How to Help the Recruiter Help You; Part 2
08.20.2021 | Blog
Hello, readers!
In part one, I taught you how recruiters scour our various sources and forage for the ones we feel have the greatest potential as well as how to make your resume a stand out among others. For this second part I will let you how to best communicate with not only us recruiters but also our clients, in the event you are selected for an interview.
For Whom the Recruiter Calls? They Call…for Thee!
After searching and trying to contact a prospect, the next step for recruiters is a screening, which we usually do via phone or video calls. The advice in this section helps us smooth out the screening and introducing jobs to you so that we can quickly get to know you and submit you for any position you are interested in.
To that end, my first piece of advice is to be responsive and attentive to calls and emails. When a recruiter leaves a communication for you, contact them back, even if you are not interested in their services. Admittedly, this is something I as a job seeker was guilty of; however, I now feel the other side of not receiving responses from candidates. No response means we will try contacting again, but an affirmative “yes” or “no” potentially saves time and worry for both us and the candidate. Even after initial contact, recruiters will follow up again when there are available opportunities for a candidate. So being attentive to your email, phone, and professional social media is important in quickly connecting you with the opportunities we have available.
When you do respond to a recruiter, another thing I would ask is to please be polite. We recruiters are human, as are the candidates we contact. This means we understand frustration and bad days. Having said that, being mean to us does not give us a good feeling about you as a candidate. I have already experienced rudeness from a candidate twice, both for a general candidate and one that applied to a position I had posted. The former rebuffed me very rudely as he let out his frustrations upon me, while the later was upset about not being able to receive a $100K salary for job that listed pay up to $75K. Recruiters do not work for candidates, but for our clients. However, we do work with candidates. If you are not the type of candidate we want to work with, we will not be contacting you for any of our positions in the future.
The next piece of advice I have is to be honest about your skills, experience, and expectations. Part of our job as go-betweens for candidate and client is the passing of information from screenings and discussions with candidates to our clients. For each job we send a candidate’s resume to, we write a short introduction about the jobseeker based on the resume and our communications with them. The purpose of these discussions is to get to know the you who is not on the paper, to tell our clients what the resume simply cannot. So, we place a lot of trust in candidates to give us truthful information about themselves and thoughts about the jobs we introduce to them. If you are not honest with what you can bring to the table for our clients and get found out, it could potentially harm our relationships with our client, and we will not be able to continue working with you as a candidate.
The last, but most important, piece of advice for this section is to be patient throughout the process. From screenings with us to interviewing and hiring for some companies can be notoriously long. After submitting a candidate’s resume and introduction for one position, we can be waiting for as long as 2 or 3 weeks to have any update for the candidate. An interview between client and candidate could be scheduled the following week, with another 2 or more weeks for waiting for a decision or offer for the candidate to be made. This of course depends on various factors, such as how busy the client company is, how urgent the opening is, and how many people on the company side need to ok the candidate to be hired. This is one reason we usually recommend more than one position to a jobseeker whenever we can. For you as the candidate, this means needing to play the waiting game a lot, especially if you are applying for multiple positions.
It's Dangerous to Go Alone. Take These (Interview Tips)!
After a we submit your introduction and resume to a client and they are interested, we will set up the interview at both your and our client’s earliest convenience. After the interview, we await the client’s feedback as to whether or not they would like to hire you, or schedule a second interview. In this section, I will tell you how you can best present yourself to the client, which helps us by showing the client that we selected a good candidate for their position. Showing your best to the client also gives us a good grounding for any offer negotiations prior to you accepting employment.
The first thing to remember when interacting with a client is to be punctual when going to your interview. It is always good to show up five or so minutes early, whether it is onsite or a scheduled meeting via a service like Skype or Zoom. This not only gives you some time to mentally prepare but also shows that you respect the clients’ time. The interview is often the first time that candidates will have direct face time with clients, and first impressions are important. If there are any issues with you arriving on time, let the recruiter know as soon as you can so that we can either inform the client of the delay or reschedule the interview entirely, if need be. Otherwise, you risk seeming like you don’t value the time of others, and your prospective employer may not have a great first impression of you.
Another key aspect of meeting our clients is to be professional and personable in how you present yourself. It is always safer to dress your best for an interview. A suit is always an excellent option, but a dressy button-up top with professional bottoms and shoes is better than a t-shirt with jeans and sneakers. Showing that you put effort into your appearance shows that you are taking the interview, position, and the client’s time seriously. Also, being open to making small talk and asking general things about the interviewer shows that you can keep cool and respectful while being nervous. It also expresses an interest for others and good people skills.
Another good idea is to be thoughtful of the interviewer and their time. Being aware of how long and how much time you talk is always good idea. Gage the person interviewing you while you speak to see if you are talking too long or not long enough. Always ask questions about the company and position. Show off your knowledge and skills that apply to the job. Some interviewers actually want to feel like they are being interviewed and like to see the candidate take the reins and lead the verbal exchange for part of the time. Also, sending a thank you letter or email is a good way to respectfully follow up with the interviewer and show that you ware still interested in the position. We recruiters are always happy to help by passing these along to our clients.
For more advice about how to shine at your interviews, we have this article on website,
A Little Review Never Hurt Nobody.
I know that these two articles have been a huge infodump of general tidbits about what recruiters do and what you can expect as a candidate. So, let’s review.
Recruiters search and look through resume’s every day for the best candidates for our clients’ open positions to. After finding good candidates, we contact them to screen and hopefully introduce positions. After the candidate expresses their interest, we submit their resumes for any and all available positions. From that point, we act as the go-betweens for the candidate and the client.
In order to best help us in the search, it is good for you, the candidate, to have your resume to be up to date, thorough, concise, as well as you to be knowledgeable about your realistic prospects. While communicating with recruiters, your being responsive, polite, honest, and patient helps us get you applied for the best positions. If you have a chance to interview with our clients, punctuality, professionalism, personability and thoughtfulness go a long way to giving our client the best impression of you for us to work with for negotiating a job offer.
Our job board is updated no less than ones a week, so feel free to check it out if you are interested. We are always happy to answer questions about our positions or general topics for job searching. Don’t be afraid to shoot us a message at the below links.
Thank you so much for reading!
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