Working with a recruiter

If you’ve landed on this guide because you’re a job-seeker who is considering working with a recruiter to write the next chapter in your professional growth story, we are so excited you’re here. Why? Because not only is there a ton of potential for you to grow in your career by working with a recruiter, there is also a lot you need to know about how to effectively work with a recruiter.

From finding the right recruiter for you (because not every recruiter is a good match!) to actually collaborating with your recruiter to find your next role, you are as much a part of the success equation as your recruiter. 

And that’s exactly why we created this guide. At People Obsessed, we possess decades of collective experience in empowering professionals (from the frontlines in sales to the C-suite) to find the right roles for them. Now, we’re going to put our expertise to work for you in this guide, which will tell you everything you need to know about working with a recruiter, including:

• What great recruiters look like (and what they’re looking for in you)

• What questions to ask when evaluating recruiters for your needs

• What you can (and should) expect in your recruiter relationship

• How you contribute to your own success in working with your recruiter

• Must-know dos and don’ts for working with a recruiter

Are you ready to take the next step forward in your career? If so, let’s dig in … 

Part I. How to find the right recruiter for you

If your idea of finding the “right” recruiter for you is firing up ye olde Google to search for “recruiters near me,” stop. Do not pass go, do not collect $200. Not every recruiter out there is right for you; finding the right recruiter is a lot like trying to find the right partner in a relationship. 

It’s about fit and compatibility AND it’s about connecting with someone who specializes in and demonstrates success in your industry! While business is business, each industry has a flavor all its own. 

For example, when evaluating a recruiter, you’ll want to ask yourself questions like:

• Do they have experience in my industry or field? (Advertising technology is a very specific category, if you are in this field, you want a partner who understands the landscape and is working with companies in the space.)

• Do they have experience in placements for my role or function? (Are you seeking an executive placement? You’ll want to look for a recruiter with executive/leadership recruiting experience.)

• Are they currently working with, or have they worked with companies that you’re interested in joining? (For example, Fortune 500 companies vs. early-stage startups. Enterprise SaaS in MarTech or FinTech. AdTech or Media Companies.)

• While they don’t have to become your next BFF, it IS critical that you’re aligned in how you’ll work together. Communication method and cadence are critical -- remember this is the next step in your career, don’t leave anything to be misunderstood.

• What does your vetting process look like before you send opportunities to candidates?

• What will your expectations be of me as your candidate?
  

Last and most certainly not least, you’ll want to discuss the type of network your recruiter has because, often the power of a recruiter comes down to the size, breadth, and/or depth of their network. This is particularly true if you’re working in a niche industry where your recruiter having the right connections and understanding of the landscape, can make all the difference in the types of roles they are able to put in front of you for consideration.

What a recruiter is looking for in you as a candidate

Come to the table with your story

The other thing you need to keep front-of-mind before you start talking to any potential recruiters is what recruiters can’t do for you. In fact, one of the most common mistakes candidates like you can make is to show up on the virtual doorstep of a recruiter like an unmolded slab of clay, ready to be shaped by a recruiter into a masterpiece. 

If your recruiter has to work too hard to understand who you are and what your story is, you won’t see the results you’re looking for from them. Yes, great recruiters will provide guidance and feedback on how to best show up for certain roles, as well as opportunities you may not have even considered, but they are only able to provide that level of feedback if you can clearly speak to your story, goals, needs, and so on.

That’s not to say you have to have your entire future career roadmap figured out, down to every last detail. You just need to have a firm grasp on at least the “basics” of you. That way your recruiter can immediately get to work on remarketing you to companies for potential opportunities or matching you with specific projects they are working on right now, rather than having to spend time architecting the bare minimum narrative about who you are as a candidate.

Also, you’ll need to have an open mind

Another reason why it’s so important to be able to articulate your potential (at least in some way) from the get-go is that much of your success with a recruiter will depend on another key component – your ability to keep an open mind about what opportunities are right for you.

When you meet the right recruiter and you arm them with your story, your goals, and what you perceive as your potential, that’s where the magic begins. So, while it’s essential you come to the table with your basics nailed down, you should also do so with an open mind to what’s possible for you. Don’t be too binary in your thinking around what your next step should be, because a great recruiter will know how to put roles in front of you that you would have never even thought of. 

Now, if you’re an executive … 

If you’re on the hunt for an executive recruiter, everything we’ve shared so far in this section applies to you. That said, there are a few other key points you need to be aware of, based on the unique nature of executive recruiting. 

Understanding the demands of your industry is even more important when you’re seeking out an executive recruiter. In some cases, an executive recruiter must be ingrained in your industry (e.g., AdTech or Enterprise Technology). In other cases, however, the need for industry experience is less of a necessity (e.g., you’re a Chief People Officer or Chief Financial Officer open to different industries for your next role). 

You also need to be very honest with what you want from your recruiter. In working with executives and senior leaders in the past, we’ve found that many are initially hesitant to share what it will take to get you to say “yes” to a role, whether that’s your salary requirements, the access you want, or something else. 

For instance, if you know for a fact that you will not take a role that’s less than $300,000 per year as a salary, you need to disclose that upfront. Otherwise, your recruiter may unwittingly put you in interviews for roles that pay less than that, which is a waste of everyone’s time. From the very beginning, you need to equip your recruiter with your non-negotiables. On the other hand, you also need to be realistic. You're not going to get the same package at a Series A or B startup as you might be used to if you're with a big company.  But it's the upside, the excitement around and opportunity to build, and the potential that makes up for it!

It can feel uncomfortable at first to be so direct, but it’s how you’ll prevent your recruiter from putting you forward for roles that would never, under any circumstances be a “yes” for you.

Part II. How to keep your recruiter happy (so everyone wins)

There is no way for us to overstate how important it is to have healthy, active communication with your recruiter. Because, it doesn’t matter how great of a candidate you are or how much of a perfect match your recruiter is to what you need – if your communication sucks, none of that matters.

How to communicate well with your recruiter 

First, don’t make it hard for them to get the immediate answers they need from you. In the recruiting world, things move very quickly. For example, at People Obsessed, it isn’t uncommon for us to reach out to one of our candidates by text to say: 

“Hey, I have something for you! This is an incredible opportunity, we need to connect today so I can run this by you because they are moving fast. When can we talk?”

In other industries, that kind of urgency can ring hollow or false, but that is not true in the world of recruiting. Outstanding professional opportunities can pop up on a recruiter’s radar without warning and require immediate action before they slip away, so you can’t leave your recruiters hanging. 

Second, on the other hand, your recruiters can be understanding and accommodating of those of you who will be working with a recruiter while you’re still in an active role currently. Great recruiters get that, for some of you, you’re in between a rock and a hard place – you’re preparing to leave for a role, but you can’t tip your hat that you have one foot out the door; you still need to seem actively present in your current position.

In those cases, you still need to be proactive in communicating when you’re unavailable – for instance, if you’ll be at a company off-site for three days with limited availability – or what your day-to-day schedule looks like (on average), so they can communicate on your behalf effectively with other organizations. 

We know you’re active in the market, we want you to land the best role, and to do that, you must keep your recruiter abreast of all your opportunities. Make sure they know all the moving pieces, details on other offers, your thoughts on roles, etc. Great recruiters will help you think through all your processes and do their best to keep things moving. By sharing, you’re also helping them keep their clients abreast of your candidacy which is critical to achieving the right outcome. 

In short, you don’t want to create a situation where your recruiter has to chase you down or where they don’t understand why they’re not hearing from you. The right recruiter will be working around the clock to help you land your next role, you need to set them up for success … and also not frustrate them. How you interact with your recruiting partner can also make or break your candidacy. If you aren’t communicative and proactive, easy to work with, and showing them your best, they may get behind and feel more confident in another candidate.

Communication also refers to closing the loop on interviews

It’s common practice to send a short thank you note to the person you interviewed with at a company almost immediately. But when you’re working with a recruiter, that’s only the first step in your follow-up communication sequence. 

The next person you should immediately be connecting with in some fashion (email, text, phone call, carrier pigeon, smoke signal) is your recruiter. Your recruiter shouldn’t have to proactively reach out to you to ask how an interview went. Because, if a recruiter is constantly having to chase you down to find out …

“So, what did you think of the company/role?”

“Overall, how do you feel the interview went?”

“Were any next steps discussed with you?”

… it’s a waste of their time – specifically, time that could be used to continue to find other opportunities for you. 

Your engagement and energy matter to your recruiter

Remember, how you show up to your recruiter matters as much (if not more) than how you show up to an interview. For example, if you’re generally passive and lacking in enthusiasm overall, a recruiter will see that and be less likely to put you at the top of the pile for an opportunity or fight for you as a candidate. 

Although you shouldn’t think about every conversation with your recruiter as an interview, you need to keep in mind that your recruiter is evaluating your viability as a candidate in some way with every interaction you have. To be clear, that’s not to say you should fake enthusiasm for roles you don’t believe are a fit for you. 

Quite the contrary, we want you to speak up in those cases. If an opportunity feels off to you, for whatever reason, most definitely speak up! The best relationships between candidates and recruiters, we’ve found, are those rooted in honesty and radical candor. Instead, what we’re talking about here is how a recruiter will notice how active and engaged you are (or aren’t) in the process. 

For example, if you’re saying you’re excited about the process (or a specific opportunity), but you show up to conversations with low energy and a passive posture, or you’re difficult to get ahold of when it matters most (with no proactive communication), your recruiter will notice and potentially scale down how hard they work for you.

Another great way to think about it is like this – at every touchpoint, you’re building your brand with your recruiter. And if you’re building your brand in a positive way, great recruiters won’t forget you, which can be very helpful down the road when you’re thinking about future career moves beyond the one you’re in right now.

Part III. A healthy recruiter relationship must be built on trust

Ultimately, trust is the big swing factor in how good your outcomes are (or aren’t) with your recruiter. Moreover, how strong that foundation of trust is within your relationship will depend on you, the candidate. We’ve already touched upon this in a few ways already:

• Your recruiter needs to be able to trust that you’re being upfront and honest about all of our requirements for your next role.

• Your recruiter needs to be able to trust that you’ve given them your whole story, without leaving anything important out.

• Your recruiter needs to be able to trust that you’ll be easy to reach (within reason) and that you’ll go out of your way to be a proactive communicator.

• Your recruiter needs to be able to trust that you are fully engaged in the process and ready to actively participate every step of the way.

That said, the other mission-critical piece of the trust equation with your recruiter is that you need to trust them, as well. That’s right! When you work with a recruiter, a leap of faith is also required on your part. 

For instance, it may feel like the smart or strategic move to hold certain pieces of information back – maybe you don’t want to seem too “greedy” or accidentally talk yourself out of a career opportunity by being too prescriptive at the start. In either of those hypothetical cases, you need to put that information out there and trust your recruiter. 

Trust that they won’t judge you for your salary requirements or, if they do have feedback on the requirements you share, that feedback is only being shared to help you be successful and grow. Trust that you won’t accidentally talk yourself out of a potential role, because a great recruiter will still challenge you with opportunities you may not have even thought of. (They’ll also know the right follow-up questions to ask to determine what your true boundaries are.)

More simply, don’t try to weigh all your options before you have all your options in front of you.

You also need to trust the process (not just the recruiter)

All too often, we see incredibly talented candidates get caught up in the vicious cycle of trying to decide if they want a role (and even potentially dismissing it outright) before they’ve actually gone through the process of interviewing and learning more about what the role actually is. 

We know this comes from a well-intentioned place – you’re not picking out what you want for dinner tonight, you’re choosing the next step in your career. This is an important decision and one that can have disastrous (and costly) consequences if you get it wrong. 

Still, you’ll end up shooting yourself in the foot throughout the process if you go in with this kind of mindset. You need to trust the process your recruiter is guiding you through. Instead of constantly trying to determine which offers you want, be in the business of getting job offers first. Only once you have a menu of offers to choose from should you start the evaluation process. 

I usually say that you’re in the business of getting offers - focus on getting the offer before you decide if you want the job or not (unless you really know it's not the right move). Otherwise, you’re using your energy on the wrong thing - you’re deciding about a role before you have all the information and you’re still getting it during the not yet completed process. And, if you don't get the offer, you’ve misused your energy/focus, and that might be what cost you the role.

The good news is that if you’ve followed the rest of our advice in this guide – showing up ready to arm your recruiter with your story, being a proactive and open communicator, etc. – you can trust that your recruiter will lead you down a path where those offers you get to choose from are right up your alley. 

Part IV. Great recruiters mate for life

Yes, one of the reasons we’re so passionate about educating candidates like you about what it takes to have a healthy and happy relationship with your recruiter is because we work with candidates just like you, and we don’t want those relationships to suck for either of us. (And if you’re a candidate looking for a recruiter, let’s talk about how we potentially can help you land your next role.) 

But beyond our own needs at People Obsessed, the real reason this conversation matters is that often candidates don’t realize what the future potential of a recruiter they work with now could mean for them five or 10 years down the road. 

What we mean by that is, for many of you, you’re only thinking about what’s 10 feet in front of you – getting out of your current role and figuring out what the heck you’re going to be doing next. Yes, your recruiter will be right there along with you in this immediate journey, but the best recruiters out there are a lot like penguins in that we mate for life. 

That’s why, if you’re serious about moving your career forward – particularly in the realm of leadership opportunities – you need to find a recruiter that actually cares about you as a person. (Yes, there are recruiters out there who are more transactional and are looking to ‘check a box,’ so to speak.) 

Because, if you make a great impression, if you’re an all-star talent who is also easy to work with, we are going to want to continue to work with you. We’ll keep you in mind as new opportunities come up. We’ll want you to come to us if you’re thinking about making a switch later on. Heck, if we place you in a leadership position and then you want help building out your own team, we’ve got your back there, too.