Why don’t you like recruiters?
What’s wrong with recruiters?
A recent post on LinkedIn regarding what to ask a recruiter when they cold call about a terrific job opportunity generated so much recruiter-bashing that I am compelled to learn more.
Why do so many people have such bad things to say about recruiters? Are there that many bad practices? Are there not enough good recruiters to cancel out the bad ones? This is such a hugely emotional issue I hope this post can serve to air some of the issues and some of the solutions. I will make it available on LinkedIn as well.
The reasons I hear most often are
- Recruiters don’t get back to you
- I am just a paycheck to them
- They don’t tell the truth
- They don’t really have the jobs search they contact me about
What do you have to say? If you are a recruiter, be sure to chime in on how candidates can avoid interacting with recruiters who won’t treat them well.
Themocracy
The recruiters that bug me are the ones who are clueless about the jobs they are talking to you about, I was sent on a 2 hour drive to interview for a job I had a hard time believing I was qualified for, the recruiter assured me I was (in a field with a shortage of well qualified folks) 10 minutes into the interview, the manager confirmed my thoughts. Then the recruiter who could only speak English well enough for me to figure out it was the same job another recruiter had already contacted me about (but wouldn’t tell me the company, which I easily figured out by Googling the position title and city!) The tales go on. I am occasionally contacted by people who are specialists in an industry and we have intelligent conversations about my qualifications and if I’m sent on, it’s for a relevant job. Those are rare!
I agree entirely with Cleo. There some really great, professional, conscientious, skilled recruiters out there, but the inept ones can make everyone look bad. It infuriated me in my job search last year that the job offer I ended up accepting was for a company I had first connected with not through one of the good recruiters, but through one of the most incompetent!