Thinking of Working With a Recruiter For Your New Job Search? Don't Waste Your Time.

                                                         

I originally intended for this to be a quick post about how irrelevant and useless recruiters are nowadays. After I started to research a little bit more I eventually came across some terrifyingly interesting facts about the staffing industry as a whole.

First things first: I'm not a journalist and this is my understanding of what I read from various sources and articles. It's my first stab at writing something of this nature and I'd greatly appreciate professional opinions on the analysis or any constructive criticism as I feel I might be leaving out important facts that will negate my claims. Here we go.

After four years of indentured servitude, I decided to quit my joke of a job upon completion of my MBA. I had absolutely no legitimate leads on job prospects other than a few meager communications with recruiters on LinkedIn (it's important to note that these "recruiters" contacted me at this point - not the other way around). Riding the wave of positive encouragement from my peers and harnessing unbridled courage, I said fuck it, let's roll the dice. I egregiously thought my networking abilities, coupled with the weight of my newly obtained degree, would be more than enough to find a job relatively quickly (I'll cover more on the topic of the crippling depression during unemployment later as this was one of the scariest moments in my life).

I took to the internet and my daunting job search was underway. I figured my best bet was to be bold, have absolutely no shame, and start emailing and messaging people I've never talked to before. I absolutely hate using the cold-calling methods for any reason whatsoever, but desperate times call for desperate measures.

I spoke with the aforementioned "recruiters" and let them know I was now interested in pursuing whatever opportunities they had to offer. I also built up my own arsenal of recruiters by reaching out directly after applying for multiple positions.

Immediate success! Within the first month I had a few in-person interviews and was scheduled for six phone screenings with the recruiters. I thought to myself, this is way easier than I imagined. Why is everyone having such a hard time finding work? I quickly realized how poorly I had judged the situation at hand. What seemed like smooth sailing quickly turned into an abysmal discovery of failure.

Remember those six phone interviews? Neither do I. They never took place. Out of six scheduled phone interviews, I only received two calls; both of which were late and followed up with a barrage of excuses and apologies. Confused, I emailed the other four, almost apologizing, asking if I had the incorrect time or if I was supposed to call them. I either received no response or was told that particular individual no longer works for their company.

Well, ok... I still had a few in-person interviews to look forward to. A couple went through fine, but I was turned down. Rejection is an inevitability, so it wasn't the end of the world.

The straw that broke the camels back was with my final experience. Ironically, this was a job I figured I was a shoe-in for as the hiring manager (who previously turned me down in a final interview) specifically requested I apply for another position on his team. I was scheduled to go in at 9:00am on a Thursday.

Thursday morning comes. I woke up at 6:00am and started preparing. At 8:15am, right as I was turning the key to lock the door behind me on my way out, I received a call. It was from the recruiter. "Hey Jeremy! So... haha... my bad. Looks like you were scheduled to come in at 8:00am, but I told you it was at 9:00am. The panel of interviewers are sitting in the room waiting for you. But don't worry - I went in there and told them it's my fault. I'll go ahead and schedule you to come in next week. What day works best for you?" I went back inside, took off my freshly ironed suit, put back on my pajamas and watched Phineas and Ferb while indulging on Ben & Jerry's ice cream to numb the pain of self-loathing.

Here's where the analysis portion starts:

So what does it take to become a recruiter? In order to hold such a well sought after title, you must possess the following qualities:

1. Be alive
2. Be able to drink water without choking from improper consumption

I Googled the phrase "average turnover rate in staffing industry" and immediately had a wtf moment. If you do this, you see a rather alarming 300% number hidden in there. 300 fucking percent!? It's then followed up by the words "perhaps the highest of any industry in the nation." Perhaps??? Couldn't think of a worse way to word that myself. I had to look into this more since none of this seemed to really make sense.

This search then led me to find the American Staffing Association (ASA). A direct quote from Figure 7 (pictured below) from their website: " Figure 7: The Average Staffing Employee Works About Three Months." This explains why most of the recruiters I was working with never responded to my calls or emails... 

The ASA also has dinosaur sized balls to put out this article on "Why Work For A Staffing Company?" The first header literally says "Staffing Companies Have Jobs To Fill." Yeah, no shit.

The below chart is from the 2015 ASA Staffing Industry Economic Analysis report, titled: Steady Growth Continues: Staffing and Recruiting Industry Outpaces the Economy and the Labor Market

Yellow bars = turnover rate in staffing industry. Teal trending line = average time (weeks) a person works for a company in the staffing industry.

I then Googled "staffing industry," of which another horrific chart magically appears: Sales.

The graph shown below is, again, directly from the ASA Economic Analysis Report, showing that nearly 90% of sales generated by staffing firms comes from temporary and contract employment. In case you were looking for full time employment, the odds are stacked against you finding a recruiting professional willing to help (you're not profitable enough).

I know there are always exceptions to the rule. There are plenty of good recruiters out there who do a kick-ass job (and for that, I applaud your efforts in helping individuals during a delicate and dangerous time in their lives): but for every one of you, there are 99 others in your place fucking everything up.

I am going to continue researching this topic. I hope I am accurately representing my opinion and the statistics. I welcome any dissenting or opposed opinions. Here's another interesting article I found from 2011 on "Why our employment figures are wrong." A completely different topic of discussion, but related nonetheless.

My words of advice for anyone seeking full time employment hoping to get assistance from headhunters or staffing agencies is this: don't waste your time. The people you're working with already have one foot out the door and most likely don't have your best interests at heart.