterns that we may not even recognize.

As more and more people are forced to explore new options, an understanding of all the tools available to you as a job seeker become increasingly important. Even people who have worked with agencies to change jobs sometimes do not understand the dynamics of agencies and how to maximize your relationship with them, both in the short and long-term. In this Newsletter, I hope to help you understand the reality of what a recruiter can and can’t do for you and how to recognize a good recruiter.

First, let’s talk about the different type of firms you might encounter. However, let me start with this caveat – I am only talking about recruiting for direct employment, not contract employment. Contract employment has different rules of behavior and it’s always been too murky a world for a simple soul like me.

There are two types of recruiting firms - contingency and retained. Usually, retained firms work on high-level jobs and contingency firms work on mid and lower-level jobs. Here at Right Recruiting about 50% of our business is retained work. We are unique in that we get retainers for senior, mid-level and junior jobs. I will come back to that later though. Most of the recruiters you will speak to are contingency firms so let’s address them.

Recruiting has no "barrier to entry". Anyone can print a business card and call themselves a recruiter. This is important because, when you call or e-mail even the oldest, most established recruiting firm, you can end up speaking to someone who was selling cars last week. In fact, some recruiting firms lose so much of their staff that you are almost guaranteed to speak to someone with less than a year experience.

That’s important for a lot of reasons. Someone new to the business may not know that your company is actually owned by another company and send your resume to the parent company. A rookie recruiter may not really understand what you do now or what you want to do. Many recruiters are only interested in getting you to go on an interview - any interview. Most recruiting firms grade their recruiters on how many interviews they set up. It doesn’t matter whether someone gets hired. The more interviews a recruiter schedules, the less grief from management.

Please understand how important that last piece is. Recruiters, on a daily basis, are evaluated on the number of interviews they set up, whether the interviews are appropriate or not. That’s why you sometimes get a big “sell” about meeting with a company about jobs and locations in which your interest in zero. The recruiter is not really interested in finding you a good job. He just wants to get his boss off his back so he has a desk to work at the next day. While I am a firm believer in the philosophy that it doesn’t do you harm to meet with new companies about jobs, I also know that there has to be a line drawn somewhere. It’s your time that is being invested so you get to draw the line. Don’t be afraid to say no to an interview. When you do, have clear and consistent reasons why and make sure you explain. If you get grief from the recruiter, don’t work with him/her again. Be careful though. If you’ve already given the recruiter the OK to send the resume for the job, backing out on an interview can make them look bad and cost them a large account. That almost happened to me last year.

Understanding the procedure helps. Usually, your first contact with a recruiter will come when you send them a resume in response to a specific job. The recruiter should then contact you to discuss your background for the job. If it’s not right, they should tell you why. Unless there are unusual circumstances, they should tell you who the client is if it’s a possible fit for you. If they want to keep it confidential, they should have a good and believable reason as to why. We get about one search a year that requires confidentiality. Usually that’s because there is an incumbent in the job being replaced. You should be told that immediately and you should be told the reason why the incumbent is being replaced. Our philosophy is that by advertising, the recruiter invited you to send a resume and, because of that, the recruiter owes you some info.

However, occasionally I get calls from people who want to know who my client is before they will send a resume or who are clearly pumping me for info. Do not do that. It is silly and insulting. There are only a few reasons to be so rude. None make sense.

1)       You want to decipher who the company is and contact them directly. Why? The recruiter obviously already has a contact or they wouldn’t be investing in the ad. Use the contact. Last year someone did that to me. I suspected that was going to happen so I gave the name to my client. No surprise, they got a resume from the young lady the next day. It went right into the trash can. Why would they want to hire a trickster?

2)       You don’t want to “waste anyone’s time” if the job is not right. Of course, please consider that the conversation has already probably wasted more time than just pushing the send button on your computer, both your time and the recruiter’s. Also, please remember that the idea of a resume is to present your career in the most complete, most efficient way possible. No five minute conversation can tell me as much about your career as a resume. Also, if you are not right for that job, having the resume in a recruiter’s hands can mean an early, possible match for another job.

3)       You are paranoid. You are afraid that the recruiter will do something nefarious with your resume; mass mailing it, lack of confidentiality, etc. In general, paranoia is not considered a plus in a candidate’s character. However, I will concede that some of that paranoia may be justified if you are contacting a bad recruiter. Which, conveniently enough, leads us to our next topic ...

It’s bad to work with a bad recruiter. Just like it’s bad to work with a bad lawyer, doctor, engineer or accountant. Recruiters are not credentialed so it’s hard, on the surface, to determine the professionalism represented by the person on the other side of the phone. It’s hard but it’s not impossible. Of course, this may sound self-serving, but contacting a good recruiter is probably the only thing that you ever do in your professional life that may pay enormous dividends to you, both financial and professional, for the rest of your life. There are a VP’s in the region who first contacted me 25 years ago as a fresh grad. We’ve gotten them 2, 3 and in one case 4 positions, each one at a higher level. And, as an added benefit, they never had to pay a thing. Nada. Nothing. We all know networking is important. Good recruiters are the best networking contact you will ever make.

OK, how do you tell whether the recruiter is competent or not? Well, it starts before the phone conversation. Most people hear about recruiters through one of two ways, personal referral or a job advertisement. If someone refers you to a recruiter that’s a good sign, not conclusive, but good. But it’s the ads and web site that can really tip you off.

First, do they have a web site? If they don’t have one, step away. You are entrusting your career to a guy in his pajamas working out of his basement. If there is a web site, how does it look and what does it say? Does look like a template?  It’s a pet peeve of mine, but if the web site spends a lot of time talking about “partnering” and “strategy”, it’s nonsense. Recruiters should focus on filling jobs. If the web site is not devoted to actual jobs, it’s just static.

Ads are a great clue as to the professionalism of the firm and recruiter. Here are some tips. First, is there a recruiter’s name in the ad? If not, your resume may be rotated around the office. The ad may be fiction or you may end up being "owned" by someone who knows very little about that account. Recruiting firms don’t like to put recruiter’s names in the ads because they don’t want the individual recruiter to be as well known as the firm. This is the sign of a recruiting company with a lot of turnover and who is afraid of promoting the recruiter. Bad for you. If there is a name in the ad, does that recruiter have other ads as well? Companies invest more in skilled employees by giving them more ads. You want to be dealing with a skilled recruiter.

Is the ad well written or does it look like cut/paste copy from the hiring company’s job specs? The latter is a bad sign. It suggests the recruiter doesn’t even know enough about the job/company to describe the job using normal semantics, not HR-speak. I have actually seen recruiters cut/paste descriptions for senior professional jobs and include the HR verbage that says, "Candidate must be able to lift 20 pounds." That’s the sign of a lazy recruiter.

Is there an actual phone number or just an email address? The more depersonalized the initial contact, the worse for you. It implies an attitude that the applicant is a distraction. Personally, I hate doing business with any company that is just a cyber-presence. Have you ever downloaded software and then found out there is no number to call when something goes wrong? A recruiter hiding behind email in the initial contact is not good. There is a reason our phone number is in all our ads. Sure, we get a lot of nuisance calls but we always make the effort to talk. Some of our best clients have turned out to be people who called when looking for a job and to whom we gave good advice about existing offers or their job search in general. This has paid us back enormously when they have gotten into positions of responsibility. One of the biggest gripes people have is an inability to follow up on resumes when they answer ads. I promised myself we would always maintain the ability for someone to call us, if even to just complain about something or vent.

OK - you’ve sent the resume and gotten a call about your background but no one will tell you who the hiring company is or what they do. We’ve talked about that already. Why do candidates accept not being told the name of the hiring company at this point? My first boss told me that if I told a candidate who the hiring company was, the candidate would go around my back and contact the employer directly. Maybe I am naïve, but why the heck would anyone with half a brain do that? And, guess what, people with half a brain won’t get hired anyway!! Assuming I am competently explaining the situation, what earthly good would come from someone doing that? The company gave me the job for a reason. They want me to send good people and fill the job. The easiest way to get hired is to work through the process that the company set up - work with me. I think very few people are deceptive enough to short-cut the recruiter and the few that do generally outsmart themselves.

So, if the recruiter won’t tell you who the company is, it’s the sign of a problem. Some recruiters like to withhold information as a sign of "control". "Candidate control" is a huge phrase in recruiting circles and information control is a symptom of that. It is a series of techniques designed to manipulate a candidate unknowingly. There are seminars in the industry on just that topic. My guess is that you don’t want to be controlled; you just want a better job. Don’t let someone play games with you in order to make themselves feel important. Unless the job is confidential because the hiring company is replacing an incumbent or another internal reason, there is absolutely no reason you should not be told the company name and given their web site once you’ve sent a resume and are considered a possible match.

Also, be careful if the recruiter seems more interested in getting names of people you work with and references than they do about your fit for the job. They are just file building. No recruiter does references before sending a resume. It’s not efficient. Save the references for the end of the process.

If the recruiter asks you to only work with him, run. Put simply, I have been doing this in a local market for 25 years. I have a database that lists companies and managers at over 3,000 firms in the region. My fee structure is low enough so that almost every company out there is accessible to me. But even I don’t know everyone and would never pretend that I do. I begin the relationship fully aware that a candidate’s career is more important than any one fee I may generate. Don’t let some slickster limit your options just so that he maximizes his chances of making a few thousand dollars.

Lastly, don’t be impressed that the recruiter met with you. This is important. Many recruiters are trained to use a physical interview as part of the candidate control process. It’s a way for them to pretend to interview and evaluate you, but in reality you are just providing them ammo to close you on a job you may not want. For example, a standard question for you is "What are the 3 things you want in a new job?" Like a good soldier you provide that list. Then, miraculously, whatever job the recruiter represents that might result in an interview has those 3 things. And, oddly enough, they are always in the order you listed them. That’s because the recruiter is reading them from your application.

For some recruiting firms there is a more insidious reason to physically interview you. They want you to sign their application. Many applications look like standard employment apps with a signature at the bottom. However, look carefully. Some firms include a teeny paragraph that says that if they find you a job and you don’t start or you quit within a year, you actually owe them the fee. Ouch!!

If  you are getting good vibes from the ad, phone conversation and job description, don’t play games!! This is important. For example, if you are looking actively, don’t pretend you are looking passively because you want to be wooed for a job. Don’t lie about your background or hide any hiccups you might have from the recruiter. These things will come out anyway. Knowing them up front can help the recruiter work around them. And, for gosh sakes, don’t lie about your salary in the hopes of getting a higher offer. More and more companies are doing background checks or asking for income verifications before extending an offer. How embarrassing to get caught in a self-serving lie when you are so close to the finish line.

Lastly, don’t misunderstand what a recruiter can and can’t do for you. They can get you an interview and can prep you for the interview with info about the company. They can’t get you the job or sell you to a company. If they say they can, run. I recently had a fellow an interview for a sales job. I had placed both Sales Managers and the COO of the company so I knew them well. They interviewed him and almost hired him but were very concerned that he had had a lot of jobs in the last 4 years. He took the stance that I should sell them on him. From my perspective, their concern was valid and it was something that they had to factor into the evaluation, along with his positives. Candidly, it worried me too and I wasn’t comfortable with his attitude that I was now not doing my job for him. If he didn’t get hired, and he wasn’t, it wasn’t because of me. It was because he made a series of bad decisions over the last few years that reflected negatively on his judgment and that bothered my client. Just like I tell my clients not to expect me to “sell” a candidate on their job if it’s not a match, a candidate should not expect a good recruiter to “sell” a client on their candidacy if it’s not a match. Bad recruiters will say they can sell you and they can’t. Good recruiters who can, usually won’t. That’s why they are good recruiters.

I think this takes us to the crux of what makes Right Recruiting different. It’s now time for shameless self-promotion. Here is what makes us unique.

First, we are successful. You do not survive in a commission intensive business for 25 years without being good at what you do. You also don’t survive for that long without being straight-forward with people. Because we have been successful, we know we will continue to be successful. We don’t need to trick people, play games with companies or manipulate situations to pay our rent. We know with absolute certainty that if we do our job our success will continue. Our job is simple, make good matches. That is all we need to do. No one placement is worth pushing the envelope to far. Candidate control, sales closing techniques and all the other sales tools taught at other firms are distractions.

Second, we have no interest in growing the company. I’ve worked in enough places to know that some growth increases overhead. You suddenly have training costs, managers, politics, etc. Overhead means you have to charge more or beat your staff up to push the envelope to the breaking point. Sooner or later you need to try and raise your fees and, in doing so, eliminate those companies who won’t pay your rates from your client base. As a candidate, that hurts you because you can’t be represented to some potential employers. Because our overhead is so low, I can tell you with total assurance that our rates are the lowest in the region. We have never had a potential client balk at our fee schedule and I would never let a fee dispute prevent a candidate from being hired. 

Third, we remember everyone. Our biggest expense is software and our database. If we talk to you today but can’t place you today, we are evaluating you for every job we get from now till you retire. Because we won’t be selling cars next year and we will still be in business, every contact point is of value to us. That’s why we sometimes place people in great jobs years after first contact. Last month we placed a fellow into his first managerial job. He has 15 years of experience and we first placed him 12 years ago. We’ve stayed in touch off and on during that period and when something good appeared he was one of the first to hear about it.

Fourth,  when we contact you about a job we assume you are intelligent. We give you the facts and let you draw the conclusions. Intelligent people are smart enough to know what’s in their best interest and, guess what, intelligent people are also the ones who usually get hired. Sometimes, candidates misinterpret this. They expect us to chase after them and hound them about jobs. Instead, we leave a message or send an email and spend the rest of the day looking for other potential candidates. People who know us know that they should pay attention to messages from us. There is always a good reason we call.

A lot of our difference stems from our retained relationships with many of our clients. A client pays us a retainer for a few reasons. One, it’s a sign of their commitment to fill the job. Two, it’s a way of incenting us to give honest advice about candidates rather than push the candidate who is most convenient. Three, it extends the evaluation process into the candidate’s first contact with us. You may or may not believe this, but one of the key traits that exist through most of our retained client base is a sense of courtesy. That’s an underappreciated business tool and can be a very valuable character trait. Our clients pay us a retainer so that we will be incented to share with them any positive or negative signs we pick up beginning with the first contact. It’s funny how many people think they can treat a recruiter with contempt yet still turn on the charm with the hiring company when necessary. The good part of working with a retained recruiter on a job is that, if you are good, you will assuredly get an interview. The bad part is that the recruiter is a very real extension of the potential employer and will not sweep any perceived negatives under the rug. 

That’s all folks. Please remember us when you want to explore the market and, as ever, referrals are greatly appreciated. 

RIGHT RECRUITING
Water Tower Building, 6198 Butler Pike, Suite 120, Blue Bell, PA 19422
Tel: 215-641-9300  Fax: 215-641-9308
 jeffzinser@rightrecruiting.com