Yes and No.

(Before I deep dive on this topic, I want to state the following does not apply to all recruiters and the best advice I can give you as a candidate is to build relationships with recruiters; you have to put in the work; and learn not to react with emotion or burn bridges).

We got to separate internal vs external recruitment agents, as both have their pros and cons.

Internal recruitment agents:

• They are employees first.
• They work directly for the company.
• Most likely to be assisted in recruitment using an Applicant Tracking System (ATS).
• Aim to recruit to exact job specifications.
• Some have targets but not all.
• In general they are more secretive about wages.
• In general, they have a more “candidates comes to us” approach.
• More groomed to the companies hiring methods.
• Usually don’t work on commission.

External recruitment agents:

• They are sales people first.
• The are a 3^rd party, who are contracted to find candidates.
• They use recruitment sites, LinkedIn and their own contacts to source candidates.
• They aim to recruit to about 60/70% of the job description.
• They have sign up and sales targets.
• Can be secretive on wages but overall a bit more open.
• Overall they have a “hunt the right” candidate approach.
• More hustle mentality in their hiring methods.
• They work on commission.

This is not an exhaustive list but a rough list; I put it up to mainly illustrate one point.

Both parties are not your friend; it is a business relationship and don’t forget this, you must exercise professional scepticism when dealing with recruiters.

I’ll mainly focus on external recruiters because this seems to causes the most hiccups.

Always remember these are sales people and they make money off sales; if they do not think they can make money off you, you are of no use to them.

As with all sales roles, some sales people (in recruiting, I tend to find it is mainly the junior ones), will lie and cross lines to get that sale.

The following are lies that have been told to candidates, to get that sale, I can vouch for:

Rec) “The role is remote or they will be moving to remote working in the future”.
This didn’t happen!

If remote is important to you, ask at interview, make it clear it’s of importance to you, and try to get it in writing.

Rec) “Your current company will still give you; your bonus”.
Person was interviewing and offered a position, she didn’t want to take the role, as she was awaiting her bonus, which was due to be paid circa two months later.

The recruitment agent told the candidate, that her current job would pay her the bonus, the candidate believed the recruiter and resigned. The candidate did not get her bonus and a spat ensued, but nothing could be done.

The is the candidate’s fault! she should have checked her contract, she also shouldn’t have been looking knowing she wanted to stay for the bonus, whilst I mainly blame the candidate in this case, it does highlight lies some recruiters will tell.

Rec) “This company has great growth opportunities for the right candidate”.
Candidate got the job only to find, it has a steady but stagnant work force who have been in their respective positions for 5+ years.

I mainly blame candidate on this one, ask about staff turnover and take a look on Linkedin but again, the recruiter target here was commission not FIT.

Rec) “I am calling from XYZ recruitment agency and I am aware of a vacancy coming up in your team soon”.

This was a horror call a candidate overheard to their line manager, from the recruitment agent they had just signed up to. You can imagine how anxious this call made the candidate.

To avoid this, when recruiters ask for your “line managers” name for a “reference” say reference is available on a job offer or state that your company only gives out HR details for references, some shady recruiters will use your reference details, to try and get a way into the company, or worse drop you in it.

Rec) “How did the interview go, what kind of questions did they ask you”.

If the recruitment agent has multiple candidates; especially if there are people who are interviewing after you, they want his information to pass onto the other candidates to give them a better chance in the interview. This makes sense and I don’t call this as particularly shady, they are trying to make a sale.

To avoid this, just give them a vague answer like, “we mainly went through my CV” or “they seemed to be more interested in me as a person”.

Rec) “Your salary will be reviewed after your probation”.

Unfortunately, negotiating your salary as a employee is always an uphill battle, this line is often used to get you to join for a lower rate than you want.

To avoid this, be clear on your salary expectations and do not budge, do not accept someone willing to pay you less until XYZ time scale, even if it is true, 1) you won’t get the salary backdated and 2) think of it as you paying them for the job?

It often works better if you start with a high number you don’t actually expect to get, and work your way down to the number you actually want.

Rec) It’s a great place to work, I’ve placed someone there before or I got someone there now”.

This could be true but is often used to sell the company to you.

There is nothing to avoid here, just take what they are saying with professional scepticism.

Rec) “I’ll speak to them to clarify the role”.

This one usually comes up when it’s clear you are a good candidate, but don’t seem convinced by the role or it’s clear you will probably walk away from it. Some recruiters will flat out lie and try to repackage your doubts, as “that will only be a small part of the role”, “that will only be for the first few months” or “the role will grow into xyz”, with XYZ magically being the the stuff you was looking for”.

They could be telling the truth, as some companies put out a general job description.

To avoid this, if you’ve got another interview lined up, clarify directly from the hiring manager, of course they may lie to you too but hopefully you’ll get a feel something is off when they answer your questions.

“I just had an interview with XYZ, what would you say they are like”, reply “I didn’t know they was looking, I will have a word with them”.

The person interviewing the candidate happened to know her old line manager, and decided to give them call to find out more about the candidate, the persons current line manager was unaware the candidate was looking.

This is not the candidate’s fault nor is it a recruiters, there’s not much you can do to avoid this, the hiring manager broke confidentiality and acted in an unprofessional manner. I added this as more of a FYI.

Final Thoughts:

External recruitment agents are not the enemy and are not evil, they buss their backsides building business to business relationships and go through all types of BS dealing with candidates too, candidates are not saints!
Inexperience and high pressure can bring out the worst in people, we as candidates only have to apply some professional scepticism and we’ll be alright.

@Brainthrough

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