Picking the right recruiter
The purpose of my column is to help candidates understand how recruiters work, and so this time I'm getting down to some hard facts.
If you're a candidate, the chances are you don't understand how recruiters work. There's a good chance you think you have a rough understanding, but in most cases you're not quite on the money.
Understanding anything is the key to getting the most out of it, and this is true of recruiters. Some economists suggest that for you to understand anything, you need to understand the incentive; and for a business, the incentive is usually money.
Firms who recruit professionally broadly fall into two categories: commercial and candidate-advocates.
Commercial recruiters are the names you know from the pages of CareerOne online and in print. Candidate-advocates are mainly Job Network providers and a few companies who represent candidates in the marketplace, such as outplacement firms.
I get the feeling everyone understands the fundamentals of Job Network. If you're unemployed you go along and they help you find a job. They get paid for it. The people you meet there don't work for the Government - they work for private organisations that have a contract with the Commonwealth Government. Normally the result is that they are underpaid and overworked, but nevertheless they are there for YOU. This is because the Government is effectively paying for a successful outcome - when you find a job the government pays the organisation that helped you.
In a similar fashion you can then understand outplacement firms. If you lose your job you may be offered outplacement (take it every time!). The outplacement firms get paid to help you. If they land you in a job it will either get them a bonus, enhance their reputation leading to more work, or in many cases, both.
What many candidates fail to understand is that commercial recruitment firms are a completely different animal. The reason for this is that the incentive comes from the client; and whilst in Job Network or outplacement the client is YOU, in commercial recruiting, the Client is NOT YOU!
The client for a commercial recruiter is the organisation looking to fill a job.
Regular readers will know I enjoy some analogies. Let's look at one now.
Think of yourself as a hammer. You're pretty useful, you can do a few things well. You're perfect for banging in nails, quite useful if there's a plasterboard wall to be demolished, and if you're turned around, you can even prise nails out. You're a pretty useful device; candidate-advocates will basically help you find a nail that needs banging in.
Commercial recruiters, on the other hand, have jobs that need doing.
So if they have a client (remember, their client is NOT YOU) who needs to dig a hole, a couple of others with bits of wood that need cutting, and yet another has a wall that needs painting; where's their interest in you? I can see the interview: "You look like a great hammer! Tell me, can you dig? Can you paint? Any good at cutting wood ? Hey, do you know any shovels?"
It's not wrong for commercial recruiters to be focused on their clients. Whilst you might suppose a moral duty to care deeply about candidates; there's an even higher one - to provide the service to someone who is paying for it.
Good recruiters care about both. So much so that sleepless nights and very long days are the norm in this industry.
So, if you've read this, and you're a candidate, you might be feeling a little less excited about the ability of professional commercial recruiters to help you. In truth, all I've done is explain some facts you need to know before you plan your next move. The worst move you can make is to try to interact with a commercial recruiter as though they're a candidate-advocate.
In my next column, I'll explain how you, as a candidate, can maximise your chances of success by aligning what you need with what a commercial recruiter needs.
Robert Godden is the author of "1001 Nights in the Trans-Arabian Corporation's Boardroom" and an Adelaide-based recruitment specialist.
