I can't help but cringe whenever I see the the autosuggest from Google when I type "Recruiters are". Annoying, liars, lazy, stupid, pushy, scumbags. Is it just me or do I have a tendency to take on roles with negative reputation?

Although contingency recruiters are taking the most hit, in-house recruiters are not spared either. I'm not here to defend our reputation. But what I can do is attempt to explain how it ended up like this.

Contingency

If you've been contacted by a recruiter from a recruitment agency representing a vague picture of their client, then you've just encountered a contingency recruiter (CR). There's usually a low barrier of entry. More of a sales job than recruitment, a CR earn commmission for every role they close. Every recruitment agency would have a different set of KPIs but this is usually the root cause of all the negative reputation that you stumble upon.

When given daily KPIs like

• Number of calls
• Number of CVs sent
• Number of business development calls

It's an unforgiving reality where failure to meet these targets would translate to losing their job. Operating under that kind of pressure, you shouldn't be surprised as to what people would do just to survive. Mass emailing, calling, spamming, you name it. For as long as these kind of KPIs exist as a measurement of productivity while disregarding the whole recruitment experience, the negative reputation would never fade away.

In-house

An in-house recruiter (IR) have a different set of KPIs. They are the company's gatekeeper. Depending on the setup, an IR might have to take on a full stack role aka dealing with a lot of administrative work. KPIs like time to fill, cost per hire, retention would mean that an IR have to be more selective and careful when it comes to filtering in the right people.

Given the amount of roles and the high number of applicants, it can get out of control pretty quickly. The majority of complaints towards an IR revolves around ghosting and lack of feedback. It's not an easy feat to coordinate between multiple interviewers and getting timely feedback. Coupled that with potential legal issues and the sheer amount of work, the collateral damage is inevitable.

In an ideal world, we would have full control over the candidate experience and the hiring process. In reality? Not so much. Although the environment and pressure is a major contributing factor, it's not a justification for us to continue perpetuating these negative experiences.

You may have been at the receiving end of these behaviors and for that, I'm truly sorry. I admit that there's a big hurdle to overcome in this industry / profession before we can truly see some positive effect. For now, all I'm asking is patience and empathy.

Change is coming, albeit slowly.