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Freelance 101: About contract agencies and recruiters
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LinkedIn, industry blogs, and job search support groups are abuzz with stories of frustrations with contract/temp agency recruiters. How do you get past the frustration of the tricky and often capricious business of working with recruiters? Let’s take a general look at what an agency’s basic job placement situation can be.
The agency’s clients (employers) pay the fees when a candidate is placed, so keeping the client is essential. A recruiter needs to form and maintain relationships with clients of all kinds - those who are specific in their expectations and those who toss out terse and incomplete job requests. A client contact might be an HR rep or a hiring manager, so the information given in the job request varies in quality. Some clients delay in responding, reviewing candidates, and deciding, while others jump at the first candidate that looks good. Many clients postpone open job requests or cancel them altogether, while others simply disappear (no phone calls or emails). Many clients work with several agencies and don’t contact the recruiter whose candidate didn’t “win” the job.
The rules, processes, and environment that recruiters work in also control the candidate experience. Agencies have the whole HR and payroll function to handle for existing hires. If recruiters are pushed to high contact and placement quotas, relationships with candidates often suffer or are nonexistent. If the recruiter’s agency grabs listings from others and tries to place candidates in those jobs, it’s a numbers game only. Recruiters can be pressed to prioritize mining references from candidates to generate new client leads. Candidates may be rough-screened and entered into a database so that the agency can boast a huge ‘stable’ of talent, and never even ‘meet’ a recruiter at all.
This often leaves work-seeking candidates feeling like the lowest priority, and given the current economic climate and agencies’ need to compete for a smaller market share of available job requests, this can be true. Many candidates respond to posted job requests (huge resume piles), many resumes are hard to absorb, many candidates aren’t qualified, and others fall outside strange parameters the client sets, fair or not.
But not always! The most thoughtful, thorough, and relationship-oriented recruiter manage quotas, client issues & rules, and still focus on building candidate relationships. This can be through minimal in-person, some phone, and frequent email contact. They do screen carefully, ask for interview feedback from both candidates and clients, and keep the candidate relationship strong in hopes of having a solid core of skilled talent remain accessible to them. They network, share advice, and do their best.
See Directgov for information on Employment Agency Rules.
Questions? Contact L.J. at ljbnomad@gmail.com.
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