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What a Recruiter Really Wants and Needs from Job Candidates, Part I

By Michael Bozethnetworking-virtual-inperson
Contributor, Career Services

Recruiters are valuable to job candidates in many different ways.

Recruiters are an amazing resource for job candidates. They can either help you or ignore you. The trouble is that most job candidates have unrealistic expectations of recruiters, and mistakenly believe that recruiters are there to help people find jobs. That could not be any further from the truth. The truth is that recruiters fill jobs for companies and want to make their hiring managers happy.

This simple principle works great if you are a job candidate with the right skill set to fill a position that’s currently open or will be in the near future. In other words, if you are marketable and happen to find a recruiter working in your area to fill a position, the odds of that recruiter working with you are pretty high. However, if you are working with a recruiter who doesn’t have any open positions in your industry, or you are difficult to work with, you may be headed down a dead end.

Recruiters are valuable to job candidates in many ways. The most obvious is that they may be able to present you for a vacant position. They also offer tremendous value to job candidates in areas that may not be so obvious. For example, recruiters might have insight into your market or geography that you didn’t know about. They may offer advice about job-search activities, your résumé and or your interview skills. In many cases, it’s actually in their best interest for you to be hired.

That means if you help recruiters get what they really want and need from you, you will have a greater chance of getting what you want from them. Here are some ways in two perspectives (the second perspective offered in tomorrow’s blog post) that you can make the most of your relationship with recruiters.

Communication with recruiters:

  1. Build a solid professional connection. People want to help people. Seek appropriate ways to connect with recruiters and inspire them to want to work with you. Don’t go overboard and be inappropriate, but be personable and realistic. Connect with recruiters on a normal and expected social media channel such as Facebook and LinkedIn. Showing up at their office unannounced or uninvited is not advised.
  2. Respond promptly. Check your voicemail and e-mail at least twice a day. Recruiters live in a “hurry up and wait” world and will call you when they need you, so don’t hesitate. Otherwise they will keep looking to find someone else to meet their immediate need. Also please make sure your ring back tone and your away voice message are professional and appropriate.
  3. Be up front and honest. Don’t make recruiters pull information out of you and don’t mislead them with your answers, as they need key facts from you. Truthfully answer inquiries about how much you are looking to make, whether you’re willing to relocate, how you feel about traveling, overtime or any important questions to you. Anything less than up front and honest is a waste of time — both theirs and yours.
  4. Don’t let a recruiter be surprised by anything. Recruiters hate to fall in love with a candidate, only to find out later that there are skeletons in his or her closet. Honesty, while putting your best foot forward, is still the best policy. Let recruiters know what’s going on and they will do their best to help you. Even if you try to not disclose something, if it comes up in your background check, it will be another waste of time and a dead end for you.
  5. Provide information about your job-search progress. If you are interviewing and getting close to an offer, let your recruiters know. They may want the opportunity to reasonably push the hiring manager or interviewer into making an offer and it’s in your best interest if they do.
  6. Share the responsibility of maintaining communication and following up. If a recruiter is working 20 positions, and 100 people apply to each of those openings, then that means 2,000 people want his or her attention at any given time. Recruiters should be professional, to be sure, but ask yourself this: How fast could you get back to someone if you had so many people wanting something from you? Don’t lose sight of the fact that the sole responsibility of recruiters is making their hiring managers happy. They are going to call their hiring managers back first, wait for their decision and then let you know. Keep this all in mind; it is the very real world of being a recruiter.

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