If you’re active on LinkedIn then you won’t find it long until you come across an anti-recruitment post. These generally consist of annoyance at the smallest things recruiters do but they are just doing their jobs like anybody else so why do they get such a hard time?
I’ll start by saying that I don’t think everyone has a bad perception of recruiters specifically. In my experience, it tends to be salespeople as a whole. If you watched Masterchef this week you would’ve taken note of Edmund who said that if being a recruitment consultant wasn’t bad enough, he recruits estate agents. He then went on to call it the perfect storm by combining the two most despised professions. For Edmund himself to say that, there is a clearly a negative opinion of salespeople in general!
Historically, recruiters have been criticised for their unethical behaviour which consisted of advertising for jobs that didn’t exist just to get hold of more CVs. It’s clear to see that this doesn’t happen as much anymore but to closed minded people, their opinions of the industry and recruiters might not change with the times.
In the days before technology, particularly recruitment software, recruiters relied on their memory, organisation skills, training and natural talent. It seems to some people that the standards have slipped in the industry and what used to be a relatively niche industry has now become something that so many people join for the sake of it. It no longer seems like people become recruiters because they genuinely want to develop a career as one but more because it’s seen as being easy to get into. It’s the people who don’t take the time to learn the sector they recruit into and build relationships with their clients and candidates who give recruiters a bad name. Please note, these are also the type of recruiters who label themselves as a ‘specialist’. There seems to be more of these recruiters than ever before and take the light away from those who actually do their job very well.
Talking of technology, when recruiters don’t utilise their software efficiently it can result in jobs being sent to applicants who aren’t necessarily interested in that specific role, an understandable frustration for candidates. An example of this would be sending a Commis Chef job to all applicants who contain the word ‘chef’ on their CV. You could receive some bemused responses from candidates who mention Chef infrastructure software on their CV so recruiters don’t always get it right!
Another reason why recruiters might get so much hate is because people are reluctant to pay for good recruitment agencies because they think they can do it themselves. This may be down to the fact that the market is absolutely flooded with ‘specialists’ and as previously mentioned, not all of them truly are what they say.
Despite the mass of anti-recruitment posts on LinkedIn, I recently saw a positive post about recruiters’ dedication to their jobs, how hardworking and organised they are and how open they were to new LinkedIn connections. This is the first pro recruiter post I’ve seen in a long time and it seemed to attract a lot of attention and rightly so. A positive post like that deserves more attention than someone naming and shaming a recruiter for something ridiculous. It received over 5300 likes and 325 comments and undoubtedly these were all from people within the industry but it’s encouraging to see recruiters getting a positive response. It’s pretty hard to come by these days!
What do you think about the unjustified hard time recruiters get? Do they deserve it or is it just another bandwagon for people to jump on?
