An important message to frustrated candidates from a misunderstood recruiter
Much as candidates dislike recruiters, recruiters are not always enamoured of candidates. According to one senior recruiter, this is born of a misunderstanding.
If you are a candidate who feels the urge to berate recruiters, he would therefore like to request that you read this first:
"In all industries, there are good and there are bad. This applies to all sectors of the economy and to all walks of life. And it goes for financial services recruitment. Some of us are bad, but a lot of us aren't. We are good people doing a good job.
If you are a candidate and you are frustrated that your career is not going to plan, I understand that you might want to take your frustration out on someone and that that someone might be a recruiter.
However, this would be to misunderstand the role of the recruiter. Taking your frustrations out on us displays your ignorance of the recruitment process.
Fundamentally, we are nothing more than intermediaries. Our role is to find the right candidates for our clients and to manage clients' expectations about the candidates we can find. Sometimes, our clients have unreasonable expectations and we try to explain to them that holding out for perfection isn't viable.
Where possible, we try to help candidates and to introduce them to a better opportunity than they have at the moment. However, we are constrained by what our clients request: we can't put forward candidates who differ too much from a client's ideal.
If you're ambitious and you want to do something that will take your career to the next stage, but which isn't necessarily a linear progression, you may not meet clients' requirements for a particular role. In these circumstances, we won't be able to help you. But don't be rude, don't be aggressive. Be patient and think of other ways to reach your goal.
Most of all, remember that all recruitment firms have databases. On those databases we record everything that goes on and we track every individual we come across. If you behave rudely to us out of frustration, it will be noted for posterity. In future, recruiters who have never come across you before will read those comments on the database and form an opinion of you based upon your past behaviour. Do you really want this? Probably not."
