{"id":1227,"date":"2011-06-07T20:18:01","date_gmt":"2011-06-08T02:18:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/famille.org\/?p=1227"},"modified":"2011-06-07T20:18:01","modified_gmt":"2011-06-08T02:18:01","slug":"the-recruiter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/famille.org\/?p=1227","title":{"rendered":"The Recruiter"},"content":{"rendered":"

More in the continuing series of my job search experiences…<\/p>\n

In my last post, I talked about searching for a new job.\u00c2\u00a0 I gave my experiences using the internet and networking.\u00c2\u00a0 Using either one of these methods, you will eventually experience The Recruiter<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Recruiters at a very high level come in two flavors, internal<\/em> and external<\/em>.\u00c2\u00a0 Internal recruiters are generally HR folks who work within a company; their job is to find skilled candidates to fill positions that the company needs to hire.\u00c2\u00a0 These recruiters often use other search mechanisms, such as job boards and external recruiters to find candidates.\u00c2\u00a0 Often your first contact with the actual company that is hiring is with the internal recruiter, although that may not be the first contact you make about the particular job.\u00c2\u00a0 Why?\u00c2\u00a0 Because some companies have external recruiters that vet candidates first, then pass them on to internal recruiters, who further narrow the field before passing on the resumes to the hiring manager.<\/p>\n

External recruiters, on the other hand, don’t work for the company that is hiring.\u00c2\u00a0 They are paid by the company to find qualified candidates.\u00c2\u00a0 Their interests are two-fold: on one hand, they want to develop a long-term relationship with the hiring company, so they want to be picky about candidates to ensure that they’re adding value to the hiring chain.\u00c2\u00a0 On the other hand, they need to talk to a lot<\/em> of candidates in order to find the right one for the jobs that they’re involved in searching.<\/p>\n

This presents a dilemma.\u00c2\u00a0 And it’s one of the most frustrating parts of dealing with external recruiters.\u00c2\u00a0 Often, based on a resume that you’ve posted on a job board, you’ll hear from an external recruiter.\u00c2\u00a0 He or she will probably want to meet you in person, go over your experiences and skills, and talk about the job that they’re trying to fill.\u00c2\u00a0 On the other hand, they have to deal with thousands of candidates in order to find maybe three to five that qualify for the position.\u00c2\u00a0 What happens to the other 995 candidates?\u00c2\u00a0 Well, as much as the external recruiter promises<\/strong> that you’ll hear back from him later this week, if you’re not in that top five, you probably won’t.<\/p>\n

And here’s the rub.\u00c2\u00a0 They might actually have been hired by the hiring company to find a candidate, or they may be trying to find and promote a candidate themselves – even though they might not have an existing relationship with the company.\u00c2\u00a0 They hope that they can present a candidate so compelling that the company will hire you, instead of someone else, and pay their finders fee.<\/p>\n

What does all this mean?\u00c2\u00a0 For any given position you find on aggregators, job boards, and even company websites and networking, there is probably an external recruiter out there trying to fill that position too.\u00c2\u00a0 That means that you’ll run into them a lot.\u00c2\u00a0 And most times, that contact will consist of the following:<\/p>\n