Interviewing Your Recruiter
April 12, 2011 by Damian
I have been doing legal recruitment for about 8 years in total and have interviewed literally hundreds and hundreds of candidates. By coming to see me, all of them, to one degree or another, were putting their future career in my hands which is quite a leap of faith on their behalf. They were trusting me to act professionally, to represent them in the best possible light, to respect their anonymity when necessary and to ensure that they get the best job going in the market. If I failed in any of these respects, this could have had significant ramifications for them in terms of their career.
I take these responsibilities very seriously and am always conscious of the integral role that I play in this (at times) life changing time in someone’s life. I work hard to establish a rapport with a candidate and try to convey an honest, transparent and friendly approach. The reason for this is that the recruitment process can get very involved. When a candidate is going through the process, I will be in contact with them most days in one form or the other and you end up getting to know your candidate very well and vice versa as it progresses. As such, it is absolutely vital that, from a candidate’s perspective, they are 100% comfortable in and confident with my approach.
So after 227 words, where am I going with this? Well, in all of my years of recruitment to date, only two candidates have really taken any time to question me about my background and my approach and asked me why I thought I was the best person to represent them. One of them was a senior finance lawyer on his way to the US who knew he could get a job there himself but did not have the time to pursue it. He sat back in his chair with his hands behind his head and grilled me for the first 20 minutes. Once I convinced him that I knew what I was doing, it became about him and the short story is that we placed him with a top tier US firm, he came back to NZ and is now a partner in a leading NZ firm.
The other time happened this week when a junior lawyer came to see me. I was initially a little surprised by his approach. ‘Can you tell me about your background?’ is usually a question I ask, not the candidate. This was not something that I expected from a recent graduate but ultimately it left me very impressed. This candidate wanted to be sure that I knew what I was doing, that I knew the market, that I could represent him in the way he wanted, that I was going to be transparent and professional and that ultimately, I was going to have his best interests at heart throughout the process.
On reflection, I don’t know why more candidates don’t want me to establish my credentials before I start trying to establish theirs. I have nothing to hide and am happy to answer any questions candidates have about my background (professionally speaking anyway – I really don’t fancy answering questions about my favourite colour or my favourite footballer ever. To save the trouble, the answers are ‘green’ and ‘Roy Keane’).
If you are not happy with my answers or my approach, go to see someone else who you feel more comfortable with but make sure you ask them the same questions. The consultant/candidate relationship is so important that you need to be absolutely convinced that you are dealing with someone who you trust and get on with. If that means me answering some questions at the start of the interview, then I have no problem with that.
So the moral of this piece is before you let your recruiter start interviewing you, feel free to take some time to interview them. Now I’m going to finish this to go do some interview preparation of my own for the candidate coming in to see me at 3pm today just in case she reads this before she comes in and has some questions for me…
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