It's Not About Money!
What are your initial thoughts of a recruiter?
It’s defined in the Oxford dictionary as “a person whose job is to enlist or enroll people as employees, in the armed forces, or as members of an organization.”
A lot of people, when they think recruiting, think “head hunter”. Which I often note has a negative connotation. This could be because of an assumption that I get talked to about every so often from candidates getting familiar with the practice. The rumor is that, if successfully placed, a recruiting company may “take a little off the top” of your base salary when placed or even a piece off the top of their hourly rate in order to get paid at the end of the transaction.
With my experience in the industry, I can tell you that it isn’t the case. In the current industry, a 3rd party recruiting agency is commonly utilized to help fill difficult roles or even hiring as usual if the company doesn’t have enough employees or staff within HR/recruiting style roles. When a 3rd party organization is used, they get paid a portion of the salary via percentage of the placed base salary, but it doesn’t come from the new employee’s wage/salary, rather a separate allocated budget for 3rd party sourcing directly from the company at hand. When a recruiter gets paid, its generally commission pay based on the amount earned for the company they work for. Thus, the higher-level roles/more roles you fill, the more you would make in theory.
Now what does that mean? That means that the most money I have ever made on a placement was most likely the highest authority and highest paid placement that I’ve made in the past. Generally, most would assume since the point of working is often to make money, and the highest authority placement is assumed the highest worth in financial value, that this would be my favorite placement. Which is a good theory, but not the case. The most important placement that I have ever made was a placement that didn’t have a financial effect on me and took more work than any other placement I have ever worked with. That placement wasn’t even for an executive level role and it was a placement nobody would even know that I had a part in. This role was filled by an individual who was struggling for purpose and had true passion was the industry they were in. This candidate told me that they went through a rough patch in their life and they coming down from the high of their college success. Something had happened and caused them to have struggles that ultimately made them lose confidence in themselves and sink down into a mental place that was in no way healthy.
After that had happened, they took a break from school and work – even leaving behind some stellar offers post-graduation. That gap of only a year without a full-time job slowly grew as they applied over and over again, but unfortunately if you’re a new graduate the market isn’t forgiving and they surely paid the price with rejection after rejection due to this. This individual and I worked together for months, both early and late, in order to break them into the industry of their dreams in order to give them a purpose in life again and we eventually did so.
The day I got that individual a job was the highlight of my career so far. I had no financial incentive and hardly any “skin in the game” personally, but I changed someone’s life. I helped them get back on track in order to pursue something that truly gives them purpose, and that is the greatest success anyone could have ever asked for. Often times people forget that recruiting isn’t just stealing talent or being a middle man in a transaction, but if you find the right recruiter, they can be a partner in the job search with the ability to circumnavigate traditional/modern hiring practices.
Connect with Hunter Haws on LinkedIn.