Why you need to meet your recruiter when you’re looking for a new job.

Why it’s so important to meet and get to know your recruiter.

So you’ve decided it’s time to look for a new job.   What’s your next step?  You’ll probably go on line and apply for jobs that you like the look of.   Some of them will be via recruitment agencies.   At this point, you have a decision to make:  should you meet the consultant?  Or are you happy for your CV to be sent out on the basis of a brief chat on the phone, or simply even an email acknowledgement?   And how confident are you that you have control over your CV when you’ve not got a relationship with the person who’s representing you?

In my view, it’s actually a very important decision as it can make or break the success of your application.  I know that to help you find the job you want, I need to know as much as possible about you: what makes you tick, what you enjoy, what your strengths are and, very importantly, what you want to do next.  To do that, I have to meet you and have a proper, two way dialogue.

You could argue you could do this on the phone, but with 55% * of received communication coming from body language that won’t do you justice as I’m not going to get the full picture.  And without the full picture, I can’t represent you effectively to my clients and give that added value that a good consultant should always be doing.

To me, it’s not enough to have a brief chat with someone who maybe starts selling you jobs or agencies where they want to send your CV – your job move is just too important.  So as a candidate, you should ask to meet your consultant for a proper in-depth interview and if that doesn’t happen, select a professional recruiter who will take the time to do this.

And if you’re a client, you should be asking some important questions too.  How can a recruiter know someone’s right for your role or company if they’ve not interviewed them face to face?  How much of your valuable time are you going to waste interviewing unsuitable people?  And, in a people business, should you be paying the same fee rate to someone who’s simply farming out CVs?

Sarah Owens is Managing Director of Direct Recruitment www.direct-recruitment.co.uk

(* By the way, if you want to know where the rest comes from, it’s 38% from para linguistics (the way you say things) and 7% from the words themselves.)