The importance of meeting and getting to know your recruiter.

Sarah Owens, Managing Director of Direct Recruitment explains the benefits of building a relationship with your recruiter.

So you’ve decided it’s time to look for a new job. What’s your next step? You’ll probably go on line and apply for jobs that you like the look of. Some of them will be via recruitment agencies.

At this point, you have a decision to make: should you meet the consultant? Or are you happy for your CV to be sent out on the basis of a brief chat on the phone, or simply even an email acknowledgement? And, how confident are you that you have control over your CV when you haven’t got a relationship with the person who is representing you?

In my view, it’s actually a very important decision as it can make or break the success of your application. In order to help you find the job you want, I need to know as much as possible about you: what makes you tick, what you enjoy, what your strengths are and, most importantly, what you want to do next. To do that, I have to meet you and have a proper, two-way conversation.

You could argue that this can be done on the phone, but with 55% * of received communication coming from body language, that won’t do you justice as I’m not going to get the full picture. Without the full picture, I can’t present you effectively to my clients and give that added value that a good consultant should always be seeking to do.

To me, it’s not enough to have a brief chat with someone who will start selling you jobs or agencies where they want to send your CV – your job move is too important. So, as a candidate, you should ask to meet your consultant for a proper, in-depth interview and if that doesn’t happen, select a professional recruiter who will take the time to do this.

If you are a client, you should be asking some important questions too. How can a recruiter know someone’s right for your role or company if they’ve not interviewed them face to face? How much of your valuable time are you going to waste interviewing unsuitable people? And, in a people business, should you be paying the same fee to someone who’s simply farming out CVs?

Sarah Owens is Managing Director of Direct Recruitment.

* By the way, if you want to know where the rest comes from, it’s 38% from paralinguistics (the way you say things) and 7% from the words themselves.