Job-Seekers and Recruiters: Understanding and Gaining Commitment

At its best, the recruiter/job-seeker relationship is a natural alliance, with the job-seeker on the one hand looking to find their next position, and the recruiter on the other who works to match the job-seeker to the right opportunity, and successfully navigate them through the selection process.

However, in many cases what should be a symbiotic relationship becomes strained and the outcome for all parties can be fruitless and frustrating. Why is this? I believe that one of the key factors is commitment: a lack of it on the part of jobseeker, recruiter, or both, and a lack of understanding between the parties about what level of commitment is expected, offered and available.

"There's a difference between interest and commitment. When you're interested in doing something, you do it only when it's convenient. When you're committed to doing something, you accept no excuses; only results." ~ Kenneth Blanchard

You don’t have to search hard on LinkedIn to find complaints from recruiters about job-seekers pulling out of interviews or turning down offers, and complaints from job-seekers about recruiters that do not offer feedback and don’t return calls. Such ill feeling can be avoided well before this juncture is reached by both parties examining what’s important to themselves and each other and whether, in fact, they are committed to investing the time and effort in to getting a good result.

Job-Seekers

Job hunting can be a stressful and complex business, particularly when the chips are down and there are bills to pay. Engaging with recruiters can seem like a great solution, and often is, but only if the recruiter commits to the cause. Often they won’t, or can’t and this leads to a gulf in expectations. So how can this be avoided?

A scattergun approach of contacting as many recruiters and applying for as many jobs as possible on a ‘more the merrier’ basis might seem like sound logic, but it’s not. It’s far better to be discerning, do a bit of due diligence and pick out a small number of recruiters who specialise in your field, and invest your time and energy in to building a relationship of mutual commitment with them.  

Why? Because firstly not every recruiter is qualified to help you and secondly because good recruiters assess every situation on their chances of achieving a positive outcome and two key considerations within that are whether you have a skillset that they experience demand for, and whether or not they are the 14th agency this morning that you have contacted. It’s not because recruiters fear competition, it’s just a simple fact that the percentage chance of reaching a successful outcome reduces as the number parties involved increases. The commitment (or otherwise) that you receive from a recruiter will stem directly from this assessment. This may seem calculating or even cynical but the truth is that any successful business leader will tell you that you concentrate your efforts on the areas where you predict the best chance of a return.

As such, it’s important to pick the right recruiters to work with. Do they specialise in your line of work? Is their website professional and advertising the right kind of vacancies for you? What about their LinkedIn profile? Are they credible? Finally, when you choose to pick up the phone, are they able to speak knowledgeably about your sector? What are they saying they will do for you? If you choose to register your CV with a recruiter, you should be very clear on what they are committing to do for you, and in what timeframe. This will help to prevent that gulf in expectation forming. Finding the right recruiter who understands you, your market, what you are looking for, has the contacts in the industry to help and is willing to leverage these contacts for your benefit, can be your passport to your next job.

Remember though that commitment works both ways, it has to be earned as well as offered. So in order to gain the commitment of your chosen recruiter, you are going to have to convince them that you are clear in your mind about the sort of opportunity that you are looking for. Recruiters don’t like uncertainty, because ‘moving parts’ lead to interview drop outs and offers rejected. A good recruiter will try to reduce these moving parts by asking you lots of questions. Your commitment to the process is that you should be prepared to answer them. Recruiters want to empathise, they want to put themselves in your shoes because this helps them to put opportunities in front of you that you are likely to accept. Achieving this requires information, and lots of it.

Conversely. if a recruiter fails to respond to your phone call or email, if they are unable to convince you of their ability to help you or are vague on what exactly they will do for you, or if they just don’t make much attempt to find out about you and your situation and what you are really looking for, then the chances are that you don’t have their commitment, so you should draw a line and move on. Doing so will save you time and heart-ache later down the line. Your best chance of getting a good result with a recruiter therefore is to:

-         Work with a small number of companies that genuinely specialise in what you do.

-         Make sure that the recruiter knows exactly what sort of an opportunity you are looking for and what sort of offer you are likely to accept.

-         Offer the recruiter the time and attention that they need in order to fully appreciate your situation and requirements.

-         Ensure you fully understand what the recruiter is going to do for you, and when.

Recruiters

Every recruiter has been in a situation where they have seen a fantastic profile that looks perfect for a vacancy that they are working on, but the candidate just doesn’t respond to the numerous attempts to contact them. Worse, if contact and a subsequent application is made, the job seeker ends up changing their mind either at point of interview or (worst of all), post-offer and acceptance.  Here it is the recruiter that wants to commit, because they can clearly see a successful outcome, but the breakdown comes from the lack of commitment from the job-seeker.

This isn’t a criticism of the job-seeker, because ultimately you can’t make someone more committed than they want or need to be…maybe they just aren’t that interested in the opportunity in question, or they just aren’t quite at that point in their current employment where they are ready to take the plunge. The trick here is for the recruiter to read the signs early and not allow the process to develop to an unsatisfactory conclusion.  It’s difficult, because it’s all too tempting to give an uncommitted job-seeker the benefit of the doubt in the hopes that it will all come good in the end. But it rarely does, leaving the recruiter, end client/hirer and often the job-seeker themselves unhappy.

If you leave a professional answer machine message and a well-crafted email explaining your interest in getting in touch, and the job-seeker doesn’t return your call or email, then I would generally consider this to be an uncommitted candidate and move on, however good the CV or profile might be. There’s no point in wasting time and energy constantly pursuing a person that doesn’t want to be pursued. Of course it’s worth noting that the job seeker may be very committed to finding a new position, they just might not be committed to you, either because they have relationships in place with other recruiters, or you just haven’t done enough to convince them that you are worth talking to.

Taking the time to really get to know the job-seeker, to understand their situation, personality, motivation and drivers is also essential. Usually if this has been done thoroughly, the truth of whether the job-seeker is likely be interested in a particular opportunity will become self-evident because the recruiter’s sense of empathy will allow them to make that judgement. In my own experience, trying to ‘sell’ an opportunity to a job-seeker is not an effective strategy…if you are having to try too hard then it’s unlikely that the opportunity will develop to a successful conclusion. The process should be to understand the job-seeker’s interests and drivers, and to then match the relevant aspects of the opportunity to those drivers and let the job-seeker do the rest. This is a far better way of generating commitment than trying to twist the job-seeker’s arm.

A job-seeker’s commitment can be explored by asking about availability to attend interviews, and whether they are prepared to re-jig their CV to make it a stronger match for the opportunity being discussed. You should only be prepared to make an application if feel you have the candidate’s full commitment. Are they giving it to you? If not, move on to someone that will.

Conclusion

Recruitment as an industry is all about people and relationships, but it’s commitment that underpins any successful relationship in business and it’s commitment that can turn the possibility of a successful outcome in to probability. In short, if job-seeker and recruiter understand and trust in what the other party is ready and able to do, then an equality in commitment is far more likely to be achieved, which in turn brings that successful outcome a step nearer. Where that equality is absent, it doesn’t necessarily mean that you are at the end of the road, but you should modify your expectations accordingly and focus on those relationships where there is more synergy…and commitment!