The Recruiter’s Role in the Recruiting Process
… and How to Work with Them
By Hughes-Castell (www.hughes-castell.com)
For those who are looking for a new job, many candidates might be wondering whether they should consider working with a specialist recruiter. Good recruitment consultants should be experts in terms of knowledge of the areas they cover and can provide invaluable insight into the market and how your career would fit into that.
Consider recruiters who specialize in particular field
No single recruiter covers all, even in a specific industry; most of the time, recruiters focus on specific regions/cities, industries, and/or job functions. Hence, the candidate/applicant should understand the recruiter’s reach: how they can best help you meet your career goals?
Recruiters can be an extension of their clients’ talent acquisition team
It is important to remember that recruiters are providing a service to their clients and in most cases, act as a partner to identify candidates for their most urgent and current hiring needs. Nevertheless recruiters should always be keen to speak to quality candidates whether or not they possess the skill sets for their clients’ current requirements. At some point they will be in demand. As a candidate you should tailor your application and highlight the skills and achievements that best match the targeted opening. A good recruiter will be able to help you with this in order to alert the client to your key relevant attributes.
How do I raise my profile with recruiters?
It is always good to maintain a relationship with recruiters and reconnect with them on a timely basis to update them with your current status, even if you are not actively looking for a new role. Recruiters nowadays will often go through candidates’ social media profiles as part of the recruitment process. To increase your profile and demonstrate your strengths, you can utilize tools such as social media:
- Maintain an active, clear, and detailed profile in LinkedIn to showcase your specialization and accomplishments;
- Post informative content related to your industry and share industry insights;
- Follow companies you may be interested in working for in the future and join news groups related to your industry;
- Take the initiative and build a contacts network that can assist you with your career;
- Ensure your profile picture looks professional (According to a Jobvite report, 41% of recruiters will judge you based on your profile photo)
Be mindful of how you use social media – Linkedin is not Facebook or Instagram.
How to partner successfully?
A good recruiter will have experience in dealing with both candidates and clients, and be able to be a buffer between the two. Hence, it is important to have mutual trust and share relevant information about compensation, other offers, and changes in opinion about the role or the client. It is essential to ensure that you are prepared to make a move when the time comes: think about what you would do if your current firm counter offers you; what you need to transition to the new role; what will be required to wrap up in your current role. When it comes to package negotiation, recruiters should be aware of what your expectations are and have good insight into what such a role generally pays in the current market.
Building a long term partnership
A positive recruitment process for any particular assignment, whether it is successful or not, should encourage you to maintain the relationship with the recruiter. If the process does not lead to an offer, you should, if not be happy with necessarily, at least have understood the reasons why the process didn’t work out and see why the recruiter can be a valued resource in the future. They should have learned more about you as a person and as a candidate, and be able to quickly identify suitable new openings before long. Ideally they should be a valuable resource throughout your professional career, helping you with your future moves, providing good market intelligence, mentoring you through difficult career choices and ideally helping to build your own team.
Contributors: Ji Li & Pauline So
Contact:
Asia Headquarters:
(852) 2520-1168
hughes@hughes-castell.com.hk
China Headquarters:
(86) 21 2206-1200
shanghai@hughes-castell.com.hk
About Hughes-Castell: We were the first legal and compliance recruitment consultancy to target Asia, starting in 1985 in London. In 2016, we celebrated over 30 years in Asia Pacific. Hughes-Castell is a specialist recruitment agency that focuses solely on legal and compliance recruitment.
