how to deal with a rude recruiter
A job-seeker wrote:
I’m looking for advice on how to deal with rude recruiters, due to a phone interview with one earlier this morning.
A third-party recruiter contacted me for a slew of opportunities he was hired to fill for a start-up company. Presumably, he found my profile on LinkedIn, as a few others have in recent months. Our initial 30-minute phone conversation about his client went very well, and after reviewing a position description forwarded to me in follow-up via email, we set a second more formal phone interview, during which he screened me to write a report for his client. This one- hour conversation went very well as well, until he started asking about compensation, at which point his tone of voice became quite gruff, aggressive, and at one point even demeaning.
Recruiter: Tell me what is your compensation structure?
Me: What do you mean by compensation structure?
Recruiter: What is your base pay and bonus structure?
Me: I’m not comfortable revealing that information. I would rather you tell me what the salary range for this Director level position is that you sent me a description for, and I’ll let you know if that meets my expectations.
Recruiter: No, you have to tell me your salary information. This is how it works. Your potential offer will be based on how much you earn right now and without this information we can not proceed.
Me: I don’t understand. Shouldn’t the offered salary be based on the position the company is looking to fill, and the skills and experience which I bring to them? I am not interested in wasting my time our yours either, don’t you know the salary range for this position?
Recruiter: No, it’s not my time, it’s my client’s time that you would be wasting! Yes, I know their range, but the offer is based on YOUR current salary.
Me: I’m sorry, I still don’t understand. Shouldn’t the salary offered be based on what I bring to the firm?
Recruiter: Look, I’ve done a lot of recruiting and occasionally I come across situations like this. Look, you’re just one in a million and so if it’s not you it will be someone else.
Me: Mhmm, well, I can give you a range of what my salary expectations are for the next opportunity I take on.
Recruiter: Okay that is fine.
I gave him my range and he said, “okay, that is in line with the Associate Director position.” I pointed out that I was forwarded the description of Director, and the Associate Director position is for someone with less work experience. He said, “Sure, so the company may choose to hire you at a higher level, in which case your range would still be fine.” I let him know that he should understand my position too of not wanting to be short-sold, and he said that based on my salary expectations I don’t need to worry about that.
Now, without his tone of voice added to this dialogue, the conversation may not seem as aggressive as it sounded to me in conversation. But it is quite difficult for anyone to overlook his condescending remarks about how I was wasting his client’s time and that I was just one in a million resumes that he was reviewing and was easily replaceable. If that were the case, then why did he contact me first for this opportunity? And wouldn’t we have achieved the same outcome if he gave me a range and I let him know it was too low for me? Thirdly, as a representative of the firm he’s hiring for, do I want to work with an employer that doesn’t value me and has the attitude that he can replace me at the drop of a hat? In my opinion, this is no way to hire top talent, especially for a rapidly growing start-up.
I wish I had stood my ground more strongly and let him know that in fact I was averaging 2-3 interviews a week, that many recruiters and HR reps were finding my 5+ years of industry experience and excellent education profile to be quite appealing, and remind him that he was trying to recruit someone who is quite comfortably employed, and therefore not desperate for his client’s offer letter. However, I didn’t want to get in the way of an opportunity to speak to the firm itself.
Do you have recommendations on how I could have handled this conversation better, and the attitude with which I should proceed in this company’s interview process? I’m worried about leaving money on the table, distraught that an opportunity which I was otherwise quite excited about has been tainted by this disrespectful conversation, and worried about what this experience means going forward in the interview process with this firm.
Why, yes, I do have advice about handling conversations like this: Don’t deal with jerks. You sound like you have plenty of options, so you can simply decline to work with people who operate this way.
At the same time, it also sounds like you took a fairly confrontational approach right off the bat, which you didn’t need to do.
Let’s re-write that conversation to show you how it would have gone with a different approach.
Recruiter: Tell me what is your compensation structure?
You: I’m looking for a range of $X to $Y. Is that in the ballpark?
At that point the recruiter probably would have just told you, but if not, then you’d get something like this:
Recruiter: What are you making currently? I need your salary history.
You: My employer’s salary structure is covered by my confidentiality agreement with them, but I’m looking for $X to $Y.
Again, at this point the recruiter is probably going to stop pushing, but let’s say that he doesn’t.
Recruiter: You have to tell me your current salary or we can’t proceed.
You: I’m sorry to hear that. I’m assuming you think I’m a strong candidate since you contacted me, and I’ve told you what I’d need to earn in order to leave my current job. But if we can’t proceed further, that’s fine.
Now, I want to emphasize that this advice accounts for the fact that you have options. If you didn’t have options and were desperate for this job, and the recruiter was insistent, you might have no choice but to give in and cough up your current salary. I think that’s BS for all the same reasons you do (it’s no one’s business but yours; compensation should be based what the company thinks your worth is, not what someone else thought your worth was; etc.), but the reality is that if you’re desperate for the opportunity, you don’t have the luxury of standing on principle.
You sound like you do have options, so exercise them by choosing not to work with recruiters who aren’t rude.
by ALISON GREEN
ARROGANT RECRUITERS WORKS ONLY FOR BODY SHOP COMPANIES
In addition to this: Keep in mind that when you will have an interview with an external recruiter, the recruitment company he/she’s working for will invoice up to 20% of your annual salary; it means by questioning you about your salary, he or she thinks if it is worth to introduce you and earn from your placement into the final hiring company. Also, he will check your background and ask you references from your previous & current employer, he might not take your references from your current one but might call them to introduce other candidates to replace you when you’ll resign to join your new jobs. The references you’ll give him will help him in his work, he might also ask you references from colleagues and managers that he or she will target on his headhunt. So he or she should be grateful and enjoying working with you for this placement in a win win partnership. Arrogance can be sometimes a bluff and if you choose to spread the word of his attitude, it can have a bad effect on his/her reputation. Don’t under estimate yourself. Don’t be desperate. They need you.
Arrogance : An insulting way of thinking or behaving that comes from believing that you are better, smarter, or more important than other people”.
The Arrogance Factor : Recruiters, both internal and external, have a decided advantage over applicants - recommending who gets in for employment consideration and who doesn’t.
Are recruiters gaining on the status lawyers now occupy as operators in one of the most despised professions on the planet? Do you think arrogance can be justified or is it just an ego complex from mediocre people ?
‘Arrogant’ recruiters continue making the same mistake when it comes to their talent pools.
That is according to Adam Gordon. He is the Managing Director at the Norman Broadbent company Social Media Search. The recruitment company aims to build relationships with candidates online by using social media.
Gordon has noticed one mistake that recruiters repeatedly make when they try to broaden their talent pool. The mistake, he tells Recruitment Grapevine, is that they are shouting out for talent to come and join their talent pool.
“It is very arrogant,” Gordon says. “I saw one company that posted on LinkedIn and said ‘calling all lawyers. Come and join our talent pool.’
“When they are inviting the world’s best talent to come and join their talent pool. That is like a company selling a service and telling all possible customers to line up in an orderly queue so that they can sell you their product face to face.”
The problem, Gordon explains, is that the best lawyers in the world already have well-paid jobs and are usually performing well where they are.
He continues: “So the people who are going to come and join their talent pool are the people who are looking at job adverts. And the people who are looking at job adverts are almost never the people that you want to hire. They are the people who need a job.
“Companies who think that all they have to do is to say ‘we’re hiring, form an orderly queue’, well they’re going to find out that it doesn’t work.
“Almost no companies have that luxury. Well, maybe Apple, Coca-Cola and McKinsey do, but few others.”
But that doesn’t mean that Gordon is opposed to talent pools, just the way companies invite people to come and join their talent pools.
“Here is where the irony is,” he says. “Companies should definitely create talent pools, but they should definitely not call them talent pools or invite ‘the world’s best talent’ to come and join them.
“What they should do is to create communities. They can easily do that by having their hiring managers connect with people and create a nurturing relationship with them so that they can recruit them in the future.
“Create communities by setting up LinkedIn groups with just a certain type of people that makes it appear more like a peer to peer knowledge sharing insights communities. “
The trick, Gordon says, is to make sure that you share useful information to potential candidates instead of just spamming them with information about the company.
He explains: “If you are useful, then you will create goodwill in return. And that goodwill will make people come and look at your organisation.”
HIRE MORE DRINKERS FOR YOUR RECRUITMENT TEAM
Yes, you read that right. Hire more drinkers!
Oh, wait, slight typo…
I mean, you have got to hire more D.R.I.N.C.K.A.E’s
If I were building new recruitment company today, the only people I would hire would be D.R.I.N.C.K.A.E’s. And I am pretty sure this is valid across all businesses in the modern age – certainly those selling a service, or an idea.
This is what a D.R.I.N.C.K.A.E looks like:
Digital natives:
People who ‘get digital’, are comfortable with social media, are great e-sourcers, can find people on the web, and can build relationships online.
Reach:
And by ‘reach’, I mean a network. People who know people. People who are connected, and known in a niche. People who may not know all the answers, but they know the people who have the answers, or at least, they know where to find those people.
Intelligence:
Hugely underestimated in recruitment, I have found. Intelligence that is. Everyone says recruitment is not ‘rocket science’. True, but it’s not easy either. And in the modern era, clients and candidates just will not deal with dummies. I am talking about intellectual prowess, which earns credibility, but also emotional intelligence. Knowing when to shut up, when to speak, what to say, what not to say.
No d*ckheads:
Sure you can bill, but you are just not that nice to have around. I won’t hire you. Ever.
Content:
Yes, the ability to write. Not emails so much, but that’s a bonus. I mean blogs, tweets, status updates, compelling profiles.
Knowledge and niche:
Specialisation is the future of recruitment. A mile deep and an inch wide. Credibility through expertise. That’s the way.
Attitude over résumé:
Always. I can fill in the gaps in your experience and skills, if you have the right attitude. Hire attitude.
Empathy:
I know, crazy word when talking about recruiters. But the days of the arrogant, showy, pushy, superficial recruiter are over. You want great candidates to work with you? You have got to feel their pain, and understand their hot buttons. That is the only way to build an off-line brand, and become a ‘talent magnet’.
So there it is. Throw away your old Job Descriptions. Only hire drinkers.
Sorry, I mean D.R.I.N.C.K.A.E’s
by Greg Savage
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