[svp]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fqRG3OJRApE[/svp]
Too often, people fall for stuff that recruiters say to them and blame employers. In this video, I illustrate one of those classic examples of recruiter BS.
[spp-transcript]
People sometimes believe that they have relationships with recruiters. They have known them for a while. They trust them. The person seems honest. Let me point something out to you.
I was coaching someone recently who told me about a job he was submitted to buy a recruiter. He likes the guy and thinks he’s competent; the job hunter is not quick to give out praise to people.
The job hunter is looking for director role and goes on an interview for a position reporting to a manager. That tells you right away it is not a director role. He is interviewed by a staff person who reports to the manager; he queries a him about something that he knows little about and is wrong in his opinion, gets into an argument with the job hunter who, later, sent him a link to a Wikipedia article proving that he (the job hunter) was right.
“I was told this was a senior role by the recruiter. It’s reporting to a manager. Why did they change things?”
Let me let you in on a secret. They didn’t change anything; you were lied to by the recruiter.
If a firm changes a position from a director level to one reporting to a manager, this is not something they conveniently forget to tell the search firms about. Certainly, they will speak to the recruiter and tell them “You have this director coming in. We revise the position to one reporting to a manager (a senior architect, for example). Make sure the person will be okay with that.”
I’ve never seen a situation where firm didn’t tell me that when they revise the position so I can go back to the job hunter and not waste everyone’s time.
I had to stop in his tracks and tell him, “It’s not the firm. It’s the recruiter who lie to you!”
Recruiters take advantage of the relationship because they hoped that, if you go in the door, like the money, the job, or the company, maybe you will accept the job offer and they’ll earn a big fee. They believe that they have nothing to lose and everything to gain.
I have to challenge you about working with recruiters. There are a lot of very very good ones. After all I’ve done search from many many years and do more coaching now but still think of myself as a search professional. In the work that I’ve done I’ve always been forthright with job hunters I know a lot of people who are the same way.
Then there are the others. You don’t really know the difference when they tell you it’s a senior position. It’s a senior what? Senior manager? Senior director? Senior VP? What kind of senior are you talking about? In this case it became senior architect.
So get explicit with them because there is a seduction going on where search firms are individual recruiters play on the relationship to have you do things you really shouldn’t be doing because they are a colossal waste of your time.
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Do you really think employers are trying to help you? You already know you can’t trust recruiters—they tell as they think you need to know to take the job they after representing so they collect their payday.
The skills needed to find a job are different yet complement the skills needed to do a job.
Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter has been a career coach and recruiter for what seems like one hundred years.
JobSearchCoachingHQ.com is there to change that with great advice for job hunters—videos, my books and guides to job hunting, podcasts, articles, PLUS a community for you to ask questions of PLUS the ability to ask me questions where I function as your ally with no conflict of interest answering your questions.
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