Longing for a career you love? Recruiters won’t help.
Three out of four American workers are disengaged in their jobs - they have work that’s not rewarding, interesting or valuable. And it’s not surprising that nearly 40% of workers would like a find a new job - and in many cases, a new career.
But finding a new job, and especially a new career, is hard. Nearly half of people who want to change jobs say they’d like help with their job search process. For many, the only resource they know about other than friends and family is a recruiter. Recruiters can be helpful, but in many cases they simply are not the right person.
To understand when a recruiter is helpful, you first need to understand how recruiters earn their living. Most recruiters are contracted by the company that is hiring, and they are paid when they refer a person who is hired by the company. As you’d expect, the recruiter is motivated to get someone — anyone — hired as quickly and easily as possible. That’s the fastest and easiest way to get paid.
This means that recruiters’ best way to get paid is to refer the easiest candidates — in other words, to refer candidates who are doing as close as possible to the same job as the company is hiring, like referring a VP of Human Resources for a company hiring a VP of Human Resources. That’s fine — as long as your goal is to move into a job that’s the same as what you’re doing now.
But what if you’re looking for more of a change than just the same thing at a different place — say a promotion, or a broader job (such as moving from compensation analyst to HR generalist), or a completely different career? The more different the job, the harder it is for the recruiter to get the candidate hired and to be paid. As a result, recruiters usually aren’t very helpful for people who are looking for something different.
What a candidate who wants a job change needs is different. They need to prepare for the new job — a promotion or career change requires new skills and experiences than what they’ve had in the past. Job changers need help understanding what new skills and experiences they need and planning how to build those skills and experiences. This is the work of a coach.
Recruiters, on the other hand, usually don’t do this — developing candidates is simply too time consuming to be worthwhile for a recruiter (who can earn much more by referring an already qualified candidate), and recruiters are not trained to help candidates with these challenges. It’s simply something that most recruiters don’t know how to do. But it’s the bread and butter of coaches.
If you’re interested in a change in career, a promotion or a job that’s just different, then a career coach is a better choice for you than a recruiter.
CareerWave provides a revolutionary online career coaching service that is effective, available anywhere and much more affordable than a traditional coach. Our coaches help clients find careers they love and develop the skills necessary to get them. To learn more, visit us at careerwave.me.
