RECRUITERS ARE HELPFUL
I need to post something about recruiters: They’re helpful people who can not only do a lot of leg work for you, but also give you insight into your industry and inform you of trends, analysis and hopefully salary data.
The reason I need to post something is because we’ve received a great deal of inquiries from this profession on our UX Professionals group on LinkedIn. The inquiries range from membership to sales to actual recruiting. Some are up-front, courteous folks who, faced with a direct question, will answer to their intentions; others are not at all as honest.
The UX Professionals group on LinkedIn doesn’t currently accept membership from recruiting because many, many (85%) members have asked that we don’t allow any direct contact via the list in regards to sales or recruiting. I hope that the people in these two industries understand that the entire group is using the majority rule here and, while not to some people’s liking, is going to be in place until next quarter so that we can establish a baseline membership and collect content for an industry site.
I’d love to hear from these two audiences so that they may have their free speech heard in a public forum.
June 26th, 2008 at 2:57 PM
I understand the need to maintain the purity of having only users on the website, and in the LinkedIn UX professionals group.
Honestly, I have been on both sides of the coin - first, as a professional sought after by recruiters, and now as a technical recruiter. Admittedly, there are a lot of us that just don’t get it. My boss likes to call it “throwing spaghetti at the wall” recruiting/sales practices. In other words, bombarding both candidates and clients with junk mail (i.e., jobs that don’t match your skill set, or candidate resumes that don’t even come close to your hiring needs) in hopes that something will stick. Fortunately, the people that subscribe to the “throwing spaghetti at the wall” spam method do not last very long in our industry; however, they leave a distasteful trace in HR/hiring manager/candidate’s memory of recruiters.
On the other hand, the professional recruiters/specialized staffing companies can be a great resource for candidates and hiring managers. For candidates, working with a good recruiter can be an amazing opportunity to have a professional provide an optimal representation of you to companies via re-vamping your resume (for FREE! People pay big bucks for this type of service), have your resume handed directly to hiring managers (versus being lost in online resume databases), receive feedback on the hiring process from a reliable source, and receive interview tips, etc. that helps you put your best foot forward.
From the hiring manager side, a good recruiter/service can send you targeted resumes (e.g., I only send 1-2 targeted resumes), help you further define your hiring needs, provide you with industry-related information (e.g., going salary rates, etc), pre-interview people for you, and help you save time when you need to add additional staff. Depending on the relationship, they might even send a couple of bonus freebies your way (e.g., resources, candidates, etc). You can also utilize recruiters to post jobs for you for free on resume websites (e.g., HotJobs, etc), which can save you thousands of dollars per year in saved subscription costs.
In regards to the question of whether or not to allow recruiters on this website, or into the UX Professionals LinkedIn group, honestly, it doesn’t matter. A good recruiter will find great candidates regardless of their sources.
Also, one more food for thought, if you are sought after by a recruiter that presents a position that is a good fit with your skill set, and you are NOT interested, just consider it a compliment. After all, isn’t better to be sought after, than to be struggling to find work because your skill set is obsolete?