When should Organizations NOT use Recruitment Agencies? | Why you shouldn't ask Recruiters for Career advice when Job Searching

Happy Monday everyone and hope you have a great week ahead! On this week's edition of my Newsletter:

• When should your Organization NOT be leveraging Recruitment Agencies?
• Why you shouldn't ask Recruiters for Career advice when Job Searching

When should your Organization NOT be leveraging Recruitment Agencies?

So your Organization is actively recruiting for a particular type of role and you've been considering engaging with or reaching out to a Recruitment Agency to help speed things up. Maybe you just don't have time for Recruitment yourself. Maybe your Internal Recruitment Team is up to their necks in other roles they're recruiting on. Or maybe you need help finding Candidates for a really hard-to-fill role.

Look - there could be a multitude of reasons as to why you're looking to engage with an External Recruiter for assistance - but here are some reasons why you should NOT:

• Internal Candidates. Maybe you want to consider internal Candidates first and you're in fact already interviewing some people on the inside. Complete those interviews first before deciding to engage with External Recruiters. It is a major frustration for Candidates who have been presented and interview with you externally only to be told you decided to move forward with an internal Candidate for the role. If you are indeed interviewing internal Candidates, then be transparent about it with your External partners - they will appreciate that so they can communicate realistic expectations to their Candidates as well as the Recruitment Team who will be working on your job opening.
• Getting a "feel" for what's out there. You should only be interviewing Candidates when you have an actual requisition, with budget and approvals all in place. Interviews are NOT for conducting "market research" so you can get a feel for what the Talent Market currently looks like. This is a major pet peeve for Recruitment Agencies especially who work on a contingency model: an Organization giving the impression that they are serious about hiring, only to just want to meet the Talent Pool and see what's out there. You're wasting the time of Candidates and your External Recruitment Partner will probably be cautious about working on your roles in the future. Do this multiple times and well - you know the story about "The Boy Who Cried Wolf". If you really do want to get a "feel" for what's out there, conduct your own independent research on that or discuss this very frankly with your Recruitment partners - both internal and external. They might already have some insights to share with you without having to schedule Interviews and waste the time of Candidates who are seriously looking for new opportunities.
• Your Internal Recruitment Team is also recruiting on the role. Unless they are at full capacity or are having trouble finding Candidates for the role, why engage with External Recruitment Agencies if your internal Recruitment team is already working on it and getting good traction? More often than not, this results in a duplication of efforts, debates about who approached a certain Candidate first, and an almost adversarial relationship between your Internal recruitment team and your External partners. Typically - in my experience - my Clients who do have an Internal Recruitment Team only engage with me when there is good reason for doing so and when their Internal Recruitment Team is unable to recruit on the role as its hard-to-fill or they are up to their necks in other internal requisitions. Have a frank discussion with your Internal Recruitment Team if that's the case before going External.

Hope these tips help your Organization in figuring out whether it makes sense to reach out to External Recruiters for assistance on your current or next open Job opportunity!

If you're an Organization looking to hire Tech Talent in Canada, reach out to me for more information on how I can help you find, Interview and recruit Top Candidates for your Team!?Send me a message here on LinkedIn ?or email me at [email protected]

Why you shouldn't ask Recruiters for Career advice when Job Searching

Let me clarify a bit more what I mean by this. What I'm specifically talking about here is reaching out to Recruiters for advice about some type of uncertainty you have in where you want to take your career either at present or in the near future, while at the same time attaching your Resume and asking them to consider you for current job opportunities they're recruiting on.

Reality check, folks: they're NOT going to want to assist you for any of the roles they're recruiting on - at least for now and at least until you know for sure what you want and where you want to go in your Career.

Why?

Because you just disclosed to them that you're clearly uncertain about where you want to take your Career. For external Recruiters such as myself, who charge a fee to our Clients (i.e. the Organization we're recruiting for) for our services, this would certainly be a risk. The last thing we want is to waste the time of our Clients by interviewing (or even our Clients hiring) someone who is not 100% sure about what they want and end up leaving if they realize they actually wanted to pursue the other Career path they were considering.

I get these type of emails and messages every now and then from people who are both, asking for my advice on which career path they should pursue, but at the same time also expecting me to consider them for roles I'm currently recruiting on.

Its one or the other, folks!

If you're uncertain about which direction to take in your Career, consider taking a temporary pause in your Job Search until you figure that out. Do your research, speak to others in the fields you're considering pursuing, and form your own conclusion about which you want to commit to. You should not be reaching out to Recruiters at this point. You should be figuring out what you want. After this is done and you know for sure which path you want to pursue with confidence, THAT is when you need to be commencing with your Job Search.

Know what you want and communicate it clearly and confidently to Recruiters!

Have a job search related question you'd like my perspective on? Join me every week on Wednesdays at 11AM ET right here on LinkedIn for my weekly Live Stream and ask me your questions in the comments during the Stream - see you later this week!

That's all for this week folks - see you next time!

Dean Kulaweera - IT Recruiter | Director, Recruitment & Sales |?Tech Recruiters 360

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