Working With Executive Recruiters: A Hiring-Side Guide for Experienced Professionals

Executive Recruiters Do Not Represent Job Seekers

An executive recruiter is not an agent hired to find someone a job. The recruiter has been retained or engaged by an employer to find candidates who fit a specific assignment.

That means a recruiter can think very highly of someone and still have nothing appropriate to offer that person.

I see this from the recruiting side all the time. A candidate may have an excellent career, impressive accomplishments and years of leadership experience. None of that necessarily makes the candidate right for the search I am working on today.

The client may need experience in a particular industry. There may be a compensation range, geography requirement, company-size preference, leadership mandate or very specific background that matters to the hiring team. Sometimes there are requirements candidates never see in a public job description.

The recruiter’s job is to understand those requirements and bring the client people who can credibly meet them.

Understanding that eliminates a great deal of unnecessary frustration.

What Happens Before a Recruiter Ever Contacts You

Experienced professionals usually see only the visible part of recruiting: a LinkedIn message, email or phone call.

A lot has already happened before that contact.

When I begin a search, I am trying to understand what the employer actually needs, not simply matching job titles. I want to know why the position exists, what the person will be expected to accomplish, what experience matters most and where there may be flexibility.

Then the search for people begins.

Recruiters may work through existing candidate databases, LinkedIn, professional networks, referrals, previous candidates and direct research into organizations where the right people are likely to be working. For an executive or specialized search, that can mean identifying people who have never applied for the position and may not even be looking for a new job.

This is why visibility matters in an executive job search.

A recruiter cannot consider someone who cannot be found, and being found is about more than checking the “Open to Work” box.

What Makes an Experienced Professional Recruiter-Friendly

When I look at an experienced candidate, I need to understand fairly quickly what that person does and where the person fits.

That sounds obvious. It often isn’t.

After 20 or 30 years, careers become complicated. There are multiple companies, responsibilities, promotions, industries, accomplishments and sometimes changes in direction. Candidates understandably want to communicate the full breadth of that experience.

Recruiters are trying to determine relevance.

A LinkedIn profile and resume should make the current professional identity clear. What kinds of problems has this person solved? At what level? In what environments? What has the person actually accomplished?

A long career can be a tremendous asset, but only if the market can understand it.

This becomes especially important for professionals over 50. Trying to prove the length of a career is usually less useful than making the value of the experience unmistakable.

Why Sending Your Resume to Hundreds of Recruiters Usually Doesn’t Work

Mass recruiter outreach feels productive because it creates activity. I don’t think it is a particularly good executive job-search strategy.

Recruiters specialize. Some work within industries. Others concentrate on functions, compensation levels, geographies or types of companies. A recruiter who primarily handles financial leadership searches isn’t suddenly going to have an appropriate chief marketing officer assignment because a strong CMO sent a resume.

I would rather identify a smaller number of recruiters and search firms whose work actually overlaps with my background.

Research the firm. Look at the searches it handles. Look at the recruiter’s background and areas of concentration. If there is a legitimate connection between that recruiter’s market and your experience, make the outreach specific.

The objective isn’t to accumulate recruiter contacts.

It is to become relevant to the right recruiters.

How I Would Contact an Executive Recruiter

I would keep the initial approach brief.

Tell the recruiter who you are, what you do and the types of opportunities you would reasonably consider. Give enough information to establish relevance without sending an autobiography.

If there is a mutual connection or legitimate referral, mention it. Recruiters pay attention to trusted referrals because the person making the introduction is lending some credibility to the conversation.

I would also make sure my LinkedIn profile supports what I am telling the recruiter. If the message says one thing and the profile communicates something entirely different, the recruiter now has work to do just to understand the candidate.

Make that easy.

What Recruiters Are Looking at When They Find You

Candidates sometimes assume a recruiter is simply comparing the resume against a job description.

There is more going on.

I am looking at career progression, scope of responsibility, measurable accomplishments, industry relevance and the environments in which someone has succeeded. Depending on the assignment, I may also be thinking about leadership style, communication, compensation, geography, company size and whether the person’s career trajectory makes sense for the opportunity.

I am also thinking about the conversation I will eventually have with the client.

That is an important question for any executive job seeker to ask about his or her own positioning.

Why Recruiters Sometimes Go Quiet

This is one of the most frustrating parts of working with recruiters, and there isn’t one explanation.

Sometimes the client changes the requirements. A search can slow down, be put on hold or disappear completely. Another candidate may move ahead. The hiring manager may decide a particular background is more important than originally expected. Internal candidates appear. Budgets change.

And sometimes the recruiter simply doesn’t communicate as well as the recruiter should.

Candidates shouldn’t interpret every period of silence as a judgment about their professional value.

At the same time, repeated messages to a recruiter are unlikely to change the requirements of the search. A professional follow-up is reasonable. After that, keep the rest of the job search moving.

What to Do When a Recruiter Calls About the Wrong Job

Take the conversation seriously.

Recruiters build networks continuously. Someone may not be right for today’s search but may be exactly right for one six months from now.

If an opportunity isn’t appropriate, say so professionally and explain why. If you know someone who may genuinely fit, a thoughtful referral can be valuable.

I remember people who are helpful, candid and professional.

That doesn’t guarantee a future opportunity. It does make a relationship easier to continue.

Recruiters Should Be One Part of the Search

I would never build an executive job search around recruiters alone.

Recruiters work on the assignments their clients give them. They cannot manufacture the right opportunity because someone happens to be available.

An experienced professional should be working several channels at the same time: targeted companies, professional relationships, former colleagues, industry contacts, direct opportunities, LinkedIn visibility and appropriate recruiters.

That matters even more at senior levels, where some opportunities develop through conversations and relationships long before there is a public job posting.

The goal is not simply to apply for more jobs. It is to create more ways for the right people to discover and understand your value.

A Better Way to Think About Recruiter Relationships

I would stop asking, “How can this recruiter find me a job?”

A better question is, “Does this recruiter understand where I fit, and have I made it easy to recognize when an appropriate opportunity appears?”

That is a much more realistic relationship.

Good recruiters can become valuable long-term professional contacts. They can provide access to opportunities you would never have discovered independently, and a recruiter who knows your background may remember you when the right assignment appears months or even years later.

But the relationship works best when expectations are realistic.

Recruiters are one important part of an executive job search. They aren’t the entire strategy.

If Recruiters Aren’t Responding, Look at the Bigger Picture

If you are an experienced professional sending resumes to recruiters and getting very little response, I wouldn’t automatically conclude that recruiters are the problem.

I would look at how the market is seeing you.

Is your target clear? Does your resume communicate what you can do next, or mostly document what you have done? Does your LinkedIn profile make you findable for the work you actually want? Are you approaching recruiters who work in your market? Are you relying too heavily on recruiters and online applications instead of building a broader search?

Those are often more useful questions.

I work through those issues with experienced professionals in my Executive Job Search Strategy Sessions. The objective isn’t to turn someone into what a recruiter supposedly wants. It is to make sure the market can clearly understand the experience, value and direction that are already there.