Re: QUESTION: headhunter etiquette

[Aileen Nelson <AileenN -at- ITGROUP -dot- COM>]

Hi Everyone.

I just wanted to present another side of the Headhunter thing.

I used to work in HR and spent the majority of my time recruiting IT
professionals.  I used many sources but the main one was Headhunters.  I
had strict criteria of which agencies I would use as I had as many as 5
new ones a day calling for my business.  Although I wasn't specifically
recruiting techincal writers, I think the standards would still apply.

ON Multiple Submissions: If a person was submitted by multiple agencies,
I would normally use the agency who submitted the person first. However,
I have talked to the candidate in order to determine who had
"permission" to submit.  If an agency submitted someone without
permission, I wouldn't work with them again.

I wouldn't use agencies who "re-did" resumes.  There are a lot of
agencies who do this. They re-write the candidate's resume into a
standard format.  I tried interviewing people based on these resumes but
found that the resumes were often overstated.  I had the opportunity to
compare many "original" and a "re-done" resumes.. the fault was normally
on the redone.  ALso found that stuff that was interesting was often
left out because it didn't fit the market buzzwords.  I ended up
deciding that these resumes were a waste of my time.

If I found that agencies were double billing (ie charging the company
and the candidate), I wouldn't work with them. This only happened twice
where I had contractors who I wanted to flip to full time.  IN order to
do that,  the company had to pay a fee AND the contractor did as well.
It wasn't a normal practise in the industry.

The kiss of death for many agencies was lack of screeing. To me the
whole point of agencies was to cut down the time that I had to spend
screening resumes. I wanted to know that if I received a resume, that I
could count on the person being a reasonable candidate.  Agencies who
submitted to many resumes that were "crap" (ie didn't have skills
required for position) were toast.  I often found that these agencies
only did phone screenings.

Anyways, there are many more criteria that I used.  But I think those
listed above are probably the most relevant.  I got to the point where I
had about 10 agencies that I worked with on a regular basis.  I usually
tried 1-2 new ones with each new requsition.  In my two years there, I
would guess that I tried probably 50 agencies, only 10 made the cut.  I
was part of an association for IT recruiters.. most of them used similar
standards. There were so many agencies that I had the luxury of picking
who I would work with.

Hope this provides some insight to the other side

A.


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