Direct from the Recruiters Mouth

We work closely with a lot of recruiters to both understand their needs, as well as support our clients in networking. For this reason, we understand the frustrations many recruiters are facing. Lucky enough, we found one of our partners willing to answer a couple of quick questions to give us information to support your job search. The purpose of this is to help you, or you as a candidate, understand what you need to do but also understand the challenges recruiter’s face and how you can help them.

A recruiters perspective….

What type of firm do you work for?

I run a boutique recruitment firm in the IT industry. We were much larger at one point however we have decreased our size to allow us to provide an improved service to a selection of key accounts.

What do you see as the main purpose of a recruiter?

To put it bluntly we work for our client and manage the candidate selection process. In a way we also work with the candidate but the client is the payer in this instance so our focus is predominantly on what they want.

Have you seen an increase in the number of people applying for each of your jobs over the last 12 months?

Yes absolutely. We would now see several hundred applicants for our more junior to middle management roles which is a rather large increase. Many of these applicants do not meet our requirements and it is a challenge to be able to review each application individually.

How do you manage that many applicants?

We don’t. Like most recruiters today we use an e-recruitment tool that helps us manage and sort the applications. It isn’t ideal as we know that there are some challenges with these tools but we don’t have an option; we just have to hope people start to understand how to write an application to suit these.

How soon do you shortlist applications?

I start looking at candidates that have been brought to my attention in the software immediately. For some roles I can have a short list of candidates, including calling them, within 24 hours. For others it may take a week but I generally will try not to take longer than this unless it is a specialist role.

Will you stop reviewing candidates when you have a shortlist?

Sometimes yes and sometimes no. If I have spoken to a number of people and I feel that there are a couple that would meet many of my clients needs then I will until I finish all of those interviews. Sometimes I won’t need to look again until I have another role but there are times when my first round of interviews doesn’t identify a solid candidate so I will then start again.

What is your biggest challenge as a recruiter?

Managing the expectations of the candidate and the client. We get a lot of calls from candidates and we know many people get upset when we are unable to call them back however we also need to work within the deadlines given to our client. When we have a candidate that we know we can place in a current role or with a current client our focus will be there first however I personally do try to help other candidates where possible; I just can’t help them all.

What advice can you give a current job searcher?

Start with the resume. We know a lot of people think we don’t look at them but if it isn’t written properly in the first place, and it doesn’t outline how they meet the requirements of the job ad, then there is a high chance that the system won’t identify them as a suitable candidate. Even if the system works then if the resume is not well written then I won’t contact them for a chat; to me this is really important and they need to get this right the first time. This is actually where most people come undone without even realising or accepting that this is the case.

A career coach’s perspective…..

The information provided above from our partner directly reflects the focus that we take with many of our clients. The challenge we have however is to encourage people to still understand that they still need to focus on their resume. Even in this day and age, where technology is doing a lot of the initial shortlisting, if the resume makes it through but is a poor representation of the candidate; then this will deter the reviewer. For this reason, we work with our client’s firstly to get this right. If we cannot have this right, then whatever happens moving forward can have a much lesser impact than it should.