Working with recruiters can be frustrating. I’ve worked with the insufferable prima-donnas in the USA who make job candidates jump through hoops. I also worked with outsourced recruiter-bots from India and Pakistan who relentlessly harass job seekers, expecting them to drop everything to immediately respond to an email.

To cope, I developed a set of policies that govern my dealings with recruiters. This article describes the experiences that helped shape this policy. It aims to provide a better understanding into why some job seekers are wary of recruiters due to the behavior of certain individuals in the field.

Recruiter Policy

1. In order to efficiently assess the relevance of a job opening, the recruiter should furnish a detailed job description at the onset of our communication. Please provide: the job title, location, posted salary, and a comprehensive description of the work as described by the client/employer.
2. Stating a job is located in Houston, Texas, tells me nothing. Houston encompasses a large area. For reference, the Houston area is larger than the states of Rhode Island or Delaware; and the city is larger than several European countries. At minimum, I need the zip code to effectively evaluate if the job location is a good fit.
3. Our time is valuable (yours and mine). If an in-person preliminary interview is necessary, your office must be within a 5-mile radius of the heart of the major city I reside, or we must conduct it online. I’ve had past experiences with last-minute cancellations from recruiters, citing unexpected meetings with their managers as the reason. In this digital age, I find it hard to believe that calendar management skills can be so poor.
4. Please avoid contacting me about a position if the deadline for resume submission is near. Many have asked for my swift response, citing end-of-day deadlines. I cannot accommodate last-minute requests due to someone else’s poor time management.
5. I will not lie on my resume. Unfortunately, I have multiple experiences with recruiters who insist on rewriting my resume. The end-product makes it clear the recruiter lacks a basic understanding of the field they are recruiting for. Either that, or the recruiter must think the hiring manager is stupid.
6. I do not participate in skills assessment tests. They are a waste of time and are obsolete, given that most candidates born after 1985 possess good technological skills.

Prima Donna Recruiters

Recruiters in the USA can be the most difficult to work with, and excel at wasting the job seeker’s time. Contributing to the frustration are their tendency to:

• Not provide enough information upon contact.
• Waste time with pointless interviews and last-minute cancelations.
• Manufacture urgency with deadlines.

Little Information at Initial Contact

Many recruiters provide as little information as possible when they initially contact a candidate. It’s inappropriate to contact someone, out of the blue, and only provide a few tidbits of information regarding something as important as a job.

Recruiters only earn money if a candidate they represent is hired, which causes some to be reluctant when sharing information. They tend to prefer discussing everything over the phone, which serves a double purpose of helping them evaluate if the candidate is a good fit. But I don’t want to take time away from work or other activities on a call if the job isn’t even a good fit.

Having that information helps the candidate evaluate if the job is worth pursuing, which can ultimately save the time of both parties. If the candidate isn’t interested, they can respond saying as such or ignore the message. In fact, LinkedIn and Indeed make it easy for job seekers to respond with 1-click.

Interviews Galore

Recruiters interview candidates to evaluate if they are suitable enough to present to a client. Most of the time this is done over the phone, but sometimes the recruiter needs to visually see if the candidate is presentable and requires a candidate to undergo a preliminary video interview.

A visual interview is the obvious next step in evaluating a candidate. Unfortunately, this is when many job seekers get frustrated with a recruiter, especially if the agency requires an in-person interview.

I’ve had several recruiters schedule in-person interviews only to cancel at the last minute… when I’m already in the parking lot! The most common excuse I hear is, “I just discovered I have a meeting with my manager.”

While disappointing, the job seeker should be accommodating.

• Yes. A couple hours were wasted getting ready for the interview.
• Yes. The trip to the staffing agency’s office burned a lot of fuel.
• Yes. This cancellation messed up a perfectly dry-cleaned suit.

Remember, the recruiter is a doorstop blocking your path to a real interview with the company. Take a deep breath and agree to reschedule the interview, but ask for it to be held online.

Quite often, the recruiter will no-show to their own meeting… a second time.

This is ridiculous! I find it hard to believe, in the digital age, anyone could have such poor calendar management skills. At this point, such unprofessionalism clearly indicates the candidate should walk away from the opportunity.

Last Minute / Manufactured Urgency

Recruiters need to have a list of candidates ready for a client before a deadline. But why do they have to contact me about the job when the deadline is imminent?

The recruiter usually calls to discuss the role and assess whether my experience makes me a good fit. They usually ask me to send some documents or reply to a confirmation email. Nothing major… until I say something the recruiter dislikes, such as offering to complete the tasks over the weekend.

Now, the recruiter suddenly mentions a deadline to submit resumes, either by the end of the day or by tomorrow morning. This deadline, which didn’t exist just moments ago, now requires me to drop everything and complete these tasks immediately.

Why?

• I applied to the job over a week ago.
• There are only 30 applicants listed on LinkedIn, and this number is likely similar across other platforms.
• Recruiters have a system or algorithm used to weed out non-qualifying candidates, so it’s not like they have to painstakingly review each individual resume.

Even accounting for a workload exceeding 30 cases, why do most recruiters wait until the last minute to contact me about a job? And why must I drop everything at work or cut across 7 lanes of traffic, just to send the recruiter an email before an arbitrary deadline?

Someone else’s poor time management is not my problem.

Outsourced Recruiters

I regularly experience a relentless barrage of calls from Indian and Pakistani recruiters. One called me more than five times before I finally gave in and answered. I was in the middle of a lunch meeting, so I put the call on speakerphone. I asked if there was a fire, or if he was calling because a loved one was dying on a freeway?

The answer was no, he merely wanted to discuss a job opportunity he just sent me by email.

I cut him off to point out how unprofessional it is to harass someone with non-stop calls, and made it clear I have no interest in working with someone who behaves in such a manner.

He responded by saying, “I understand,” yet immediately asked if I have time to discuss the job now. 

This behavior is typical of outsourced recruiters from India/Pakistan. They send an email and, if they don’t receive a response within minutes, they call incessantly. If you answer the call, they demand that you drop everything to address their immediate needs.

Imagine a surgeon with a patient on the operating table. He forgot to leave his phone in the office and pauses the surgery to answer a call from a number that has called 5 times already. This must be an even greater emergency than what the surgeon is already dealing with!

The surgeon explains that he is in the middle of surgery (in my case, a meeting). However, the outsourced recruiter’s lack of regard for your time and circumstances is so extreme, they don’t bat an eyelash before asking you to stop what you’re doing to address their needs.

The patient could die, but that’s okay so long as the recruiter gets an immediate response.

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These experiences helped shape my recruiter policy. If you’re a job seeker, you may relate and hopefully find these situations amusing. If you’re a recruiter, I hope you gained insight into why some job seekers are frustrated with the games played by less reputable professionals in your field.

In a future article, I’ll discuss email recruiting, relocation expectations, and common scams.