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Post Redundancy: How to Handle Your Recruitment Consultant

Posted on Monday, 02 March 2009 09:28AM by Janet Davies, Editor

Sound advice from Herbie Henderson, author of ‘How to Handle Your Recruitment Consultant’ Being made redundant stinks.  Whether you anticipated it, semi-suspected it or if it came completely out of the blue, for most people the experience is a gut wrenching one that leaves them at a very low ebb.  And at this moment when for many people the only light at the end of the tunnel seems to be the train coming the other way, the last thing you feel like doing is immersing yourself in the horrors of finding a new job. The endless streams of letters, phone calls, forms, tests, interviews (if you’re lucky) and rejection (some rejection is par for the course) are a highly unappealing prospect at the best of times, but even less so when you’ve just lost your job and have been thrown into emotional and quite possibly financial turmoil. Nevertheless immerse yourself you must. So you have to adhere to all those ghastly clichés and pick yourself up, dust yourself off and start all over again...  Firstly I’ll just explain why it’s worth you using recruitment consultants (RCs) and secondly I’ll explain special considerations when dealing with them when you have been made redundant.   So, Why Use Recruitment Consultants? When searching for a new role recruitment consultants are regarded by many as a necessary evil, others regard them as a waste of space. Neither of these opinions is helpful. Of course you can succeed in a job search without using RCs, but if you deliberately embark on a search without using them you’re missing a trick.   A really good RC is, in essence, like a fabulous matchmaker with an enviable little black book. And, without wishing to strangle the metaphor to death, doesn’t that have its appeal when compared to just randomly responding to a lonely hearts advert along with a gazillion other singletons gagging for a date?   A good RC will: 1)  Expand your opportunities: a good RC will introduce you to a far wider range of job opportunities than you could ever unearth by yourself, not because you aren’t a determined grafter, but simply because RCs have access to information and people that you don’t.  (To put into perspective how popular the RC route actually is, recent surveys estimate that 83% to 87% of companies use RCs to fill their positions.)   2) Utilise their contacts and their database: there will be organisations with whom they already have strong relationships (which is fabulous for you), and there will be organisations they’re able to approach on your behalf and carry weight simply because of who they are. Believe it or not RCs and agencies with good reputations are respected and their opinions are valued by clients.   3) Refine your search: they’ll help prevent you wasting effort and valuable time going on wild goose chases and chasing down blind alleys.   4) Provide access to insider knowledge: they’ll be able to give you the inside track on new jobs just in,  or forthcoming opportunities that are not yet public knowledge.  Don’t forget that often RCs know about forthcoming openings before employers. How and why? Because many of the very individuals who come a register to search for new jobs, have not yet handed in their notice to their existing employers, and RCs know they’ll need replacing.   5) Provide even MORE insider knowledge so you have the inside track and the edge over competitors at interview: when you’re invited to interview with prospective employers RCs will give you the low down on the organisation, the people, the team etc. They’ll work with you to ensure you’re properly and thoroughly briefed before all your job interviews. Thus you’ll know all you can about the company, its culture, the teams and the dynamics relevant to the opportunities you’re pursuing (and not just the comparatively tame and mundane information that the prospective employer will have listed on their website).   6) Be your only option: last but not least, and I know some candidates resent it, a lot of organisations simply will not accept direct applications. Such organisations elect to work only with well respected agencies, thus outsourcing the early stages of their recruitment process.   RCs are a fact of job hunting life, so you need to handle them intelligently.   Vital Things to Remember When Handling Your RCs After Being Made Redundant:   1) This is business; keep it professional.  Your RC is not a therapist. Your RC is not a mate. The single biggest trap people fall into when speaking with or meeting with RCs when they have recently been made redundant is to end up giving chapter and verse on the ghastliness of the whole thing/the unfairness of it/the shock of it/the appalling way it was handled/the fact they never liked the darned job anyway etc etc etc.  You may understandably be feeling very raw and hurt; you may be being terribly gung ho about it and want to impress everyone with how pragmatic you are being.  Indeed you are likely to have lots of valid opinions on everything that happened but save those thoughts for discussion with your pals, with your family, with the cat, with the ceiling of your bedroom or the mirror in your bathroom, but never ever with your RC.   Your RC may well ask about what happened, it is after all the reason you are there (not to mention that some of them enjoy ‘a bit of a gossip’), but give them the facts, don’t labour over them.  There is no need to be a cold fish, you need to be engaging, but don’t concentrate on the redundancy, steer the conversation so you concentrate on the positives of the job for example; why you enjoyed the role, what you were good at, things you learned in the job about yourself and your strengths, skills you developed whilst in the role.   2) Do not bad mouth your ex boss or ex colleagues. There may be some bad feeling following your redundancy, there may have been bad feeling there for some time. A meeting with your RC is not the place to air your displeasure(s).   3) Be the best version of yourself. At all times during your contact with your RC remember that the person you appear to be to your RC, is the person they are going to be selling to their clients, so you need to make yourself a desirable commodity.  Do not appear to feel sorry for yourself, and don’t seek sympathy from them.  You don’t want their pity, you want them to be excited by you.   4) Be realistic.  You know your financial situation and thus you’ll know how soon you need to find a job and how much you need to earn. You must ascertain what is important to you, and what you want, but you must also ascertain what’s important to the market and what the market wants. You should not be relying on your RC to tell you what your value is in the marketplace. This is more important than ever in the current economic climate: as you will be (painfully) aware with every new round of redundancies there are less jobs in existence and more and more people out there fighting for them.  If you have unrealistic goals in your search for your new role you are wasting time and energy.   5) Communication. One of the principle complaints from candidates is that RCs don’t return their calls, and that their communication is lousy. Do you know what one of RC’s principle complaints is about candidates...? Yep, you’ve guessed it: lousy communication. Communicate with your RC and let them know what’s going on at all times. Got to change an interview time last minute? Make the call. Tell them as soon as you know. Putting off making the call doesn’t make it any easier.  Don’t pussy foot or filibuster, just be professional, clear, concise and consistent at all times. In short, maintain a standard of communication with your RC that you would wish them to maintain with you, and you’ll have a solid foundation upon which to handle them masterfully.   In summary there are a great many things you can do to get the most out of your recruitment consultants (and these are obviously discussed in greater length in my book), but the tips above provide a good and solid grounding.   Being made redundant is not your fault and is something over which you have no control, but remember: missing opportunities due to mishandling RCs is entirely your fault and is entirely within your control.   Good luck and good RC handling! About Herbie Henderson With a head packed full of insider knowledge (thanks to her experience as a recruitment consultant), Herbie set about creating her book 'How to Handle Your Recruitment Consultant'. It's packed full of excellent insider tips and sensible advice and we think it's well worth the cover price of £9.99 - we wouldn't have brought it to your attention otherwise! The book is published by Short Stack Publishing ISBN 978-1-906467-05-05 and is available from all online bookstores including our own amazon selections 'Great books on career management'.    Copyright © Herbie Henderson 2009