Most annoying, unimaginative, and flaky people I’ve ever dealt with.
I had an extensive call with one 2 weeks ago about a job that we both agreed was a great fit for me. Called back earlier this week and he completely forgot about our convo. Another one called me yesterday about a buy-side role, but I had to run into a meeting. We set up a time for later in the day. I called and he didn’t answer. Sent a follow-up email and no reply. I’m in full job-search mode now, but I’ve always had to deal with this crap with recruiters. I realize they are bombarded by people, but I find this practice completely unprofessional.
Even more annoying, I seem to get constant recruiter emails/calls for programming/developer related roles even though my resume has nothing of the sort on it except for VBA listed under my skills.
I no longer accept interviews with recruiters for this very reason. At the very least I’ll speak with someone from the internal HR department but too much of my time has been wasted talking to these folks (recruiters).
Agree with the above, however there are good recruiters out there. If you’re looking in Chicago I’ve worked with a guy in the past who was a pro that I’d gladly connect you with. Worked in the industry as an institutional consultant for years and has tons of connections. Referred multiple friends his way.
Worked with another decent guy in Minneapolis, but I think that was more luck than anything else. Every other recruiter struggled to understand that a CFA designation was different than CFP or CPA, so there wasn’t much happening there.
My experience with recruiters have been pretty good tbh, sometimes they don’t reply simply because they don’t think it’s worth exploring, it’s a little rude but it is what it is.
Good recruiters are few and far between and what I really dislike about them is that they really don’t bother fostering any form of a relationship. I realize they probably have thirty jobs they need to find candidates for but often if you don’t work out for one job they just completely write you off and start ghosting you. I agree that most of them are very unprofessional and usually don’t know very much about the industry they are recruiting for. For instance, I had one contact me asking about my equity valuation skills and blah blah blah. After three minutes of chatting I had to cut her off and explain that my career in private equity has nothing to do with equities (stocks)…She is a Finance grad, too.
I don’t know. Most of the recruiters that I talked to seemed ok. Just understand you are a widget to them. It’s hard to understand that you are a commodity, but that’s how it is.
They are not too busy to politely let a candidate know they are not the best fit for the job rather then just ignore emails like a jackazz as they wait to here back for a new position that could greatly alter their life. Takes 10 seconds.
I don’t really blame them for not wanting to return calls and rejecting people personally. Can you imagine 95% of their pipeline asking for feedback, complaining about their situation, and wondering what they could have done better? Who has time for that?
Of course the downside is that rational, non-emotional candidates like people on this forum don’t any confirmation, but for every rational person there are probably 9 others who are just going to complain and moan and waste time that could be used on filling a role.
Imagine you test drive several used cars with the goal of buying one, or you visit many apartments for rent. Do you call back all the ones you don’t like with detailed feedback? No, they are just commodities and you don’t care about the ones you don’t like. Recruiter doesn’t have time to give gentle and personal feedback to the 30 people they work for each position. It’s a mistake to take it personally if you are one of those people. You’re not that important - it’s hard to digest this when the product is a human, but the sooner you realize this the better.
^^Agree with questions referring about detailed feedback for sure. I’m just referring to the question after going through months of interviews such as, “Just seeing were I stand?”. Requires simple response. I’ve had several recruiters, who were very good with communication for several months into the interview process only to completely shut me out of any communication. Just let us know so we can move on.
The issue with society today is that we have started to treat human beings as a commodity. Sending an automated E-mail to unsuccessful candidates from a do-not-reply address is incredibly simply to set-up. At a bare minimum I would expect the recruiter or preferably the hiring manager to call the two runners up to let them know that they didn’t get the position…This shouldn’t be a strain out of anyone’s day.
Again, it’s a job market with many, many candidates. Your value is less than the time it takes to send that out. Sure, you might have an issue thinking of people as items, but that’s how it is in this market.
If it makes you feel better, recruiters tend to treat you much better as your workplace value increases. They get paid based on your starting salary, to this is to be expected, I guess.
^Ohai is onto something. Your base salary 50-60k trying to break back into the game is negligible for them. You need to become one of their golden children; high capacity, high salaries, ambitious and willing to move. You’ll get calls from them every 6 months asking how you’re doing.
You haven’t been out of the game long enough to forget that common courtesy is a bonus in this industry.
Sure, agreed, but just because there is a high volume of “sales” doesn’t mean that every recruiter has to conduct themselves in such an uncouth manner. This isn’t even a criticism of recruiters alone - how about hiring managers? Sure, people are busy, EVERYONE is busy, but taking ten minutes out of your day to make two phone calls to thank two people isn’t going to ruin your day.