Third-Party Recruiters and Staffing Firms - Part I
In this three-part series, we’ll talk about how to work with recruiters and staffing firms. We’ll also look at four ways you can work with them.
How it works…
Third-party recruiters and staffing firms normally charge the hiring company, not job seekers, for their services. This means that it’s not their role to “find you a job” – their focus is to find candidates for their client companies. Are you that candidate? That’s what they want to know.
Develop a relationship with a recruiter as you would with any person in your network. It could very well be beneficial to your career because they have a foot inside many doors that you might like to walk through. My first manager in the staffing business used to say that applying to work with a staffing firm can be like applying with 50 companies at once. She had a good point!
Nowadays, it’s a very good idea to partner with a good recruiter or two in your job search. This can be the key to a successful move, and, in most cases, nurturing these relationships will make a difference to your career over the long term. It’s pretty common for seasoned recruiters to work with a person who they helped years before and, for whatever reason, now has to look again. A recruiter friend once told me about when a candidate she’d helped off and on for fifteen years called to see if she’d assist his daughter in her job search!
There are four main ways to work with recruiters and staffing firms: contract, temporary, temporary-to-hire and direct hire. Each method or option has its pros and cons, and some can even be combined during a job search. I would advise that you ask yourself which option or combination of options might work best for you and then factor that into your strategy.
Tomorrow, we’ll look more in depth at two of the four ways to work with recruiters and staffing firms, contract and temporary.
Angela Loëb is an author, speaker and co-owner of Great Occupations. She and her partner, Jay Markunas, help people make successful career transitions through workshops, webclasses, personalized coaching sessions, as well as through The Job Search Boot Camp Show. Find out more at www.greatoccupations.com.
[...] of the four ways I mentioned yesterday that you might work with recruiters and staffing firms. I’ve also added my thoughts about [...]