Who are recruiters anyway?

Recruiters: you can't live with 'em, you can't live without 'em, and you can't shoot 'em...seriously though, you can't its a felony.

If I had to think of a general term to describe recruiters as a whole, I might have to agree with the general consensus that recruiters seem awful. At some point we have probably all dealt with recruiters (yes, including me) who are under-qualified, misinformed, unresponsive, trying to fit a square peg into a round hole (you get the idea), but honestly these recruiters fall into the proverbial - one rotten apple spoils the whole bunch.

On the whole, at least with the recruiters with whom I've had the pleasure to work, they are none of these descriptors listed above. In fact, they are the complete opposite. In many cases they are OVER-qualified, completely informed both in their specialty, their business, and their client/company, uncompromisingly responsive, and always look to find the best match for their candidate personal gain be damned.

The truth is its easy to paint the recruiter as the villain (and trust me we do). I think there is a saying out there that goes something like "don't shoot the messenger". Yea well, the messengers are recruiters. Because of the effort that most of us put into interviews, hearing feedback that we weren't selected or that we didn't do well is hard and more often than not its the recruiter that has to deliver the news.

Job searches are stressful. You rely on recruiters to help you along the way, and nothing is worse than getting burned. Frankly, while caught up in our own searches, its easy to forget recruiters are human and its at that moment that we have some pretty choice words for the unsung hero's of the job search world. I can only imagine how many people rolled their eyes at this moment. Perhaps "hero" is a statement of grander, but in all honesty, there is so much that recruiters try to do - FOR YOU.

Here are a few items just for a taste.

• Learn about you & invest time in knowing you - I have a feeling that a lot of recruiters ask the same questions. Tell me about your background, tell me about your skills, tell me about your search, tell me what is important to you, etc. These may be routine, but these are not throw away questions; they're important. You help recruiters understand what you honestly want, and hopefully direct you to the jobs that will give you that.
• Push for feedback - While it may not always seem that way, recruiters try to keep the process moving (Surprise, recruiters have OKRs to hit too). Hiring Managers have a full time job and actually hiring people is a small fraction of that, so its easy for you to get lost in the shuffle. Recruiters are your partner. They want to unblock the process, and trust me, they do everything they can.
• Push back on poor feedback - More often than not, especially if you have just received a rejection, a recruiter is not delivering that information at face value. When receiving feedback recruiters want to know why too. Generally, recruiters have already tried every possible scenario to find a reason for hiring teams to say yes. Tough feedback is just as deflating to recruiters as it is to job seekers (unless you're a jerk and then they're OK with it. #facts).
• Negotiate on your behalf - I can get into a whole post on salary and transparency, but for the purposes of this I'll keep it brief and to the point. Recruiters receive no benefit to low ball or under pay you. Let me say that louder for the people in the back -RECRUITERS RECEIVE NO BENFIT TO UNDER PAY YOU.

I could go on, but I'll save that for another post on another day. What I'm really trying to finally answer is this: Who are Recruiters? In a simple statement, recruiters are your partners. Recruiters are people who want nothing more than to help you get successfully to the end of a very stressful process. Recruiters are the backbone, the negotiators, the hype-persons, and the empathizers. And if you'll let them be, recruiters are your friends.

Thanks for reading my first post! Constructive feedback and/or topic ideas are always welcome.