As I have chance to hire people through recruiters, I usually use them only if I couldn’t find a good candidate at all from my channels and advertisements. From my perspective, hiring through recruiting has much more restrictions than hiring directly. The complexity increases as you have to deal with one more person who are demanding on your time and attention.
So is it bad a candidate to go through recruiter to find job? Not really, but you have to be really careful. I read an article today, called Three Tips for getting a job through a recruiter. Reg Braithwaite gives some tips on what should a candidate be careful when dealing with recruiter. First one is so true, the death of double submission:
This is 100% true. It’s absolutely bad to have two recruiters submit your resume to the same client. Speaking as a client, I round-file any resume received through two recruiters. This is because I do not want to end up fighting with them over who should get paid. And they will fight.
The trouble is, the recruiter thinks that they only have upside to submitting your resume, even if the client already has the resume, or you’ve worked there in the past, or another recruiter has already submitted it. They will tell you all kinds of stories, such as “if you haven’t submitted it in the last ninety days I can resubmit it for you.” The recruiter would rather have a slim chance of a fee than no chance, and if your resume gets tossed, well, better luck with the next company.
I have been in this situation before, where I receive the same resume from two recruiters. Frankly unless the candidate is really, really good, I wouldn’t consider him at all to avoid which recruiter should be paid.
The other two tips on keywords, and never disclosing your compension are pretty well as well. Worth a read.
Three tips for getting a job through a recruiter – [Raganwald]
