The first recruitment agency was established in 1653 by Henry Robinson, who proposed an "Office of Addresses and Encounters" to connect workers with employers. Modern recruiting began in the late 1800s during the Industrial Revolution. Over the last 200+ years, many opinions and experiences have led to various reputations and myths surrounding recruiters.
“Recruiters don’t provide feedback, they don’t care about candidates”
This myth surely was created from candidate experiences like “ghosting” or not responding to candidate inquiries. While these experiences do happen, assuming that all recruiters don’t respond to questions or follow-ups simply isn’t true. Great recruiters see candidates as humans who willingly provide their time and energy throughout an interview process. Successful recruiters know that maintaining relationships with the people they engage is the only way to remain successful long-term. Just because someone isn’t a great fit for a role being filled today, staying connected with thoughtful communication allows for both parties to potentially provide undetermined value to each other at some point in the future. Great recruiters are ALWAYS interested in developing their database of qualified candidates. When new opportunities might be a fit based on their initial conversations, great recruiters will reach out and make those folks aware.
Recruiters can only provide feedback when they receive feedback to give. Not all companies or hiring managers are able or willing to provide feedback for every candidate interviewed. If a company won’t provide feedback, it isn’t a personal vendetta toward the candidate. Is this fair? No! My dad taught me at an early age, “Life isn’t fair, whoever told you it was, lied.” While this was a harsh truth to learn, rejection without the “why” is still a form of redirection, and a great recruiter will provide a response either way. Professional rejection isn’t personal, a company makes decisions to best support its business, just like candidates make decisions to best support themselves.
“Recruiters just want to fill a job opening, they don’t care who gets hired”
A role being filled is not a job well done. Great recruiters always seek a win-win-win scenario. The only way to achieve this is to work towards a good match for the candidate, AND the client. Only then is it a true win for a great recruiter looking to develop a long-term professional desk in the recruiting space.
The best recruiters match candidates and clients on multiple levels. A job well done is reflected during the 6-month and 1-year or more check-ins that contain positive and grateful feedback from both placed candidates and their hiring managers. Facilitating and bringing together long-term professional partnerships is the ultimate goal for recruiters. Long-term, successful placements are the key to longevity as a successful recruiter. These types of placements will have hiring managers reaching out when needing to hire other people and candidates will be happy to share their network with the recruiter who helped them find their now-favorite job.
The main reason recruiting exists as an industry is that almost every company has (companies have?) dysfunction within their hiring process. Full-cycle recruiting often involves helping and guiding hiring managers with job descriptions, interview questions, and interview processes. The best recruiters can help create an interview cycle that both candidates and clients find helpful in determining whether a partnership makes sense to consider. Accepting an extended offer means both the candidate and the client see value in joining forces.
“Recruiting agencies are expensive”
The average fee for an agency recruiter is 20% of the candidate’s base salary. For example, a placed candidate who agrees to a $100,000 base salary would yield the recruiter a $20,000 fee. Not bad! The average turnover cost for an employer is 0.5-2x of an employee’s salary. Using the same sample candidate, the cost of losing the placed employee would range from $50,000-$200,000. Agency recruiters want to make long-term placements where the candidates thrive and eventually lead their new company to new and sustained levels of success. Companies want to retain their people because they can’t afford not to.
Beyond the dollar cost, there is also a disruptive cost to the company environment experiencing turnover. The burden placed on others while the position is left unfilled can impact the company more than just the financial aspect. Great recruiters can typically provide solutions faster than internal HR teams, minimizing this impact.
“Recruiters are deceptive”
Many people have shared experiences with being contacted by a recruiter for job openings that lack crucial details or clearly don’t align with their professional experiences. Some recruiters do use the “spray and pray” method of outreach. Those recruiters won’t be in the field very long, as this is not the strategy amongst the top performers in recruiting. Why do recruiters send emails or messages to generate candidate interest? Over 50% of outreach is done via email which yields an average of a 39% response rate (the highest % of all outreach).
Targeted outreach with pertinent information regarding an opportunity to folks with relevant professional experience yields the highest response rate. If you receive a message that doesn’t mention the hiring company’s name or any specific job-related criteria, odds are that message is coming from the S&P method mentioned above. Great recruiters include a brief explanation about why they thought your experience would be a potential fit with their client, and information about both the role and company including industry, size, benefits, and salary range for the role. Being upfront with information is the beginning of building rapport and trust while subconsciously respecting the time and energy of both the recipient and sender.
Hopefully after reading this, you’ll recognize that not all recruiters are alike. The negative reputations certainly weren’t created out of thin air; some people have lived these “myths” and their lives were negatively impacted. The last two years where the hiring market has become incredibly bleak have helped push out the same recruiters whose actions created the reputations/myths mentioned above.
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