Recruiters

rabbit Stew

Hi everyone,
One of my brothers has been approached by a large recruitment agency for a position as a recruiter.
Does anyone have current or previous experience in this field?
If so could you please tell me about it i.e.
Basic wage
Commistion scale
Work environment
Job stress
etc.

Cheers
Stew

AARRRGH

It's a good job if you enjoy sales (esp. cold calling.)

The money can be very good, depending on how hard you work, what industry you are selling into, and what recruiter you work for.

It would not be abnormal for a decent recruiter to earn well over 60k per year.

board om

it depends which area he will be recuriting to. obviously construction or retail wouldnt be a great area at the moment. where as finance or sales is brilliant.

you would have to be very good at business development and also at account management to make it work. there is no guarantee that just becuase someone makes a good sales person that they will then be a good recruiter, unfortunetly it isnt that straight forward. if you put in the work then the returns are excellent. you can make some serious money at it if you do well.

basic wage - would depend on previous experience, so anywhere form €22k upwards. with good previous sales experience you should get €30k+.
commission scale - would usually be around 10% of the placement fee. where i worked the good recruiters that would be hitting target were getting a minimum of €3k a month in commssiion and it was uncapped so there was no limit on earnings.
Work enviorment - depends on the company and the people you are working with. there can be a very high turnover of staff in recuitment because like any sales job, if you arent hitting the targets then you are out the door. usually you will have 3 months to prove yourself and if you dont do it in 3 months then its time for a career change.
job stress - it can be very stressful. its not your average 'sale' of showing an item and selling it to the customer. you bascially have 2 sales to make, one product being a job and the other product being a candidate. you have to sell the job to the candidates, then you have to sell the candidates to the potential employer. it can be very difficult to sell a candidate to a company because they may be perfect on paper but you cant control how they are going to act or what they are going to say when it comes to the interview. if they do a great interview and the company love them, there is no guarantee that the candidate is going to like the company. then if you do manage to place a candidate in a company and they start the job, there is no guarantee they will stay there. if they leave within the first few months then the recruiter doesnt get paid and all the work has been for nothing. so the only way to keep on top of things is to always have lots of pokers in lots of fires. you have to work smart and multi task or you wont last long.

hope this helps.

rabbit Stew

Thanks boards om,
Very informative.
He's a good sales man and has worked with me in my management consultancy firm but wants to try his own thing for awhile. I think he'll do well but reading some of the posts here he won't be popular.;)
But then again i get the impression that if a square peg applies for a job in a round hole, he'll blame the recruiter if he doesn't get it.
There also seems to be a bit of begrugery that the person placing the applicant in a position is making more money than the applicant.
Could be wrong but thats the feeling i get!

board om

rabbit Stew wrote: »

He's a good sales man and has worked with me in my management consultancy firm but wants to try his own thing for awhile.

that is a good background to be coming from. the fact that he has already been doing consultancy will help him in a big way. he could probably start by recruiting for some of the companies he is currently dealing with, once that doesnt effect the work you are alredy doing with them. he will already know all the essential information about the company and he will have a relationship with them already, so that is half the battle. where a lot of recruiters fall down is they either try to recruit for a company without finding out what the company actually do, or what the job fully entails, or basically what the company are looking for overall. they just just take the job spec, pick out the key points and start calling people with the hope that if they send 20 CVs to the company 1 of them will get the job. that just doesnt work. i even made the mistake of doing that myself in the begining, just sending CVs for the sake of sending them. but then i realsied if you went out and visited the company, got a feel for what they do, see the kind of people they normally hire, and then find out exactly who they want for the role, you will get the position filled. and you will probably get it done with 4 CVs instead of 20. once i got the hang of it i had a rule where i would get 4 CVS of exactly what the company was looking for, and usally 1 of the 4 got the position. i made a point of telling companies that i wont send a lot of CVs, but the CVs i send will be exactly what they are looking for, so quality over quantity. they would rather get 4 CVs that are relevant to the job, than 20 CVs that arent worth the fcuk. and they are alot happier when you do that and after a while they stop using other recruitment agencies becuase they know you will get them what they need. there are so many bad recruiters out there that companies love when they find a good recruiter and they will gladly give you all their business if you do it well.

rabbit Stew wrote: »

I think he'll do well but reading some of the posts here he won't be popular.;)
But then again i get the impression that if a square peg applies for a job in a round hole, he'll blame the recruiter if he doesn't get it.
There also seems to be a bit of begrugery that the person placing the applicant in a position is making more money than the applicant.
Could be wrong but thats the feeling i get!

you hit the nail on the head there. nobody wants to believe that they arent good enough for a job, so if they dont get an interview it is always the recruiters fault. they dont understand that sometimes they are just not what the company is looking for. also some recruiters just dont bother to tell candidates the truth, that the company dont want to meet them, so they just dont tell them anything at all and the candidate is left hanging. i suppose it is hard to tell someone that they arent good enough. that would never get any easier. but on a daily basis i used to get CVs from candidates who had absolutely no experience in an industry, they will have changed jobs more times than they have changed underwear, and they will be applying for a €60k a year senior position, and then they will blame you when they dont get an interview. or try explaining to someone in Dubai that the interviews are taking place tomorrow and the company are not going hire them over the phone. its ridiculous what some people expect. but when it doesnt go their way it is always the recruiters fault, never the candidate.