What Your Recruiter Isn’t Telling You | And Why That’s Great News for You

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Why won’t you just tell me the name of the company?

We get this one quite a bit, especially with lower or mid-level searches (90k-150k salary levels, or around 3 to 10 years of experience, depending on the function and industry).  So what’s the deal?  Why won’t you tell me who you’re working for?

Well, to start, we don’t work for the company.  Recruiters work WITH their clients, and that’s an important distinction.  When we contact candidates about opportunities but are hesitant to disclose the name of the company there can be a variety of reasons.  The most common is that many job-seekers don’t recognize the value of recruiters, and would rather go around this step in the process and apply to the company directly.  In reality, nobody wins when this happens.  Hiring managers and HR teams are swamped daily with applicants for open positions, sometimes relevant, sometimes not.  Sifting through resumes isn’t their only job, either.  Even for HR professionals, screening resumes for a particular role can take as little as 5% of their daily time.  When applicants apply directly they are rolling the dice and hoping that their resume will get the full consideration it deserves. Unfortunately, this rarely happens. It’s more likely that the resume will get a glance, at best, from an overworked hiring authority or HR team member and will not be given a thorough evaluation.  HR professionals and hiring managers rely heavily on recruiters to help them screen candidates, and they’ve given full license to trusted recruiters to evaluate candidates’ backgrounds before putting them through, effectively removing the hardest step in their hiring process.  When you apply directly to companies the recruiter doesn’t get paid and you may not get hired.  In the end the recruiter will miss out on a bit of commission, but you could be missing out on a competitive annual salary, which means you have considerably more to lose at the end of the day.

But you’re just a recruiter!
How could you understand the complexities of what I do?

Good question, but do you really think an HR administrator has a better idea of this job?  Consider this: HR professionals constantly juggle hundreds of resumes, on top of their many other functions, and are more often than not trying to screen out candidates.  He or she can’t possibly understand the complexities of the kind of role you fill.  The recruiter, on the other hand, is far more specialized, and more than likely works closely in your niche, speaks to professionals with a similar background day in and day out, and has direct instructions from managers on what to screen for. In fact, a recruiter’s mentality is to always find ways that he or she can screen candidates in. And, to top it off, the recruiter can get your resume under a hiring manager’s eyes directly, and in very little time.

But I’m trustworthy, I won’t go around you!
So why have you still not told me who the client is?

Beyond the issue raised above, there can be a multitude of other reasons.  For example, the company might not want you to disclose that they are hiring.   They may be planning on replacing someone and don’t want it to somehow get back to that person (a sad, but sometimes true reality).  Or maybe they had recently had layoffs and weren’t planning on bringing the previous employee back. There can be a variety of factors at play, none of which have to do with intentional deception.

Ok, fine, just go ahead and submit me.

When a candidate asks a recruiter to simply submit his or her resume, without knowing anything about each other, it’s really asking for trouble.  Why would you trust a recruiter to represent you to a potential employer without knowing anything about who that recruiter is, how they operate, or whether they will showcase you properly?  You wouldn’t trust a stranger on the street to watch your kids, so why would you trust a stranger who calls on the phone with your reputation?  On the flip side, the recruiter has worked extremely hard to provide real value to their client.  The last thing he or she wants is to jeopardize that by representing someone who could potentially hurt their standing with a client.  They have an obligation to fully vet candidates before sending them to the client. It’s a candidate driven market but at the end of the day clients are the ones who pay the bills, not job seekers.

How Can ABA Search Positively Impact Your Job Search Process?

At ABA Search we combine specialized recruiting expertise, clear communication, and personalized service to help job seekers land the employment opportunity they deserve.

For us, it’s all about the people. Contact our team of experienced legal and technology recruiting experts to learn more about the benefits of partnering with our expert team of recruiters when searching for employment.

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