Is a recruiter supposed to actively recruit applicants or wait for applicants to find them?

If a recruiter is waiting for applicants to find them, then is that person really a recruiter?

I know external recruiters are paid when someone is placed with a company. But what incentive does an internal recruiter have if they're drawing a salary from their company?

Help me understand, please.

Possibly bonuses for quality fills.

I would imagine it varies with the company, whether a bounty is paid or not. However, a recruiter is supposed to do more than find suitable candidates and "close" the hire, things like making sure the condidate understands the company, the working conditions and the position requirements, etc. In my experience, having managed in-house recruiters, this aspect of the job is usually performed insufficiently, if attempted at all.

My experience is that the majority of recruiters have exellent social skills and salesmanship. They seem to be lacking in the other qualities noted above.

Look, in today's world of automated culling of resumes and applications, the current day recruiter in most companies is little more than a paper pusher that is a drag on the profitability of the company. First, it has been my experience that the majority of the recruiters I've met know absolutely nothing about the actual company they work for. Second, they rarely know a hell of a lot about the position(s) they're seeking to fill. Does your resume check off all the boxes on the automated systems checklist? If yes, then it goes into the next pile for the next person to determine if an interview is warranted. Oh you have 20 years in a particular field or position and check off 19 of 20 boxes on their checklist while offering even more related experience or skills, doesn't matter because you didn't check off box #11, so thank you, come again. Hell, I've been told by a couple HR folks that some of the application culling systems are so faulty that they'll reject a resume if it, 1) spans more than two pages, and/or 2) includes formatting the system doesn't like (Ex. horizontal accent lines). Yeah, some great stuff.

I've had to deal with a number of recruiters over the past several years, and if they weren't working their current jobs, their only other option 'might' be waiting tables somewhere. Not an impressive group of people, doing substandard work, relying virtually solely on automation to do their jobs for them, and negatively impacting almost everyone they come in contact with.

Well my recent experience with a recruiter is 180 degrees from what Bigdeal reports.

I got a call from a guy last December asking me if I was interested in another job. I got those calls every few months but for the first time I was. Dude was smooth. The kind of guy who could sell ice to Eskimos as the saying goes. Turns out he’d spent about 20 years on Wall Street and he had the attitude that makes me believe it.

Anyway the guy was very knowledgeable about the work I do and the current state of the industry, including having a lot of insider info on the company I was working for. Info that I knew was true and could have only come from someone with connections.

I tossed out what I thought was a stupid high number and he went to work. It took about two months but he got me an offer for the salary with a few things given back on my side like vacation days. I did nothing as far as negotiations were concerned. The only interview I did was over the phone with the guy who is now my direct report. In my case I have worked with this company for years so upper management already knew me. Basically I did nothing but talk to the recruiter half a dozen times and within 3 months I was at a new company doing work I love and making about 45% more.

Smart businesses front load investment and resources in the hiring processes to get good people and weed out dead weight, so they don't have to spend the resources to deal with the messes that bad hires will make. That's where recruiters can be worth their weight in gold. Quality of people is everything, but you have to be willing to pay better for the best to get them and keep them. Never bypass talent. The Chick Fil A model is a great example of this concept in action.

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Originally posted by Pale Horse:
Well my recent experience with a recruiter is 180 degrees from what Bigdeal reports.

I got a call from a guy last December asking me if I was interested in another job. I got those calls every few months but for the first time I was. Dude was smooth. The kind of guy who could sell ice to Eskimos as the saying goes. Turns out he’d spent about 20 years on Wall Street and he had the attitude that makes me believe it.

Anyway the guy was very knowledgeable about the work I do and the current state of the industry, including having a lot of insider info on the company I was working for. Info that I knew was true and could have only come from someone with connections.

I tossed out what I thought was a stupid high number and he went to work. It took about two months but he got me an offer for the salary with a few things given back on my side like vacation days. I did nothing as far as negotiations were concerned. The only interview I did was over the phone with the guy who is now my direct report. In my case I have worked with this company for years so upper management already knew me. Basically I did nothing but talk to the recruiter half a dozen times and within 3 months I was at a new company doing work I love and making about 45% more.

You sir were dealing with a hired gun (i.e. someone who does not work for the company they are seeking to place a new employee at). These people are night and day different from the in-house HR department staffs I was referring to above. As an example....Years ago when I worked for EDS out of Plano, Texas, I used to have to evaluate Project Manager applicants. Of the maybe two dozen applications I looked at, I actually recommended one. Of course he didn't get hired. Out of the rest, the majority of those who HR approved for hire survived maybe 6 to 12 months before they bailed for other jobs (several of which would have been fired had they not bailed) because they could not handle the load or stress of the job. So no, I do not hold in-house HR departments in very high esteem. Third party head-hunters on the other hand can be very talented.

So I've been trying to "network" into a firm here. It's a large international firm. I say "network" because apparently you can't apply for work anymore, you have to network with someone inside, get yourself a "mentor" who works there and be referred in.

Friend of mine has referred me in multiple times and has even gotten in touch with a recruiter there. He referred me into a position and got in contact with a recruiter saying he referred me into a particular position. She replies she's not a recruiter for that department and continues to try to find me a position. Well I found a position, sent it to my friend, he referred me and got in contact with her. She's an internal recruiter and doesn't appear to have any motivation to do her job.

Even if it's not her department, you would think she would reply with "it's not my department but I've forwarded this message to him and cc'd you in the message" but no...

Hence my question to what a recruiter really does. I've worked with multiple recruiters, I was placed in my current company by a recruiter and he went to lengths to get me hired because he wanted to get paid.

It has been a long time since Ive had to deal with that, but back in the ‘90s I had experience with both internal and external recruiters that spanned a wide range. Yes, there were folks both internal and external who I wouldn’t even dignify by calling them salespukes - cheerleading order takers with no clue about the product would be closer to the mark. There were also folks (again both internal and external) with great people skills, great ability to read people, and good understanding of what was required for the company & position. There were also folks in between.

Perhaps there should be more nuance in the question. What is the range of things a recruiter does? In my (admittedly dated) experience, it ranges from “Do a great job helping both the employer and employee by working to find/create great fits.” to “Getting in the way, chase off good candidates, and make everything take longer and work out worse.

In short, just like any other profession, there are good ones and not so good ones.

During the years that I worked for a medium size -- around 150 employees -- software development company, we did not have recruiters nor an HR / personnel department.

Depending on the project(s) that I was working on, my role might have been system architect, technical team lead, project manager, etc., but my job description always included things like evaluating resumes, interviewing applicants, even wining and dining those who we decided we really wanted. In that sense, I suppose that I could have been called a recruiter, part of the time.

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Originally posted by slosig:
In short, just like any other profession, there are good ones and not so good ones.

Twenty five or so years ago, that would be a true statement, but like so many other things today, automation has rendered most of these internal HR people useless. They rely almost solely on technology to weed out the right applicants, which for someone who's been in the tech industry for the past 25+ years is laughable.

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Originally posted by Edmond:
She's an internal recruiter and doesn't appear to have any motivation to do her job.

Female HR in a nutshell.

Good post.

They put a few adds up on indeed and then go home by noon.

My wife is a Human Resources manager that makes deep 6 figures with stock options and a 6 figure annual bonus. HR has been good to us.

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Originally posted by Voshterkoff:

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Originally posted by Edmond:
She's an internal recruiter and doesn't appear to have any motivation to do her job.

Female HR in a nutshell.

No different from HR as a whole.

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Originally posted by Edmond:
Is a recruiter supposed to actively recruit applicants or wait for applicants to find them?

If a recruiter is waiting for applicants to find them, then is that person really a recruiter?

I know external recruiters are paid when someone is placed with a company. But what incentive does an internal recruiter have if they're drawing a salary from their company?

Help me understand, please.

I good recruiter is pro-active. Bottom line.

Internal recruiters however tend to be more passive. Filter through applicants that apply and try to filter the noise to a manageable level for the manager. Occasionally this role is coupled with a HR function. Typically they also have some sort of metrics / placements to make.

External 3rd party agencies are more aggressive. More traditional "head hunting" to find the right talent. Good recruiters typically work and focus on a specific field. (IT or Healthcare Etc) They usually know that field, and the comp ranges very well.

Source: Agency Recruiter for past 14 years. Drop me a note if you have questions.

Speaking of recruiters.....do companies really think it’s the best idea to hire people with extremely heavy middle eastern accents? I bet I get an average of 2-3 calls per week from recruiters that I can barely understand. Those voicemails get deleted as soon as I hear the person start talking. I’m not going to spend the next ten minutes trying to figure out what the voicemail says.

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Originally posted by Largefarva:
Speaking of recruiters.....do companies really think it’s the best idea to hire people with extremely heavy middle eastern accents? I bet I get an average of 2-3 calls per week from recruiters that I can barely understand. Those voicemails get deleted as soon as I hear the person start talking. I’m not going to spend the next ten minutes trying to figure out what the voicemail says.

A lot of companies have Off-Shore recruiting support. Or at times entirely offshore recruiting. I do hear this complaint often.

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Originally posted by myrottiety:

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Originally posted by Largefarva:
Speaking of recruiters.....do companies really think it’s the best idea to hire people with extremely heavy middle eastern accents? I bet I get an average of 2-3 calls per week from recruiters that I can barely understand. Those voicemails get deleted as soon as I hear the person start talking. I’m not going to spend the next ten minutes trying to figure out what the voicemail says.

A lot of companies have Off-Shore recruiting support. Or at times entirely offshore recruiting. I do hear this complaint often.

It’s absolutely horrible. The way I think about it is if this is what they put into trying to bring talent to their company then it’s likely not a company that I would be interested in working for. And my current situation is one where I would very much like to get away from. So I have a lot of incentive to consider different opportunities....but I just can’t deal with recruiting like this.