Aren't video game recruiters annoying?

“No agencies please”

A common, and for the most part. An understandable battle cry for internal recruitment teams.

I should know, I ran one or two for a while.

I've had more pitches than a campsite.

But the disdain is something I’ve already experienced in video game recruitment.

From both companies and people working in it.

Because most of them have had shit experiences with recruiters.

And you know what, fair enough.

So what is an agency recruiter anyway?

Basically, we find candidates for our clients. Like an Internal Recruiter or HR person, just with less job security and more self-loathing.

"Well at least I don't have KPI's based on CV's sent"

If you don’t have much to your skillset other than being able to talk to people and use a computer, you can probably get your first job in it too. 

Why?

Because it’s actually not that hard if you do it properly.

How do I know this?

*cue flashback*

I left school at 18 with no real grades (or clue) and after bouncing around a few call centres (which I excelled in, yay for being an extrovert) I fell into recruitment.

That’s what you get for signing up to a high street agency and making the director laugh. Hired on the spot.

*end flashback and cue years of cynicism*

It’s a job with a low barrier to entry and overwhelmingly good commission but with a poor basic salary. That’s to motivate you to do “a great job”.

In fact, all it does is foster a sense of desperation to make enough money to do fun things in life, or in some cases just try and make ends meet.

Combine this with the fact that for the most part, it’s a job that works on a contingency basis. (Which means if you don’t fill a client's role. They don’t pay you a thing.)

You get a majority of recruiters who want to fill jobs as quickly as possible, so they can move onto the next job. In a never-ending chase for more money.

As a result of this, the quality of service to candidates and clients alike takes a huge hit.

All in a misguided chase for more commission.

Oh and as a nice bonus, it tars everyone with the same brush.

Yes I know.

"nOt aLl rEcRuiTeRs"

Ok, what's commission?

So let’s say I approach you about a job, it’s paying you ￡50,000 (because I’m British and don’t want to google the exchange rate) if all goes well and the client hires you, my agency gets a percentage fee based on your salary.

So say I’d agreed to terms of 20% with a client I would be paid a fee of ￡10,000 based on your ￡50,000 salary.

That’s money that DOESN’T come from your salary, it comes from the client's hiring budget.

So in terms of dough, it’s in a recruiter's interest to get you as much money as possible because that in turn, gets them more money.

But often in the chase for this money, there is often a drop in quality of service.

"Magaluf here I come!"

So how does this quality of service get affected?

So let’s look at the whole process.

Any bog-standard agency process once terms are signed with a client should go something like this.

- Take a client brief on the role. If applicable, take the time to question them about the industry. Knowledge is power after all. 

- Advertise the job online.

- Search for candidates on job boards and LinkedIn

- Speak to these candidates and find out what makes them tick, and what they’re looking for. 

- If your job fits with that, pitch it to them. 

- Submit them to the client. (Once the candidate has confirmed though, don’t punt a GDPR violation) 

- Arrange interviews after the client has screened them.

- Make the offer of employment when the client has decided who they want after the interview.

- Feedback to the unsuccessful candidates, after all, you may be able to work together in the future or at least help them look at where they didn’t fit in the role and adjust for next time.

- Ride off into the sunset on feelings of self-worth holding a big bag of money.

What a lot of short term “money-hungry” recruiters will find wrong with this is that it depends on large investments of time for the areas that can actually give them opportunities for quality service.

You know, actually talking to candidates, taking proper briefs, and covering all the bases.

But by ignoring or not devoting time to these parts of the process, all it does is show a fundamental lack of long term strategic thinking. (and make them look a bit of an arse)

These recruiters either lose themselves in the myth that if they aren’t pelting CV’s at the client every second, what they’re doing won’t make them any money. Or their boss is lost in that myth and is beating them with a proverbial stick in which case idk, find a better agency to work for.

So they end up in a routine like this.

- Get a job description for the role.

- Paste the exact job description online.

- Write a status on LinkedIn that you’re “delighted to announce that you’re working on an exciting opportunity with a client”

-Search the job title and a few key skills, download the first 40 CVs you find. 

- Calculate the commission you could make and start looking at everything you can buy/pay off online.

- Send the link to your colleagues who will like the status. (Extra points if it’s only your agency colleagues and your mum who like it)

- Wonder why you have no candidates.

- Panic.

- Assure your boss you’re “all over it”.

- Actually, read the job description.

- Take the job title from it and paste it into LinkedIn/Job board search.

- Message every single candidate about the job. Copy & Paste the message to make it faster

- Hope someone bites back.

- Once you get some CV’s send every single one of them immediately to the client and cross your fingers.

- Don't give feedback to the unsuccessful candidates because you need to find other people to punt at the client.

"I've tried the bare minimum, what the hell do I do now?"

It’s the recruitment equivalent of working hard and stupid, rather than smart and profitable.

By wasting time in this way, not only are they being ineffective for the client.

They’re pissing off the candidates too.

It’s glorified keyword matching on a cv, with no time taken to learn the industry or put the effort into the process.

So why are they treating me so badly?

Honestly? 80% of it is probably because they’re overstretched and fear giving bad news. The rest is probably poor training.

Getting rejected from a job is statistically more likely than getting it.

So when you have a shortlist of say 8 candidates at the first stage interview and they all get rejected. Now times that by about 7-14+ jobs.

Ego’s get bruised, tears shed and the recruiter gets frustrated. So they desperately go out to find more candidates.

They may or may not have had feedback from the client, and they may or may not give some form of rejection to candidates.

In their mind, the “failed” candidate is no more use to them, so why bother putting time into the relationship? (They’ll find out when that candidate is a hiring manager or perfect candidate one day)

They don’t want to be the bearer of bad news, out of fear.

You just know this dog blocks peoples email rather than using an auto mailer.

But if you can’t handle giving people the respect to tell them the outcome of their recruitment, you shouldn’t be in it.

It’s the wrong mindset and comes down to a lack of strategic, long-term thinking.

After all, if you’re a prospective candidate or client reading this, you’ll know you aren’t stupid, you all talk to each other, you remember things, and when a role comes up that you ARE perfect for and WOULD take or could do with some support for. 

And you sure as hell won’t work with a recruiter that treated you badly, would you?

Because I can guarantee that 90% of you reading this have had a bad experience with a recruiter AND told a colleague in the industry about it.

So for recruiters, we need to wake up and realise that the chances of making a sale actually increase when you take time to do quality work treating candidates like people.

Aside from being the morally right thing to do, it’s also the best play financially.

It’s just sad that it takes many of them the realisation of “more nice = more money” than you know.

Just doing it.

Why are you telling us this?

I’ve been in games recruitment for a little while now, and honestly. I love the industry, it’s end products and its people. 

So it’s a natural fit. 

"I even did a Blender tutorial for doughnuts so you should totally use me as your recruiter. Haha kidding. Unless...?"

But after having been in both Internal Recruitment and also helping to run a copywriting and social media agency for a while, I had a bit of a culture shock coming back to the agency world.

I've had Clients speaking with me who had been burned by agencies in the past, candidates who’d been “done over” or even a mix of the two groups outright refusing to deal with me JUST because I was an agent even though they didn’t know who I was or how I worked.

“Bad recruiters” is a topic that can be talked about until the cows come home.

So by adding some context, perhaps it can help you work out who the ones you’d want to work with are.

So how do I tell the good ones?

I mean, you’ll probably know.

But look for the ones that listen to you, that take the time to do the little things like giving feedback after an interview, that do the proper fact-finding and learning about the industry if you’re on a call as a client and aren’t ramming a sales pitch down your throat every 3 seconds.

In short, don’t look for a recruiter who can be a human being.

Look for a human being who can recruit.

There's tons out there.

And at least one eye liner wearing Knight.