I’m sure you must have been in contact with a recruiter before, either when you’re applying for your first job, or they’ve reached out to you recently for a new opportunity in another company.
If you’re not familiar with what a recruiter does, their day will consist of the following:
- Receive a job opening request from the hiring manager and have an initial meeting to learn more about the job description.
- Screening for relevant profiles by reading the resumes of candidates who have applied for the job opening.
- Actively search and reach out to passive candidates in various platforms for professionals, such as LinkedIn.
- Call potential candidates to learn more about their experience, aspiration, and share more details about the job opening.
- Ask candidates for their availabilities and arrange interview schedules.
- Give candidates updates on the interview results, next recruitment process, and request for additional information.
- Have a bi-weekly sync with the hiring manager and update them on the candidates in the pipeline.
- Discuss hiring decision with the hiring manager and communicate it to the candidates.
- Negotiate offer packages (salary and other benefits) and the start date with the selected candidates.
- Discuss with other stakeholders who are involved in the recruitment process, such as the compensation team, onboarding team, etc.
The points above are the most common job description of a recruiter. Depending on the company’s size and organization structure, a recruiter’s job can be broken down into more specific and specialized functions, or assigned with more responsibilities outside of the recruitment scope.
I’ve been working as an in-house recruiter for almost four years now, starting from a startup company with less than 20 employees to a global company employing more than 100.000 employees. I can confidently tell you that there will always be the same problems you have to face as a recruiter, no matter how established the companies are!
Dear Candidates,
1. Please only apply for a role if your profile fits the requirement.
When you see an opening in a company’s career site or online job portals, it will include a minimum requirement section basically telling you, “Hey, you must check all the boxes, if you don’t, then we won’t consider you. EVER!”
The fact is, we are never short of interested applicants, depending on the roles and regions, we can receive up to 30 applications per day! The problem is, 95% of them are not qualified. For example, it’s clearly stated in the requirement that you must have experience working on project A, B, and C. It doesn’t mean that you’re suitable if you only have experience on project A and C, let alone if you don’t have any of the experience at all!
2. Please provide the exact information as what is requested.
Sometimes I can predict candidates’ interview outcome just from whether or not they can understand basic instructions, such as asking a candidate to do an online screening test, requesting their portfolio, or their availabilities in the upcoming week to schedule an interview.
I can be so confident with a candidate after a phone call with them, thinking they should be able to excel the interviews, to suddenly realize that they might not make it at all. If you can’t even understand a clearly laid out instruction asking you to provide X, Y, and Z in your portfolio, how can you work on much more complex problems expected from the job. It might also show that you are not committed to the recruitment process at all.
3. Please don’t be afraid to clarify things that you’re unsure of.
This might also be the reason for the point above. Candidates might be too afraid of being judged by the recruiter that they’d rather guess on what the instructions meant rather than clarifying and do it the right way.
If you’re unsure of the job description, which team you’ll be assigned to, or what are the next steps, just email your recruiter. It’s our responsibility to share with you all the relevant information that’s allowed to be shared and make sure that you have the best experience while being in the recruitment process. You’ll need to commit your time and effort in the next 1-2 months. At least be 100% clear on what you’ve signed up for!
4. Please be transparent with the recruiter as well.
People tend to forget that recruitment is a two-way process between the recruiter and the candidate. A recruiter needs you to pass the interviews and fill the job opening as much as you need them to update you if you’re going to get the job or not. Communication is the key here.
Imagine the feeling when you finally find a candidate for a role that has been opened for several months, helping them guide through the process for the last few weeks, but suddenly the candidate just vanishes without any update. If you’re having (or have foreseen) a situation that might prohibit you to continue with the process, then please tell us. The sooner the better, so we can manage each other’s expectation and find a solution together.
5. Please be realistic with your expectation.
Having experienced working in a region where the startup and tech industry have just boomed and the competing for talents has become so fierce, I find candidates can be too unrealistic in what they’re asking for. It can be salary, other benefits, or responsibility.
A recruiter should be asking for your expectation at some point and tell you up front if it’s possible or not. For example, it’s a common knowledge that you can expect 20–30% increment of your current salary if you’re poached, but that can only happen if you also fulfill the exact requirement for the position and the company’s budget. You can’t just expect a company to offer you a manager-level salary and responsibility when you’ve no management experience before. Even if you do, is the scale similar? Just because you have the word “manager” in your job title, it doesn’t mean you can also be a manager somewhere else.
Dear Hiring Managers and Interviewers,
1. Please be certain on the hiring needs.
It’s quite common for hiring managers to just put their hiring request without actually understanding their exact needs. They just feel they need to add more people to their team without thoroughly assessing their current team allocation and whether it makes sense for the long term.
This happens a lot in fast growing companies which are still testing and deciding on their business direction or companies that are focused on developing multiple products at the same time. But this also means that these openings can be seen as urgent today, and suddenly get cancelled the next week. Please confirm your team’s budget and manpower planning with the management before asking the recruiter to work on it. It takes a lot of effort to plan the recruiting strategy and build the pipeline, and I don’t want to let it go to waste just because of your impatience and carelessness.
2. Please be realistic with your requirements and budget.
In an established company, there is a compensation team dedicated to assessing and come up with the budget for a specific role. But if it’s in a smaller company, usually the hiring manager will provide the number themselves. They don’t always know what the talent market is like — often they don’t even know what they’re looking for.
A recruiter needs to educate the hiring manager whether what they’re looking for actually exist in the market, and they need to adjust their requirement or budget to it as well. Sometimes they can be too stubborn, insisting to stick with the requirements and then complain when there are no candidates. How can you expect to find a polar bear at a savanna? And even if it magically appears, how can you lure them only with a piece of half-eaten sausage?
3. Please start the interview on time.
If you’re assigned to be the interviewer, you have the responsibility to represent the team to assess the candidate. You only have an hour — which is not a lot of time to get the candidate comfortable, ask questions, learn about their experience and answer their questions.
By starting late, you will not only have less time to assess thoroughly, but you will also give a bad experience to the candidate, which will affect the reputation of the company. It’s understandable if it’s a one time thing, but it has become a bad habit. The candidates have allocated their time and yet we seem to take it for granted. You do know that they can choose to withdraw from the process, right? Why is it so difficult to be punctual?
4. Please input the interview feedback right away.
When a recruiter doesn’t give you any update on your interview result, it’s not because they don’t want to but probably it’s because they’re still chasing the interviewer to put in their interview feedback. And it’s so cumbersome!
I can be chasing an interviewer everyday for a week and still not have it by then. What’s the use of interviewing candidates if you do not share the feedback? That’s the whole point of interviewing them in the first place! If you don’t have time to put in your complete assessment that day, just share a quick summary and your suggestion, whether we should proceed the candidate to the next stage. That’s all I’m asking for!
5. Please be more responsive and decisive.
It’s funny how the hiring manager can be so pushy to the recruiter to provide more candidates, but when the recruiter has built a strong pipeline and ask them to make a hiring decision, they become so slow in responding and need to be chased around to get that green light. Rather than delaying, please let me know if you need more additional information to help you decide faster.
A hiring manager will often ask to interview more candidates just to see if there are better options out there. They will say things like, “They are good, but I feel there might be better candidates. Let’s put them on hold for now until we find another one”. These candidates have fulfilled the initial job requirement you requested and I have other roles I need to work on. I can’t just leave the candidates in the dark while they’re expecting to hear back from me. Until you give me a clear reason why they’re not good enough, I’m afraid I won’t find any more new candidates.
Being a recruiter is much easier if I’m only expected to call and screen candidates, but that’s not the case. Working with people can be very challenging because they have their own agendas and I need to be objective and manage their expectations. It’s highly rewarding when you’re finally able to close the roles that have been opened for quite some time, but the process of getting there is what’s emotionally exhausting.
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Previously published on medium
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