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Freelance 101: What you should offer for contract agency recruiters
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As freelancers and contractors, everyone is potentially a client. Often we work with contract, employment, and/or temp agencies to get jobs with clients, and the key for standing out and getting the best recruiter/freelancer experience is to remember that your agency and recruiter is also your client. This means that you need to focus as much attention and detail on learning and fulfilling your recruiters’ needs so that you get into the reliable pool of talent your recruiters rely on first.
Essentially, you need to choose, develop, and maintain healthy professional relationships wit a few recruiters who you personally find responsive, helpful, accessible, and productive on your behalf. Determine if you prefer more in-person/phone contact, or if mostly email might be fine. Determine how frequently you need to have/give contact, what form, and what response, and base your own pool of recruiter talent on that. Then keep maintaining those important client relationships the way do your freelance clients and any boss at a contract assignment.
DO:
- Research and get to know the agencies you plan to work with. Check out GlassDoor and Yelp, for instance. Find out what your peers and friends say. Prepare a full, detailed resume for the agency that has all the fleshed out information they need for the past 10 years of your work and education experience. Offer this when asked so they have it for their records.
- Prepare a 1-page modified resume that the recruiter can read and scan quickly to get you in the door.
- Have an Objective area at the top of your resume that lists 6-8 job titles you can fill with your expertise, a skills section also near the top, and a short list of successful projects/clients that highlight recent accomplishments.
- Prepare a 1-page Employment Considerations sheet that the recruiter can add to your file with your work environment, salary range, skills, schedule, commute, and other work preferences on it.
- Be prepared to have an agency-specific resume without your contact information that states “represented by XYZ Agency”.
- In every contact with your recruiter, emphasize your solution-creating abilities so you can be selected as the person who gets the job done.
- Be accessible by phone and email during extended business hours – 7:30am-5:30pm, for those recruiter messages/calls.
- Be open to varying types of contracts as you build the relationship – be a go-to candidate.
- Check in with your recruiters periodically: every could pf weeks while looking, and every quarter while employed (to keep the relationship open).
- Let your recruiters know when you have added new skills, education, and job experiences.
- Just communicate in a “hello, how are you” way once in awhile, especially when do don’t want something.
- Communicate industry events and networking opportunities once in awhile so your recruiter knows you are a pipeline.
- When you do an interview with the client, call your recruiter to discuss how it went and what else you can do to ace the gig.
DON’T:
- Rely on one recruiter or agency Pit agencies or recruiters against each other in a contract “bidding war”.
- Disappear on your recruiters – notify when you get a contract lasting more than a week, when you are going on vacation, when you are sick, etc.
- Forget that your relationship with your recruiter comes before your relationship with the agency’s client – contact your recruiter for all issues, because you are representing the agency.
- Forget to report to your recruiter on all client transactions, before, during, and within 6 months after a contract assignment.
- Provide incomplete and vague information – your resume and information should all be targeted to selling you as a top problem-solving candidate.
- Give a recruiter more than 3 references or so, especially if you sense data mining is going on.
- Say you have skills and experience you really can’t live up to in the first days of a contract.
- Overcommunicate with your recruiters by calling every few days, sending lots of emails, or responding to job requests you aren’t qualified for, Stay with a recruiter relationship that is souring or fading (lack of recruiter contact).
- Stay with an agency/recruiter that markets you to a client without your specific knowledge and approval.
- Accept any issues in your compensation, benefits, signing contracts, etc. that shortchange or concern you.
Your agencies and recruiters are as much your top clients as is the boss in a contract or the person you do freelance work with. Keep them in the loop, provide the professional go-to information they need to represent you, and do your part to make their jobs easier and your relationship more reliable.
Questions? Contact L.J. at ljbnomad@gmail.com.
