Here are some of the ways that a “client” can really turn a recruiter off:

  • Tell me you know exactly the kind of experience you’re looking for, when you haven’t hired anyone in a year, instead of asking me: “This is what I’d like to find, will the market bear it?”
  •  “We absolutely need to find “x”  amount of experience, but we know our pay is really low.”
  •  “We have been interviewing  on and off for three months, we don’t know what were looking for but we thought we’d give you a call and see what you can do.”
  •  “We can only pay a 10% (or 15%)  fee but expect you to come up with excellent candidates.” (So then we ask, “why would we send you an excellent candidate, when the market will bear 25%?” And you answer, “well, we’re such a good company to do business with and certainly we’re going to be able to hire quite a few more people and we’re such a good company.”)
  •  “We have had four people in this position in the last 18 months…and  they were all slugs.”
  • “We really don’t like using recruiters…  but our internal recruiters aren’t any good, so we wanted to see what you could do.”
  •  “I will tell you what were looking for, but you need to work through our  internal recruiters in the home office. They have to screen all the resumes and candidates. (And they are all 22 or 23 years old, so they really know what they are doing.”)
  •  “We have six people (or more) involved in the interviewing process and it’s going to take at least three or four weeks to get someone hired.”
  •  “We know we don’t pay very well, but surely you can come up with good candidates.”
  •  You tell me you need candidates very badly and  then, after we organize a group of candidates, you don’t return our calls.
  •  Our calls are not returned.
  •  The hiring authority turns the interviewing over to someone  who, when the candidates show up, tells the candidate that they don’t really have any idea of what the company is looking for…and don’t know why they are even in the interview.
  •  Every one of our candidates is told they are absolutely wonderful and perfect for the job and then they (or we) never hear from anybody.
  • “We know exactly what we are doing…we have done this three or four times before.”
  • “We can tell a great candidate by looking at a resume. We know what’s out there. We just can’t find what we need…send us some resumes.”
  • “We’ll get back to you in a week or so.”
  • “We’ll tell you how to manage the intervewing process. (Insead of asking us, “how should we approach this?”)
  • “We know exactly what we are doing when it comes to hiring.”
  • Tell our candidates that you really don’t like paying a fee.
  • Tell our candidates that since you have to pay a fee, you can’t pay them as much of a salary.
  • Not forewarning us about the horrible Glass Door  reviews about your company.
  • Telling us, “I’ve never made a mistake in hiring!” (either you have never hired anyone or you are a liar)
  • Not relying on  our experience…been here since 1952…our recruiters average 16 years of experiece. We each (more than 20 of us) interview more people in two weks than most hiring managers interview in a year.
  • You get mad at me and our candidate when you took 3 to 4 weeks for your “interviewing process” to find out that someone else interviewed and hired the candidate in four days.

The best way to keep all of this from happening is to simply call us, tell us what you need and then will help you design an approach that’s going to make you (and are candidates) successful. It is an easy, but it’s really simple and we keep it that way