How to Successfully Use a Recruiter or Recruiting Agency to Find a Job

How to Successfully Use a Recruiter or Recruiting Agency to Find a Job

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What Is a Recruiter

A recruiter is in charge of finding qualified candidates for a job opening. A recruiter will work directly with a hiring manager to determine the skills needed for the role, create a job description, and then manage the application process between the employer and potential employee. This means reviewing the 

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What Is a Recruiter

resume, setting up phone and in-person interviews, submitting a job offer, negotiating the offer if needed, and sometimes even onboarding the new hire. In conclusion, recruiters are there to meet the demands of both the employer and the employee throughout the hiring process.

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Why (or When) Should You Use a Recruiter?

Use a Recruiter When You're Looking in a Specific Industry There are some definite advantages to using an internal recruiter or agency recruiter, especially if you’re in certain industries. Many companies in the fashion and beauty industries work exclusively with agency recruiters to hire new talent. The same goes for many web 

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Why (or When) Should You Use a Recruiter?

design, development, and technology jobs. Do some quick research to see if agency recruiters are common or even some informational interviews with people in the industry you want to pursue. It’s pretty obvious if the majority of people use an agency—and you can even ask them which one.

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Why (or When) Should You Use a Recruiter?

Use a Recruiter When You Don't Have a Strong Personal Network (or Just Want to Better Your Odds) Often, agency recruiters have contacts and relationships at the places you’re applying (or in the case of internal recruiters, they’re actually working for the company already) so chances are they can bump your resume to the top of the pile if they like your style.

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Why (or When) Should You Use a Recruiter?

This is a great option when you’re making a career transition. For example, if you’re going from a finance company to a retail company, your retail network might be smaller or (seemingly) non-existent. Try networking with agency recruiters who have retail clients and especially with internal recruiters at the retail 

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Why (or When) Should You Use a Recruiter?

companies you’re most interested in.

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Use a Recruiter When You Want Expert Help

Consider this too: an agency recruiter’s blessed with the stellar ability to sell you. It's their job. We’re not always our best representatives during a job search (consider any interview you ever botched, and you’ll see what we mean), but it’s in the agency recruiter’s best interest to get you the optimal gig, and they do it with great form and style.

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Use a Recruiter When You Want Expert Help

Agency recruiters might even work with you on your resume and interview skills first. And that personal pitch? They will hear it first so they can give you feedback on it before you have a conversation with a hiring manager.

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Use a Recruiter When You Want Expert Help

Use a Recruiter When You're Moving to a New City or New Industry Even if you don’t meet any of these specific reasons, you can follow this general advice: internal recruiters work for the company, and agency recruiters work for you.  That’s why it’s hard (and more competitive) to get an internal recruiter to “work” for you.

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Use a Recruiter When You Want Expert Help

You’re better off trying to build relationships with internal recruiters at the companies you love but approach with professionalism right away.

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How to Help a Recruiter Find You

While you're out there looking for a recruiter, optimize your presence to make it easy for recruiters to find you, as well.  Even once you find your next job, it's never bad to keep yourself (and your resume) viewable to future opportunities.

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How to Help a Recruiter Find You

As we mentioned earlier, internal recruiters tend to reach out to you and not the other way around, but here are a few ways to up your chances of grabbing their attention: Optimize your LinkedIn profile. We can't say this enough. We know it’s a headache to navigate the various LinkedIn settings and sections, but it’s also the social platform that 

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How to Help a Recruiter Find You

Include resume keywords you know recruiters love. The keywords you use are completely dependent on your industry, but you can glean some insight by studying job listings that interest you. Update the experience and skills sections on your resume to include terms that a recruiter might be seeking for a specific role. If you’re applying for more 

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How to Help a Recruiter Find You

than one type of job in your industry, create multiple versions of your resume and tailor them depending on your need. Never send a resume to an internal recruiter that is not tailored to their specific job and company. Treat any phone call like an interview. When a recruiter does reach out via email or phone, take the process very 

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How to Help a Recruiter Find You

seriously. Their screening call may mean the difference between never hearing from the company again and landing your ideal job. Even if you don’t fit the open position, an internal recruiter may go out of their way to find you a place at their company if they like your personality and experience. A friend in the art industry once interviewed 

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How to Help a Recruiter Find You

with a recruiter for a position at a museum, but they ultimately offered the position to someone in-house. That same recruiter, though, called her in for three more interviews over the next four months until, finally, they found her a position that suited her needs and theirs. The key here is to stay in touch and build that relationship so 

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How to Help a Recruiter Find You

when a role opens up, the internal recruiter thinks of you right away.

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Where to Find Internal Recruiters

Naturally, you might be wondering how do you find and connect with these gatekeepers? Here are some places to start: LinkedIn We guarantee the recruiter at your dream company is on LinkedIn. You can search “recruiter Company Name” or if you know their job title, search for that. Keep digging down in 

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Where to Find Internal Recruiters

connections till you find the recruiter who hires for the specific jobs you’re interested in at that company Company Career Pages The career pages are getting so much better and companies want to share more about who works there, the culture, and the open roles. See if you can figure out from the Career page or the job description who is the 

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Where to Find Internal Recruiters

recruiter for the role you’re interested in. Industry-Specific Events There’s a good chance there is a recruiter at whatever event you RSVP to next. You can increase those odds exponentially when it’s a career event or specialized professional networking event. Like when we had recruiters give resume feedback during a live webinar.

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Where to Find Internal Recruiters

Subscribe to a professional networking newsletter to make sure you're on top of the latest networking events and opportunities. Here are a few examples: – Fairygodboss – InHerSight – Mother Honestly – Indeed – The Mom Project – The Muse – PowerToFly

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Where to Find Contingency or Agency Recruiters

If you’re at a point where you have no idea what you want to do exactly, but you know you’re ready for a change, try reaching out to an agency in your field (or the field you’d like to enter). Chances are they're aware of some positions that aren't publicly available yet—and those positions might be a perfect match for your background and goals.

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Where to Find Contingency or Agency Recruiters

You can start by doing some research just by searching terms like "fashion recruiting in Los Angeles" or "marketing agencies in Chicago," or whatever it might be including the list we shared above. Once you find an agency or two to contact, get your introductions going and be sure to treat the initial email seriously because you want 

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Where to Find Contingency or Agency Recruiters

them to want to work with you. There are a lot of recruitment agencies out there and we would always recommend first asking your local network if they have used an agency and the name. But we also want to be helpful so here are a few “big” and trusted agencies to check out: – 24|Seven – Robert Half – Kelly Services

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Where to Find Contingency or Agency Recruiters

– ManPower – Kforce – AppleOne – TEKSystems – Aquent

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How to Best Utilize Contingency or Agency Recruiters

Ask All of the Questions Ask as many questions of the recruiter as they ask of you.  The goal is to find a good fit for your goals and industry, so make sure the recruiter you go with has your best interests in mind during the process by asking them detailed questions. You’re kind of like a rising actor picking the right agent.

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How to Best Utilize Contingency or Agency Recruiters

Pick Their Brains Don’t be afraid to pick their brain. Just like my friend who asked her recruiter for details on companies in Los Angeles, remember that your agency is working for you as much as potential companies. Don’t be afraid to ask their advice or suggestions on companies that might be a good fit or how they think you 

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How to Best Utilize Contingency or Agency Recruiters

can optimize your resume for their field. Choose the Right Fit Make sure you pick the right recruitment agency for your field. Often recruiting agencies are industry-specific and that’s a great thing. No one wants to go through a Walmart-esque staffing agency to find a job. Trust us, it won't be good. If you’re unsure what the 

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How to Best Utilize Contingency or Agency Recruiters

best recruiting agencies are in your industry try these three tricks: – Start by talking with people in your network. See if anyone has worked with recruiters in the past. – As you’re scanning job boards, take note of any positions that look like they were posted by a particular agency. When you start to see patterns, that’s the agency

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How to Best Utilize Contingency or Agency Recruiters

for you. – You can also do a Google search and reach out for a screening interview at a firm that looks promising, then browse through their site listings to see if anything appeals to you before contacting them.

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How to Email a Recruiter

Reaching out to a recruiter—both internal and at an agency—requires you to stand out and get to your point fast. Regardless of where they work, they’re busy so it’s your job to make their job easy. Make it easy for them to present you to a hiring manager. Here are few tips to make contacting a recruiter a bit more successful.

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How to Email a Recruiter

Sometimes you know exactly which company you want to work for (some of us are just meant to work at Github or Everlane, you know?). If you're after the environment and work style more than the job title or salary, you're probably primed for reaching out to an internal recruiter who works in-house at your dream company.

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How to Email a Recruiter

Consider optimizing your LinkedIn profile for, and reaching out to, a company's recruiting team via a carefully-crafted cold email or LinkedIn message. If you have a few companies in mind, reach out to each of their recruiters as you see fit with their direct work email. If you know their name, do a quick Google search to see how 

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How to Email a Recruiter

the company sets up their email addresses and then contact them directly.

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