If you have been in the corporate workforce for any length of time, it’s likely that you have utilized the services of a recruiter. They play an important role in your job search. Recruiters have strong, long-term relationships with corporate human resource professionals and hiring managers and access to confidential jobs that can’t be found on job boards. They understand the company’s corporate culture and are familiar with the personalities and expectations of the interviewers. Good recruiters will help you prepare for the interview, guide you through the long and sometimes arduous process, offer encouragement, serve as your liaison with the firm and assist with negotiating a competitive offer for you. Be forewarned; there are amazingly fantastic recruiters, some horrendous ones and an awful lot of mediocre, untalented headhunters in between the two extremes.

Here’s an insider’s glimpse into the unglamorous life of a recruiter, from my more than 20 years of experience as an executive recruiter. Understanding how recruiters operate, their motivations and how the game is played will help you forge a productive, working relationship with them that will result in you getting a great, new job.

Recruiters generally work on behalf of the company who pays them a placement fee only when the candidate accepts an offer, starts at the company and also remains there for a certain length of time. Recruiters need candidates, but do not have a contractual agreement with them. Think of recruiters as matchmakers who need to make both the candidate and client company happy to successfully make a placement.

The very nature of the recruiting business is incredibly competitive and brutal. The vast majority of recruiters work on a contingency basis. This means that a recruiter could invest an incredible amount of time, energy and resources, but if they don’t produce the winning candidate, the recruiter and their firm will not receive any financial remuneration.

A typical recruiter is given a job requisition from a corporation, along with about 3-10 other staffing agencies. Simultaneously, the company will post the job on its internal job board, LinkedIn and other job sites. It becomes survival of the fittest and a race to find the best candidate before anyone else. Recruiters need to spend tedious hours scouring job boards and internal databases, reviewing hundreds of resumes and LinkedIn profiles. After isolating a slate of suitable candidates, the recruiter meets with them to ensure that even if their resume looks appropriate for the job, they also possess appropriate interpersonal and social skills.

There are virtually no requisites to gain admittance into the recruiting industry. Therefore, people constantly drift in and out of the field. There are no academic requirements or regulatory oversight. There is a chance to make a lot of money if they are very successful. Consequently, the industry becomes oversaturated with recruiters—continually creating never-ending competition, especially in areas that are hot.

Most people fall into becoming a recruiter. Growing up, we all knew kids who said they wanted to become a doctor, policeman or baseball player—never a recruiter.  They usually find their way into the industry after trying and failing at a bunch of other sales-related jobs. That is not meant as a slight to recruiters. Rather, it is a testament to the type of person who keeps trying different paths until finding the right profession that leads to personal success. Most recruiters quit within the first year or two. Those who remain recognize that— to build a career— it takes a lot of drive, commitment and effort.

With all this in mind, you can now probably make more sense of your prior experiences working with recruiters and understand why they acted the way they did. For instance, if you got the brush-off from a recruiter, it was most likely because they did not have a relevant job for you at the time. It was no disrespect to you; the recruiter just couldn’t help at that particular time. If they did, I can assure you the recruiter would bend over backwards and jump through hoops to help you and get your resume to the client company before their competition. The more time the recruiter spends on someone who doesn’t fit their current mandates, the more likely it is that a competitor is zeroing in on the appropriate person. To be a successful recruiter, you have to have blinders on and only search for the perfect person for the job at hand. Any time not spent on this task is wasted time, which could end up in not placing anyone and not getting paid.

If you are not interested in a job presented by a recruiter that you are suitable for, you can now understand why a recruiter would be pushy. They know that your background and skill set could readily get you an interview and job offer—ultimately, leading to a commission for the recruiter.  If they let you get away, it will take hours and exhaustive efforts to find someone else who also has the suitable background. It is much easier for the recruiter to keep hounding you.

I’m not painting this bleak picture to make you feel sorry for the miserable existence of a recruiter. Rather, by understanding how the game is really played, it will enable you to work more successfully with recruiters in the future and, ultimately, lead to finding the perfect, new job.

Source: Forbes