How Do I Find a Recruiter?

Recruiters or headhunters tend to have a lot of jobs. At the same time, working with a recruiter or headhunter can be a mine field. It can be dangerous from the perspective that if you do not know what you are doing when you are dealing with a recruiter, it can cause a lot of problems. Many, many people have made serious mistakes using the wrong recruiter or using a recruiter when they don’t have to. Nevertheless, people get jobs through recruiters every day and using a recruiter can be a great thing. The number of recruiters out there is astronomical. In terms of recruiters that list themselves in directories and that sort of thing, there are at least twelve thousand who are known in their industries. In talk about recruiting firms, there are a couple of things you need to understand, besides the fact that they are different than employment agencies. The first thing that is important to understand is that, generally, large recruiting firms will be a little bit better than their smaller counterparts. This is a general rule and there is a reason for this. Larger recruiting firms typically have resources to research jobs or contacts in the hiring community. What do I mean by that, specifically? Typically, when you look at a larger recruiting firm, they will be better because they have more resources to serve you. Usually, this is because they are in the contingency space. When you use a larger recruiting firm, most of the ones out there–or the ones that you will be using and almost everybody uses–are known as contingency-based recruiting firms. Essentially, a contingency-based recruiting firm is one that only makes money if you are hired. They advertise and call people and try to find people to take a certain job for which they are recruiting. They do this with numerous employers. The more jobs a recruiting firm has, the better off you will be because you will have more opportunities to work in different places. When a recruiting firm gets larger, it is typically a sign that they are doing something right, which means they are having success in terms of recruiting. Larger recruiting firms also usually work out of offices and this means the people there are working and putting more into their jobs. Larger recruiting firms typically have the resources to take phone calls, speak with employers throughout the day, and reinvest into the business. Smaller recruiting firms do not have the resources to investigate all the jobs, typically. You might also find they don’t put in as much time on your job search because they don’t have the staff. These firms are often run out of people’s homes and typically are a bit limited. At the same time, some of the smaller ones may have highly developed relationships with a few employers. It is not uncommon for a very small recruiting firm or even a solo recruiter to have one or two very strong relationships with employers and those employers will consistently turn to them for jobs they have available. For the most part, however, this is not the case. In addition, small recruiters do not do a lot of advertising. To some extent, this limits the number of employers they can serve. Larger recruiting firms will do a lot of advertising, which increases the number of employers they can serve. There are drawbacks and strengths to each and you want to encompass them both in your search. However, the more reinvesting that is going on and the more jobs the recruiter has, the better it is for you. As you look at ads and look at recruiters, it is very important that you understand what type of recruiter you are dealing with. The two types that you need to be concerned with are the contingency-based recruiters, mentioned earlier, and retained recruiters. In the following sections, we’ll take a look at both. Contingency-Based Recruiters This means that the recruiter is only compensated if you are hired. This is why it is on a contingency. They typically charge an employer anywhere from 15% to 40% of your annual salary; sometimes more, sometimes less. In order to get candidates, the contingency recruiter will do lots of things. They advertise and cold call for candidates. Any way they can get candidates, they will. It is important to understand that most jobs you see advertised and most cold calls you receive are from contingency [Read more]

How You Handle Chaos Will Determine Your Success Or Failure

Yesterday I received a telephone call at 9:00 am from an employee who had been working for a recruiting company of ours for less than 72 hours and was giving notice before boarding an airplane.  We had brought this particular employee out to work for us from another city and were training her in Pasadena before she fled home to the city she is from. During this employee’s 72 hours with the company, she witnessed numerous changes we were forcing ourselves to go through.  One of our largest businesses was formerly a student loan company.  Despite the fact that the number of loans we are doing is down 98% from this time last year due to the difficulty of making loans in this economic climate, we still had some employees unnecessarily on the payroll in the hope that things would pick up.  We were in the process of letting some of them go.  This new person was witness to much of the chaos these remaining layoffs in this business have created in our company. While we are understandably doing fantastically well in several of our businesses, the loan industry is not one of them.  Moreover, our company has recently replaced its Chief Financial Officer and its Human Resources person.  This has resulted in an incredible amount [Read more]