I have had some nice calls lately from these guys. December recruiters were angry / demanding in messages: "ie go to this firm! take this salary! . . . " now the tone has changed to a more “i have this great opportunity / lets work together / etc etc” i like this new outlook. and my messages are sounding nicer. its not really cool to have someone yelling at you on your messages, telling you to “jump” – if you know what i mean
I don’t like recruiters. They remind me of real estate agents.
yeah , in general i don’t like them either , they remind me of real estate agents as well - especially those in the city that i dealt with when i was trying to get an apt . . . they always want you to take the deal because it is good for them - - not really because it is good for you. but they are the doors and windows that could possibly present you with an opportunity that will change your life/career
Just feels like recruiters target individuals who do not really need their services. Occasionally you will have one approach you with something interesting.
recruiters are basically USELESS IMO…they’re like financial advisors. when i was interview back in 2008 i must have met with 20 recruiters and ended up getting a position based on my own DD.
I feel that there are two major shortcomings for most recruiters: (1) they’re focused too much on trying to place candidates in positions that may not be ideal for the candidate (sometimes the candidates don’t know this, but other times they do and that’s when they get frustrated with recruiters); and (2) they spend a lot of time pitching job opportunities, but not enough time coaching their candidates. I recognize that it takes a ton of time for a recruiter to bother with doing resume reviews and mock interviews for candidates. Also, the other problem is that a lot of recruiters have never worked in finance before, so outside of being able to propose suggestions for some basic behavioral interview questions, the recruiter would potentially be up a creek without a paddle if he/she interviewed for a finance job. But, for the recruiters that have the know-how to coach candidates, I wonder why they don’t spend more time coaching; it seems like it would improve their placement rates significantly. Can any headhunters/recruiters on this board opine? The reason I’ve been thinking about this progressively more lately is because I’ve had several recruiters refer their candidates to me for my career management services, whether it’s resume reviews, mock interviews, or general career path discussions. I charge my standard rates. Then, the candidate goes through the interview process, gets the job, and the recruiter gets some percentage for placement fees (like 15-30% of the candidate’s base salary!). Of course, I appreciate the referrals that recruiters/headhunters send to me pretty much every day. However, the recruiters are also being incredibly resourceful because what they end up getting for placing a candidate is typically some large multiple of what my consulting fees are (anywhere from 30-80x in most cases). Ultimately, this makes me wonder whether I could become a headhunter myself. Any headhunters/recruiters here want to share stories about the pros/cons of their job? It seems like a job that can pay well if you’re good at it, but I don’t know if I’d like it enough to forgo a potential career in general management/strategy which is what I’m really interested in at this time.
Just to put some numbers around what I was saying, there was a recent situation where a client had retained me to help them with investment banking interview preparation – we did two separate mock interview sessions. One mock interview session was for behavioral interview questions, and the other was for technical finance questions. The candidate went through three rounds of actual interviews and a modeling test and got the job. The consulting sessions netted me ~$350 and a lot of satisfaction for getting my client a job; the person got an M&A analyst job with a $60K base (year-end bonus will probably be around $20-40K) and even more satisfaction for now being gainfully employed; and the recruiter probably got paid somewhere around $8-10K for placing the candidate. Yes…$8-10K! I know that there are a lot of people that are growing frustrated with headhunters, but it seems like there is a lot of money to be made. Maybe we should all just quit the CFA and become headhunters. Or is being a headhunter a pretty tough and competitive life?
I like headhunting but I think there is a cap - - in contrast to working in parts of finance in general where there is no cap I like things with no cap . . . ie JTLD could possibly make $100B dollars and be the new bill gates . . . we never know what is going to happen next and it is awesome
I was talking to someone about headhunting tonight - - she gets between $100K and $200K to place someone but these are execs in specific parts of PE
numi… i would fund a start up if your game. I have been thinking about the same thing. I do the same thing you do on the energy trading side
Even if you set the bar pretty low, the good ones are few and far between at least in finance. Many of them don’t have a very good idea of the concepts attached to each job posting. I think numi and goldenboy are onto something.
numi Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Any headhunters/recruiters here want to share > stories about the pros/cons of their job? It seems > like a job that can pay well if you’re good at it, > but I don’t know if I’d like it enough to forgo a > potential career in general management/strategy > which is what I’m really interested in at this > time. numi - - btw - - I am working with a major headhunter this summer to identify the placement of high profile PE execs - - she currently is on retainer for a PE shop in the city, which I cannot mention on here or through email because of her confidentiality agreement. But she would be open to me bringing on other people to share a % if I gave you credit. I can cut you a % of the deal if you have any good leads. I’ll send a note to your p.orcupines address (I added the “.” because of the bots) when we start looking this summer.
goldenboy09, philip.platt – i’m interested in hearing more details about what you’re working on. Please drop me an e-mail with a short description. Would definitely be interested in discussing and seeing if an alignment of efforts makes sense. Thanks!