What's the best way to use a recruitment agent?I would like tips for working with recruitment agents, e.g. things to watch out for, games they might play, how to get the most out of them.

The first trick is to actually find a good one. That's half the battle. Take recommendations from your friends, focus on ones that specialise in and actually understand your particular skillset. The Top Consultant report that came out earlier this month is probably a good starting point to sussing out the good ones - as they were voted on by jobseekers based on their own experiences.A big decider for me is determining whether I am a person or a CV in their eyes. A good agency will want to meet you for at least an hour to find out more about what you've done and what you're looking for. This is also important in consulting because there is a certain level of professionalism and polish that is usually required - this is impossible to gauge from a CV, but takes about 2.6 seconds to establish in a face to face meeting.Watch out for them editing your CV without your permission. And far too many of them will submit your details to organisations without your consent, and will only speak to you when a company shows an interest - you have to control where your CV ends up, because it looks pretty bad if a company receives it four times from four different sources. I'm sure there are plenty of other examples out there too... why not just apply directly to the firms that interest you?

I do the job internationally, which seems to draw howls of derision and offensive posts from certain quarters.... I am not sure I would take too much notice of the job boards. These things are quite easy to fix. One website rates the recruiters who provide the best feedback to candidates on how often you click "yes" or "no" when asked if a CV meets your expectations - clearly this does not help much in real terms as you do not actually have to follow up with anyone. Others use equally flawed methods (I am sure this site is the honourable exception!). I would always work on personal referral but remember that the recruiter's job is to help the company find the person and not the other way around. Be wary of a recruiter who says that he/she will randomly send your CV to given companies - you might as well do that yourself - unless the person can explain exactly who the CV is going to (ie by name) and can quanitify the nature/strength of that relationship. One trick would be to drop in names of key people in a given company (find them out or make them up). If the recruiter claims to know a load of bogus people, you know there is an honesty issue! If the recruiter claims to be best friends with someone you actually know, you know again that you are in trouble. Try to catch out the recruiter, definitely. It is fightening how often "do you kow David Smith at Bain" [David might be a bogus person or might be someone you actually know] is met with a knowing smile and an answer along the lines of "yes, I was best man at his wedding". If you want to get really nasty (this has happened to me and fortunately I was not lying!), get the recruiter to call their "best friend" in Bain/BCG etc in front of you - your friends numbers are generally in your mobile are they not... If you know a given person well and the recruiter claims to as well, call that person up and pass the phone across. If you are going to make it in consultancy, you should have the ability to tell the BS from the valued advice. Make sure you know exactly where your CV is going, check that the recruiter actually has an agreement with that company. When recruiters say it is "confidential and they cannot mention the company by name" they are almost always just chancing their arm. If they have a good relationship with the client, they should be able to convince you of that by telling you about meetings, social engagement, the clients fmaily situation etc etc... The other thing is that a good search firm can, by definition only work with 1 third of the market. In most cases (there may be exceptions in the cases of those who focus only at graduate level), the recruiter who claims to work with more than 1 third of the market, is probably only serving the clients on an ad hoc basis and will probably not be able to add much value. They should be able to tell you who they work with and the nature of the agreement. I generally tell a candidate if a company is not my client that they are welcome to approach that company independently and that I am not likely to add value in this instance.The recruiter has value when he/she has better access to the hiring company than you have and can actually influence the outcome in your favour - ie spend time explaining your strenghts to the client, who would otherwise just spend 10 seconds flicking through your CV. The person who just dumps your CV on a client is actually diminishing your personal brand.Rant over. Hope this helps

one last thing. send your CV as a PDF document. Recruiters will not want to speculatively send your CV without adding their logos as clients have a habit of claiming that they "received the CV from another source so we cannot pay you". Although annoying for recruiters, it does force them to call you gain your trust (plus get you to send a word version) and work with you rather than banging the CV around.

Thanks for the tips guys. Re PDF CV's - great idea, I'll convert mine right now

I do genuinely feel sorry for these recruitment guys. The incentives they are presented with are horrible. Make successful placements and they'll get excellent remuneration and be able to pay their mortgages with ease; fail to make placements and they could be earning less than a new graduate and spending sleepless nights worrying about losing their homes.This doesn't excuse the practices that sometimes go on and much of the advice in this thread is on the money in terms of taking control of who ends up receiving your CV, etc.By way of positive contribution to the issue, thought you might like to see the results of the 2007 poll we conducted to ascertain readers' 7 top management consultancy recruitment consultants. This should at least give you some ideas of individuals / firms to approach that are likely to behave in a professional and thoughtful manner.You voted for these recruiters (1,000 candidates in total took part) and they are:>> Craig Milbourne - Consulting Point>> Jamie Stokes - Astbury Marsden>> Angela Heath - Beament Leslie Thomas>> Don Leslie - Beament Leslie Thomas >> Adam Jackson - Astbury Marsden >> Mike Thompson - Druid IB >> Sasha Kemp - Consulting PointHope this helps (and any HR managers wishing to receive a full copy of the report please email bryan@top-consultant.com)Tony RestellTop-Consultant.com

Thanks Tony and everyone else who replied, it's very much appreciated. I've come across Mike Thompson before, and even though I wasn't a match for the role I was enquiring about, he gave me a lot of time on the phone and some genuinely helpful advice. Highly recommended.One more general question:What's the best thing to do when you phone up a recruitment agent, send them your CV etc and then they want to meet you? Obviously I understand that they want to know more about the individual and what he/she is looking for, to place a face to the CV, to understand potential 'fit' with opportunities etc but in my experience these meetings have pretty much been a waste of time. More often than not they maybe know you're not suitable for the role in question just by looking at the CV, but want to meet nonetheless just to find out things like what daily rates my firm charges, who our clients are, what projects we're currently working on etc - basically using it as a source of 'intelligence' for their own purposes. Obviously it's not a huge time investment, but for those of us who are travelling, it can be quite inconvenient to have to reschedule your entire workload just to attend an 8.00am meeting with somebody who wants to know all about you in great detail and then it later turns out doesn't really have much more to offer you than you can find in 10 seconds on the top consultant job adverts page. It's like when you go to a careers fair and they just dish out business cards with the URL of their website on it and tell you to apply online, it makes you question the value of actually meeting them in person.Also what should you do when you come across those agents who try to get you to make fundamental changes to the structure of your CV or start jumping through a lot of hoops (signing agreements, photocopying ID, filling out forms, attending meetings, etc) when they don't even actually have a specific opportunity in mind? Maybe I'm missing something - I really am wanting to understand more about the process so any advice/input would be appreciated

I absolutely agree with the points Tony makes. While we have to have sympathy for the recruiters on a personal level, they are playing with your lives/careers. I am, however, of the opinion that as intelligent consultants, presumably with good academics, experience in conducting due diligence etc, you should have the skills to sort out the wheat from the chaff. There is part of me that has little sympathy with you if you end up getting sucked in by the "cowboy" end of the market. If you cannot suss out a 23 year old wise guy, you are going to be eaten alive in a strat consulting firm, surely!

Let me take the latter points first - as they are the easiest to deal with!!There are certain things that recruitment firms are now legally obliged to do, one of which is to verify the identity of all jobseekers. Hence asking to see your passport is something that all reputable agencies should be doing.As regards re-writing your CV, there is a good reason for this. Many recruitment firms will reformat CVs into a standard format so that when the consulting firm receives them they are in a standardised format and the decision-maker there can more quickly perceive if you are of interest. Many consultancies will expect this from their recruitment supplier, so refusing to play ball just creates an obstacle to being considered for the role. However you obviously want to maintain control over where your CV is sent, so put it in writing that they can modify your CV only for the purposes of sending it to INSERT NAME OF SPECIFIC EMPLOYER.The signing of agreements is usually done to protect the recruitment firm against the actions of cowboy recruitment firms. The principle aim of the agreement is to have you confirm that you have asked this recruiter to represent you and therefore protect their investment of time in you as a candidate...Imagine the situation: a cowboy recruiter has forwarded your CV (without your knowledge) to say Capgemini. You are also put forward to Capgemini by the bona fide recruiter who you have given permission to represent you. You then accept a job with Capgemini and a recruitment fee becomes payable. The cowboy recruiter got your CV in front of Capgemini first and may try to claim the fee. However the signing of the agreement with the bona fide recruiter allows them to prove to Capgemini that they were the ones who had your permission to put them forward and that the fee is payable to them.Obviously check out the agreement before signing, but this would be the usual reason that a recruiter would want things put in writing.On to the opening question about investment of your time in the process. I am personally very protective of my time, so I totally understand why you are too! Broadly speaking, I would take it as a positive thing that a recruiter wants to invest time in building a relationship. A cowboy recruiter would want to get your CV and have it sent off to (multiple) clients with as little effort as possible. So those that are actively looking to invest time in you as a candidate are likely to be the good ones. Without doubt these meetings are useful to them from an investigative point of view - getting to know everything that's happening in the industry, why consultants at certain firms might be disgruntled and want to move on... These are all good things for a recruiter to know. In a recessionary market I'd certainly agree that finding out who else is recruiting, etc. is gold-dust information for a recruiter. But honestly in a boom market like now, most recruiters have more than enough assignments to fill and so their challenge is finding candidates to fill those roles.Hence I would suggest investing a bit of time in the relationship too - but at a time to suit you ideally!Hope this is helpful.Tony Restell (Top-Consultant.com)

I was thinking more along the lines of the 40 year-old 'managing consultant' recruitment agents rather than the 25 yr olds (and in any event, from my experience, the latter are often easier to work with since they get straight to the point and don't see everything as "complex"!!!)... sadly i'm finding myself giving them the benefit of the doubt too often, so was wondering how best to sort the wheat from the chaff. Obviously I have common sense but am hoping to find out more about other people's experiences/tips

Just noticed another post slipped in by the time I had finished writing mine, so thought I'd mention that the above post was in response to the one by "you bring it on yourselves"Will now read Tony's... thank you all for the help/advice, it really is appreciated

Thank you Tony for the helpful advice, I'm now starting to understand that some of these 'hoops' are there for a legitimate reason after all

maybe you need to find the 30-35 year old who is young enough to "get straight to the point" as you put it but old enough to have some experience/knowledge!!

Personally I would ignore surveys and be careful whose advice you take. Ask a friend who has used a good rec cons recently - they will undoubtedly have a direct dial telephone number where you can speak through opportunities and arrange a meeting to judge whether you can work with them or not.

Definitely agree that surveys are a little flawed. It is great that this site has performed a survey and I assume that the readers will treat the information in the right way. In reality, it is easy to rig. I have heard mixed reviews of all of those listed, although a couple of them have been in the game a long time so they should know their markets. Do you remember when a neat little email campaign ensured that Rick Waller the fat bloke cleaned up in the semi-finals of the first series of Pop Idol? Some random South American recently won a vote for best young player of the World Cup as a result of an English email campaign to ensure that Christiano Ronaldo did not win. English football fans managed to ensure that an English fan won a competition to sit on the French team bus and Jedi became and official British religion. I am sure that a relatively commercial recruiter can generate enough real or artificial votes to ensure that he/she is in the top group. In a survey group of 1000, you cannot need too many to get in the top 5 or so if you can be bothered to do a bit of campaigning you should do pretty well.A recruiter's job is to help the client find you if you are what the client wants. If you are not what the clients wants, the recruiter should be screening you out of the process and not desperately trying to push you into the company. Clients have no objection to paying recruiters for top candidates who are hard to find/attract. They are less comfortable with paying for more "run of the mill" types. In short, unless you are the sort of rare beast the recruiter is chasing, the recruiter's time is best spent on other things - unless you are prepared to pay for the time you take up as a candidate ofcourse as you would have to if you visited virtually any other advisory service provider! In my experience, the genuinely strong candidates rarely have a complaint as they are almost always looked after - remember the recruiter serves the client and not the candidate as a priority. The weaker candidates often blame the recruiters for their own shortcomings. I have had candidates mess up an interview, get rejected and then blame me for not getting them a job - no attempt to analyse what went wrong and learn from it despite my suggestions to that effect. Funnily enough, unless they can prove that they have learned from the experience and will change the approach in future, I do not want to embarrass myself by putting the same candidate forward to another client! Other clients may then ask me if I know the same individual, who has inevitably found his/her way to them. We are not charities put on this earth to tell mediocre and needy consultants how to run their lives. We have to be commercial and focus on the people who are going to make us money. I will make the point one more time.... we are here to help the clients find the "golden" candidate. We are interested in the really great people we have to coax into joining our clients. We are interested in the candidate with numerous options and who is in demand. Our job is to go into the market and get the best candidate for our client. If the candidate has 6 companies fighting over him/her, our job is to ensure that our client wins over the over 5. Our job is not to sit there like a volunteer from the Samaritans listening to sob stories from mediocre candidates. Any decent recruiter will work hard to win the trust of the genuinely strong candidate but will not have time to deal with the weak. It's dog eat dog out there.... sorry!

Insomniac,You make some interesting points. However, your arguments are equally applicable to the recruiter marketplace. Don't be surprised if candidates also need to sift through an overwhelming mass of 'mediocre' recruitment consultants to identify the ones that really can match their aspirations to opportunities. Recruiters who don't take the time to either understand their ambitions nor have many real opportunities are not worth wasting time on. This is the reason why I seldom waste more than 30 seconds on talking to the average recruiter.Your post is also disconcerting in its sheer narrow mindedness. You may be targetting the golden recruit for your clients but the real skill in recruiting is not in a herd like pursuit of the most popular candidates ( which seems to be your modus operandi and one with respect anyone with half a brain could replicate) but to identify the best fit for the client. Anyone who has lived through the last recession knows how quickly 'in-demand' skills become obselete and over the long term, companies need people who 'fit' and are able to add long term value rather than those who are being chased by the maximum number of people.Also amusing that you choose to vent against 'mediocre' consultants without whom you would presumably not have a business. Also the number of such mediocre plodders who are constantly pursued by recruitment consultants must surely be an anamoly ?

You also make some very fair points there, especially about the recession and I suppose posting long rants at such an early time in the morning is not a great thing to do - sorry if the tone was amisss! The MD of first recruitment firm I joined proudly told me that we did not have to do any business development - a year later he was rushing round what was left of his organisation imploring us to sell, sell, sell!!! We had gone from needing nice cosy account managers (the sort who would gladly wile away hours making candidates feel good about themselves) to needing backside kicking sales guys who would bring in the revenue! As recruiters we have to spend a lot of time educating the clients as to what is realistic in the candidate market while educating the candidates as to what is realistic in terms of their own options. When stuck in the middle of clients who only want to top 5% of Wharton/INSEAD and candidates who believe that they should not have to look outside the top 2 or 3 firms, you have to manage both sides, neither of which particularly likes what you are telling them sometimes. The point in my clumsy way that I was trying to make is that this is not a coffee morning at the women's institute. Our time is very precious as is yours. Both sides should be able to make the decision quickly as to whether it is worth investing time in the relationship, as is the case with any business scenario. Believe me, as a recruiter, you absolutely want your client to be more open-minded and more open to a wider candidate pool. Unfortunately, they often set the criteria and candidates either meet them or do not - end of story, unfortunately much I am often frustrated by this. I have always felt that the top tier strat houses in particular miss out on some very good people by insisting on such a precise set of criteria - before people jump in on this point, I do also understand why they do it. It is an unfortunate fact that we spend a lot of time having to explain to candidates that, while we personally think that they could do wonderful things for company X, experience tells us that this is an argument we are simply not going to win. Go to a less experienced recruiter, you will will get the answer you want now (plus lots of nice time spent with the recruiter "getting to understand you better") but the same result months later. Your hopes are raised for nothing. Candidates must absolutely be choosy. I absolutely agree with you on this. Both sides need to avoid those pointless meetings where you really can't help each other and focus on where the chances of a successful collaboration are greatest. My advice to candidates is not always to take the easy option. If the recruiter takes a bit of chasing it is either because he/she is useless, which will become apparent quite quickly, or because he/she is extremely busy getting people jobs. Clearly if it is the latter, you may need to fight to make this person your best friend. It is a sad fact that many of the most successful recruiters are not very nice people but they get the job done. Don't be fooled into thinking that the recruiter whose schedule is completely open and is prepared to travel half way across the country to come and have a coffee with you is the one who is going to help you out.... much as it is very flattering of course.

There are some basic levels of professionalism that I would normally expect from a recruiter and as a group they sadly fall short of these more often than not. Unfortunately these also include some of the top-ranked individuals mentioned in the top-consultant report. The basic things I would expect from them would be :- Responding promptly to phone calls and email queries rather than trotting out the 'I am swamped' excuse. I need to understand that you are interested in me as an individual before I allow you to represent me.- Be prompt in collecting feedback from interviews and passing it back. Yes this could mean chasing up the client but as a candidate I expect you to have this sort of relationship otherwise I might just as well go to a company web site and apply.- Build a long term relationship. It's bizarre how so many fail to work on this very obvious point. Today's star candidate is almost certainly tomorrow's client.The places where good recruitment consultants really add value are :- Making you aware of opportunities you may not have considered or been aware of.- Setting up exploratory conversations with interesting people without a clear agenda to see if there are any opportunities. if these are the kind of chats you would not normally be able to have then value has been added.- Coach you to best 'sell' your potential.- For senior levels, help create roles around your profile and interests rather than trying to fit you into an existing job spec.Unfortunately, by far the majority of recruiters do not add value in these areas. They are glorified CV processing machines and in theory the job could be done just as well by a back office system in India.

I completely agree with Dotter... if we are not interested in you we should just tell you straight rather than string you along. If we are interested, we should be able to do everything you suggest.

<<if we are not interested in you we should just tell you straight rather than string you along>>The thing is that most mid-career candidates are approached by recruiters ( especially in this sort of market) rather than the other way round. However, their &apos;interest&apos; is normally just placing you within an existing job spec as quickly as possible rather than taking the time to understand ambitions and motivation.Also, if I were a recruiter I&apos;d be loath to tell a candidate that I myself had approached that I was not interested in them. It only takes a slight change in industry and the economy for new types of skills to be in demand.

Is it true that most candidates are approached by recruiters rather than the other way around? If so, how do you get on their &apos;radar&apos;? I have a pretty high profile in my particular industry sector, but have only been approached once in the past and that was by an agent who I used a few years ago to fill a role. Do you have to call the agents and register your details before you can expect to get calls from time to time, or are there really lots of actual "headhunters" out there who research/hunt down the ideal candidates, to whom I must be invisible?

Some points on the above: 1. Find a recruitment consultant that someone you know has dealt with. Surveys are VERY easily rigged. Personal recommendations can&apos;t be beaten.2. Because a recruitment consultant takes the time to meet you and "bond" does not mean they are good at their job. If they are any good they will undoubtedly meet you before you interview and coax you to highlight your skill set but if they catch up with you for a chat and tea and cakes they are probably rubbish with nothing on the go and looking for leads / insight into the market. These are the people who you should not work with.3. As soon as you speak with a rec cons you should know whether they are intelligent and understand the market, opportunities and teams. They should be able to give you at least 10 reasons why you would consider moving to x firm/s.4. We only get paid when we get people jobs - although it would be a great world if we could meet with people whose skills may be in desire after a change in the market, unfortunately we don&apos;t have the time. It raises candidate expectations and is unfair. Surely you would not want your time wasted meeting up with someone only for them to tell you to hang on for a shift in the market. 5. Lastly relationship building is undoubtedly key - I am in regular contact with everyone I have ever helped - however my loyalty is to my clients who I have excellent relationships with. That&apos;s the advantage of using a recruitment consultant - I can persuade my contacts to overlook the "buts" in your CV and get them to meet with you in the first place. The rest is largely up to you.

Original poster ask a friend / colleague for a personal recommendation and have an impartial chat with the recruitment consultant about what&apos;s going on in the market at the moment. If they are any good they will be able to tell you straight away if they can help you.

Original poster - what&apos;s been written here isn&apos;t factually correct, in the consulting industry at least. The vast majority of interactions between candidates and recruiters arise when a candidate has applied to a role being advertised by a recruitment agency. Unsolicited approaches by headhunters I would say account for <20% of candidate-recruitment firm interactions. So some headhunting does happen - and for "hard to fill" roles this is the principle methodology for producing a candidate shortlist; but even where candidates are "headhunted", very often they will be on the recruiter&apos;s database as a result of some earlier interaction / application to a job advertisement a year or two ago.Headhunting is very prevalent in investment banking and bankers expect to be called proactively by this type of recruiter. There are lots of recruitment firms that would label themselves as pure headhunters in banking. In consulting pure headhunters are not nearly so common, so it wouldn&apos;t be out of the ordinary to be a consultant that has never been headhunted - even if you&apos;re very good.Hope this helpsTony Restell (Top-Consultant.com)

Strange to read that. I have been in consulting a long time and I have only ever been headhunted. Obviously registering a CV helps the recruiters find me but all the roles I have had were a result of an approach rather than an application.

Dotter - what you are describing is a situation where you&apos;ve instigated having a relationship with a recruitment firm and then thereafter it&apos;s been in their interests to check back with you periodically to see how happy you are and to help you move on if you&apos;re looking for a new challenge (and this catching up with you will mostly happen when the recruiter has a role they need to fill that you would be suited for)This is quite distinct from proper headhunting.A real headhunting firm (by which I mean a Heidrick & Struggles, Spencer Stuart type organisation) will:i) receive a mandate from a consulting firmii) have a highly qualified individual (usually of similar calibre to an MBBB consultant) research an industry to identify all the candidates that are experts / high-flyers in that particular specialismiii) proactively approach candidates not because they have any prior relationship with them but because those candidates are the best candidates for that particular roleThis type of real headhunting is pretty expensive and so whilst common in investment banking tends to be reserved mostly for £100k+ roles in consulting - and even then will only be resorted to once other routes have failed.Which isn&apos;t to say that the recruiter in your case hasn&apos;t provided both you and their clients with a great service - but it&apos;s more akin to them prodding you into applying for a job rather than outright headhunting.Tony Restell (Top-Consultant.com)

Tony,You&apos;re absolutely right and that is exactly how things happened.Strangely, I have been getting a lot of unsolicited calls over the last 12 months from people surfing linkedin for profiles and then calling the office switchboard !Clearly a new trend in the recruitment industry !

it&apos;s an old trend Dotter!!

I&apos;ve seen a couple of comments on the forum discrediting the winners in our recent reader survey - which singled out the best management consultancy recruiters; indeed in this very thread one reader states that recruiters would find surveys like this "easy to rig".Two key points on this issue. I personally know a number of recruitment firms that ran banners on their websites or in the footers of their emails encouraging candidates to take part in the survey and vote for them. <b>However</b> in the survey we gave candidates the chance to vote both for recruiters they wanted to praise / recommend to others <b>and</b> for those they thought were awful and wanted to steer other candidates away from. >> The winners of the best recruiter awards were those who had the best aggregate score (ie. total votes in favour less votes where the recruiter got slammed). The interesting thing here was that it was not at all easy to "rig the survey". Many recruiters that encouraged candidates to take part in the survey actually produced a stream of candidates that wanted to complain about that firm and vote against them.So in essence you really could only win these awards if you could produce an overwhelming number of candidates that were prepared to testify to your professionalism and not have that many that felt your services were substandard.Of course there are a lot of recruiters (who didn&apos;t do so well) who stand to benefit by calling the results into question. Getting bumped off a consulting firm&apos;s PSL in favour of a firm that did do well in this survey gives them a very real reason to want to challenge the results. Bear that in mind when you are reading any posts like this and ask yourself what the contributor&apos;s motives are for sullying the results...Tony RestellTop-Consultant.com

I&apos;d be interested to know what a headhunter does differently to a recruiter who proactively finds and then places a candidate who is not actively looking for a job. I accept the headhunter will have excellent industry knowledge of the area they are working in but so too will some recruiters. Anyone know the difference, if indeed there are any?!

Absolutely no difference at all.

Other than the £20,000 fee!!?

Do you think a recruitment consultant is paid less than a headhunter?

Most recruitment consultants seem to introduce themselves as "headhunters" anyway.Sounds a bit more impressive than CV scanner and spec matcher I guess !

Aaah there we are!! That&apos;s the spirt. I knew it had been too long without some criticism.

I think it&apos;s funny how much some people seem to hate recruitment consultants. Solution: Just don&apos;t use us!

I&apos;m also surprised by the figures that Tony quotes, as it does not really reflect my experience (although I appreciate that my experience may not be a representative sample).In each of my previous career moves, I have been approached (unsolicited) by a headhunter, and assumed that most of the roles in consulting were staffed that way. The first of these moves was well before LinkedIn, for around a £40K position.These days, I get loads of approaches from "headhunters" that have found my details on LinkedIn -- as others have pointed out, normally through the switchboard or via my easily-guessed email address of village.idiot@myfirmname.com (NB: not my real name or employer). The rest of the calls come on my mobile and generally are pretty clued-up about my skillset. But then again, I work in a fairly specialised area.

A headhunter would traditionally charge 33% of the initial annual salary, paid in 3 installments, the first on agreement of working on the job. A recruitment consultant would charge a fee upon placement - normally between 15% and 25%. Why would a consultancy/company pay more for the same service?

Tony, as this is your site, I do not want to criticise your survey. It is flawed and nothing you have written there persuades me that it is not easy to rig. However, it is more accurate than just about any other system I have seen so you cannot dismiss the results out of hand - they are probably more accurate than most of the findings offered by the young grads at the strat consulting firms who can just about tie their own shoelaces and still live with their mums

As recruiters we serve the clients, not the candidates. If candidates like us this is a nice bonus but by no means essential. To me, the clients, who pay our fees have the right to judge us. Sometimes we actually have to work against a candidate to serve the client - ie we are expected to be consultative about the pros and cons of an individual rather than try to claim that every candidate is the second coming! This way we build credibility and if you are the right person, the client will listen to us and as a previous poster puts it "overlook the buts" on your CV. If we try to sell everyone, we come across as the boy who cried wolf and when we do have that brilliant candidate who just needs a bit of explaining, the client does not want to know. Candidates can get very aggressive towards recruiters when their issue is actually their own lack of appropriate skills/qualifications - or in some cases a bad reputation caused by a previous indiscretion they perhaps do not realise we know about. They can expect a free career counselling service from recruiters who have better things to do with their time. Example (not in consulting, as it happens) of the candidate from Hell is the candidate who hounded me mercilessly over a period of months and wasted hours and hours of my time. I knew the Vice Predients of 2 of his previous companies who advised me in no uncertain terms not to touch the guy with a bargepole. The last tirade saw him banging on about how he knew every CEO/CTO/COO in the EMEA region within the market he was targetting, he played golf with this guy and was good friends with another guy, was godfather to the children of this other guy etc etc yada yada yada ... After the latest tirade, I basically said "if you are so well connected, what the f$%k do you need me for" and hung up on him. In a 10 year career, it was the one time I lost my cool!

I&apos;m sure candidates have plenty of horror sories about recruiters too but swapping tales from hell isn&apos;t really the point. It is interesting that you see recruiters as primarily serving the client. Naively, I had imagined this as an intermediary profession - helping match buyers and sellers of services and in the long run unable to function well without a decent relationship with both sides of the equation. I think recruiters have a difficult job but I can&apos;t help feeling the field suffers from oversupply since it seems that barriers to entry are getting increasingly small. This probably explains the number of recruitment agencies that open up as soon as the general market hits a reasonable period of stability. Sadly, a lot of these are indistinguishable from each other and amount to no more than one man and a broadband collection mining CVs on the internet.In an ideal world, for good candidates a good relationship with a recruitment agent would be priceless through a career. Unfortunately, it is getting increasingly hard to sort out the chaff these days. Surveys like top-consultant, however flawed in identifying &apos;stars&apos; , do help.

A CEO once told me that one of the secrets to his success was always to have the business cards of 2 good recruiters in his pocket at all times. It had take him 10 years, however, to work out who they were. Experience and trial and error is the only way. The bizarre thing is that much as we like to have a pop at each other recruiters and strat consultants do much the same thing in terms of leaping on the latest band wagon to make money. It is just that the more junior strat consultants are kept away from the front on business development side of the business. Both groups made a lot of money during the telco/technology boom scratched around when that bubble burst until they found the next opportunity. There are just as many ropey strategy consulting houses popping up in a strong market as recruiterment firms. There are an inordinate number of "unique, niche, specialist consulting firms" in both recruitment and strategy. As far as using recruiters is concerned you should look for the right person rather than the right company. There is often huge variety beteen the quality of individual consultants in a recruitment firm. They turn staff over quickly and you have to make sure you follow the good people around the market. IN an ideal world, your career should grow along with that of the recruiter. ie the recruiter who is recruiting business analysts and junior consultants when you start out may be recruiting Manager, partners, practice heads and Directors of strategy in industry when you reach that point. You can actually help each other out as your respective careers advance.

Come on - let&apos;s be freinds. We need you as much as you need us.:0)

...i before e except after c.... free consultancy for you!!

Think (think) think (think) think (think)think (think) think (think) think (think)You better think (think) think about what you&apos;re trying to do to meYeah, think (think, think), let your mind go, let yourself be freeLet&apos;s go back, let&apos;s go back, let&apos;s go way on back whenI didn&apos;t even know you, you came to me and too much you wouldn&apos;t takeI ain&apos;t no psychiatrist, I ain&apos;t no doctor with degreeIt don&apos;t take too much high IQ&apos;s to see what you&apos;re doing to meYou better think (think) think about what you&apos;re trying to do to meYeah, think (think, think), let your mind go, let yourself be freeOh freedom (freedom), freedom (freedom), freedom, yeah freedomFreedom (freedom), freedom (freedom), freedom, ooh freedomThere ain&apos;t nothing you could ask I could answer you but I won&apos;t (I won&apos;t)I was gonna change, but I&apos;m not, to keep doing things I don&apos;tYou better think (think) think about what you&apos;re trying to do to meYeah, think (think, think), let your mind go, let yourself be freePeople walking around everyday, playing games that they can scoreAnd I ain&apos;t gonna be the loser my way, ah, be careful you don&apos;t lose yoursYou better think (think) think about what you&apos;re trying to do to meYeah, think (think, think), let your mind go, let yourself be freeYou need me (need me) and I need you (don&apos;t you know)Without eachother there ain&apos;t nothing people can doOh freedom (freedom), freedom (freedom), freedom, yeah freedomFreedom (freedom), freedom (freedom), freedom, ooh freedomThere ain&apos;t nothing you could ask I could answer you but I won&apos;t (I won&apos;t)I was gonna change, but I&apos;m not, if you&apos;re doing things I don&apos;tYou better think (think) think about what you&apos;re trying to do to meYeah, think (think, think), let your mind go, let yourself be freeYou need me (need me) and I need you (don&apos;t you know)Without eachother there ain&apos;t nothing people can do(Think about - ah me, think about - ah me,think about - ah me, think about it)(Think about - ah me, think about - ah me,think about - ah me, think about it)(Think about - ah me, think about - ah me,think about - ah me, think about it)(Think about - ah me, think about - ah me,think about - ah me, think about it)You had better stop and think before you think, think!!

Aretha,Are you still with Deloitte?

according to another thread it seems I would be better suited to Accenture

a specialist IT programmer with a music degree!

I think you are missing an important fact here: a good recruiter has a wealth of knowledge about the industry he/she is recruiting for. You will benefit from this knowledge when the recruiter advises you on where to apply, which companies are hot and not so hot at the moment, how to prepare yourself for an interview, what to avoid, etc. This knowledge is gained mainly by networking. Any conversation you might have with a recruiter who is asking you questions about your employer, your experience of what the market is like, etc, will have asked other candidates similar questions and that&apos;s where you get your additional information from. If nobody was prepared to put in the effort and work with candidates and consultancies in gathering market knowledge, you might as well just apply directly to the consultancy. It&apos;s a give and take thing. Think about it!

recruitment consultants are reactive, and are typically more candidate orientated, shopping him out to all clients.headhunters are proactive and no matter what will find the best possible candidate for the client, there is more of a responsibility towards the client.furthermore due to the typically higher salaries for candidates headhunted, coupled with a higher retainer fee = higher paid headhunters.

It is the law of the jungle, I am afraid. Highly paid, high value consultants get access to the highly paid well connected recruiters/head-hunters. Everyone else gets to deal with the cr@p....