This is maybe a personal experience, but working with a recruiting agency or person has been nothing but bad experiences for me. Here are some examples:
Randstadt - Invited me to ‘interview’ with them for openings, I took half a day off, they tested my computer skills and after all that they ask “what jobs are you looking for?” and then I tell “analytical roles in the finance industry” and they say “we don’t do those”. Wasted my f**king time. Toronto office.
Randstadt - (Again, but for my gf this time). I was in Boca Raton, FL this time and my gf was looking for admin jobs so we walk into the emptiest Randstadt office on this planet and ask to speak to an advisor. They give us this massive attitude and roll their eyes at us like we just spat on the windows. After I do some convincing for them to see us, a woman comes out, gives us a bunch of attitude, condescends us with “have a nice day” + nice, big, fake smile and then goes outside to smoke. I can’t believe these people are employed.
Plan Finance - I cold email a recruiter on LinkedIn and she is very excited to meet me and emails me a bunch of information then schedules an appointment in their downtown Toronto office. The day before, she has her colleague call me and say she isn’t feeling well and will call me back to reschedule the appointment. Like getting dumped by your ex’s friend, lol. On Monday there is no call. On Tuesday I call her and leave a voicemail. No response. On Wednesday I email her. Nothing. Turned into a ghost. What is it with these people?
Accountemps - A guy calls me and we have a pleasent conversation (or maybe I’m crazy) then he gives me all this information and tells me that he only recruits for 4 major companies and that it’s a back-and-forth between recruiters and candidates so everyone has to stay on top of it. I gather a bunch of jobs from those companies I am interested in and email it to him. POOF. Another ghost. Another recruiter that apparently never existed…
Who has had a good experience with a recruiter? I would like to know if it’s at all possible. These people are awful to work with. Maybe unless you have an MBA + 10 years of experience + massive influential network… in which case… you won’t need these c**nts in the first place.
Ehhh, my experience has been decent, some of them don’t want to waste time on leads they don’t feel confident about as they get paid by successfully placing people so unless you are a very close match to the job many of them won’t even return your call.
pretty much what these guys said. unless you are going to get them paid they won’t return your calls. if i remember you are on the young side so I wouldn’t bother with any of these people.
recruiters are like real estate salesmen. they both want you to compromise to satisfy their optimal enviornment: higher volume at your detriment to fulfill their commission on the deal
Recruiters are only good if you have experience, they will reach out to you. I got reached out to a few years ago for a new position that gave me a 40% pay increase thanks to a recruiter. I get contacted frequently for positions with varying levels of pay based on my experience. Lower level positions dont really do much for them in terms of commission and with how easy they are to fill.
Positives- the majority of job openings are never even posted on the channels where 90% of people wait for them. Having a connect to that “black market” is immensely helpful. The alternative is building and maintaining a network which is 100x the effort. That’s basically what they’re doing for you. There’s also an alignment of interest comp wise. When you speak with internal HR their motivation is to pay you as little as possible to save the company money. When you speak with a recruiter their motivation is to pay you as much as possible since that correlates to their fee. This is huge if you think you’re currently underpaid as internal HRs will absolutely use it against you while a recruiter won’t care.
Negatives- The candidate to opening ratio nowadays is probably 100+ to 1. A lot of recruiters imo take that as their license to kinda treat candidates like $hit. Being highly unresponsive, dropping you at the slightest hiccup, refusing to work with anyone that isn’t PERFECT for them, etc. They’re not wrong in terms of them being the ones holding the cards, it’s just weird that when your only job is to deal with people that you wouldn’t do it well. You never know who could become more “placeable” down the road.
My tl;dr is that while a good recruiter is hard to find, they actually do provide a ton of value if you can find one.
Lol. C’mon, I don’t mean everything I say here. You know that. don’t hate me.
I will come back with another account. What’s big deal.
So, here is the thing, I met two recuiters so far from RBC. But they wanted someone who has already graduated from the program. So they couldn’t considered me for sales jobs. Although, meeting was really effective for me as they gave me few suggestions for networking and resume/cover letter. Luckily they were blunt and told me that I should totally change my resume and focus more on client relationship, client management, and those sort of stuff.
They are good people but very busy, lot of them have gone out of business because of LinkedIn.
You will find that recruiters are most useful the higher up you go in your career. For entry level stuff, people just post it on monster.com or whatever. For positions that pay say $500k and up, companies tend to hire headhunters who can scour people and convince them to apply even if they are not actively looking.
Agreed, basically anything above entry level they are hiring recruiters to dig for people. Its shocking how difficult it is to find people with experience. I was shocked when I started getting head hunted for supervisory positions and now I see how few people in my line of work are even capable of something that simple. Start with a pool that small, if you just post a job you are narrowing it down to candidates who are actively looking for work & who know your company. Thats such a small amount of candidates you would be lucky to get one or two applicants who are fit for the job. Hiring a headhunter they can reach out to people who arent actively looking (I wasnt at the time) and they may nibble at an opportunity.
I agree where they’re very good for you if you’re a very strong candidate. I think it helped that I landed 2nd+ round interviews so they were willing to tell me about all the openings that might be relevant (good number were not but that’s the game).
I always figured that unless you have a super high end house like $10mm plus, realtors’ motivation would be to convince you to sell the house at any prevailing bid, even if it is too low. If your house is worth $1.1 million, the realtor would sell your house for $1 million if they have to, and earn $60k rather than $66k commission, rather than spend more time haggling when they could be working other clients, or risk having the house sit on the market long enough for you to hibernate or change your mind.
Anyway, on the recruiters, the fact is they have listings or contacts you cannot find elsewhere. Companies are sometimes secretive of personnel changes, so they hire recruiters to go about hiring discretely. When recruiters see someone at a company leave, they will proactively arrange meetings between the company and potential replacements, even when a job opening has not been officially created. You could network yourself, or you could be friends with head hunters and use their network.
You are better connecting with the recruiters that work internally at the company you are trying to get into and the specific area you want to work in (i.e. lead recruiter in asset management division for JPMorgan).
That way it’s tailored (because you targeted a specific sector), focused (that recruiter only works for one company) and often times helpful (they will tell you why or why not you are a good fit).
When I was applying for a corporate finance job the first time, the guy helping me said he spent 2 years as an external recruiter and it was impossible to make an honest living. Every recruiter that could feed his family did so by bullying candidates into accepting lower pay than what they were worth so he could seal a deal.
