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Job Seekers Beware: Don’t Use A Recruiter!

This is going to seem backwards, a recruiter telling you not to send your resume to recruiters, but bear with me.  I should probably start at the top.  When a company hires a recruiting firm to find people for them, the contract will usually state that “we agree to work with you, bla bla bla, terms and conditions, bla bla bla, and you agree to pay us $X for any applicant that we put forward to you within a period of 1 year.”  All of this is well and great for the recruiting firm and for the company looking for applicants.  The recruiting firm goes out and sources people to put forward for this position.  Great applicants, good applicants, and those applicants who are trying to see if they can luck out with a position they might be a couple years away from being qualified for all send in their resumes.  The process runs smoothly, and eventually one of the applicants gets a shiny new job.  The problem with this equation, of course, is that often a person’s resume, especially those who are less than qualified, are pushed along to the companies in the process.  Someone who put their name in for a Marketing Manager position, who could be the ideal applicant for a Marketing Assistant position, suddenly loses ground to other applicants because the company suddenly is faced with a fee if they were to hire that person.  Remember that “within a period of 1 year” part of the contract…  It is for this reason that you shouldn’t be blindly throwing resumes around, hoping that one of them sticks and you get an interview.  

There are certain things you must ask a potential recruiter before going with them:
•    Will you be interviewing me before submitting my application?
•    How many applications do you typically submit for a given posting?
•    Will you ask for permission before submitting my resume for a different job?
•    How long does my resume “belong” to you?
•    How do you plan on representing me to potential employers?

All of these questions should be answered to your complete satisfaction before you submit a resume.  Any recruiter who will not interview you prior to submitting your resume is likely operating on a resume dumping principle.  Essentially, they post a job and then simply forward the resumes that they receive onto the employer hoping to use the effects of volume to their advantage.  Asking for permission to submit your info to another position comes down to your ability to find jobs yourself.  If a recruiter submits your resume into a large company that has posted their job publicly themselves, you are limiting yourself in the same way the under qualified Marketing person had.  The final question, how the recruiter plans on representing you answers the question that you surely must be asking yourself at this very moment: Why in the world would I ever go through a recruiter???  The answer comes about from the behind the scenes work that a good recruiter will do for you.  A good recruiter will go to bat for you and make sure that your best foot is put through the employer’s door.  Writing candidate profiles, providing the employer with an assurance that they should talk to you, prepping you for the interview process, ensuring you understand the most important points surrounding the job, and generally making you as attractive as possible are what good recruiters do.  In effect, it is the shift from bouncer to agent that makes the use of a recruiter a valuable tool in your job search, either as an active candidate, or as a passive networking opportunity.

Darryl Sheepwash is an Account Manager with Talent Edge Solutions, a local recruiting and retention firm specializing primarily in Management positions within the Retail, Tourism, and Hospitality sectors.  If you would like to discuss this issue further, please send an email to dsheepwash#talentedgesolutions.com.