Scott the Insurance Recruiter: Five Biggest Problems Encountered When Working With a Recruiter

Good morning! I apologize for not having a post out last week, I took half of the short week to celebrate my daughter’s and my own birthday and to go out and get a new puppy for the family. If you haven’t seen him – meet Spot!

A very happy birthday to Ava and Me!

In case you haven’t followed my growing family – the current tally is five – Ava (5yrs), Mia (2.5 years), Kai (2 months), Scout (Cat) and Spot (puppy). As you can imagine, coming to work is a welcome break most days.

Yesterday, I had a candidate of mine experience a really awful situation working with a competing recruiter. I’m not going to go into details about what happened but know that it was really upsetting to her and really troubling to me as any bad actions of recruiters reflects poorly on the industry in general and on me. So… today I’m going to talk about some of the common problems people have with recruiters and give some advice about how to deal with it.

Before we get started though let me say that recruiting is like any other industry. A vast majority are ethical, hard-working people that are serious about helping people with their careers. I’ll be honest – I do it for the money - I have to pay for that new puppy’s food – but I also really enjoy helping people. Specifically, I like when I can help someone achieve a goal or improve their situation. I honestly believe that most of my brethren feel the same way. But just like in any industry there is the minority. These people lie, misrepresent are unethical and have the ability to hijack your career. I’ve written a little about this before and you can read it at the link below:

Five Things You Need to Know When Working With a Recruiter

Now that you’ve done your background reading, below are five of the biggest problems encountered when working with a recruiter. At the end I’ll give one other bonus tip – how to fire your recruiter.

1. Recruiter Sends Out Your Resume without telling you

This is a really touchy subject and something that I’m pretty passionate about. When you are in a job search you are the driver – period – end of story. So, why should someone else arbitrarily decide that you should apply for something? There are some recruiters out there that get overexcited about a job order and are so sure that there is a perfect fit that they immediately send out a candidate’s resume without checking with the candidate. This is wrong – you have a right to know where your resume goes and the right to decline something. There are a whole host of reasons why but here are a couple of things that could happen if this occurs. You (the candidate) can look stupid because:

You have already accepted a job
You have already applied or are already interviewing with the company
You know someone personally there
Your boss knows someone personally there
You aren’t interested in the company and have to decline an interview

All of these things can and should be avoided.

What do you do?

At the end of the day you can’t totally protect this from happening. Also, please know that I don’t think that people do this with malicious intent – I think that it is more out of naïve excitement. However, the easiest way to protect yourself is to do two things. First, set the expectation with the recruiter that you want to be approached about anything before your resume is sent out – listen to the response. If you don’t like it then suggest that the two of you shouldn’t do business together. The second suggestion makes some uncomfortable. Protect yourself by sharing everywhere you have already applied and places that you aren’t interested in. This won’t stop your resume from being sent out but at least gives you a little more control.

2. Recruiter Doesn’t Listen to You

Last week I went out to by a new iPad for my birthday. I knew exactly what I wanted – a 32G 4G model from AT&T. I went to Target and told the clerk what I was looking for. They were out of stock. He then tried to get me to pick another model. I told him I wasn’t interested and then he ignored my comment and went on to tell me the benefits of a Wi-Fi only one. He kept going long enough that I just finally walked away as one of the kids was screaming – it was convenient. I had the ability to do this because iPads are in supply and I could go to several other stores. While there are certainly other recruiters out there, there is most definitely a finite amount of jobs available right now. Some recruiters refuse to listen to what you want and instead bring you sales jobs when you want service and vice versa.

What do you do?

Be very clear about what you want. Remember that most good recruiters talk to hundreds of people a month. Give them the benefit of the doubt if they slip up and bring you wrong thing and gently remind them of what you are really looking for. However, some will become rude and try to push you into interviewing – this is probably when you need to show them the door. Now – this doesn’t’ mean that a good recruiter shouldn’t challenge your thinking. In fact, I believe that they should make you aware of all opportunities that are close even if they aren’t a perfect match – the key is in how they approach you about it.

3. Changes your Resume

This is something that blows me away. There are some recruiters out there that will change someone’s resume making it more attractive – and I’m not talking about formatting. They will change dates, change titles and even add job duties. To me this is pretty clear cut and is wrong. Please know that there are some acceptable areas where someone can change a resume. They can put it in Word format so that it send easier. They can also take out your contact information to protect themselves. This is acceptable as it doesn’t misrepresent you in some way.

What do you do?

I’ll be honest I don’t have an answer for this one. Unethical people will do unethical things. You just need to be aware of it and call them out on it if it ever occurs. To me this is probably a deal breaker and good cause to end the relationship as well.

4. Misrepresents the Job you are interviewing for

Before we throw all recruiters under the bus, I think that it is important to know that miscommunication is a pretty common occurrence in this world. It is not uncommon for a company to tell a recruiter aspects about a job only to have it change. This can include job duties, salary, title and really anything. Similarly, I’ve had people interview for one job only to have the interview morph into a job interview for a different position that the company feels is a better fit. Nevertheless, there are situations where the recruiter lies to get you to interview and you only find out about it when you make a statement about the position and are corrected in the interview. This sucks…

What do you do?

Talk to the recruiter about it and gauge their response. Some will be very apologetic and sincere – unless they also do Community Theater you will know if they are surprised as well. If they aren’t surprised or apologetic – you probably need to look at them with suspicion in the future.

5. Recruiter Doesn’t Call You Back

I’ll be honest – I don’t always call people back. I try my best but it happens. Occasionally I’ll forget to write down a message or get interrupted mid dial. Remember that recruiters are people too and not infallible job hunting robots. However, there are others that refuse to call back no matter how many times you call.

What do you do?

On the list of evils committed by recruiters this is one that is lower on the list compared to the others but is probably the number one complaint of candidates. The reason why – its rude. It’s also unavoidable – you need to understand that it will happen. So – if you aren’t getting a response you need to create a plan of action. Decide that you will only follow up at regular intervals (twice a week, every other day, etc.) – more importantly follow up with email. You should also remember a couple of things:

· A 24 hour turnaround is nice – but a couple of days in not out of the question

· As someone that calls people for a living I’ve noticed a phenomena that I’ll call the stalker rule. The greater the frequency and volume of unanswered calls decreases the chance of a response. What this means is that calling someone over and over again will probably not help your cause – the squeaky wheel doesn’t’ always get the oil here

Conclusion – Should I fire my recruiter? How do I do it?

Let me start by saying that I don’t think you should fire a recruiter unless they really hurt your career chances. To me this is limiting. Look at it this way. I’ll be the first to tell you that I don’t have every terrific job in every market with every company. There are companies that won’t work with me or vice versa. Secondly, I love shopping at Target – it’s a clean, cool store with nice quality products. I hate shopping at Wal-Mart – but you know what if something is cheaper there or if they carry a product I can’t get at Target I’ll most definitely go there. The same is true about recruiters. Just because you don’t like them or necessarily trust them doesn’t mean you shouldn’t take advantage of them to achieve your goals. So my suggestion is that you set clear expectations with recruiters about what you want and only take drastic action when you feel like the person is hurting you career – don’t burn the bridge unless you have to.

If you do need to do so I recommend sending an email that you save for documentation. Keep it short and sweet and state the following: