Why you should work with my competitors

My colleague Anju wrote this piece on ‘why you should work with recruiters’ and asked me to expand more on why you should use recruiters in order to obtain market info and unique opportunities.

Why am I recommending you to work with my competitors?

Not every recruiter has access to every great client or opportunity, so it’s a good idea to work with a handful of talented and trustworthy recruiters to give you the best insight into the market.

I want to help you identify the recruiters that can give you a macro-level view of the market, and will tend to actually have relevant and unique opportunities you won’t hear about elsewhere.

I’m also of the opinion that if candidates and hiring companies actually took the time to qualify recruitment consultants (as you would with lawyers, real estate agents, or any other 3rd party that will influence you in making a major financial or lifestyle decision) there would be far fewer bad experiences, and job hunting would be a much less stressful experience.

How can you find the right recruiter?

There are several chances to evaluate your recruiter: You can evaluate them before speaking, during your initial conversation, and during the application process.

1. Before speaking to the recruiter:

Look at the way they present any opportunities they are sharing either publicly or directly with you. It’s quite easy to tell if the recruiter actually knows the potential hiring company well, or if they have just copy-pasted a job description and forwarded it to you.

We all receive messages from recruiters offering ‘market information’ or ‘unique’ opportunities. How many of these messages are legit? And what kind of ‘market information’ do you think you will receive if you engage with these recruiters promising a free coffee, lunch, or ‘career consultation’?

A lot of these conversations will result in ‘market information’ being a list of companies that the recruiter wants to send your resume to, and the ‘unique’ opportunity is going to be the same role you’ve heard about from 3 other recruiters yesterday.

However, amongst the noise and spam, there are plenty of great recruiters out there, both agency and internal who may be able to give you good advice and relevant information.

One of the key activities that recruitment consultants are responsible for is presenting opportunities to candidates, and presenting candidates to hiring companies in an accurate and compelling way. If they do this well, it's likely they are good at other aspects of the job too.

Is the recruiter posting updates on LinkedIn along the lines of ‘I’m hiring for this role, click on the link to apply’? Well, if that is the effort they put into publicly advertising job openings, your resume will probably get the same treatment when presented to their clients.

Look for recruiters that can share real insight into the company and why it would be interesting for you specifically.

Pro tip: When evaluating recruitment companies before meeting them, winning paid-for ‘awards’ is typically more of an indicator of marketing budget than skill or ability.

2. Initial conversation with the recruiter:

So you’ve selected one or two messages to respond to; now it's time to talk with your chosen potential recruiter and qualify if they can really add value to your search. There are some really simple steps to do this:

How much time does the recruiter spend understanding what you do, and want to do vs time spent trying to persuade you to apply for a role? You’ll soon find out if you are dealing with a salesperson chasing commission, or a potential trusted advisor.

Ask the recruiter why they contacted you specifically. You can see if they really do have an interest in your background and if they are familiar with your professional area.

Ask about their track record in their specialist area, what kind of clients they work with and what level of exclusivity they have with their clients.

When discussing specific opportunities, ascertain what level of influence the recruiter has with the hiring company. It really can make a difference who you choose to represent you. Are they a trusted partner with access to decision makers, or are they one of 20 other agents working with the same client desperate to send in a resume?

Oh, and any recruiter asking you to work with them exclusively and not contact any other recruiters? These people do not have your best interests at heart, at all.

3. Application process

When you get to this stage, you should be quite positive about whoever you are dealing with, as they’ve shown you that they have your interests at heart, are knowledgeable about their industry, and are valued partners to their clients.

Your recruiter should be able to give you a reasonably specific timeline. Every company has different resume review and interview processes, some are quite painfully slow, others can be done in a week. Whatever the process, your recruiter should know what to expect and manage expectations on all sides accordingly.

Your recruiter should be able to get detailed feedback (or at least warn you in advance if this isn't offered) at each stage of the process from resume screening to each interview.

They should be giving you regular updates on the client’s pipeline of candidates and your standing within that, giving you an honest appraisal so that you know where to focus your efforts.

Keep these steps in mind when dealing with any recruiters, and you’ll soon find a handful of talented people that can really help you out during the stressful time of job hunting.

I won't go as far as recommending specific competitors here, but after engaging with one or two agents and keeping the above points in mind, you’ll soon find who you should be working with.

This is one of the 4 reasons you should work with a recruiter to find your next job.

Here are the other three: