Recruiter: Friend or Frenemy?

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Recruiter: Friend or Frenemy?

There’s plenty of online and book advice about building a better resume or cover letter for your job search. Blogs and job-hunting forums are everywhere. And for the working wounded, outplacement firms offer these services as the consolation prize for getting downsized, courtesy of your former employer.

But your improved resume, cover letter and interview suit are just the rudimentary tools of your job hunting arsenal. How you connect to the people who can ultimately hire you is where you should spend the majority of your efforts.

Recruiters seem like the obvious people to start networking with. After all, they are paid to find candidates and fill jobs, right? It makes sense for every active job hunter to be open to a conversation with an executive search professional. And as a recruiter myself, I agree.

But all relationships should come with full disclosure. When you engage with a recruiter, you need to understand what they really do, where their alliances are, and what they really expect from you to make the relationship a fruitful one.

Headhunters or agency recruiters are sales folks—their livelihood is contingent upon fees they receive from multiple clients. If they don’t fill a role, they don’t get paid. Other executive search professionals are retained by a firm for a flat fee, in exchange for extensive research, candidate screening and ability to ferret out the best candidates for the client. These recruiters are often bound by the retainer, so they might only have the ability to represent you to that one client.

If you proceed with the agency recruiter, understand that their fee is based on a percentage of the annual salary paid to you if you get the job. So the coaching and advice they will offer you, from salary negotiations to choosing between multiple offers, will not exactly be altruistic—there’s a lot at stake for them.

If you hook up with a retained recruiter, ask them about successful searches they’ve performed recently. Is their specialty representative of your background or the kind of work you’re looking for? Even if they are able to get their client interested in you, their alliance is still with their retained client. Don't expect an objective discussion abut your goals.

Don’t get me wrong—many job seekers build wonderful alliances with headhunters and retained search professionals, and many have gotten multiple job offers over the course of their career through the same recruiter. But those relationships develop after many years, and the friendship is the byproduct of something earned by both sides.

Corporate recruiters serve a different master. Their alliance is with one company—their employer. They have their finger on the pulse of where their company is going, which jobs will offer the most growth and who the players are. They feel a responsibility to the corporate brand. They may not be working as your agent, but if you are a good technical and cultural fit, this recruiter is exactly the kind of ambassador you want to get your foot in the door of their company.

You may at times find yourself in the black hole of the interview process with even the best of recruiters—when they say they'll call and they don't, or when you know you are the perfect fit but when you're asked to submit your resume, you hear crickets. Why do these moments between job candidates and corporate recruiters go sour?

It may have nothing to do with you. Job openings get cancelled, the Hiring Manager decides to hire from within the ranks, or the recruiter pitched your background to the manager and she decided to go in a different direction. It would be nice to get a follow up call or email about your status, but corporate recruiters work on 20-30 open roles at once. They don’t always have the luxury of letting every candidate know where they stand. Don’t be afraid to reach out and ask—you’ll feel better if you are able to get closure, especially if the reason you are out has to do with budgets or a change in the job scope; something that is completely out of your control.

 Corporate recruiters are not job counselors—but the best ones will give you good advice. If you are marketable, flexible and easy to work with, you’ll end up with an invaluable ally. of course you need to be able to handle the truth about yourself as a prospective employee--don't ask for advice on how you can improve your interview skills if you're really not open to change.

 If I have a candid discussion with someone and I don't think they are an ideal fit for a role, I love it when they ask what they could have done better. I love when they ask what they did wrong on an interview. I’ve found that when candidates are truly open to constructive criticism, they will take the time to improve their resume, update their appearance, change their messaging or whatever else needs to be tweaked. A frank discussion between myself and the candidate on something as simple as staying to the point or giving better eye contact has yielded a job offer. 

 When recruiters recognize that you are technically and culturally a fit for the job they are working on, they will bend over backwards to accommodate you. But if you aren't courteous, flexible, open-minded and enthusiastic about a discussion, even if you aren't actively job-hunting, the relationship will end. You just need to remind yourself who recruiters work for--and it isn't you.