After being in the engineering staffing services industry for over 11 years, I have met countless recruitment professionals and even more qualified candidates across the country and across various skillsets. You know that you are speaking to a good Recruiter when the successes they discuss are centered around helping the folks around them, as opposed to accolades in sales figures and client acquisition. If someone has an inherent desire to do the greatest amount of good for their community, and help as many people as they can, that game plan will bring success in this game. This realization caused me to put more thought into what separates these staffing professionals from each other in the eyes of our lifeline…our candidates.
A highly valued candidate whom I had just placed with one of my best Medical/Biotech clients in Massachusetts just gave some of the best feedback on his experience with myself and DAVIS, and what separated us from our competition. He mentioned that during his career search the companies were not always bad fits, but that he had been pained previously by dealing with “terrible Recruiters”. When he chose to call back to discuss his career aspirations with me, he quickly found out that we were the “real deal” here at DAVIS. To this gentleman, we were consistent, followed up regularly and shared our insight. We realize that the job search and interviewing is painful enough, so we worked as a continuous support to try to ease that and expedite to the “right fit”.
Recruiters are a means to an end, finding that next great opportunity if they are effective…and nagging about positions you don’t want if they are not. This doesn’t mean that great Recruiters don’t “kick a brick” when making their cold calls. Their job is difficult and client expectations very often start out unrealistic given the market climate and candidate pool. Sometimes “thinking out of the box” is exactly what is needed to fill a difficult position, and that leads to receiving calls on positions out of state or being called on a position which the job title gives no clue as to the work needing to be done. If the Recruiter can connect and genuinely care about the people they are calling, it makes that brick much more soft, and that is how relationships are built. In my eyes, the bread and butter of the success of these Recruiter-to-candidate relationships is the follow-up.
I can admit that there are candidates whom have slipped through the cracks through the years, and that is a shame but never intentional. Our team here at DAVIS works diligently to make sure that all feedback is relayed to candidates and productive plans are put in place to either move candidates forward in the hiring process, or look for suitable alternatives to continue to help.
