As some of you may know, I worked as a professional recruiter for about 3 years in the late 1990s. What surprised me the most during my recruiting sojourn was the undeserved disdain that people have for recruiters (or “headhunters” as they are known in the vernacular) and how little they understood about the inner workings of the recruiting industry. Like it or not, professional recruiting is an accepted part of corporate life!
Contrary to popular belief, recruiters don’t work for the people who are looking for jobs–they work for and are paid by the companies that engage them! Generally speaking, there are three types of recruiters. Retained recruiters are usually hired by corporate clients to fill senior level corporate positions and are paid a predetermined and agreed upon placement fee whether or not they fill a position. In other words, these recruiters are “on retainer” and work for companies on an “as needed basis.” Contingency recruiters, as the name implies, only get paid when a client company hires a job candidate that was brought to them by a recruiter. As you might imagine, contingency recruiting is a very fast paced, highly competitive and often stressful job–I was a contingency recruiter. Finally, the third type of recruiter, an exclusive contingency recruiter, is an amalgamation of executive and contingency recruiting. In this case, a recruiter receives a portion of his/her placement fee in advance and only receives the remainder when the position is filled with a candidate recommended by the recruiter.
Recruiters are expensive and they cost the companies that use them substantial sums of money. Placement fees usually range from 20% to as high as 45% of a new hires’s first year total compensation package. With this in mind, hiring managers use recruiters only when they need to find candidates for critical or difficult-to-fill positions. In general, companies rarely use recruiters to find entry level employees. However, most bioscience companies use recruiters and they typically have a stable of contingency recruiters that work with on a regular basis.
How Recruiters Work
Recruiters use a variety of tactics ranging from referrals to cold calling to get job orders from their corporate clients. Once a recruiter receives a job order, he/she develops a profile for right-fit candidates largely based on the job description, the salary range for the job, the company’s benefits, bonus and relocation packages and its corporate culture. Recruiters find prospective candidates by searching job candidate databases (compiled by the recruiter or the company the recruiter is working for), getting referrals from colleagues, industry professionals and other recruiters and by placing ads in specialty and trade magazines, or listing ads on web-based job boards (e.g. like Monster.com, Careerbuilder.com, Linked-In, etc).
Once a qualified candidate(s) has been identified, a recruiter will contact the candidate(s) to review and discuss the job opportunity with them. During the conversation, the recruiter will likely ask you about your background, years of experience, skill sets that you have mastered salary requirements and whether or not you are willing to relocate for the opportunity. When a recruiter determines that you may be a “right-fit candidate”i.e., you meet many, if not all, of the job specifications outlined in the job description, he/she will ask for a copy of your most recent resume/CV. Sometimes, after reviewing a resume/CV, a recruiter might ask a candidate to modify or rearrange it before he/she submits it to a client for consideration. Some recruiters will even do it for you–I can’t count the number of resumes that I modified or rewrote before I submitted them to my clients for review. For those of you who are interested in learning how to write a proper resume click here.
Typically, you will hear back from a recruiter within two or three days if a company is interested in moving forward with your candidacy. However, if you don’t hear back from a recruiter within a week, it is unlikely that you are being considered for the position. That said, it is not unreasonable to call or e-mail the recruiter if you don’t hear from him/her after several days.
Working with Recruiters
Because recruiters are expensive, most companies don’t use them to hire entry-level employees. Consequently, if you are a first-time or entry level job seeker, I wouldn’t spend a lot of time fielding calls from recruiters–it is unlikely that they will be able to help you in your job search. People who benefit the most from working with recruiters are individuals who have several years of work experience and are seeking new career opportunities.
Based on my experiences as both a recruiter and jobseeker, I offer a few suggestions on how to work with professional recruiters. First, you MUST tell the recruiter that he/she is NOT ALLOWED to send your resume/CV to a client without first discussing the opportunity with you and getting your permission to submit it. If left to their own devices, many contingency recruiters will submit your resume/CV to any jobs that vaguely resemble your background and skill sets. Because the life sciences industry is rather small, recruiters who blast your resume to multiple employers can jeopardize a candidate job at his/her current place of employment. Nobody wants their boss to know that they are looking for a new job!
Second, it is a good idea to limit the number of recruiters who you worth with. There are a limited number of job orders in the bioscience recruiting universe and it is not uncommon for different recruiters to submit the same resume to multiple clients. While this does not hurt the recruiter’s reputation or business, it may signal to a prospective employer that a candidate is desperate to find a new job–something that may hinder your negotiating power if a job offer is proffered.
Third, work only with recruiters who you think are competent and have a proven track record of placing candidates into jobs. There are a lot of bonehead recruiters out there. Fourth, it is important to remember that you are probably not the only candidate whose resume he/she has submitted to a client company. Most recruiters try to submit at least three candidates per job order–it increases the likelihood and probability that he/she will make a placement (and actually get paid for their hard work). Finally, it is a good idea to stay in touch with recruiters who contact you to discuss possible job opportunities. I almost always return phones from recruiters who call me whether or not I am looking for a job. It never hurts to hear about the types of jobs that are out there especially with the current economy. Also, you may need a recruiter some day to find a new job!
Conclusions
Recruiters are a fact of life in the corporate world. That said, the next time you receive a call from a headhunter, I highly recommend that you be polite, carefully listen to the job opportunities that they are pitching, get their contact information into your e-mail/cell phone address book and don’t hesitate to contact them if you find yourself out of work!
Have you ever received a call from a “head hunter” who suggests that they might be able to assist you in your job search? Can professional recruiters actually help you find a job? Finally, have you ever wondered what’s in it for the recruiter if they don’t charge jobseekers a fee to help them with their job searches?
The advent of social networking sites like MySpace, Facebook and Linked In have been a boon to recruiters and human resources (HR) professionals. Social networks represent a vast and easily-accessible source of job candidates whose professional credentials and personal information are readily available to determine whether or not they may be potential new hires. While the effectiveness of recruiters and HR professionals to source new talent is debatable, I contend that there is nobody more qualified than employees at a company to identify prospective new employees who may bring value to an organization. A number of forward-thinking companies have realized that the best way to find “right fit job candidates” is to mine the social networking contacts of their existing employees. To that end,.jpg)
Like it or not, the best way to land a new job whether or not there is a recession is to network. While career counselors and recruiters trumpet the virtues of networking to job seekers, many people really don't understand what it is or how to do it correctly. I found an
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