Recruiters...

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So I've been applying for some jobs lately and today I had a call from a junior recruitment consultant. We discussed few things but I wasn't sure myself if I was a good fit (I'm more of an all-rounder and they want someone with extensive SQL skills). He said he will speak to his manager about that and see how it goes.

So later on the manager calls me and we had a nice chat. Very polite and constructive. We discussed what I want from a new job and we concluded that I wasn't a good fit for this one but he'll keep his eyes open on other jobs I might be a good fit for.

Fair enough.

30 minutes later this arrives in my mailbox:


He is a no.

Wants £XX k for Cribbs.

Out of his mind.

Regards

Bxxxxxx Jxxxxxxx


This is actually only £2k a year more than I'm on now and I would have to spend around £1300 more on commuting costs. He was obviously meant to send it to his colleague and not me.

I've spoken to him since and he apologised so all is good but it got me thinking, what do recruiters think we're worth?

I'm interested in how the recruitment agents can judge a candidate without ever working with him. I'm proud of the quality of work I do and I've always outperformed my work colleagues (if not by skills, then by hard work and longer hours to get up to speed). I would be very happy to hire myself and if I did I would consider myself a good hire later down the line too.

How do you express those qualities (hard-working, dedicated, motivated, driven, business oriented, etc.) while job hunting? I've tried couple of strategies from cocky and arrogant to modest and shy and I've been getting mixed results. How can I improve my CV -> Interview 1 -> Interview 2 -> Job Offer conversion rate?

(I do jobseeking for sports and I regularly reject job offers)

 

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Remember they are sales people. Figuratively speaking your're not worth anything to them, you are a commodity to be traded, like a can of beans. At best to them you are worth whatever commission they get.

Literally speaking they think you are worth market value at best, but often they do not know the market so they think you are worth what the client is prepared to pay.

There are also other tactics at play like low balling, spreading the middle, etc.

Generally they can't, its a fallacy. They market themselves to employers as adding significant value to the recruitment process. In general I think they cannot differentiate better than a hiring manager and therefore it is a mistake letting them vet candidates.

You have to market and sell yourself to them in order to avoid being cut for the wrong reasons.

Other methods of marketing / self promotion exist, networking, blogs, teaching, etc. Many also have the advantage that you may avoid involving a recruitment agency.

 

It's all profit driven and sometimes a company will say we will pay you £20 per hour and they will try and get someone for as cheap as possible so they pocket more money. Early into my career I found that the agency was on the same money as me per hour so they can make a lot of money off the back of you for doing very little. For fulltime positions I suspect that is roughly set but the company recruiting and not the agency.

It's interesting the email you received though as I always wondered what went on in the background when discussing candidates. I'm not very fond of recruitment agencies as whilst their are some good people working for agencies there is a high percentage of clowns that work in the sector that don't give a toss unless your worth something to them.

 

I think the difference between good and bad recruitment consultants is gargantuan. I put a sentence along the lines of 'has some exposure to Lync' on my CV, and I had recruiters calling me for senior Lync/SIP positions. I've also had recruiters tell me that I'd "get a second line support role, at best" due to my relatively few years in the business (I'm currently working in an infrastructure / sys admin role). Some are also very focused on your salary now, compared to the position they're offering; if you're underpaid currently, they'll simply discount you if the gap is too large.

However, when you get good recruiters on the phone, they recognise genuine ability, and they tend to be valued by employers more.

I get about three calls a day from recruitment consultants but only a handful of these every month are worth pursuing.

 

A good recruiter is hard to find... I have quite a bit of experience working with them and believe me, the majority of the recruiters I dealt with, are not good. Luckily I keep in contact with two recruiters that I use to help my friends and myself every once in a while when doing contract work or looking for a new job.

Money wise, well if you're good at what you do, you deliver complex projects and the job itself is complex, ask for what ever you think you're worth.. Honestly last time I asked for 20K more than what I was making and I got it. If the company is looking for someone good, they can't pay them a low salary.. usually a strong admin won't work for that price.

 

In my experience most recruiters seem to just use basic pattern matching to evaluate CV's, they don't even read them.

Some can evaluate people skills or do background/reference checks, virtually none can evaluate technical ability.

 

I was recently interviewed by the recruitment consultant (face to face interview) before getting my CV put forward for the job. She said that this is the way the recruitment should be done, and that she always interviews and checks her candidates before putting them forward. She also claimed to have a strong undestanding of the technical side of things.

I personally didn't feel like she was adding any value to the process and felt more like an obstacle that you just have to get past. I also didn't get the job which is unfortunate because I really wanted it.

 

As I always say, recruitment agents are scum of the earth, just like estate agents, unfortunately they are a necessary evil (pretty much like estate agents) if you want to get a job.

Oh and again the agent isn't working for you at all, he's working for the client and really doesn't care about the candidate, all he really cares about is his percentage, the more he can get the better as far as he is concerned. Where this can benefit the candidate is if this is for a perm role because obviously the more money they get the candidate the bigger % they get at the end of the probation period, unfortunately it's the opposite for contractor positions.

What I would say in this instance is name and shame the agency concerned to let others know how badly they think of us candidates, perhaps it will make them realise that they shouldn't belittle us.

 

That's the unfortunate nature of recruitment agencies as they're working to earn a living and hence in this case they don't care about the candidates. I would play it wisely and safe with any recruitment agents to my benefit as best as possible.

 

Ouch @ getting the email with those words... I do hope he gave you a worthy apology.

I've had my fair share of ups and downs with recruiters. Some have managed to help me land a good job, and some whilst in no way fault of their own, have gotten me a job which I ended up not enjoying as much as I'd have hoped for.

Sadly, due to my negative experiences, I'd say they've done more bad, than good, for my personal well being. Whilst I've been quite lucky and have managed to move on from job to job in a well planned manner, some of my experiences have been a mental and physical drain that have left harsh marks inside me. But I couldn't be happier right now.

It all works out in the end I think

 

I can relate to that. Every job change has been a massive step up both experience and money wise, but I can't seem to be able to find one that keeps me happy.

Thanks. Thing is that I'm not sure what I want anymore. I tend to get a new job, learn everything I can in about a year and get bored. I definitely need to make a switch to project type work. I don't think support is for me. Also I enjoy taking ownership of 'the bigger picture' of IT projects so I was thinking that maybe project management is something I should be doing. By bigger picture I mean including budgets, deadlines, deliverables, business benefits, etc.

Any advice on how to make a switch from a techie role to a IT Project Management role?

 

Because we high and mighty IT professionals have never, in our careers, sent an email to the wrong person by mistake....

For the record, I take great offense at the broad, sweeping, generalisation of calling Recruitment Agents "scum of the earth". Do you appreciate the sweeping generalisations applied to members of the IT profession? no? Thought not. My other half works in Recruitment (more admin that as a consultant, but that is besides the point). Sure, some of them are useless, and don't give two ****s, but to apply such a strong term to an entire profession is ludicrous at best.

 

Well you see that would require me to accept that they have a profession, where as I believe they are mostly unskilled chancers.

 

If you read my quote I said "recruitment agents" not recruitment agencies, there is a difference. I have worked for a recruitment agency (long since amalgamated and subsequently no longer exists at all) and for the most part the people working at the agency were great (the back room\admin staff) but the agents themselves generally tended to be self centered cocks (one of whom in my first week tried to bully me but who failed dismally when I didn't fall for his 'do you know who I am and how big my mates are?" comment, especially when I said to him "no but considering your mates aren't here at the minute they don't exactly scare me". In the end I didn't have any more problems with him but having experienced recruiters in their own working element I know from personal experience how inadequate a lot of them are when it comes to actually knowing what they are doing.

Look Fergal, I know you don't like me or my views so why not just go back to pretending to ignore me, that way you won't have to express outrage at my views and I won't have to explain them to you (but you can still copy my sig that's fine )

 

aaaaand BREAK!


Recruitment Agents are like lawyers, there's some really rotten apples that give the other 1% a bad name.

You need to remember what they are in it for (ie their money, not your happiness or success). If they are in a competitive situation (ie multiple rescruiters for the same role) they do want to be the one who gets the position filled so they get paid something rather than nothing. However, they might decide that telling their client you would probably accept Y rather than X is likely to get you into the position, they get paid and you get shafted for a lower rate than you hoped for.

If you ask for X and a recruiter asks what your actual bottom rate is, stick to your guns - it's X. To get you £1 below X they will have to show something else which is of significant value to you - better holidays, flexitime, good coffee, subsidised canteen, whatever you might actually want. The moment you say "well, for the right position I might accept Y" then Y is the number the recruiter will go for in order to be the one who gets the role filled.

Do the math - you want (say) £20,000. If you will accept £19,000 then the recruiter might a) win rather than lose the business b) do so more quickly and get paid sooner c) do so with less effort expended.
All of these might seem to be good reasons to get paid 5% less (assuming they are working on a % of salary basis).
Their small percent of your extra £1,000 is easy for them to right off, but for you, a grand is a grand, right? And that is a grand this year, and next, and the year after.
Also, if you start on £19,000, every annual salary increase of 1 or 2% (if you are lucky) is still on a smaller amount. Even if you get a promotion and pay rise for taking on more responsibility, any employer will look at what they are paying you now as a baseline. They don't pay you £25,000 because that is what you are worth, they give you £5,000 more than you are on. (with some exceptions in public sector where pay is often based on grades, but you can still be at the top or bottom of your grade).
Your next move will be hindered by the same lowball choice once made for you by a recruiter.

Hard to do when you really want a job, either because you are out of work or wanting to change career tracks. But think long and hard before agreeing to a lower rate than you need - and don't give recruiters any room to believe you will accept less than you want because it is all too often in their interests to lowball you and lie to you that the client would not go any higher (and how do you know if they would or not?).

 

Actually, I think you will find that I created MY sig before you. You created yours as a result of an argument with people on the forum - I had a completely different reason for creating it, long before you did. So if you want to talk about "copying", lets go!

I read your post completely, and I stand by my comments. I know recruitment agents. Sure, they are salesmen, sure they don't have the technical knowledge of our skillsets that we ourselves possess. But they perform a function that is requested by the clients. Some are better at it than others, some care about nothing more than the bonus. But that doesnt make them "Scum of the Earth" (some, sure, but definately not all).

It's funny you think I don't like you. I don't waste any energy on liking or not liking you. For better or worse, I stuck around when plenty of other long timers left for all manner of reasons. Guess why? Because I actually still like helping people from time to time. Letting you spout your sanctimonious, high-handed, bigoted ****e unchallenged is not in the best interests of the forum, so I challenged it. Forgive me for expecting more from a respected member of the forum (and a "Forum Leader" to boot).

 

I know exactly why you created it Fergal, remember it was me who told you how easy it was to find out information on yourself after that little faux pas you made posting ill advised comments (it took me all of 5 minutes searching to know your employer and other various tidbits about you). As for thinking you don't like me, you previously mentioned blocking me because you didn't like what I had to say, so that kinda gave me some indications on your view of me.

I stand by my comments about recruiters and estate agents (having experienced both) so let's just agree to disagree.

Wow, Sanctimonious and Bigoted, I really am doing well .

Well I best get my sanctimonious bigoted ass out of here then, I don't want to upset your poor little sensibilities now do I

 

Alright then fellas, back to the topic.