Unless you've been in a cave for the past ten years, you've noticed the changes in the job market. Job tenures are getting shorter. All of us have to run our careers like entrepreneurs now. We have to be choosy about the employers we work for, because working in the wrong job can destroy your resume and damage your mojo badly, too!
Working for the wrong boss can hurt your health, and allowing yourself to be represented to employers by the wrong headhunter is another bad move. I'm an HR leader. That's my background. I remember getting calls from abrasive, unprofessional recruiters and thinking "The poor job-seekers who chose to work with this jerk have no idea how he's hurting them!"
How would you know? You aren't there when the abrasive, unprofessional recruiter is pitching his or her services to employers.
How could you tell?
You can tell when a recruiter comes from the old-school, Bluster & Browbeat mindset. Sadly, there are still a lot of them around. You'll know what I'm talking about if you get a call at your desk at work one day, or get an email or a LinkedIn message from one of these folks.
They'll tell you that they might have a great new job opportunity for you, but that you'll have to bow to them and crawl over a few piles of broken glass to have a chance at the job.
Leave these turkeys alone! It's a new day. Modern recruiters treat their candidates like gold. If a recruiter ever threatens you ("I can't possibly submit your resume without your full salary history"), talks down to you, ignores you (e.g. they say they'll call you back in two days, but three weeks elapse and you haven't heard anything) or behaves toward you as though he or she is calling the shots, run away!
Those people cannot help you. They are just as annoying on the other side of the equation, dealing with employers, as they are with you. You might be the most qualified person ever born to fill a particular job, but if the recruiter you selected to carry your flame is an obnoxious person that no one wants to work with, you won't get the position.
Choose your recruiters carefully! Have a long, substantive conversation with any recruiter who calls you, and don't start answering his or her questions right away. The element of surprise (you weren't expecting them to call) is important to grab-a-resume-and-run type employers, and those folks will start peppering you with questions about your resume right away. That's a bad sign.
The recruiter is a talent scout. You are the talent. Since when does the talent scout tell the talent how things are going to work? It's your career, and it's your life. You get to decide who has your resume, and I don't want you to hand over your resume to just anybody.
Here are ten things all good recruiters do -- and bad ones do not.
Good recruiters sell you before they quiz you
Good recruiters sell you on working with them, not by droning on about how many excellent candidates they've placed into jobs, but by asking you what you want next in your career and actually listening to your answers. They sell you on them, the same way any good salesperson sells a customer. They don't talk over you. They don't cut you off in mid-sentence. If a recruiter does those things, flee! That is not the person to be your representative.
Eventually the recruiter is going to need to hear about your background, of course, but they should already know a lot before calling you or emailing you, assuming your LinkedIn profile is up to date. If you get on the phone and immediately get a question about your skills or - even worse -- your current salary, you have my permission to slam the phone down! (Doesn't work with cell phones. On a cell phone, just hang up and go get a nice gelato.)
Good recruiters don't ask intrusive questions
A recruiter-candidate relationship is based on trust, and that is something a recruiter has to earn. Anyone who calls a stranger (you) out of the blue and asks personal questions is not someone who knows Thing One about trust. Run away and find a better recruiter, or reach hiring managers on your own.
Good recruiters keep their candidates posted
I have sat on panels with bad recruiters and heard them say to the audience "If I represent you, I won't call you unless there's something to report." In plain English that means "Who cares about you?" When you begin working with a recruiter, you can send him or her an email message that lays out your terms for engagement (we've included a template for that email at the end of this column). If the recruiter isn't willing to send you an email message once a week whether there's news from a particular employer or not, leave him or her in the dust. If they are good at their jobs, there should be news -- it's their job to get it!
Good recruiters don't talk down their candidates' expectations
I used to get calls from recruiters when I was an HR person. When I was a manager, they'd call and say "How about gong after this HR Manager job my client is trying to fill?" I'd say "I'm a Manager now -- how about an HR Director job?" They'd say "Well, you're not ready for that."
I hadn't even shared my background with them! Bad recruiters talk down their candidates' expectations. That's a sign for you to move on. The more desperate and unworthy you feel, the easier it is for a bad recruiter to bully you into taking the first job offer you get. Forget that noise! You are on your way up.
Good recruiters don't say "This is what the client wants, so we have to go along"
Maybe the recruiter has to go along with an employer's goofy requirements, but that's his or her problem -- it has nothing to do with you. As soon as a recruiter tells you "We have to go along with the client's requirements" you know that your resume is in the wrong hands. Get out of that relationship and stop letting somebody else tell you what you have to do -- particularly somebody who makes money when you accept an offer! That's unethical and it's not in your best interests. Run!
Good recruiters shepherd job candidates through the process
Our client Nathan was working with a few recruiters on his job search. One of them called to tell Nathan that he was being invited to an interview at the company's headquarters in Alabama. The recruiter spent twenty minutes talking Nathan through the process - how they'd book the flights, what would happen on Nathan's interviewing trip and so on, leaving out no detail. That man is a terrific recruiter.
Another recruiter called Nathan a few days later to tell him that one of his prospective employers needed him to take a drug screen. It wasn't going to work -- the employer needed the drug screen to be taken within 48 hours, but Nathan was in Alabama. Nathan sent an email message to the recruiter, saying 'I'm out of town. I can take the drug screen when I get back on Friday.'
The recruiter didn't spend ten seconds with Nathan on the phone working out the drug-screen issue. "Catch an earlier flight home," she said in a voicemail message. "Pay the hundred-dollar change fee. It's worth it." It wasn't worth it to Nathan.
He liked the Alabama people a lot better than the hurry-up-and-drug-test people, and what sealed the deal was the professionalism of the Alabama recruiter versus the toadishness of the drug-screen recruiter. Case closed! Nathan loves his new job. He trusted his gut, and you can do the same thing.
Good recruiters are honest
Sometimes a recruiter will tell you "I know you really believe you're qualified for this job, but this is not the right job for you." Don't hate the recruiter for telling you what he or she believes and/or what the client believes. Bad recruiters shine you on. They tell you for weeks "I'm waiting to hear back from the client" as though they have no phone and no email to reach out to the client and say "Hey, what about my candidate?"
Recruiters who don't speak up and insist that their clients behave as professionally as they expect you to do are people you don't need in your life. Recruiters who are dishonest with you, ditto.
Good recruiters focus on long-term relationships
A bad recruiter will grab your resume, stuff it into a recruiting pipeline and then once you're told "no thanks," they'll drop you like a hot potato. Good recruiters don't treat you as a throwaway commodity. If you don't get one job they pitch you for, they'll keep in touch and let you know about other jobs at their client organizations.
I have recruiter friends who have worked with the same candidates for twenty-five years. They are great recruiters. Lousy recruiters only call you when they believe they can make a quick buck by selling you to an employer. If you don't feel good about the relationship, believe me -- you don't want the job.
Good recruiters give feedback
After a job interview, everyone wants feedback! Good recruiters use the same thoughtful listening skills that made you trust them to get feedback for you after every single job interview. If you don't get feedback beyond "Next!" after a job interview, something is broken. If the recruiter tells you "The employer won't return my calls" what does that signal? Your recruiter has no juice with the employer. That's a reason to bail on the relationship, then and there.
Good recruiters focus on trust rather than fear
Bad recruiters start every candidate relationship with fear. They try to get you off guard. They ask you personal questions that are none of their business, like your current salary or your past salaries. Why would they need that information? They don't. They will say "The client insists on having that information."
That means they haven't been able (or haven't tried) to educate their clients about good recruiting technique. Bad recruiters say "If you don't give me what I want, I won't work with you." Your best answer is "Great! Take a hike, in that case, and find somebody with damaged self-esteem to beg for a job. I won't!"
Here's a template for an email message you can send to a recruiter when you get off the phone after the recruiter has described a job opportunity and asked you to send him or her a resume.
Dear Jackson,
Thanks for calling just now. The job at Acme Explosives sounds interesting. I want you to know a few things about me before we begin to work together. If everything I've listed below works for you, please reply to this message to let me know that and I will send over my resume.
- I must give you written permission to send my resume to any employer. You have my permission via this message to send my resume to Acme Explosives for consideration for their Product Manager position. I must give similar approval via email every time you send out my resume.
- My resume is for your use only as I've just described and is not to be shared with anyone in your firm or outside your firm without my prior written approval.
- Once I give you my resume, I must hear from you by phone or email once per week until you tell me that I am out of consideration for whatever role we've been discussing. If I don't hear from you at least once per week, I'll assume that either you or the client is not interested in me and I will continue my search using other channels.
- As we discussed on the phone, I will share my salary target with your or an employer (not my current salary or salary history) only after I have heard about the target salary range for an open position.
All the best,
Wile E. Coyote
