A Boston Technical Recruiters Blog

When you start recruiting, chances are that nobody will come to you and explain the caveats in recruiting business ethics: what’s right and what’s not so right. You should assume that regular code of ethics applies, but there are several important distinction you must make for yourself independently of management; ethical distinctions that will ultimately decide what kind of recruiter you will become. Here are a few that come to mind:

1. The Candidate – The candidate is the most important aspect of your success and also the greatest challenge to your recruiting ethics. It may be surprising to some, but many in the agency world place a far greater emphasis on the happiness of the client. “Client pays the bills”… this may be so, but without the candidate there is no pay. The disrespect and arrogance leveled toward the candidate is astounding.  Candidates are commoditized and represent a Revenue or Gross Profit number and some recruiters completely forget that these are human beings. Yes candidates have their own agendas, but so do you.  It’s your responsibility to make sure you are benefiting the candidate as much as yourself.
2. Give and Take – Another aspect of recruiting ethics that is just as important as the candidate. Who will make more money? The recruiter who builds a relationship on Take or on Give? Scott Love put it best when he described a relationship as a bank. Can you take a withdrawal from an account that you have not deposited money in? No. Can you mine candidates for information including references, referrals, and leads in the first conversation you have with them? Sure, but, ask yourself, would I want to be used like that? The answer is a resounding No.
3. Resume – How much can you alter a resume to get the interview? You can’t. During your conversation with the candidate, it is your job to pull out as much information as possible about their background and to perhaps have the candidate update the resume with this information.  As a recruiter you are also a professional resume consultant and one of the “gives” you can offer to your candidate is that of creating a stellar HONEST resume. What you can do that is perfectly ethical is emphasize certain job responsibilities heavier then others. How much heavier is up to your sense of recruiting ethics. This is your opportunity to give to candidate a free service after which you can ask for a withdrawal i.e referral, lead, or endorsement.
4. Rate/ Salary – Ask your candidate what they make and what they want to make. You can’t give away the house when determining rate, but if you are trying to squeeze an extra dollar or two to make a commission band, I would say you are risking a relationship. Relationships are more important then any quota, commission band, or managerial whim. So I make a little less on one deal, the relationship I build with my candidate for giving them a little more will repay large dividends in the future. While $5/h may not seem like much on paper, if a candidate works for you for a year that’s a couple hundred for you and $10,000 for them!

There are many issues in recruiting ethics that are broadly discussed in forums and blogs by many industry leaders; I’ve included a couple of resources. The most important part of your search for recruiting ethics is YOU. Talk to people, research, and think about what exactly it is that you do everyday. You would be shocked to know how many people in our industry just don’t care.

http://www.recruitersworld.com/Articles/RW/Christine/ethics.asp

http://careers.tcco.com/CampusRecruits/Interviewing_Ethics.htm

http://www.ere.net/2004/04/21/the-ethics-of-recruiting/\

http://www.fordyceletter.com/2003/02/01/corporate-recruiting-ethics-an-ongoing-threat/

http://www.scottlove.com/

http://www.glresources.com/340.html

http://www.recruitingblogs.com/

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Have you ever had that day when in the morning you get a call that your client wants to give a promising candidate an offer, two hour later the candidate accepts and you are in bliss spending your commission? After lunch you get a phone call from the same candidate reneging the offer because he got a counter offer and you are in the depths of despair?

Recruiting is not for the faint of heart. Today, I met a great Solutions Architect, walked him into the client, everything went great. He is interviewing as we speak so I am impatiently awaiting the results. He has to talk to 8 people so I’m hoping it’s more of meet and greet than anything else. Pre-closing candidates like this is the hardest thing since they are smart and you never know all their cards.

Meanwhile I got a call from another client saying that one of our candidates that started on Monday apparently misled them on the background check. So we will potentially lose that placement if the person can’t produce documentation proving that the information was correct. It’s a bit disappointing, but I just keep going since there is nothing at all I can do at this point then hope that the documentation is there.

When I first started, I would literally run around the office celebrating every interview and going crazy at every offer, I would be equally dejected at every bad interview and every term. As I placed more people, I became less emotional and more pragmatic in my reactions.

In the recruiting model I work in, the recruiter controls a very small portion of the process so after a while I stopped reacting to minute news. The roller coaster became a more even high way. And while I still react to some very good and unexpected news with enthusiasm, I don’t let other things I do not control crush me.

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“Hi! How was traffic today? Good? Excellent! Here is your new desk, your computer, and the phone. Open up the database, search for “mech assem” and dial and smile!”

That’s pretty much how my recruiting career began. They gave me a phone and a database and told me to start calling everyone. And I did.  I had not the foggiest idea of how to approach candidates other then “Hi, I’m calling from so-and-so I have an opportunity for you”. In essence, this is all there is to a recruiting call.

The opportunity. You as a recruiter have to believe that the opportunity you have is really going to benefit the candidate. This makes the sale of the opportunity that much easier. Believing in what you are presenting makes you more confident and allows you put up better resistance when you hit roadblocks.

So back to my first day. If you thought I was going to sit there and make calls all day, you are mistaken. About a year before, I discovered a nifty little site called Craigslist. At that time it was still free to post ads and I had been posting employment ads long before I became a recruiter. My company had no idea Craiglsist existed. Thus, knowing little more then the basic idea of what recruiting is, I posted my first official job ad for a Chemical Technician for Gillette. The candidate who responded would become my first placement two weeks later.

In the end, recruiting is all about connecting to candidates and building relationships with them. It doesn’t matter if you have the best experts training you or if you are thrown off the deep end the first day. What will determine your success is your tenacious work ethic and desire to network with people.

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The year 2005 must have been a slow one for recruiting agencies; at least it felt that way as I stumbled from interview to interview never quite landing the job. I don’t know why I suddenly decided to quit my sales job and become a recruiter, its just like a childhood dream that you never quite knew about that suddenly awakes and throws you into something interesting.

My first encounter with a staffing agency had been in 2004, specifically with Creative Financial Staffing in Boston. A buddy of mine facilitated the hire that ended 3 week later with a pleasant “they will not be requiring your services” phone call from the recruiter. Apparently, I had dug up some really nasty collections issue that the supervisor did not want revealed (true story confirmed by insider).

So fast forward to 2005…

The summer was hot, maybe because I was running around in a nice suite from agency to agency trying to build a case why a young hard working graduate from Brandeis is a good bet. Yet I kept falling on my face. My Dad had bought me a really nice suit to help me out, but it just wasn’t doing it for me.

I interviewed with Robert Half, where the manager was the biggest ass you will ever meet, his name was Luke and he later became the division head of that great company. He told me I was a job hopper and that if I could hold on somewhere for more then a year to call him back. I actually did. This was just out of curiosity, by that time I had 35 people billing for me and had absolutely no desire to ever join Robert Half. But I digress…

I interviewed at Winter& Wyman in Waltham(later they tried to directly recruit me) then I went across the street to Sullivan & Cogliano. Undeterred, I interviewed at KNF&T in Boston, what amazed me about that company was the utter lack of men… anywhere. I managed to sneak into Sapphire for an unrelated job and tried to sell myself to the technical recruiter there by telling her that what I really wanted was “ to do what you do”. That must have freaked her out, recruiting being the competitive kill or be killed that it is J.

Then there was Maxim Staffing, they had a hole in the wall office, then to Apex Systems, better office still no offer. There was Ascent Consulting and lunch with my Dad who works in the same office park…. Then Resource Options in Needham, the way they described who they placed really turned me off.

I even interviewed at Time Warner for a collections job! Now I hate collections and anything to do with accounting and cubicle desk jobs, but hey, desperate times call for desperate measures! I went to SEDO.com, a reputable startup thinking they might take me for a sales guy, but alas, I didn’t come across as one.

And finally, when I despaired, and decided that maybe the world of recruiting had turned really was not for me, I interviewed at Total Technical Services in Waltham. I thought the interview went well, but just in case, I got myself a server job at the local Ground Round. This was something I wanted to do anyhow, just to level with everyone else who had done it. It seemed like such an All American thing to do. Kinda like joining the Army 5 years before!!

So I trained for 5 shifts and on the 6th shift they told me “sorry buddy, you’re not picking this up fast enough, we’re gonna have to let you go.” Holy crap! I just graduated from one of the best schools in the US and I wasn’t picking it up fast enough? That warm fuzzy feeling from before about the Ground dissipated rather quickly…

So here I was, 24 years old, no money, no job, and my Dad was wondering why he just paid an extortionist amount of money to Brandeis! Seems funny now… wasn’t funny then. I had been job searching for 2 months with nothing to shop but a pink slip from the Ground Round of all places!

To the rescue came a phone call from Total Technical saying that they wanted to bring me onboard! To say that I was pleased would be one hell of an understatement. Even the fact that they were offering $9.33/h with a 10k draw didn’t dampen my enthusiasm… I got in the door!!

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