What Do Recruiters Do For Their Money?

Today, here's how most recruitment companies work, especially in the big-ticket areas like IT and legal recruitment.

A young gun recruiter sits at a desk with a computer screen that has his diary and today's cold call list of companies.

He rings and asks for the departmental manager. Assuming he gets through, he asks if there are any vacancies.

After hearing the word "no" many times, he finally gets a "yes" and asks for the job spec to be emailed to him. There isn't much discussion beyond, "what salary is on offer, what's the most you can pay"?

Once the recruiter (read telesales person) gets the spec for the job, he'll search his vast database of candidates, all of whom were harvested from online job sites.

But here's the thing...

The people who register with the online job sites are not always the most motivated individuals.

Think about it.

These are candidates who take the lazy way to finding their next job. They haven't applied for a specific role. They've simply uploaded their CV to a database - probably a few databases!

The recruiter, when finding that his own database doesn't contain enough candidates with the right qualifications, then goes to the online CV repositories and conducts another search and downloads any CVs that appear on the face of it to fit the bill for the job.

Does the recruiter call the candidate beforehand? Probably not - at least not in 90% of cases.

They call the candidate only after the employer has expressed an interest in the profile.

We won't describe what happens next, as we have to get into the whole issue of agency disputes. You know, where one agency says they were first to send a particular CV and you happen to have received the same CV from a dozen different agents.

Recruitment is a dog eat dog world.

Let's move on and assume that the candidate is half decent and you offer the job.

In half of all cases it's likely that you candidate will not accept the position offered.

There are a number of reasons for this and it would be easy to blame the candidate, who in most cases, will be bought back by their current employer - they were simply looking for a pay rise.

They hadn't really applied for a job.

In their eyes, they were "head hunted". It sounds good when they tell their friends and even better when they tell their employer!

Of course, had the recruiter done his or her job properly in the first place with an interview, all of the hassle of getting an offer refused could have been avoided.

If a different approach had been taken in the recruitment process by the employer, a more acceptable result would have been achieved.

Time is money.

What looks like a no-risk proposal in theory (no placement, no fee), can actually cost you far more in lost time.

There's nothing better than an advertising campaign to get the right candidate. Nothing.

We'll explain why when you call David Carter to discuss your options on 01564 824554 or mobile 07800 790427.