Recruiters, wtf?

Like all of you fine AFers, I’m a busy man. Some bimbo somehow got my resume and calls me up out of the blue from a recruiting firm I’ve never heard of. She insists we meet up to discuss some CFA&MBAtype opportunities. At first I say sure. So she sends me some times via email that would work to get together. None of the times do, her firm is way the F across town, and she is not flexible with meeting outside of normal business hours. Upon asking her for more info about the roles she is placing, here is what she sends me: “In terms of open roles, I am not able to discuss openings with you until we have determined whether or not a relationship between firm and yourself is mutually beneficial. I encourage you to follow through with an interview to determine if this is an opportunity that makes sense to pursue.” And how the f am I suppose to know if it is ‘mutually beneficial’ on my end if I don’t know wtf the roles are? Can someone fill me in here? The real kicker is I found her LinkedIn; she’s been at said firm for less than a month.

She clearly wants to bang you.

By we, I think she means her firm. Not you. Obviously, she wont give you too much details in case you locate the role and firm yourself, in which case, if you apply successfully she wont get her cut. I would ask her for a brief description of the role. If she is unwilling, tell her to come across town and meet you after work/at lunch. If she is unwilling to do that, tell her to f$ck off (because if she thought you were really a good fit for the role based on your resume, she would make the effort to meet you)

I agree. Tell her you have 20 minutes during lunch to meet by YOUR office. If that doesn’t work, tell her sorry, but you are too busy to go across town. Always keep your contact with her neutral or positive. Absolutely nothing to gain by being negative in any way.

On a serious note, I agree with soddy and shark. You’re the customer here, not her. Her firm stands to make a nice fee on placing you, so she should be willing to meet at a place that is convenient for you.

Just say you can’t commit to an interview because you don’t know what or who it is for. Thank her for her interest…

Another kicker. I’ve asked to have a phone conversation, but she said she cannot comment on specifics outside of a formal interview. Do recruiters get paid to just set meetings? This seems so inefficient!

Dude, F recruiters. I get emails and calls from these people constantly for positions that have nothing to do with my background or trajectory because most of them don’t have a clue what they’re talking about. Not to mention, their mentality of making you bend over to meet them is ignorant. I’ve always found better opportunities than the recruiters will offer you. They always want to chase the low hanging fruit for their commision, so they’ll stick you in some position that’s under where you should be, rather than helping you make a stretch for an awesome position, every time.

I’ve seen this before. They’re a recruiting firm, and they just want to put you in their database. They like to make it sound like they selected you for some specific position to reel you in, and then they have you fill out a bunch of forms with your salary and job history and then say, “yeah, I’ll let you know if I see something.” It’s not necessarily a bad thing, because something could come out of it, but it is bait-and-switch, essentially, and doesn’t make you trust them. Oftentimes firms do this when they are new and want to say to firms “we have X thousand qualified professionals that we can draw on.” But first they need to have the list. It can be a bad thing if they aren’t careful about who they market you to and how. If they do something that tips your employer that you’re on the market, your employer may or may not get rid of you first, though that’s not by any means guaranteed. I think employers should assume that all employees are looking constantly. But it would suck to be sacked because your employer thinks you’re about to leave, when all you actually did was respond to a phone call with “what did you get.”

they’re a COMPLETE waste of time. theyre usually all recent college grads (from 0’s) who are just trying to make a quick buck off your labor for themselves

In my experience completely useless and waste of time. However, some people actually do get a job from them.

I agree with everyone 100%. If a recruiter doesn’t see that he/she can book a commission with you, they couldn’t care less about you. I get calls from these recruiters all the time saying that I found your resume online and blah blah blah… I remember on the Thursday before my level 3 test this year I got a call from a recruiter saying that he has a job for me that I would be perfect for and he told me I need to see him right away. I told him if I can meet him next week since I have a huge test that I’m studying for and he wouldn’t accomodate me. He says no and it has to be today. So I tell him, how about the next day early in the morning so I can still study most of the day. He replies, no way it is Friday and I’m going to the cottage. I was trying to compromise and meet him half was and he wanted no part of it. I don’t get the stupidity. If you think I was a good fit for a position then why can’t you wait literally a weekend to see me? Based on his comments, I would have been a sure commission cheque for him. The funny thing is this person has his CFA charter and could not understand the fact that it was 2 days before my test and I needed to study. Does having the CFA charter in the end make us this stupid? It seems like it did to this guy. I know I am being to extreme and dramatic but just trying to express how lame these recruiters are and useless. I work with some older guys in their 50s and they are confused about this whole HR movement in companies. They always mention, “when was the last time an HR personnel made the company money? Never! So why the hell do they have so much importance these days. If you are not making me money than you are part of the problem.”

Personally, if the recruiter couldn’t tell me at least what types of roles they were seeking, there is no way I would meet up with them. I mean, it’s not like I’m working every single minute here – I do need some downtime during the day – but I get it in spurts from AnalystForum. No way I would cut out for 30-40 minutes to talk to a recruiter about God knows what. Basically, you probably have a lot more patience than I do if you’re still thinking about this recruiter, even after she wouldn’t give you specifics about the possible opportunities over the phone. I would never tolerate such unprofessionalism. higgmond Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > She clearly wants to bang you. Agreed with higgmond – this could be. That person might be talking about different types of “openings” that aren’t job-related. Pictures of this recruiter please.

I have gotten many roles from recruiters, but the best ones are internal company recruiters. My current role came this way. I have dealt with many, many recruiters over the years, some good, some bad. I have a rule that I try to follow: I never meet them in person (this was learned the hard way, through lots of wasted effort on my part) until they have a job interview for me, and even then, I might not meet them. they want to meet you so they can present you to their client as someone that they know. It’s BS in my opinion. i’ll never forget working as a consultant a few years back and some cr@ppy firm contacted me saying that they had jobs in the $300k-$400k range that i would be ‘perfect’ for and insisted on me coming in to their office. as a consultant, i lose money when I am not working so i didn’t want to do it, but this type of job was a good incentive so I schlepped down from midtown. it was this cr@ppy office and when I walked in, they asked me to fill out a form. on the form were questions about my typing speed and high school diploma. this firm apparently also placed lower level candidates, kind of like a Robert Half. I didn’t have time for this and after they made me wait in the reception area for 20-25 minutes, i said i had to go as this was costing me too much money. the ‘recruiter’ did come out to meet me and when I complained about the stupid questions, said that she DID have a $300k-$400k job. YEAH, RIGHT. i’m sure this job would be interested in my typing speed and would hire such a low rent firm. I posted about one such memorable scam recruiter here and there aer feedbacks from other recruiters on this thread as well. if nothing else you may get a story out of meeting her http://www.nuclearphynance.com/Show%20Post.aspx?PostIDKey=144086

Recruiters have no interest in ever emailing anyone back. If they do email me back, they want some information, and then never email back again or respond to my emails.

another good HH story http://www.nuclearphynance.com/Show%20Post.aspx?PostIDKey=61840

@DoubleDip Every recruiter I’ve been in touch with over the past year has asked where I’ve interviewed. In the back of my mind I was thinking what they said in that story. I still don’t know why they ask.

Just like with job candidates, a few can be very good. I’ve had a recruiter coach me extensively of the likes and dislikes of a company and its interview process, very very useful considering that company’s process was very unconventional and difficult. Lots of time spent fine tuning my resume to cater to that company/role as well as mock interviews. More often than not though, waste of time.

Black Swan Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Dude, F recruiters. I get emails and calls from > these people constantly for positions that have > nothing to do with my background or trajectory > because most of them don’t have a clue what > they’re talking about. Not to mention, their > mentality of making you bend over to meet them is > ignorant. I’ve always found better opportunities > than the recruiters will offer you. They always > want to chase the low hanging fruit for their > commision, so they’ll stick you in some position > that’s under where you should be, rather than > helping you make a stretch for an awesome > position, every time. That has been my experience as well, unfortunately I took the bait and regretted it.

There’s no difference between recruiters and real estate agents, and after reading Freakonomics you’ll tag Ku Klux Klan too in the same group. You surely don’t want to put your career in their hands, they’ll always try to sell you for less than what you are worth, because that’s easy and optimizes utility of their time.