Articles From the Team
The importance of keeping in contact with your recruiter
Communication with your recruiter is the absolute key to a smooth and trouble free process for all parties involved. It’s quite surprising that candidates can still go missing at any stage of the process and I’m not sure they quite understand the full impact on the process this can have. From the first phone call to accepting a job and even 12 months after your start date, it is always important to keep in touch and here’s why.
From the first phone call – usually we have a very good idea of what it is you are looking for and will have started to search the market for opportunities that match your ideal role. Once we find opportunities that we think would be suitable for you, we are then able to talk through these roles and decide whether you want to get a CV over to the firm in question. If the candidate decides to cut communication at this stage in the process, it is likely that they could miss out on the ideal role.
Invited to interview – You’ve kept in contact and have now been invited to interview at a target firm, this is when the process starts to feel real and could lead to getting cold feet. If a candidate is going to go quite, it is likely that it will be at this stage in the process. There is absolutely nothing wrong with getting cold feet at this stage, in fact it’s quite normal. Going silent at this stage could get the candidate a poor reputation from the client and not only that, it reflects badly on the recruitment agency. If you are unsure or don’t think it’s the right opportunity, pick up the phone to your recruiter and have that discussion, it may well be that the opportunity isn’t right for you and we can remove you from the process without any reputations being tarnished.
The offer stage – You’ve gone through the process and now the firm have put to you an offer. There are numerous reasons why a candidate may not be in a position to accept the role. You may have been counter-offered and your current firm has realised their errors and made a promise to fix it. You may have even had a change in personal circumstances. However, this is the worst possible time to go silent on the client and recruiter. If we can’t hear from you, we have to be honest to the client and tell them that we haven’t. This usually results in the offers being pulled and a bad reputation being created. Communication is key here, tell the recruiter and we can speak to client, see if there is anything else they can do?
Personally, I think candidates sometimes think that if they are to pull out of the process at any time, it would give off a bad impression and therefore dodging calls is the short terms fix. It’s not. If the candidate explains to their recruiter the reasons why they are pulling out, whether it’s a change in personal circumstances or things have improved where they are, informing the recruiter will allow you to pull out of the process as painless as possible and also allow there to be no bridges burnt with clients. We’re here to help and It’s vital to keep in contact from the first call to accepting the offer.