Have you been rejected by a recruiter in your request to meet? Actually, they did you a favor.
Want to get rid of the frustration of being rebuffed in your request to meet?
Who doesn’t?
Having had loads of my requests to recruiters to meet having been rejected, I discovered it was all in the approach.
Between my transition and running a job transition group since April 2007, I have met approximately 140 recruiters which helped me understand their business. More importantly, I could see that almost every candidate was inflicting frustration on both sides of the table.
Here’s how to ‘think’ about recruiters. This will benefit both the recruiter (time saver) and yourself (proper expectations of whether a meeting will occur).
First, recruiters get work by networking into new clients and keeping in touch with existing ones. A call to a client is an “At Bat”. They get paid by finding the candidate that fits the specific requirements laid out by the client.
Second, a meeting with a candidate for which there is not an active search is the recruiter taking practice swings (It’s unlikely the recruiter will get any of the leads you are pursuing).
Therefore, you want recruiters filling the orders in hand, so they can find new jobs to fill, not chatting with you. The more jobs they find, they more likely they will have one that fits you.
Worry less about getting a meeting and more about including the words or phrases in your resume that pertain to the position you seek and are highly likely to be used in a keyword search in the recruiter’s database. No matter if you’ve met a recruiter, their first stop on every search is their database when starting to build a pool of candidates – you WANT to be in that pool.
There’s no harm in offering to meet to network when contacting a recruiter (with your resume). Many recruiters have some Rock Star networks, so they could make good connections. Just start with the expectation that no recruiter will accept your offer, because most will not, simply because most already have enough practice swings. This expectation is the best way to avoid frustration.
Those recruiters who do accept are interested do so because they see value in networking with you. Be certain to get prepared and figure out how you can help them – which will usually be given in return.
If they do not accept the offer, then you’ve lost nothing except the 15 seconds to type the offer in your e-mail.
Trust me; if you match up with what their client is seeking, you will spend a fair amount of quality time with the recruiter. Until then, let the recruiter go to work.
Good luck today!
Mark Richards