How Best to Work with Recruiters

Even in today's marketplace, many people have not worked with recruiters and unfortunately recruiters do not fully explain how they work and how best to work with them.

Recruiter - A Recruiter is the person within a staffing firm that is responsible for identifying and screening/evaluating qualified candidates for an open position within a client business.

This is a loose definition but I think it gives you an idea of what we do.

Q.How best do I work with a recruiter?

First off be completely honest; whether it be your salary, job history/reasons for leaving, commute etc. Believe it or not Recruiters have ways of verifying this information.

Keep tabs of where you or other recruiters send your resume. Let them know if your CV has been previously sent to a company they may be telling you about. It puts you and the recruiter in a bad light if your resume has been previously sent. If a recruiter refuses to tell you who their client is, nicely tell them you do not want to work with them.

Before you submit your resume to a job posting online, call your recruiter first and see if he/she may have contacts within that company. Most of the time when you apply online your resume gets lost in the shuffle amongst 10,20,30 other resumes. Recruiters can sometimes bring your resume to light ahead of other applicants. On top of this, recruiters love the leads!!

Be realistic with yourself. If you are a Quality Engineer and have 5 years of industry experience, chances are a company is not going to hire you for a Director/VP level position. Additionally if you are currently earning $95K, you should not ask for $140K with your next position.

Lastly, If you don't hear from your recruiter, follow up with him/her. We are humans and occasionally need that friendly reminder that you are still on the market or need to follow up with a client that we sent your CV to.