How To – And How Not To – Work With A Recruiter When Looking For A Job

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A common misconception is that you, as a job seeker, can hire a headhunter and they will find a job for you. That isn’t the way it works.

Companies hire staffing firms or independent recruiters to manage the complex and laborious process of finding, recruiting, interviewing, and successfully placing new talent. A business can employ a full-time recruiter, outsource to a staffing firm, or contract with an independent recruiter on a need-to-hire basis. In every scenario, companies employ recruiters, so no one should be surprised they act in the best interests of the employer, not the job seeker.

 However, a major quirk of the company-recruiter relationship is the recruiter’s currency is talented professionals, not the companies that pay them, so developing relationships with as many skilled professionals as possible is a vital part of their job. The wider a recruiter’s net, the more valuable they are in the marketplace, so recruiters and workers have a vested interest in developing mutually beneficial relationships that go beyond a single job.

 This is where you enter. Your initial interaction with a staffing firm or recruiter is job specific. You apply for a job through a recruiting agency’s website and they reach out to you if they believe you’re a potential hire. What if you don’t get the job? Is that it? How you approach your relationship with the recruiter will determine whether it’s one and done, or if your professional network gains an effective agent to advance your goals.

 Here are some tips to effectively manage your relationship with a staffing firm or recruiter.

1.     Be strategic about whom you contact. Staffing firms/recruiters specialize in certain disciplines like accounting, information technology, executive, etc. If you’re a database administrator, you should work with a recruiter whose relationships are in information technology, not leisure and hospitality. Each firm/recruiter will have different clients. Do your homework! For example, let’s say you have a list of the top five companies you want to work for. Try to find out if they use a staffing firm or recruiter and target that firm or person.

2.     Always Be Marketing. A meeting with a recruiter should be treated with the same seriousness and preparation as an actual job interview. You are the product and this is the time to be an aggressive salesperson. Recruiters are not part of the hiring decision. They only present candidates. However, they are the gatekeepers of the interview process and you have to get through the gate if you want to be on the inside. When you speak or meet with a recruiter, you’re asking them to lower the gate. To do that, be your biggest advocate. Make a lasting impression on the recruiter so they don’t ask, “Who was that?” when they’re flipping through resumes.  

3.     Be an easy candidate. Recruiters are busy. Very busy. If you are unemployed, you are not as busy as a recruiter. Yet, job seekers can be impatient and pushy with recruiters and that is a great way to diminish your professional reputation. Do not call them multiple times a day. Be gracious. Be prepared. Be on time. When you walk into the job interview the recruiter arranged for you, you represent yourself and them. You don’t have to get the job to make a permanent connection with the recruiter. You just have to be an easy candidate. If you are, recruiters will continue to work on your behalf.

4.     Be helpful. If someone gifted you $100, you would have a favorable opinion of them. The recruiters' currency is talented workers that they can place at one of their clients. If you want to get in good with a staffing firm or recruiter, proactively refer quality people to them. If you send “business” their way, they will have a favorable opinion of you (not to mention how grateful your friends will be if the recruiter ends up getting them a new job).

5.     Do not rely on the recruiter. Even if you have the best recruiter, they are busy. Very busy. They do not spend eight hours on you. You do not pay them. They spend eight hours a day juggling many open jobs and many people. Recruiters may have the autonomy to carry out the organization’s staffing objectives as they see fit or operate under strict timelines and directives. There is no way for you to know what happens behind the scenes, so don’t assume that working with an employment agency or recruiter is a guarantee. You are still responsible for finding a new job. Don’t punt. Stay on offense.

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Philip Roufail contributed to this article.

Scott Singer is the President and Founder of Insider Career Strategies Resume Writing & Career Coaching, a firm dedicated to guiding job seekers and companies through the job search and hiring process. Insider Career Strategies provides resume writing, LinkedIn profile development, career coaching services, and outplacement services. You can email Scott Singer at scott.singer@insidercs.com, or via the website, www.insidercs.com.

Hey, Wait A Second! This Job Was Advertised As Remote, And Now It's Not?

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Recruiting and hiring new employees is a serious undertaking. The process has built-in risks and uncertainties, so the current tug-of-war between employers and employees over remote vs. in-person work is an unwelcome new obstacle for recruiters and hiring managers to overcome.

 Enter the bait and switch. Employers know job seekers want remote or hybrid positions, so their job postings are composed in a way that makes candidates believe they are applying for roles that are 100% remote or 100% hybrid. There have been cases reported of employers misrepresenting the actual terms of the position to lure top talent into interviewing with the hope that, once in the room, candidates will make concessions to get the job.

Here’s a sample a scenario; say you live in eastern Pennsylvania and apply for a job for a company based in New York City that is advertised as a remote role. You make the two-and-a-half-hour trek into New York for an in-person interview. Then you enter a conference room and face a panel of four department directors – the interview goes perfectly until one of the directors implies the position is not as remote as advertised. Before you know what happened, 100% remote means 35% remote after a six-month trial period and supervisor approval, based on a host of performance metrics, none of which are your desire to work from home, or the beach, or the mountains, or wherever you can deliver the goods.

 What do you do? You are in the interview room or, in other scenarios, on a phone screen or Zoom call. Whatever the case, you are on the spot. 100% remote should mean 100% remote!

• Be prepared for this situation to occur. If you know terms of employment, like remote vs. office, may change, determine your position in advance. If you give in-depth forethought to this specific issue, you can respond to relevant deal breakers with measured insight.

• Before you blurt anything out, take a deep breath. Seriously, take a deep breath because you need to think things through. To resume our scenario, even if you are sitting in front of a panel of interviewers and you must think quickly, you need to think things through. Even if prepared, you need to think things through.

• Think of it this way; you can’t blow the job offer because you don’t have one. Don’t panic. You’re in an interview, not reviewing a job offer. Whatever your response, the worst that can happen is the status quo. You did not work for this company when you woke up and you won’t work for it when you go to bed. Everybody moves on. Do not put extra pressure on yourself. You’re just talking.

• Direct, polite, pointed questions are appropriate. Before you choose which path to take, be sure you understand the expectations. The promotion of the job as remote may have been a miscommunication (it happens), or something duplicitous, so ask for clarification. Ask them to explain the details of the remote aspect of the job. Make them give you an answer.

If the clarification is unsatisfactory, you have three options.

1.         Finish the interview and cut your losses. The path of least resistance is to finish the interview without pushing back on the “clarification” in employment terms, thank your interviewer(s), leave, and move on.

2.         Pull the plug and go home. To resume our scenario, you’ve driven from Pennsylvania to New York City for the interview with the expectation the next time you’d have to show your face is the holiday party. You have no intention of commuting or relocating. Like our hypothetical professional, if your circumstances are non-negotiable, in the interview, you can make it clear that you’re only interested in 100% remote work, thank your interviewer(s), leave, and move on.

3.         Pull the plug and go home, Part 2. Maybe your circumstances are flexible, and you’re not sure what you want to do. Now, you have to ask yourself, “How much do I want this job?” Do you want the job bad enough to remain in the interview and, if given, accept an offer that doesn’t include 100% remote work? Consider the pros and cons.

a.         Pros. Are there any pros? During the interview, did anything surface that changed your position on remote work? Is the compensation too high to pass up? Are there other benefits that tip the scale? As mentioned before, the strategy is to lure you in and dangle great shiny stuff in your face, so you make concessions. That doesn’t mean the great, shiny stuff isn’t, well… great shiny stuff! It is.

b.         Cons. Ethically, a company that isn’t honest with you before hiring you most likely won’t be honest with you after hiring you. You must decide, sometimes within moments, whether being trapped in an interview where you’re the least likely to protest a major change in work expectations is a glimpse into the overall corporate culture or just an aggressive recruiting method.

4.         Ask for more information. You decide you are seriously interested in the job and are open to sacrificing things like remote work to get it. Are you willing to give up all remote work? Or just 50%? Must it be part of the initial package, or can it be deferred to later in your employment? Decide your parameters. In the interview, reiterate your expectation was a remote position, but you want to hear more about the opportunity and decide based on the overall details.

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Philip Roufail contributed to this article.

Scott Singer is the President and Founder of Insider Career Strategies Resume Writing & Career Coaching, a firm dedicated to guiding job seekers and companies through the job search and hiring process. Insider Career Strategies provides resume writing, LinkedIn profile development, career coaching services, and outplacement services. You can email Scott Singer at scott.singer@insidercs.com, or via the website, www.insidercs.com.

What Is Employee Engagement – And Why Should That Matter To Me As I Look For My Next Job?

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When you’re looking for a new job, or are open to new opportunities, a company’s employee engagement scores are probably not on your radar. Yet, employee engagement it is one of the defining elements of companies that have high employee satisfaction and retention – today, a company’s work environment is one of the main, if not primary, reasons to stay loyal to a job.

Not long ago, companies were measured by their employees’ collective productivity. There was an unconfirmed understanding that productive employees were happy employees, but nobody ever stopped to ask employees if they were happy or not! The agreed-upon formula was High Productivity = Happy Employees = Great Place to Work. 

First, it’s common knowledge that productivity can be the result of venal soul-destroying machinations that spawn unhappiness and despair. Second, companies are not in business to make their employees happy. Companies are in business to make money and your happiness is not on a line item on the balance sheet. Yet, like people, companies seek greatness, and the great firms need to attract and retain top talent (and get on a Best-Place-to-Work list).

Enter employee engagement. Highly engaged employees who produce genuine enterprise-wide productivity are satisfied employees, which is provided by a workplace with challenging, meaningful work with meaningful leadership. It is an environment where employees feel aligned with the company’s mission, are motivated to achieve it, and feel they have a stake in its success. Everything else – money, benefits, bonuses, pathways to promotion, and perks follow.

For example, in “Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap… and Others Don’t” (Jim Collins, 2001) talent acquisition takes a “Who, Then What” recruitment approach. If you find a “Who” – a person most likely to be a highly engaged employee – hire them whether or not you have a job for them. Find something for them to do while you create a job for them. Sounds crazy, doesn’t it? But it works.

You will be a more satisfied employee if you are part of a collaborative team of highly engaged co-workers than a team of disengaged sloths who spend most of their workday watching YouTube. Satisfied employees produce work that exceeds expectations and motivates others to do the same.

FAQs:

Are companies losing employees because of a lack of engagement?

 Possibly. Think about the Great Resignation. People are not leaving their jobs because they are satisfied. The hardest-hit sectors are unforgiving, underpaid, and unappreciated jobs with marginal work/life balance. It’s hard to be engaged when you’re miserable. People want more, and the right people are prepared to earn it.

Do I need to work for a company driven by employee engagement?

 That depends on your personal priorities. People approach work in different ways. You may be the type who sees your job as a means to an end – a lot of money, a certain lifestyle, or both. The reason you work is for external gratification, that is, what you experience outside of work. Others are gratified by the work itself. Only you know who you truly are. If you’re focused on the external factors, then employee engagement will not be important to you. If you’re focused on the internal, you will thrive in a highly engaged workplace.

How do I find a company that values employee engagement?

Do your due diligence. Do a deep dive when you research a company. You can start with the best-of lists. Go beyond Glass Door, LinkedIn, and Forbes. Ask people in your network about the company’s reputation.

During interviews, when you’re asked, “Do you have any questions?” inquire about workplace culture, review processes, employee interaction, direct reports, or structural professional development. If the reaction you receive resembles that of a deer caught in headlights, the company is probably not driven by employee engagement.

Is all employee engagement the same?

No. Consider what you need to be an engaged employee, one size does not fit all. Every company is different and offers different things. Take a look at Tesla; recently, their CEO Elon Musk announced that employees who do not return to the office will be assumed to have resigned. If you’re committed to the idea of working from home, that may be your deal breaker; perhaps the pandemic made you value remote work and you believe you will be a less engaged employee if you are forced to return to the office full time. On the other hand, perhaps the primary reason you work for Tesla is to literally be in the room with great minds working on cutting-edge technology and design. If that’s your requirement, you’d rather work in that office, not on Zoom. And gutting it out for a while may provide a platform for you to get that next job. Only you can decide your requirements and deal breakers, and what will make you feel engaged.

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Philip Roufail contributed to this article.

Scott Singer is the President and Founder of Insider Career Strategies Resume Writing & Career Coaching, a firm dedicated to guiding job seekers and companies through the job search and hiring process. Insider Career Strategies provides resume writing, LinkedIn profile development, career coaching services, and outplacement services. You can email Scott Singer at scott.singer@insidercs.com, or via the website, www.insidercs.com.