Five Signs Your Recruiter Is Not On Your Side

Liz Ryan 

When you get ready to sell your house, you can hire a real estate agent to help you. When you’re buying a house, a real estate agent will look out for your best interests. There is a broker on each side of the transaction, looking out for each party to the sale.

It doesn’t work that way in the recruiting business. Instead of two brokers, there is only one — a professional recruiter, sometimes called a headhunter or a search consultant.

When you work with a recruiter, the recruiter is paid by the client. The client is the employer. That means that a recruiter’s loyalties can be divided.

It also means that the recruiter can represent himself or herself as your advocate when in reality they are not looking out for you, but rather for the employer.

Your interests and the employer’s interests are not the same thing!

Here are five signs your recruiter is not on your side.

When you They demand private information from you

Employers control tremendous amounts of confidential information that they would never, ever share with their employees – much less with job applicants! You have private information, too.

Your current salary and your past salaries are none of a prospective employer’s business. If they see your resume, ask you questions and listen to your answers, and still can’t figure out what your background is worth, they are not intelligent or businesslike people.

They are not worth your time.

Give the heave-ho to any recruiter who insists that you tell him or her what you’re earning now or what you earned at your past jobs.

Just say “If you or your client needs that information in order to evaluate my suitability for this role, then this is not a good match” and hang up the phone.

After all, they’re not about to give up the salary information for their current or past employees!

There are plenty of ethical recruiters who would never dream of demanding your private financial information.

They tell you you’d be lucky to get an interview

There is an old trick in the recruiting world that goes like this: the recruiter fawns on you and tells you that you’re wonderful — just long enough to get you interested in whatever job they are trying to fill.

The moment you seem to be interested, they change their tune.

Suddenly, they’re standoffish. They’ll tell you “You’d be very lucky to get an interview.”

They tell you there’s a lot of competition for the job, and they’ll be sure to point out that some of the candidates have skills and talents that you don’t.

This is a mean, manipulative approach. Run away from a recruiter who tells you about your defects. You can say “If I’m such a poor candidate for this job, I can’t understand why you wasted your time contacting me in the first place!”

Plenty of people will see your talents. Don’t let anybody squash your flame!

They threaten you with expulsion from the pipeline if you won’t give in to their demands

The surest sign of a bad recruiter is a threat to drop you out of the recruiting pipeline if you don’t comply with their every wish or bow down to an employer’s every command.

We have had clients get phone calls from recruiters at nine-thirty at night. The recruiter called them and asked them to stay up and update their resume and send it to the recruiter by nine a.m. the next morning.

Our clients were told “If I don’t have you resume by nine a.m. tomorrow, I’ll go on to another candidate.”

In normal life, we’d be appropriately horrified at the idea of a stranger calling us up and demanding that we perform work for him or her. Somehow in the recruiting world, a lot of people find this concept ordinary and even acceptable.

A great question to ask in this situation is “I’m sorry, I’m confused — are you paying me for this work?”

The recruiter doesn’t make a dime unless they have candidates to place with their client organizations. You are a skilled professional. There is no reason to behave like a doormat just because you’re job-hunting.

Fear is a great motivator for some people, but not for you! You can see right thought that tacky and unethical approach.

You can say “It sounds like you have plenty of qualified candidates for this job already – I won’t take up any more of your time” and leave that recruiter in the dust.

Who knows — a more capable recruiter may call you about the same job opportunity three hours later. Won’t you be glad then that you slammed the door on the demanding recruiter?

They don’t communicate with you appropriately

The old joke about working with big consulting firms is that before you sign the deal, the partner lavishes attention on you. It’s very flattering. Who gets enough acknowledgment, after all? Almost nobody does.

When a big-shot partner at a big consulting firm is calling you and taking you out to lunch, you feel very special.

Then you sign the consulting deal and you never hear from that partner again!

If you give your resume to a recruiter because they tell you they’re going to share it with their client, also tell them these three things:

I’m sending you this resume so that you can share it with Acme Explosives in connection with their opening for a Senior Software Architect. Please confirm in writing that you will not share my resume with any other clients without my express, written permission each time.

You do not have my permission to post my resume anywhere or to share it with other branches of your firm, without my express, written permission.

My understanding is that you will share my resume with your contact at Acme Explosives this week. I know that sometimes clients don’t respond promptly, but I will need to hear from you within ten calendar days, or I will assume that Acme is not interested in me and I will close the file and be unavailable for further communication about this opportunity.

Recruiters will play hardball with you and it’s perfectly appropriate for you to keep the relationship businesslike, as well. Don’t listen to a recruiter who tells you “There are tons of people who could do this job if you don’t want it.”

That’s a bald-faced lie. Why would they waste time with you if they had so many qualified candidates?

If the client sees your resume and says “No thanks,” you’ll be sure to remind the recruiter in writing that they’ll need your permission again to send your resume to anybody else.

If the client wants to interview you and you want to go to the interview, that’s fine. After the interview, it’s the recruiter’s responsibility to get feedback from the client. Don’t sit by the phone for the weeks. If the recruiter says “I can’t help it — the employer won’t return my calls!” then show the recruiter this column.

They need to do the same thing you’re doing. They can call the client and say “Look, I know you’re busy, but my candidate Emily Bronte needs feedback after your interview with her a week ago. If I don’t hear from you by tomorrow, I’m going to close the file.”

Everybody has to step up and speak their truth in the new-millennium workplace — you, me, recruiters and all of us!

There is no room in this new talent marketplace for wimpy, sheepie job-seekers or mewly, there’s-nothing-I-can-do-about-it recruiters, either!

They propose you for a job opportunity, but they don’t value your time and effort

Recruiters work in a transactional business. It’s not easy, and it’s go, go, go all the time! A great recruiter is a lifelong career ally, and there are tons of them around.

Your assignment is to find a great recruiter partner to work with. You may have to kiss a lot of toads to find the right person.

Every good recruiter knows that there are lots of lousy recruiters around. In your interactions with the recruiters you meet, you’ll be able to tell the good ones from the bad ones without any trouble!

People who have your best interests in mind will value your time and energy. Our client Kara got an email message from a young HR person at a company where she was interviewing.

The young HR person wrote to Kara “Nancy, the manager who interviewed you, wants to talk to you again by phone to ask you a few questions she forgot to cover at your job interview.

“The only time she has available is four p.m. this coming Sunday. She will be Chuck E. Cheese hosting her daughter’s birthday party but she says that the kids will be playing and she can talk. Will that work for you?”

Kara called the recruiter who had introduced her to the organization. She said “I can’t seriously believe Nancy wants to talk to me from Chuck E. Cheese, the loudest place in the world on a Sunday afternoon. She’ll be surrounded by screaming children. That doesn’t seem right.”

The recruiter agreed. He called his client, the lady with the birthday child, and talked her into rescheduling Kara’s call for first thing Monday morning.

Kara and Nancy had a nice talk. Kara called the recruiter afterward.

“I liked Nancy when I met her two weeks ago,” said Kara. “We had a nice talk this morning. Honestly though, I’m still not sure I want to work for her.

“She had someone call me on  Friday afternoon and ask me to be available for a call on Sunday during her kid’s birthday party. She sounds like a stress case. I don’t think she knows how to manage her time. I’d love your input.”

The recruiter was very honest with Kara. “You hit the nail on the head,” he said. “If I place you in this job and you’re not  happy there, it’s not good for you, me or this company. I have some other opportunities I’ll talk to you about tomorrow or the next day. I’ll tell Nancy it’s not a good fit.”

The recruiter got Kara into a different job in the same company. It didn’t take Kara three weeks to hear the stories about how difficult it was for the people who worked in Nancy’s department. “She has no respect for personal boundaries,” people told Kara.

Kara told us “I will be forever grateful to my recruiter for backing up my instinct that working for Nancy would be a bad move on my part.”

Use your judgment, listen to your instincts and above all, speak your truth on the job-search trail!

We are an old species. We know what’s right and what isn’t — all we have to do is speak up when it matters.

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