Recruiters

Originally posted,

I find recruiters to be interesting. I have heard most of them describe themselves to me as external contract HR workers for multiple companies. I find that hard to reconcile with the fact that they are using their client (us) to make their wages. Is their most important job filling a opening at a company or finding the right company for their client. Is it their job to sell a position to the job seeker, or sell the job seeker to the company? I am not sure there is a good answer here but it does make dealing with recruiters a difficult proposition. Having worked with them to some degree on both sides of the fence, I was never happy with their position in either case. As an employer I started to ignore entire batches of people because of the person representing them. I found the quality of people the recruiter was generally presenting to us to be sub-par and assumed that would continue to be the case in the future. As recruiter client I have had cases where jobs were pushed on me that I did not want (and that was made clear), and multiple cases where the recruiter did nothing during the entire interview process. I guess I feel that if you are going to get a large percentage of my salary has a recruitment fee, then simple pre-interview work should be done to help to their client. Information to general practices in the interview, expectations etc. I am more than happy to do this myself, but then I have to wonder why I am bothering taking the time to work through a recruiter in the first place.

Take Away: I think recruiters should be more involved with marketing their client, than acting as an external HR department. I think they need to work with more select individuals and stop the practice of simply shot gun sending of as many people as possible to as many studios as possible.