6 reasons your recruitment consultant doesn’t give you feedback

by K B , updated on November 10, 2020

One of the biggest complaints my job seeking clients make about recruitment consultants is that they actually never hear back from consultants sometimes even after they have been for an interview. So they actually receive no feedback, good, bad or otherwise.

Silence is really tough, especially if you, as a candidate, have put your heart and soul into your application.

I’ve been a recruitment consultant.

At times I’ve been a good consultant, and at times I’ve been an overworked and over-stretched consultant, struggling to meet all the targets I’ve faced and to do all the follow up I need.  So I want to dive a bit further into what makes up the silent treatment from recruitment consultants, that is why, you as a job seeker may never hear back.

I’m not making excuses, but many of the posts I have read on this stuff just skim the surface about what’s going on behind the scenes.

Or people indulge in old fashioned finger pointing labelling recruiters simply as slack sales people who are focused on the dollar. The reality is actually a lot more nuanced.

1)  First up, yes, fear of litigation, the consultant does not want to be sued.

It is actually often hard to give you as a candidate constructive feedback around your skills, when the interview process itself, has not been that scientific.

If you’ve faced a behavioural interview, around your competencies, then the recruiter could give you some targeted and useful feedback based on which competencies you did not demonstrate in your answers. Trouble is, not everyone in the recruitment process sticks to the interview script. If that’s the case anything a recruiter says, could be easily disputed by you.

2)  You may not receive any call or feedback when you are no longer a priority to the recruiter.

Read this post on the silent treatment.

Generally if this happens, the consultant is focusing on what it takes to meet their targets. They’re rewarded on placing candidates and they’re paid commission only when they meet their activity targets (client calls, visits, interviews).

If you, as a candidate, are out of the running for a role, then you are not a priority call, as the consultant focuses on what they need to make a placement.

3)  It’s really tough to give feedback.

Consultants are human (funny that). Most people like to be liked.

Disappointing a candidate is a hard thing to do, especially if the recruiter knows this is the one job their candidate wants. For a stressed out consultant, it’s easy to let this call go to the end of the day, or the end of the week, or the end of the month, or…

4)  The employer is giving the consultant the “silent treatment.”

The job may have fallen through.

Just because the agency advertises a job, doesn’t mean the job will be filled.

It’s relatively cheap to place an advertisement on a job board. Sometimes employers will place a role with an agency to test the waters. Sometimes they may change their minds about who they want. Sometimes they forget their own internal processes and don’t get sign off to recruit. Sometimes there is an unexpected restructure.

For many reasons the job may not eventuate and sometimes clients do not return consultant’s calls.

5)  The consultant has no useful feedback to give you.

Clients can sometimes give the vaguest of reasons about why they don’t want a candidate, “just didn’t think you’d fit the team”, “just not sure”, “if in doubt say no”. Or the client may give the recruiter reasons that they simply cannot repeat about your age, gender, nationality etc. There is no way that information will ever be passed on to you as a candidate.

6)  The consultant could give you the tough feedback, but knows you won’t accept it, and doesn’t need the grief you may give them if they tried.

This one’s a tricky one. If you don’t have a technical skill, for example, a qualification, experience in programming, software experience, knowledge of the law etc, then you know you don’t have that skill. It is easy for you to accept any feedback around this.

However when you lack polish (to put it politely) in the so called “softer skills” such as communication, you need to be very self aware to know that you have a problem.

If you’re not a good communicator, for a whole host of reasons, you may never know this. (Many people are great at nodding politely as if they’re listening, if  for example, you are a chronic over-talker and they’ve tuned out). Plus you’re only likely to trust this kind of communication about your communication skills if you trust the person delivering it.

As a recruiter no matter how carefully I’ve worded some feedback to reflect what the real issue has been, I’ve had people dispute it.

The conversation has not been pleasant, nor easy. I’m only human. If one person gives me a hard time for trying to do the right thing, it makes it a whole heap harder next time I go to pick up the phone.

What to do if you’re truly tired of waiting for recruiters to call back!

So if you’re reading this post and thinking there has to be a better way to find a job, rather than waiting for a consultant to call, then I have very good news for you.

I have a new training program to stop you waiting for recruiters and go direct to employers you choose.

Check out the Straight to Shortlist Challenge here.

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to work with me to get 5 meetings with your top 5 employers in 5 weeks.

It’s exciting.

It’s fun.

And it will boost your confidence significantly, because you’re in control.

Not only that, getting recommended to an employer is 10 x more effective than applying online.

To find out more, click on the image below.

 

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How to make the most of a LinkedIn Group

by K B , updated on November 10, 2020

Last week I wrote a post on why I “think” I regret becoming an open networker on LinkedIn. I had an enormous response. So thank you everyone for the support.  The thing I love about social media is how responsive people are if you ask for help. Jason Ball from Good People Japan, a networking group, kindly wrote a detailed comment about how he manages his LinkedIn activity and his group. He had such great tips for anyone wanting to use LinkedIn, I thought I’d feature it. Essentially Jason has used his LinkedIn group as a platform for meeting offline. Over to Jason!.

1. I closed off my connections for browsing.

2. I invited all the people in my local area to join a closed group for business to business development in my local area of Tokyo. This eliminated recruiters, financial planners/appointment setters, Network Marketers, and people touting business to consumers (who see everyone as a potential customer). I kept it local to Japan unless people were referred to me and had some connection to doing business in Japan.

3. My concept is about meeting in person in small groups around proposed subjects of interest. It’s also about me introducing my network to each other.

4. I became a moderator then administrator to another large group called “Business In Japan”, which had 11,000+ members world wide, and 4,500 Japan based members.  So now when people from overseas invite me as a contact, if they have taken the time to make a personal approach or have an interesting profile for doing business or working in Japan, I recommend they join “BIJ”. If they’re in Japan and fit the profile for my group I recommend we meet up in person some time, or even at an event. There I may mention GoodPeople Japan and the BIJ Group.

5. I focus on engaging with people through all channels, including into Twitter. I may soon include Facebook.

6. I focus on spending 20% of the time in person being very clear on how people can help me and 80% of my time understanding and suggesting how I might help others.

All this means I’m busy yes, but I’m busy with “real” people who are the people behind connections, followers and “friends”.

Other than that, I’m still learning how to best engage people, how to best help people and how to and define where I’m going, all while having a whole heap of fun!

Thanks again, fellow Aussie “LinkedIn”-er! (This Aussie uses LinkedIn)

Jason
Connecting GoodPeople
http://jp.linkedin.com/in/goodpeople
@GoodPeopleJapan
http://www.goodpeople.jp

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Tricky job interview questions you’d better have an answer for….

by K B , updated on November 10, 2020

According to Ross Clennett, trainer to the recruitment industry, a good interviewer should not ask you job interview questions about your strengths and weaknesses.  Instead they should ask more pointed job interview questions where you, on the other side of the table, need to provide evidence.

Here’s his list of ineffective job interview questions and suggested alternatives. He calls his job interview questions effective. We call them tricky. Consider yourself warned 🙂

Ineffective job interview question: What are your major strengths?

Tricky job interview question: In your last performance review, what aspects of your work did your reviewer mention as being particularly good or strong?

Or: What accomplishment or aspects of your current/most recent work are you most proud of? Why are you proud of it and describe to me how you accomplished it?

Ineffective job interview question: What are your major weaknesses?

Tricky job interview question: In your last performance review, what aspects of your work did your reviewer mention as needing to improve the most to take your work performance to the next level, and tell me what you have done with respect to that feedback?

Tricky job interview question: How did you feel about that feedback?

Tricky job interview question: How did you respond when you received that feedback?

Ineffective job interview question: What will you do if your child gets sick during work time? (Also avoid: Do you have young children?)

Tricky job interview question: Because of the intense customer-focused and high response nature of this job (or substitute any other valid job-related criteria), it is extremely difficult for the client to be flexible with starting and finishing times between the core hours of 9am and 5pm. Does that present any difficulties for you with respect to any other commitments you have?

Ineffective job interview question: Where do you see yourself in three years’ time?

Tricky job interview question: What skills do you want to gain or improve in the next 12 months and what steps have you taken recently to achieve this?

If you haven’t properly prepared for your interview, reflected on your strengths and weaknesses, plus how you can support anything that you claim, these questions can trip you up.

Read Ross’s full article here.

Need to get ahead of the pack for your next interview?

Get our free e-book The 7 Deadly Sins to Avoid at Job Interview!

Deborah Barit wrote this book. She is one of Australia’s leading interview coaches.

To get your free e-book and some of our best interview tips direct to your inbox, simply click on this link.

Here’s what happy readers said about the e-book and interview tips:

“Deborah Barit is a very smart lady…She is good at figuring out what an employer is looking for. It’s like she has ESP, with her help in preparing, I found no surprises in a recent interview and I was prepared for every question….” Cathy, Leichhardt, NSW

“Because I read so many of your posts, I feel as if you were my personal employment coach. I start my new position in two weeks. I had so many obstacles to overcome and each day you posted a solution to my dilemma and how to improve my search. Thank you so much for your input and PLEASE continue to do what you do!”

Click here to get access to the e-book.

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How to network to get a graduate job

by K B , updated on November 10, 2020

One of the questions I get asked a lot is “how do I get a graduate job?” I’d always suggest that people push themselves and go along to a graduate careers day. Most of the large graduate employers have stands. They put their recruiters and the shiny new graduates of their graduate programs in front of their stands and set the talk button.

I mistakenly thought you could use these fairs for research purposes to get the low down on the company and what to expect from the graduate program.

But there’s more to it than that.

These things can also be major networking events, it seems. For this knowledge I thank two people – Naishadh and Susan.

Let’s start with Susan.  As a mature age graduate she knew that she would struggle on paper to compete with younger graduates who would seem to be a much better “cultural fit.” She knew she needed to get her face in front of people to have a chance to tell her story.

Susan’s aim was to get on the graduate recruiters’ “list”.  She cracked a few jokes, chatted people up, and asked a lot of interested questions. Then she told them her story. She dressed like she was already working at the company. The recruiters lapped it up, and wrote her name down.

The reason they wrote her name down is because they receive hundreds of online applications from people who sound the same on paper. They were looking for other ways to help them make a decision. The “list” told them whom they should look out for amongst the flood, that is who’d made the right personal impression on the day.

For some great tips on how to get on the list visit my friend Naishadh at www.resumesolutions.com.au. He’s written a great little e-book on how to make the most out of careers expos. You can read it here.

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LinkedIn tips – why I “think” I regret becoming an open networker

by K B , updated on November 10, 2020

One of the decisions I made early on in online networking was to become an “open networker” on LinkedIn. For those of you who don’t use LinkedIn, becoming an open networker is where you join a group and are added to a list of people who are open to connecting up with people. Other networkers can use this list to make contact with you. Three years on after becoming an open networker I have thousands of connections. Now I kind of regret it.

I say “kind of” because there are advantages to being an open networker. One is that it expands your list of contacts by the bucket load. That means you are able to research thousands, if not millions of people in your broader network. This is great if you want to use LinkedIn to understand people, where they work and how they may help you.

The down side of being an open networker is that I am fair game. Now I receive hundreds of emails from people I don’t know. Many of them have nothing to do with my business. People have assumed that since I am an open networker that I want to hear about their bridge building business in California or a great deal on grapes in Penang.  I’m in Sydney and if you’re reading this, you know what I do. It sounds bizarre, because it is bizarre. I am simply being spammed. While I received a few interesting emails among all of these, I’m sure many more good contacts have been lost in the masses.

For me, one of the few things to come out this deluge of emails, is a bit more insight on email impact and ethics. I try to understand how people communicate and how to improve my own communication. When I’ve read these emails I’ve realised how easy it is to all sound the same. If I open an email, it’s because it’s been a really clever or targeted email, and short and snappy, or the person sending it has “lucked on” a topic that has interested me.

With thousands of connections in my in box, I also find it hard to manage the masses. It’s a challenge to find people that I really care about and want to form deeper relationships with.  (If anyone reading this has that secret, please let me know. I’d really appreciate it.)

Another thing that I didn’t think about when I opened myself up to contacts is how other people may view this when they look at my profile. Many head-hunters I have spoken to say that they look at the richness of your connections and who’s in your network. With so many contacts I am sure I look either really impressive, or really indiscriminate.

My main take out of doing all of this is that I had hesitation about becoming an open networker. But I ignored my gut instinct.  At the time I didn’t have a good reason not to do it. I now know from working within online networking, Twitter and social media, that the community influences the way people use the forum. So with LinkedIn, many people have seen people hooking up and emailing each other, seeming indiscriminately and it becomes the “done thing”. It snowballs.

What I do know is that I’m not generally a person that works a room and hands out my business card to 25 people, even at a professional networking event. I prefer to chat to two or three people and get to know them. Open networking seems to be a bit like that spray can kind of approach. I’m not saying that’s wrong. I just don’t think that’s my natural style.

My main take out of all of this, is my networking style worked for me one way offline, so I  should have approached it that way online. Perhaps that’s a good rule of thumb for anyone, really.

Have a read of point five in this post by the LinkedIn guy. It’s very telling.

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Don’t picture your job interviewer naked

by K B , updated on November 10, 2020

Top tips on coping with job interview nerves

If you suffer from nerves in an interview, chances are you’ll have heard the advice: “just picture the interviewer naked.”

I’m not sure where this gem comes from, but it’s not very sound advice. If you do go down that path, at best you’ll be slightly distracted. At worst you’ll, ummm let’s just leave it there.

You’ll get that advice when people want you to relax.

It’s meant to humanize the interviewer and reduce them to someone you may relate to. But there are better ways to calm your nerves in interview than mentally undressing your interviewer.

Here are a few to get you started.

Understand what the job is really about.

Nerves can come from being in the dark.

So do your research.

I have written about this in quite a few other posts, but I feel I need to repeat myself this after this past two weeks.

I have helped two clients with government applications and selection criteria.

The language on the position description so was woolly, I had to ring the contact.

For the first job, the advertisement turned out to be different from what the manager had specified.

For the second job, the role was an IT programming role, however the way the employer had written the advertisement, made it sound like a project management role.

Big difference in the skills the employer requires.

If there is an opportunity to check what the role is really about, do so. Even if the position description accurately reflects the role, it’s hard to tell from a bullet list of responsibilities, which responsibilities are a priority.

A good question to ask the contact is “what will I spend the majority of the role doing?”

Something on the bottom of the list could be more important than what’s on the top of the list and a lot of what you read on a position description can be just fluff and padding.

Once you understand the job, think of examples of where you’ve held similar responsibilities.

Many interviewers now use behavioural interviews.

The questions you’ll be asked may sound general and you may be tempted to roll out any old example.

But the interviewers will be judging you on the relevance of the examples you present.

Leadership, for example, at senior levels, can be more about leading through others. That’s different from managing a team directly.

Pick examples that you’re proud of!

Read this post on body language in interview.

Your best examples will make me, as an interviewer, feel like I am in the room with you.

They’ll be vivid.

Your excitement in delivering them will be reflected in your tone, your mannerisms, and on your face.

Practice.

Don’t learn your lines.

You’ll never remember them, but do talk out your examples.

I say this because often when I coach people in interview skills, we do a mock interview.

The first time someone talks through a scenario, or an example, that reflection is really obvious in their tone.

Do practice, and if you can’t practice with a professional, practice in front of a mirror.

Record yourself.

This is excruciating, but it works.

James a very good friend of mine recorded me when he interviewed me for his blog.

He kindly pointed out that I said “you know” 27 times.

OK it might have been 47 but I’ve blocked out the number I was so embarrassed.

The thing about this is that I had zero idea I was saying this.

When you need to be believed, you tend to use words to seek someone’s approval. In my case “you know” was a shortened version of “do you know what I mean?”

Get a good night’s sleep.

Pull the interviewer into your bubble.

What this really means is that you should try and focus 100% on the interviewer and what they’re asking, without being slightly creepy about it.

Make the interview about the other person, not you.

So, for example, instead of concentrating on getting your sentences out on perfect order, focus instead on whether the interviewer understands you.

Try to understand the intent of the question that the interviewer asks.

Check their body language to see if they’re receptive to you.

The bubble idea is a much better trick than picturing your interviewer naked.

You really don’t want to share that bubble with someone you might find unattractive!

Need to get ahead of the pack for your next interview?

Get our free e-book The 7 Deadly Sins to Avoid at Job Interview!

Deborah Barit wrote this book. She is one of Australia’s leading interview coaches.

To get your free e-book and some of our best interview tips direct to your inbox, simply click on this link.

Here’s what happy readers said about the e-book and interview tips:

“Deborah Barit is a very smart lady…She is good at figuring out what an employer is looking for. It’s like she has ESP, with her help in preparing, I found no surprises in a recent interview and I was prepared for every question….” Cathy, Leichhardt, NSW

“Because I read so many of your posts, I feel as if you were my personal employment coach. I start my new position in two weeks. I had so many obstacles to overcome and each day you posted a solution to my dilemma and how to improve my search. Thank you so much for your input and PLEASE continue to do what you do!”

Click here to get access to the e-book.

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