Using Recruiters in Your Job Search

JobMetaSeek is the largest and most complete job search and career center on the Internet. If it is about jobs, or job hunting skills, you can find it here. We offer more than 100,000 links to all types of job and career resources for nearly every occupation, profession and industry. Take the Site Tour and see how this site can make any management, professional or executive job search more efficient and productive. If you are job hunting, you should send your resume to recruiters. Recruiters know about your industry or occupation and they know about job openings that you may never find on your own.

Recruiters and search firms work for the employer or hiring entity. The employer pays them a fee for locating the right individual for the job opening. Recruiters never work for the job-seeker. A recruiter will not act as your personal employment agent by trying to find a position for you. If your credentials happen to match an employer's needs, the recruiter will try to place you. But don't expect an employment firm to go out of its way to find a job for you.

There are two types of recruiters, retained and contingency. A retained search firm has a contract with a company to find a candidate and receives some payment as a retainer during the process. A contingency recruiter has no search contract and receives no payment unless a placement is made.

Some employers prefer working with contingency firms and some with retained firms. Both are respected by employers and useful in your job search, but, the two types of firms will not be handling the same positions with the same employers simultaneously.

The retained recruiter has entered an exclusive contract with an employer to fill a particular position. The retained recruiter is likely to advertise a position, sharing the specifics of the position, location and employer openly. The retained firm feels a great obligation to fulfill the contract by finding the best person for the job. Retained firms generally work with higher level positions.

The contingency recruiter, on the other hand, usually does not have an exclusive relationship with the employer, and is only paid a fee if the job search is successful. Often, if the employer uses contingency firms, there will be more than one contingency firm competing to fill a certain position. Contingency recruiters generally work with more mid-level management and professional positions.

Different recruiters know about different positions. They do not usually know about the same ones. This is particularly true with retained firms. By sending your resume out widely, you will be placed in many different confidential databases and be alerted of many different positions. If you send your resume to only a few, it may be that none you send to will be working with positions which fit you background and qualifications.

Do not think that you should limit yourself to contacting only recruiters that work in your region. Very few recruiters in our Directory work only in their local area, most work all around the US or Canada and some internationally. If you really only want to remain in your area, you can specify that preference in your cover letter.

When you interact with executive recruiters, you are essentially interacting with an agent or representative of the employer. You should develop your relationship with the recruiter with the same integrity and professionalism that you would with the employer.

The Recruiter Directory is a comprehensive list of links to management recruiters, executive recruiters, executive head hunters, executive search firms and staffing agencies in the United States and Canada. The General Canada and Temporary and Contract Canada Categories contain 200 sites devoted exclusively to Canadian Recruiters. The Industry and Occupation categories are not country specific and include links to Canadian and United States Recruiters. Every link contains location information which can be used to filter your selections.