
I am constantly surprised when I talk to recruiters. They are a never-ending source of surprises.
A recruiter called me and asked if I was on the job market and I said yes. Her very first question to me was if I needed a company’s support to stay in the US. No, I said, I am a US citizen. What a recruiter should say and what I ask them when they email/LinkedIn message me are the top 3 things. Location, salary range, and duties. Recruiters you need to lead with this.
She wasted 10 minutes qualifying me and asking me extensively about my experience. I realized that there was a problem when in the end she told me the company name. I told her that I had already been submitted for this. She asked when and I looked up the date from the email that I sent the recruiter. I told her the job number and she acknowledged it was the same job. Of course, it was the same job. I knew that when she was talking but it is rude to interrupt isn’t it?
Almost 100% of the time, when a recruiter doesn’t share the name of the companies as part of the duties information you waste them with them. I can’t remember a time when a recruiter had hidden the name of the company where I was interested in working with the company. The Glassdoor and online experiences of some companies are so painful that you would rather be poor than work with them. If your company is ashamed to let it be known they are looking for workers, you have a problem at the company.
I am not making fun of her. She had no way of knowing that I already had this job covered. However, her approach might have been at the start to say “I am looking for X position, at Y company, at a range of x-y, and it is hybrid.” Then we can have a meaningful conversation. Recruiters hide information like it is going to help them. It doesn’t. If you are a recruiter and I have to pull the information from you by asking questions about things you should be freely sharing with me, then we are off to a rocky start. Information flows two ways, and when it doesn’t, I don’t want to deal with that person.
When you waste people’s time recruiters, you make it more likely they won’t answer the call from an unknown number and they won’t respond to your message. Please respect other’s time.