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10 Things Recruiters Won't Say - Part 2
November 19, 2010             Category : Higher Studies

4. “The job we advertised may not exist.”

Recruiters often advertise appealing jobs that aren’t vacant, just to build up a stable of candidates, says Nick Corcodilos, who heads the executive search firm North Bridge Group and runs www.asktheheadhunter.com in Lebanon, N.J. From a staffing firm or recruiter’s perspective, this is a practical way to do business, because many assignments offer a bonus for filling a key job fast. But for the job hunter, it’s misleading, raising false hopes at an already anxious time.

That doesn’t mean an applicant’s efforts are useless. Just because there’s no job now doesn’t mean there won’t be one in a few months. Jeremy Dixon, general manager at A-1 Temps in Tampa, says client companies will ask him for 50 people qualified for customer service positions “in a couple of weeks.” If he has a sufficient pool of established applicants, he can place them in a hurry.

For the best odds of success, job-seekers should identify companies and positions they’re specifically interested in and seek out recruiters who work with them. (This is particularly true for anyone seeking an upper management job, for which companies typically rely on an established relationship with a recruiter or recruiting firm.)

5. “We already know quite a bit about you.”

As soon as you sign up with a recruiter or search firm, they check you out – your background, your credit history, even legal records. That’s why they have applicants sign all those disclosures. If you want to work with them, you have to submit. That’s fairly standard in the job market these days, whether or not you work with a recruiter, but unlike a recruiter, a prospective employer usually doesn’t do the background check until after he’s met you. That gives a candidate the opportunity to impress on his merits, and explain anything that might be dodgy in his history. Working through a recruiter, a job seeker might never get that chance.

In that case, all you can do is make sure that the information they have is accurate, says Corcodilos. Almost 80 percent of credit reports contain errors, and 25 percent have what’s considered to be a “serious error” such as false delinquencies or accounts that did not belong to the consumer, according to a 2004 study from U.S. PIRG. To ensure you’ll be judged on your own merits, check your credit report for errors and take steps to fix what you find.

6. “Our jobs aren’t so hot either.”

Because most agencies don’t get paid unless they place candidates at jobs, the weak labor market has taken its toll. In Orange County, Calif., for example, the 20 largest employment firms saw revenue drop almost 20% in 2009, prompting many to lay off employees, according to an Orange County Business Journal survey. A lot of experienced people have left the field, says Darrel Gurney, an independent career consultant who runs the CareerGuy.com web site, leaving “empty desks and brand spanking new people who have never done this before.” That means you often don’t get the best help in your job search, particularly working with smaller firms, he says.

Bigger, national and international firms are doing better. Revenue at Switzerland’s Adecco, the world’s largest staffing company, rose 16% in July and August. Meanwhile, revenues at domestic search firms Manpower (MAN: 55.82, +2.06, +3.83%) and Robert Half International (RHI: 27.54, +0.55, +2.03%) are up 15% and 6% respectively in the last three months, in part a result of an increase in revenue-producing job placements

Tags : recruiters, cv, job, 10, say
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