Although at some point of a career life everyone has to deal with recruiters or people who perform their functions, recruiters are usually not someone who we meet on a daily basis. As such, the nature of this profession may not be clear to many people.
There are a variety of terms that refer to recruiters and their job. Everyone has probably heard different kinds of these titles: ‘staffing agency’, ‘recruiting firms’, ‘staffing companies’, ‘headhunters’, ‘executive search firms’, ‘employment agencies’,’ executive recruiters’, ‘staffing consultants’, ‘contracting agency’ and so on.
One may probably be confused and puzzled to identify the difference among all these definitions. As a matter of fact, they all do basically the same job, although use different names to manifest themselves.
In essence, all recruiters always deal with other companies, that are actually their clients, and candidates who are on the job market looking for employment. Recruiters are compensated by their clients for finding them employees that they need. The style of work may differ from one to another as well as positions they recruit for may vary from one agency to another but the business itself is the same – seeking for clients and candidates and matching the two.
There are also ‘corporate’ or ‘internal recruiters, however, this is somewhat different from recruiting agencies or whatever one would like to name them. Internal recruiters are employees of one organization and do recruitment for this organization only. Recruiting agencies, on the contrary, recruit for many companies.
Different agencies may specialize in a particular profession or industry, such as IT recruiters, they may also focus on a geographical scope, job level or combination of all these factors. For example, there are firms that help their clients to find employees for temporary assignments in a certain industry and profession within a particular area. Nevertheless, the main idea of the business is to match jobs and companies with people.
At first, matching the two may seem easy to other people. However, this process involves a great deal of time and effort. On top of it, finding candidates and clients and bringing them together is sometimes very time-consuming. In a sense, recruiting encompasses accuracy of a science and creativity of art.
Professional recruiters tend to think of recruitment as helping people find their ideal jobs and helping companies find their ideal employees.
As such, they act as intermediaries between the two parties.
In practice however, either or both parties usually have to be flexible on something for a recruiter to facilitate a placement, as it’s usually very difficult to find the best
job for a job seeker and provide a perfect employee for a client. For example, the candidate may accept a job that is paid less or located further from home than they expected. Likewise, a company may need to invest more money into training of the employee and provide a higher salary than they wanted. Therefore, it is important for a recruiter to uncover any issues and to be able to streamline the negotiation process between clients and candidates.
But what do recruiters do on a daily basis to make it all happen?
Usually every recruiter manages own time very well and is involved in a variety of tasks throughout the day, such as: networking with candidates and clients, posting open positions online and creating job ads, interviewing candidates and/or preparing them for interviews with clients, communicating with clients to discuss their staffing needs etc.
Although this role may sometimes include some sales component, good recruiters always strive to make a placement where a candidate perfectly fits the job and the job perfectly fits the candidate. In this case, they don’t even have to sell anything
To be a recruiter one needs to have a lot of skills, however the key to success in this profession is to be an excellent communicator. Good recruiters listen well to both client and candidate. They understand everyone’s expectations and are able to address problems early. Recruiters sympathize with their clients and candidates and see the process of recruiting not as selling but as consulting and providing the right solutions for both sides. They treat everyone with courtesy and professionalism.