How to Make Agency Recruiters Work Hard for You

 I recently wrote a feature on the importance of using recruiters to help you to get a job. It was titled How to Choose The Best Agency Recruiter to Market You. I highlighted figures from CareerXRoads which showed that recruiters accounted for nearly 10 percent of job placements, meaning that they are a crucial gateway to jobs for job seekers. The article gave advice on the sort of things you should consider when choosing a recruiting agent, to ensure you pick one who is best equipped to help you with your job search.

But, having chosen an agent, the article pointed out that you as a candidate will still be competing with other candidates for the recruiter’s attention and this is why it’s important that you behave in a way that ensure that the recruiter is squarely focused on you—which brings us to the subject of this article. So how can you do this? The secret to getting a recruiter to focus on you is getting them to believe that you are the best bet, i.e. the person most likely to be placed and to stay in the role for the long term. You need to be the person that the recruiter can look in the eye and think, “Money: this person will earn me my commission!” Below, I have set out several tips on how you can make recruiters see you as a great bet for placement, meaning they will be focusing more of their energy on getting you, as opposed to the competition, into a job.

1. You must make the recruiter believe that you are “the one.”

As we touched on above, recruiters are paid a commission on placing a candidate in a role. This means that while they believe that you are a great bet to be successfully hired you will be at the top of their activity list, but if at any point you begin to appear more difficult to place, making you a poorer bet to be hired, the phone may go quiet and you won’t hear from them. So, what factors will make you appear as a great bet to a recruiter? These are:

1. Has the essential skills for the role/type of role
2. Experience in a similar industry/role/company
3. Excellent personal presentation
4. Excellent communication skills
5. Interviews particularly well and can answer difficult questions
6. Very passionate about the position and company
7. Prepared to negotiate on salary
8. Prepared to relocate, prepared to travel and prepared to commute a distance
9. Available immediately, at short notice or able to negotiate a shorter notice period
10. Easily contactable and very responsive
11. Shows commitment and is not likely to pull out at the last minute

In order to get a recruiter to believe you are a ‘money ticket’ and to get them to bet on you and work hard for you, you need to possess/exhibit as many of these qualities as possible.

2. Ensure they know you are actively looking.

Make sure you keep your agent informed of your job search status, that is, are you actively looking or not actively looking? Why is this important? Because agents are receiving new resumes every day and you can quickly drop to the bottom of the pile and become a cold prospect. Therefore, if you don’t hear from your agent for a few weeks, drop them a quick line to reignite the fires and let them know you are still ready, willing and able to be interviewed.

3. Make them think that you are in demand and will be snapped up soon.

If you get an interview through another channel or have any positive activity with an employer always let your agent know. (You don’t need to tell them who the interview was/is with). Why? Because this will make you appear increasingly employable to the recruiter, making you appear like a great bet and this will focus their attention on you as they try to get you in to interviews before you are placed through another agency.

4. Always try to visit the agent face-to-face.

As they say, it takes 2 seconds to click a button and apply for a job, so it is not necessarily a reliable indicator of a candidate’s commitment to working with the particular agency and staying loyal to that agency throughout the placement process. And in order to get the recruiter to work hard for you, they also need to feel that you are committed to working through them, and that they are not simply 1 of 10 agencies you are working with. A good way to show commitment is, where possible, to take the time to suit up, and attend their offices face-to-face to have a meeting with a representative of their team.

Of course, there is no magic formula  that will enable to you to seduce recruiters and get them to fall in love with your candidate credentials. Recruiters do vary in their approach and expectations, but these tips should enable you to appeal to the broad range of recruiters in the marketplace and get them focusing on you as opposed to your competition.