CheckMate

This is the third part of a series about whether you can trust recruiters, and the kind of questions you should ask or ask about recruiters to help make that determination. In Part 1, I gave an overview of the reasons behind the series and guidelines for working through it, and in Part 2 I discussed the market leading position that a recruiter might claim.

In this third installment, I want to address the number of recruiters a firm says they have:

• Does the firm claim to have a large number of recruiters, say, several hundred or more?

• If so, how does the number of recruiters claimed stack up against the industry standard, i.e., known leaders among executive recruiting firms? (For reference, the Lucas Group, perhaps the premier firm among executive recruiters and a place we’ve mentioned previously, says they have 400 associates.)

• Is the firm claiming part-time independent contract recruiters in their total, possibly in an apparent attempt to make the firm look bigger? There’s absolutely nothing wrong whatsoever with contract recruiters, but what about claiming them all as members of your firm so you can advertise having a large number of people? How does that strike you?

• Are the names of all of the firm’s recruiters listed on their website?

• How many of the firm’s recruiters do you see with an online presence, e.g. job listings, on social networking sites, and so on? If a firm says they have several hundred recruiters, I’d expect to see some evidence of the majority of them online, not just five or ten of the same names. Do you?

• Does the company list national or division directors? Are those one-person divisions (i.e., the director), or are there actually teams of recruiters assigned to those divisions? Are the team members’ names listed on the firm’s site?

This is the second part of a series about whether you can trust recruiters, and the kind of questions you should ask recruiters to help make that determination. In Part 1, I gave an overview of the reasons behind the series and some guidelines for working through it.

OK, with what I said in my last post firmly in mind, let’s start with this one - market leadership:

• Does the recruiter claim a leading position in a specific market (for example, “the largest recruiter in the xxxx niche”)?

• If so, what’s that based on - something you can easily check out or something you can’t (e.g., the actual firms who are using that recruiter, since that’s usually confidential)?

• Does the logic behind the recruiter’s claim make sense to you? Or does it appear to be some “creative redefining” where they have spun some very specific and narrow parameters in a way designed to give themselves an exalted position (i.e., the “whale in a bathtub”)?

• How does the claim stand up against known industry leaders? And by that I don’t mean staffing agencies like, say, Kelly Services or Robert Half, but recognized leaders in the executive recruiter world like the Lucas Group?

I said in my last post I was going to talk more about questions that candidates should be asking recruiters.

I wasn’t going to write about this subject because, first, it’s not real pleasant; second, my experience has been that potential candidates, recruiters, and business clients have already seen through some of the firms that are out there; and, last, I kept naively hoping things would change on their own. But, ultimately, I decided to, largely because I see so much stuff written all the time lecturing candidates about not lying, being honest on their resumes, not overstating their accomplishments, and so on (some of it on the blogs of firms who look like they might be doing some of those same things themselves), I thought it was time to address the recruiter end.

Not to mention some of the claims I see some recruiters make - I find myself waiting for the part where they tell you they heal the sick and raise the dead.

Let’s be honest - recruiters don’t enjoy the greatest reputation. And while a lot of that isn’t justified, there’s also a large part of it that we’ve done to ourselves. What bothers me so much about that is that, whether some of these guys realize it or even care, that kinda thing hurts all of us.

I had initially planned to write just a single post, but there was so much here, I decided to split it into several. The common theme for the series is this…

As much as I’ve suggested using recruiters in your quest to be a financial advisor - and still do - I also think some cautions are in order. There are definitely things I’d suggest you check out when you’re considering replying to an ad from a recruiter, or responding when one has reached out to you, or just reaching out to one on your own.

The bottom line is simple: Can you trust what a recruiter says, and, ultimately, can you trust that recruiter?

As you go through these, I want you to forget for now what anybody else - including me - might say about a particular recruiter, since nowadays anybody can say anything online, good or bad, and you may not be able to trust the source. Let’s just remove that variable and concentrate on what the firm and its people say about themselves. Because, in the end, what matters is your personal evaluation of the recruiter - does what comes out of the recruiter’s own mouth square with reality?

Look for patterns - one of the the biggest things to look at is whether the recruiter appears to consistently overstate things. Sure, we all want to put the best face on things, but I’m talking about stuff that goes beyond a little salesmanship. To go back to a reference I’ve made before, if you hear Jon Lovitz in your head saying “Yeah, that’s the ticket!” as you’re reading a recruiter’s website or talking to them on the phone, that oughtta be a big red flag warning for you.

Naturally, I also invite you to look at what, if anything, we say about ourselves in each of these areas and decide for yourself if we’re being accurate and truthful. We sure aren’t perfect, but I can tell you that, as a general rule, we try not to toot our own horn and instead let our actions, how we conduct business, and our results speak for themselves.