Recruiters Don’t Work for You: Understanding the Reality of the Recruiter-Candidate Relationship

Key Takeaways

• Recruiters work for employers, not job seekers.
• Recruiters can be valuable, but they should be one part of an executive job search.
• Executives need their own strategy for networking, target companies, positioning, interviewing, and career transition.

If you’re looking for a new job, there’s a good chance someone has already told you to “work with recruiters.”

That sounds like good advice. After all, recruiters have relationships with employers, know about jobs that may never be posted publicly, and can potentially put your résumé directly in front of a hiring manager.

However, there is a fundamental misunderstanding that causes many job seekers to become frustrated with recruiters: The recruiter does not work for you. The recruiter works for the employer.

Understanding that distinction is important if you want to use recruiters effectively during an executive job search or career transition.

I know this because I spent years in the recruiting business and understand the process from the inside. Over the past 15-plus years, I've also helped thousands of professionals successfully target, interact with, and navigate the recruiting process. I've seen candidates misunderstand the recruiter's role, share information they probably shouldn't, and the amount of time wasted pursuing recruiters who were never realistic targets in the first place.

The problem isn't that recruiters are doing something wrong. The problem is that many job candidates don't understand how the relationship actually works.

Who Does a Recruiter Work For?

A recruiter is hired by an employer to fill a particular position. The employer has a vacancy and wants qualified candidates. The recruiting firm has a business relationship with that employer and will receive a fee if its candidate is hired. That creates a very different relationship from what many candidates assume.

Imagine a company hires an executive recruiter to find a Chief Financial Officer. The recruiter may identify, contact, interview, and present dozens of potential candidates. The recruiter's objective isn't to get you a job. The objective is to find a candidate the employer will hire.

If you're that candidate, that's great. But if you aren't and another candidate gets hired, the recruiter still successfully completes the assignment.

That's not personal. It's simply how recruiting works. The recruiter's job is to fill the position, not to find you a position.

That may sound like a small distinction, but it changes how you should approach recruiters when you're an executive job seeker.

Why Recruiters Don't Have Jobs "For You"

One thing I hear from potential Endeavor Agency clients regularly is, “I've been talking to a recruiter, but they haven't found anything for me.”

That statement usually reflects a misunderstanding of the recruiter's role.

The recruiter isn't necessarily supposed to find something for you. Instead, the recruiter has a specific task to fill a specific position and is looking for candidates who fit that task.

Let's say you're a 52-year-old technology executive with CIO experience in manufacturing. You develop a relationship with an executive recruiter who specializes in technology leadership. That recruiter may be very good at what they do. That doesn't mean they're a good resource for your executive job search.

The recruiter is probably working on several positions at one time. For example:

·     A $175,000 Director of IT position

·     CIO search for a healthcare company

·     VP of Technology for a private-equity portfolio company

·     CTO position with a software company

If none of those opportunities fit your background, geography, compensation requirements, or career objectives, the recruiter may have nothing for you.

You don't necessarily need a recruiter who knows you. You need recruiters who are working on opportunities that make sense for you, which is a very different objective.

How Recruiters Get Paid Matters

Another misconception is that a recruiter will advocate for a candidate because they strongly believe in that individual.

Recruiters certainly can develop genuine professional relationships with candidates. A good recruiter may give you useful advice, prepare you for an interview, explain what the employer is looking for, or tell you how your background is likely to be perceived.

Those relationships can be valuable, but don't confuse helpfulness with representation.

The employer is the recruiting firm's client. The employer is paying the recruiting fee, and the recruiter is responsible for helping that client complete its search. If a recruiter presents ten candidates and the employer hires Candidate #7, the recruiter has done the job they were hired to do. They don't need Candidate #3 to win.

You may ultimately be Candidate #7, but you should understand the overall relationship before assuming the recruiter is representing your interests.

This doesn't make the recruiter your adversary; it simply means you and the recruiter have different responsibilities in the process.

Be Careful About What You Tell a Recruiter

This is another area where an executive job seeker can get themselves into trouble.

Many professionals treat a conversation with a recruiter almost like a conversation with an executive career coach. They really shouldn’t.

The recruiter is gathering information that may help the employer make a hiring decision. Some of what you tell the recruiter could eventually be shared with the employer.

This doesn't mean you should lie to a recruiter. You shouldn't. It does mean, though, you should think about what you're sharing, how you're framing it, and whether the information is necessary.

For example, you may be unhappy with your current boss or might be unemployed and under financial pressure to find another position. You may have had problems with a previous employer and have concerns about part of your background.

Those things are probably important to you, but you need to understand that a recruiter isn't necessarily the person who should help you work through them. The recruiter is evaluating whether you're a fit for the employer's position. That distinction becomes particularly important when you're discussing compensation.

Don't Give Away Your Negotiating Position

Suppose you're currently earning $190,000 and you'd be willing to accept $180,000 for the right opportunity. You tell the recruiter, “I'd take $180,000.”

Now, you've just given away information that may be valuable later.

If the employer ultimately wants to hire you, why would the recruiter tell the employer that it needs to pay you $210,000 if you've already told the recruiter you'd accept $180,000?

That doesn't mean the recruiter is intentionally trying to underpay you. It means the recruiter has information that can affect the hiring process, and you have voluntarily provided it. Information has value. Once you give it away, you can't take it back.

This is one reason candidates need to think carefully about how they discuss salary expectations, especially if they haven't yet established their value to the employer.

A Recruiter Can Help You Without Being Your Advocate

A recruiter can tell you that the hiring manager is particularly focused on industry experience. They may tell you to be prepared to discuss a major transformation you've led, something about the company, or what the employer is likely to ask during an interview. That information can be and is usually extremely useful.

Think about this, though: Why is the recruiter giving you that information?

Because the recruiter wants the candidates they present to the employer to perform well.

If an executive recruiter consistently presents strong candidates who understand the assignment, interview well, and ultimately get hired, that reflects well on the recruiter. The employer is more likely to use that recruiter again. That kind of relationship will benefit everyone. The employer gets qualified candidates. The recruiter has a better chance of completing the assignment. You have an opportunity to present yourself effectively.

The recruiter's primary responsibility isn't to make you more competitive than every other candidate. Their responsibility is to find candidates who are credible enough for their client to consider. Your responsibility is to compete for the offer.

A Recruiter Is Not Your Career Coach

Thinking this may be the biggest mistake I see job seekers make. Some professionals expect a recruiter to help them figure out what they want to do next, rewrite their résumé, improve their LinkedIn profile, develop a networking strategy, build their personal brand, identify companies to target, prepare extensively for interviews, explain why they aren't getting interviews, and manage their entire job search.

Some recruiters may help with pieces of those things, but that's not what they're being paid to do. They're being paid to fill positions for their clients.

This is where an executive career coach or career transition firm has a fundamentally different role.

A career coach works for the job-seeking professional. The purpose of executive career coaching is to help you determine where you want to go, how you should position yourself, which companies and opportunities to pursue, how to approach the market, and how to manage the different parts of your job search.

Recruiters can be and usually are one part of that strategy. They shouldn't be the entire strategy.

Not Every Recruiter Is the Right Recruiter

There are thousands of recruiting firms and tens of thousands of individual recruiters, and they aren't interchangeable. Some recruiters focus only on C-suite executives. Others specialize in technology, healthcare, financial services, manufacturing, private equity, sales, human resources, engineering, or legal positions. Some work within specific geographic markets or compensation ranges, while others focus on interim executives or board positions.

Even within a specialty, there can be significant differences between recruiters.

A recruiter who specializes in placing $150,000 sales executives probably has little relevance to a $350,000 technology executive. A recruiter who specializes in Fortune 500 financial services executives may not have meaningful relationships with the privately held manufacturing companies you may be targeting. A recruiter who places CEOs may never work on the VP-level positions you're pursuing.

Simply finding someone who says, “I recruit executives,” isn't enough. You need to understand whether that recruiter actually works with the employers, positions, industries, geography, level, and compensation range that matter to you. Many professional and executive job seekers lose time and fall behind because they don't take these factors into account when reaching out to recruiters.

Don't Build Your Executive Job Search Around Recruiters

I've seen candidates spend hours updating LinkedIn, sending résumés to recruiting firms, completing questionnaires, having introductory calls, following up repeatedly, and waiting for responses.

Then they become frustrated when nothing happens.

Sometimes the problem isn't that the recruiter isn't responding. The recruiter may simply not have a relevant assignment. Other times, the candidate is targeting the wrong recruiters or approaching the recruiter as though that person has been hired to conduct the candidate's job search.

Neither approach is likely to produce the result the candidate wants because an executive job search needs to be broader than that. You should identify companies where you could create value, building relationships with people inside those companies, developing your professional network, pursuing opportunities that may not yet be posted, positioning yourself effectively, preparing for interviews, and learning how to work with recruiters when the right opportunity comes along.

Recruiters can be an important part of that process. They shouldn't be the entire process.

Being Recruited Is Different from Looking for a Job

Many executives have a different experience with recruiters when they're happily employed.

A recruiter calls unexpectedly and says, “I have an opportunity I think you'd be perfect for.” You weren't looking for a job. You weren't unemployed. You weren't conducting a career transition. The recruiter found you.

That experience creates the impression that recruiters are an effective way to find your next job. Being recruited as a passive candidate, though, is very different from conducting an active job search.

When you're a passive candidate, the recruiter has already identified you as potentially relevant to a specific assignment. When you're actively looking, you're trying to identify recruiters who may have assignments relevant to you. Those are two completely different situations.

In addition, if the last time you seriously dealt with recruiters was five, ten, or fifteen years ago, the process you remember may not be the process you're dealing with today.

What Can a Poorly Managed Job Search Cost You?

The cost of a career transition isn't just the money you may spend on professional support. There's also the cost of making mistakes in your job search.

You can spend weeks waiting for opportunities that don't exist and spend time talking with recruiters who aren't working on positions that fit your background. You may give away information that weakens your negotiating position or fail to develop relationships with the recruiters who actually matter to your career.

You can also become overly dependent on recruiters and neglect the other parts of your job search.

For an executive earning $200,000, $250,000, or $300,000 a year, the financial consequences of a prolonged or poorly executed career transition can be substantial.

The question isn't simply, “Can I afford professional career coaching?” You should ask yourself this question as well: “What will it cost me if I don't know what I'm doing?”

Recruiters Are Valuable When You Understand Their Role

None of this means you should avoid recruiters. Quite the opposite.

Recruiters can be an extremely valuable part of an executive job search. They may give you access to opportunities that aren't publicly advertised. They can potentially put your résumé in front of decision-makers. They may provide useful information about a company, a position, compensation, or the hiring process.

The key is understanding where they fit. Think of recruiters as one channel in your job search, not as your personal job-search representative.

Your broader strategy should include target companies, networking, building relationships inside those companies, your professional positioning, hidden job opportunities, interview preparation, and a plan for working with recruiters. When you understand that, the recruiter relationship becomes much easier to navigate.

You Don't Have to Become a Recruiter to Work With Recruiters

I've always found it interesting that many highly successful professionals will spend years becoming experts in their own fields but assume they can figure out the job search on their own when they need to make a career move.

You may be an excellent executive and have spent 25 years running companies, managing people, selling millions of dollars in products, building organizations, or leading major transformations.

That doesn't automatically mean you're good at finding your next position. Job searching is a specialized skill. Networking is a specialized skill. Interviewing is a specialized skill. Positioning yourself in the marketplace is a specialized skill.

Working with recruiters is a specialized skill, too. You don't need to become a recruiter, but you should understand how recruiters work and how they fit into your overall executive job search.

The Bottom Line

Recruiters aren't your enemy. Many are exceptionally professional, ethical, and helpful. I've worked with plenty of good recruiters, and I know the value they can bring to an executive search.

But you need to understand the relationship.

The employer is the recruiter's client. The employer pays the fee. The recruiter has been hired to fill a specific position.

You may be the person they ultimately place. If you are, that's a win for everyone.

However, the recruiter isn't responsible for conducting your career transition. That's your responsibility. Use recruiters. Build relationships with them. Return their calls. Take advantage of the information they can provide. You just can’t sit back and wait for recruiters to find your next job.

Take action to build your own target-company strategy, develop your network, position yourself for the opportunities you want, learn how to interview effectively, and know how to negotiate when you get an offer.

If you need help with those parts of the process, that's where an executive career coach can play a different and important role.

At Endeavor Agency, we've spent more than 15 years helping thousands of professionals understand the parts of the job-search process they typically don't know and often don't know that they don't know.

We’re not looking to replace, ignore, or disparage recruiters. It's to make sure you, as the job seeker, understand how to use them as one part of a much broader career strategy.

What you don't know can cost you far more than you might expect during a career transition.