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What's being overlooked in this entire conversation is the efficacy of calling candidates at work. Despite what this troll is telling you, no working professional worth his salt would even consider working with the moron recruiter who thought it was a good idea to call a candidate at work. It fails on so many different levels. 1) It jeopardizes the current standing of the candidate with his employer. 2) It's a subversive invasion of privacy 3) It demonstrates a low sense of emotional intelligence on the part of the recruiter. How many of you would like a telemarketer to call you at work attempting to sell a product? That exactly what a recruiter is doing, except you're the product.
E,
Here is a cut and paste of a typical industry conversation about getting calls from headhunters. When you read this, you will see that what we do is commonplace, no matter how much you deny it goes on and how you characterize what we do.
This is not to say that you cannot 'hang up' on a headhunter when one calls; I'm just showing you -in black and white print- that the industry has been doing things as I've described it for as long as the business has been in existence.
If you were to take the time to input 'what to do/say when a headhunter calls', you would see then, finally, that everything I've said is how-it-is. Whether you believe it or not, whether you like it or not.
You call me a troll because I have described how the executive search process works. What you have really done is take on a form of denial or perhaps you just like to counter people, no matter what they say.
Don't forget- you can look up your own articles to explore but as I've said, even though they will each have their own flavor of how the business works, it should become clear to you finally that it all starts with a phone call to you at work.
It’s mid-week and a stressful one at that like any other. Somehow everything is not going as smoothly as you would like. The coffee is on strike like the subways and even then there’s this email from your boss, the day seems messed up already by 8 clock in the morning … And then there’s this call: “Hello, do you have a moment for me? Can you speak freely?” Who would have thought, that on the other line there is a headhunter and he calls in to save your day. Well, at least he has a very high probability that a leading management position is in store for you … Do not miss it, even if you are just not in mood to show off your best side. What not to do when a headhunter calls is something we will discuss today, so that you do not simply let this opportunity slip away.
Headhunters characterize the current recruiting industry more than ever. Meanwhile, it has also become common to switch a job even if one was actually quite happy but in effect looking for new challenges. Many professionals are finding meaning in their jobs and without challenges, new goals or adventure, a lot is left to be achieved. So well, stay calm, and listen to what the headhunter has to say and if you just can’t talk, then you find an alternative date, where you can talk. Until then, read the following 3 mistakes that you should commit by no means when in contact with a headhunter …
1. I am sorry dear headhunter but I am sooo busy
You do know that you can potentially increase your market value by the headhunter interaction ? Headhunters work on seeking candidates for top positions and basically help you get up the career ladder. Coming off as a busybody is not doing you a favor as a lot of headhunters work with their networks and focus on building long term relationships with clients as well as candidates. By appearing like a snooty busybody, what you are really telling the Headhunter is that you have no interest in the job or future jobs. If this is the case, it’s ok to clarify that you are currently satisfied with your job and want no changes, however, it is rude not to even listen to what he / she has to say. By being polite and calm, you will perhaps emphasize that this position is not for you, but the headhunter will keep you in good memory. And that can’t be so wrong, because you do not know when something can change in your current situation …
2. Why are you calling me, you do see I already have a job!
Welcome to the real world, dear Senior Manager. Headhunters with the clientele of large and successful companies are looking for the employed and experienced. “Headhunters do not usually work with candidates who are unemployed,” says the author Terri Lee Ryan, who also works as a career coach. Next she says: “Companies do not pay so much money to headhunters to find candidates who are not fully employed. There are some good people on the sidelines but companies still want to see candidates who are successful in their job and are at the top of their careers. That’s why I always tell employees that you will never notice if you do not already have a new job”. So, think through again for a moment, before you cancel the headhunter.
3. Why are you calling me at my workplace?
Each Headhunter is clear that the workplace is one of the most probable but also one of the most inappropriate places to reach you. However, to start the conversation in an abrupt. “why are you calling me”, would be a fatal error. A good headhunter will ask you if it fits you right and if not, whether he can call you back to another time. Get this information from the headhunter and specify your preferred communication channel (say e-mail). Rearrange a time, where you can talk in peace, and on your home phone. Stay discreet and polite, the Headhunter also wants to make it work and does not want to place you in an uncomfortable situation. You lose nothing by remaining open to discussion. This also allows you to see how the market is viewing your profile, if none else.
Hopefully you will refrain from making these critical errors in your next conversation with a headhunter.
Staying open to options is the first step to finding success in any chosen career path. We wish you luck!
.................
Like I said, E, you are certainly entitled to your opinions, characterizations, analogies and metaphors but you cannot continue to deny we call people at work and that whether you like it or not, people benefit from our calling them.
I'm not saying calls at work don't happen, but every time I've witnessed a recruiter call someone at work, it's resulted in the following: 1) The candidate telling them off and hanging up 2) A call down to internal HR to let them know of the harassment. There's nothing HR likes more than eviscerating some punk agency trying to snipe down its employees.
Both you and e130478 are both very confused and highly unfamiliar with the art of dealing with recruiters.
More sophisticated professionals know being called by a headhunter is a good thing, not a bad thing.
First, are you both saying you would prefer phone calls at home while you are eating dinner?
Okay, let's go back to basics because the sooner you learn this, the better off you will be.
Understand that if you got a call from a recruiter/executive search consultant, it could very well mean you are highly qualified and well thought of in your industry.
This means you are a valued professional other employers would want to hire.
Do I have to remind you that people get better jobs and more money by changing jobs?
Next, we call people at work because that is where they are found. It is relatively easy to reach out to someone at their workplace because most companies can be accessed by phone. We call the switchboard and ask for you or we find out your extension and/or use the 'dial by name' directory and then we are talking to you or, in many cases, an administrative or executive assistant.
Our clients want us to find them highly qualified people.
You, as a 'highly qualified' person, are on the job. Where else would I expect to find you?
And please, no crybaby stuff about 'getting fired'.
Either you recognize you have been given an opportunity to get a better job and you quickly whisper into the phone your cell number and tell that headhunter to call you later, at a specific time or,
you tell that headhunter to call you at home and give him/her your home number/cell phone and HANG UP.
Or, if you are being watched (maybe you are a nurse and have just been called to the nurse's station to take the call and have four other nurses standing next to you plus the secretaries listening), you can turn this to your advantage (with your present employer) and say either nicely or not, "please do not call me, I am very busy!" and then hang up, saying under your breath, loudly enough for the group to hear, you 'hate recruiters' and then walk back to whatever you were doing.
What's so hard about that???People get calls from recruiters all the time. It is an opportunity to be assessed as being qualified and appropriate for that recruiter's search assignment. To you, that could mean a better job. And you come here, to complain? Gimme a break!
Now, had you complained that you get too many calls from recruiters, each day, that would be a common enough complaint. All the Best of the Best get calls all the time from headhunters. You should consider yourself so lucky. And if you are happy where you are and have no reason to be taking a better job, then just tell that recruiter, 'no thanks, I'm happy here and please don't call again' and then HANG UP.
You'll make points with your boss, even if you are being short-sighted about the opportunity of being offered a better job.
Now, for e130478:
"A recruiter who calls you at work is a recruiter who doesn't last long in the industry, plain and simple."
Where did you hear that? You are very much mistaken. Headhunters/Recruiters spend their entire day, calling professionals at work. THAT IS WHAT THEY ARE SUPPOSED TO DO.
Where have you been?
"These people are usually very desperate to meet their quota and are on their way out."
Again, you are misinformed. Recruiters/Headhunters spend their day calling professionals at their workplace. It goes on all the time. It is Standard Practice.
"If a recruiter were to get me fired, what are the chances that I would utilize his or her services to find me another job, anyway?"
How can a recruiter get you fired?
That would only happen if you were on the phone with one, your employer heard you and thought you had initiated the call.
Let me help you out:
If a recruiter calls, it is about what might be a better job. You should listen to what they have to say.
If your boss is close by, let that recruiter know you can't take the call just then and ask that recruiter to call back at a better time, letting him/her know when that would be.
Or give that recruiter your cell or home number, letting them know you are busy and can't stay on the phone, letting that person know when they should call back.
And if you are being watched -which is how you sound from the tone of your post- just tell or yell at the recruiter, telling that person to never call you back again.
Believe me, they won't. Problem solved until the next recruiter foolishly calls you.
Now for the other eye-opening part, e130478:
"If a recruiter were to get me fired...what are the chances that I would utilize his or her services to find me another job, anyway?..."
So you can learn about our business because it is more than clear you are totally uninformed here-
As a rule, recruiters/headhunters do not find people jobs. We are in the business of recruiting people who are doing a job a client wants them to be doing for them. We then recruit them and send them on interviews where, hopefully, they are made an offer to take a better job. If they don't get an offer or are not make a 'better' offer, that person simply keeps their job and nothing more is said.
We are not in the employment agency business. We don't find job for people who got fired. No Thanks! If you came to me, saying you had just been fired, I'd show you the door.
So first, we don't get people fired, they get themselves fired.
The days when an employer would fire a staff member just because they were talking to a recruiter are over unless that employee is already on that employer's bad side.
People who are considered to be high value and come to their boss with the news they have been made an offer by another company usually get, in response, a Counter Offer.
Not always, but if someone is considered to be filling an important role in the company, their employer won't just agree to see them leave without attempting to offer them a 'better situation' so they stay and keep their job.
The very idea a recruiter would 'get you fired' is absurd unless it was done deliberately and frankly, that technique was only taught to us old-timers and most likely, none of the current wave of Millennial recruiters you may run into even know that technique of recruitment.
One more time- recruiters do not deliberately get people fired. If you are caught talking to us, then you should hang up after yelling something into the phone about 'never call me again!' so your boss does not know you were taking advantage of the situation to know about what might have been a better job.
Thank you, both. I've not heard anything so silly in weeks.
Read about how you can improve your career by having a headhunter/recruiter guide you to a better job. Your complaints are in fact, non-existent in the real world.
Thanks again for the laugh,
Paul
What complete and utter nonsense. Any recruiter/headhunter/whateverer with an iota of common sense will NOT call you at work. They will call your cell phone, leave a voicemail or most often, email you. That's because they don't want you to get fired. If you got fired, you wouldn't want to work for whoever they are representing because then you wouldn't trust them. Obviously.
So you're needles in hay stacks looking for needles in hay stacks. That sounds like a remarkably inefficient system, which effectively operates on the inconsequential cost of bothering the hay.
bUU, Hi...
Well, again, this is someone flavoring the conversation in the direction they want to take it, whether it matches reality or not.
I already covered this but I will say it again and perhaps you will either let up or understand better:
Yes, it is a needle in a haystack search. That is to say, I am looking, for example, a pricing actuary with particular experience in Whole Life.
The 'haystack' is the pool of actuaries who are in the insurance business and the subset haystack is that pool of actuaries who specialize in Pricing.
Now, for every actuary I speak with who is:
...not quite qualified;
...not ready to make a move because his wife is in school and when she graduates they want to move to Wisconsin;
...only been on the job for six months;
...has been promised a promotion soon and want to take advantage of that;
...ready to make a move but wants an actuarial job in Product Development;
I now have additional actuaries on file and know when and/if to call them back when a job of their stated interest crosses my desk.
"...bothering the stack...", is your characterization whereas in reality, each of those actuaries with whom I've spoken now has a headhunter in their back pocket who knows when to call them back with a job that suits their particular interest. All at no cost to them.
So each 'needle' with whom I interact is an investment in a future recruitment while I continue to seek out that pricing actuary with just the right experience and the job represents an improvement over their current situation.
The reason this is not an inefficient process is because I'm in the business of actuarial recruitment (in addition to other industries) and sooner or later, ideally, everyone I speak to is eventually a possible recruit for a future opportunity I will be representing.
Generally speaking, the people I approach in this manner 'get this' and understand it is to their benefit to let me know what their future job would look like so I will know when to call them back.
The difference between the types of headhunters with all our different personalities and how we engage with people is most often the point of contention amongst professionals who get our calls.
For them, it is not about why we call -they get that- it is about how we come off and whether or not the person being approached is comfortable with that particular headhunter.
Some people are a pain/Some headhunters are a pain.
Some people are a joy to speak with/Some headhunters are easy to speak with.
So it is not about 'what' we do that catches everyone's attention- it is most often about any one experience when having spoken with a recruiter/headhunter who was or was not familiar with that person's business, whether they were persuasive or pushy, whether they were engaging or being a jerk.
I don't even know what "...inconsequential cost..." means so I can't address this.
Bottom Line: The "stack" doesn't mind being "bothered" since talking to a headhunter -even briefly- is an investment in one's future.
If you are not getting calls from headhunters or are otherwise not familiar with the business, it is incomprehensible how you can assess the process.
I'm not saying calls at work don't happen, but every time I've witnessed a recruiter call someone at work, it's resulted in the following: 1) The candidate telling them off and hanging up 2) A call down to internal HR to let them know of the harassment. There's nothing HR likes more than eviscerating some punk agency trying to snipe down its employees.
Man, you guys are totally clueless. Let me say one last thing and I am done here:
1. That someone got a call from a headhunter/recruiter who is a pain is regrettable. Like I said on this thread, there are all types of personalities, just like in most other professions.
2. A call down to 'internal HR to let them know of the harassment' is just being a girl.
Do you really believe the 'agency' is going to chew out that recruiter?
Not at all. They were doing their job and got burned but that is not going to get them fired or even reprimanded.
The first time someone I had endeavored to recruit who later told her hospital administrator (hoping she would get brownie points for ratting me out) and subsequently called our company, the office Director showed the right amount of sympathy, promised him the moon and apologized.
My manager then asked me if I was recruiting in AZ and I said, 'yes' and he then patted me on the back, telling me that I was doing a good job but in the future, 'be more careful'.
The second time went similarly and the third time (by then, I'd been in the business twenty or so years), a Director of HR at a hospital where I had been recruiting literally hollered at me for a good several minutes.
When he ran out of steam and I asked him if I could reply, he said, 'sure' and I then reminded him that I was only doing what recruiters do and that if I had been recruiting for him, it would be he who would be getting the benefit of my hard work toward identifying someone specific for a career opportunity for which I was recruiting.
We spoke together for another several minutes and when he saw that I had a depth of experience in recruitment and that since I had previously worked in patient care, myself, and understood the business of healthcare, he then asked me if I would consider recruiting for a difficult to fill position at his hospital.
So, no, we don't get "eviscerated" when someone rats us out, we are just reminded to 'be more careful'.
This thread has had the most amount of ignorance to it that I've ever seen before, anywhere, about any subject.
And it is disappointing that not one of the other search consultants who post here have chosen to speak up to confirm what I have been saying here, all along.
You guys are really stuck on your position so no matter what I say or how much I explain the business, I can see that nothing is going to change here.
"...punk agency...". Huh, that really says it all.
I think it is just an intractable dispute, him insisting on making you admit that most recruiters engage business not appreciably different from that of cold-calling telemarketers, relying on volume rather than quality workmanship, and you being unwilling to grant those pretty accurate characterizations.
Quote:
Originally Posted by HeadhunterPaul
bUU, Hi... Well, again, this is someone flavoring the conversation in the direction they want to take it, whether it matches reality or not.
It does match reality. I suppose what is motivating your denial is that it doesn't make the recruiters vocation look very admirable. I'm sorry if you find it upsetting, but I think it is really important to acknowledge the actual feelings of the people on the other side of the telephone calls recruiters make rather than just relying on a recruiter's own perception of how they want those they cold-call to feel. If it gives even just one recruiter pause enough to be even a small amount more considerate about who the recruiter calls, and causes that recruiter to do a bit more work to match only people looking for work and qualified for the position they're trying to fill, then I've had some positive impact.
Quote:
Originally Posted by HeadhunterPaul
I don't even know what "...inconsequential cost..." means so I can't address this.
That's perhaps the problem: If you don't recognize what recruiters take from others when they make unsolicited calls, then you're going to see the recruiters work as worthwhile rather than exploitative.
Quote:
Originally Posted by HeadhunterPaul
Bottom Line: The "stack" doesn't mind being "bothered" since talking to a headhunter -even briefly- is an investment in one's future.
Here is the actual bottom line: We are the stack, Paul. We're telling you that the stack minds being bothered. We're telling you that we want recruiters to find another business model, such that recruiters only contact people who are looking for a new opportunity. Candidates are happy to engage opt-in systems that are put in place.
Quote:
Originally Posted by HeadhunterPaul
If you are not getting calls from headhunters or are otherwise not familiar with the business, it is incomprehensible how you can assess the process.
Good thing I know quite a bit about the business, then. What makes you think that self-ratifying nonsense like this is worth posting?
The question that remains is whether these recruiters don't know how to do the job respectful of those they call, or rather choose not to because they make more profit being most often annoyances than exclusively value-added parts of the system.
Anybody that is still cold calling company switchboards is so behind the times that you can safely assume they are dinosaurs of little value, surviving only off their dwindling book of business. If you want to find somebody with a certain skillset, do what the rest of the modern world does and look them up on linkedin and send them a message. If I had somebody like "headhunter paul" call me at work, I would probably tell them what a fool they were for calling me on a work number and hang up (if I even bothered answering their call in the first place).
I've only had one recruiter dumb enough to call me at work and they got an earful. Headhunters are pretty much useless in IT, and hhp shows you why.
Last edited by bighusker; 07-12-2015 at 06:31 AM..
Anybody that is still cold calling company switchboards is so behind the times that you can safely assume they are dinosaurs of little value, surviving only off their dwindling book of business. If you want to find somebody with a certain skillset, do what the rest of the modern world does and look them up on linkedin and send them a message. If I had somebody like "headhunter paul" call me at work, I would probably tell them what a fool they were for calling me on a work number and hang up (if I even bothered answering their call in the first place).
I've only had one recruiter dumb enough to call me at work and they got an earful. Headhunters are pretty much useless in IT, and hhp shows you why.
Hi, Big...
Re switchboards, first, how we execute our business is not your problem. If I call the switchboard, asking to be transferred to the CIO, Ms. Janis Roberts, I'm hardly going to apologize to you for doing so.
Secondly, I never said I don't use LI to identify target recruits. Also, what you don't realize is that no matter how many people in a certain profession show up in a LI search, it is still necessary to, sooner or later, access the company to determine if there is anyone in that profession who did not show up in a LI search. We leave no stone unturned. Again, like I said elsewhere in this thread, if we are specializing in recruiting certain types of professionals, we can't afford to not make sure there is anyone at a target source company a LI search missed.
There are other software packages out there that we also use to identify target recruits or HA's. Plug in a name, a title and company name and voila, I have a list of names to call. It's embarrassingly efficient.
As far as LI system messages go, whether you believe it or not, most professionals consider such messages as no more than junk mail. I would no more send a target recruit a LI message than I would eat oatmeal for breakfast. It's just not going to happen.
Also, no matter how much you won't like hearing this, a headhunter/recruiter has a greater advantage in speaking directly to a target recruit than in sending LI messages. I won't bother to explain why since you have your mind made up in these matters, anyway.
Fortunately for you, most Millennial recruiters have an aversion to picking up the phone so from them, you will continue to get their messages.
I don't recruit in IT. I've never met Ruby, never gone out with Ada (even though I've heard she is a lot of fun on a Saturday night) and the only time I run into Primavera is when the chef serves it to me. So what method of contact works best or not when recruiting IT professionals is outside my knowledge base.
Anyway, you will continue to hang up on us and I will continue to call. You do what works for you and I will continue to do what works for me.
The question that remains is whether these recruiters don't know how to do the job respectful of those they call, or rather choose not to because they make more profit being most often annoyances than exclusively value-added parts of the system.
Quote:
Originally Posted by HeadhunterPaul
Anyway, you will continue to hang up on us and I will continue to call. You do what works for you and I will continue to do what works for me.
I guess we know your answer to the question. Thanks.
I guess we know your answer to the question. Thanks.
You're Welcome!
LOL!
Paul.........
...
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Recruiters Calling at Work...
