Perhaps an ambition of many young people is to become a MSc in a particular field — an ambition that usually takes from 4 to 7 years. It is to be rewarded with a reasonable starting position, for a reasonable financial compensation that should open your world to success. Or at least that’s what students have been told in the universities.

Being a Master myself I should admit I have never met the clerical challenge called “recruiters” or even more euphemistically named recently ”talent acquisition specialists” before graduating. A challenge because it is the first gate to be opened to the company one is applying in. A gate, because usually gates have nothing to do with what is inside them and are just a burden to many that are aiming to enter through it. Or said differently, recruiters often do not involve in the real business of the company and are there to filter the good from the bad matches for open positions.

So far it all seems well put together in a working scenario until one gets a bit more familiarized with the recruiters’ nature. These professionals often have barely Bachelor’s degree from organizations widely accepted as Universities (which is another topic of discussion) and limited to none working experience before they are thrown to the business world. Often they are still learning how the software programs (designed to help recruiters in their daily life) work when they are already taking go/no go decisions on applicants’ CVs and Cover letters. These people have never studied or worked or anyhow practiced the area of expertise needed for the job position one is applying to, but still they are the ones to judge who is skillful enough and who’s not.

Perhaps it already seems that I am not totally clear what the recruiter position stands for (I guess this will be an immediate reaction of any recruiter reading the lines above). Perhaps they are wrong as I have personal experience being such for some period of my life. Actually being such helps me (and this is not necessarily positive) see how a decision about my application to a specific company is being considered. Every time I get a recruiter’s email containing the familiar to many Masters word “unfortunately” I remember myself sending such automated emails as well. And this is maybe what hurts more — it is not the fact that you are being rejected, it is more the idea that you are rejected by some intern/trainee/Bsc with nothing but clerical skills, who has limited expertise in the position you are applying for.

Furthermore, recruiters often try to compensate their lack of basic knowledge and understanding of the job openings with more simple things they can associate themselves with, being attitude and character. A new trend among many companies (and by private recruiters) is to look for people who can well fit in the company’s culture disregarding the specific knowledge they can bring in. If you put yourself for a second in the shiny recruiters’ shoes you will most probably think the same- “I have no idea whether this guy is good or not but let’s see if he can smile a lot, let’s see if he is easy-going!” Well, if you need another person smiling and joking in the premises of the company, better hire another recruiter instead of looking for a strategy consultant with a friendly character.

With the risk of going away from the initial topic and with the chance of having lost some of the audience already, I will put some more attention on the recruitment role as a position, its history and how it evolved in time. Basically recruiters are external to the organization people (often even put in separate cubical from the other employees, often on another floor situated in the corner not to disturb the value-creators there), whose only task is to filter the huge amount of applications received daily for new job openings. The demand for such people has been created thanks to the many excellent universities, who already decades ago started creating the product called “Masters”- youngsters who know a bit of everything but overall nothing at all, praising themselves with a single document (diploma) which states they are to run the tomorrow’s world. As the programs rose in numbers, so did the amount of Masters spit out of the University doors and fiercely attacking any starting position out there available. Due to the mass product created — Masters, difficult to differentiate from one another, companies were forced to act and employ administrative clerks being able to rapidly filter among the applicants. As for open position there could be a queue of 20 graduates, there had to be some mechanism to block this people and to perhaps let one or two go onto the next stage. It is clearly a job no manager would like to do and thus is outsourced to those externals called recruiters. For such job you do not need any skills — you just act as it was said, you do not think because thinking is done on a higher level, and you ought not to lose time as other CVs are waiting to be rejected. Managers on the other side do not have high expectations from the person they will get to interview on the second round (after a candidate goes through the recruiters’ gate on the first). The consciousness of a manager is centered on the idea that “I need someone now, someone who can learn fast and act as taught; someone who will listen and obey”. Ever heard a manager say “There are not irreplaceable people”? Well, it is their motto, it is intrinsically part of their mentality.

All wrapped up it looks like a manager sending his assistant to the local fast-food restaurant for a quick sandwich — it has to be warm, cheap, preferably not spicy, but most of all easy to digest so another one can take its place soon. Recruiters are just assistants in service of their managers in doing what the latter do not want to mess up with. They are assessed by quantity of tasks done, not quality.

Recently there has been a new definition of recruiters that rose up and came into being in start-ups, looking for employees helping them grow the business. Such are the start-up founders themselves- people who always dreamed of being the ones who recruit others and being the ones who get to have the managerial decisions, no matter if such were to be for a small unknown company. Such people are specifically delighted in interviewing others and feel that it is their time to take a revenge on all the unsuccessful solicitations they had before. Unfortunately, these people are even more severe in their judgment, compared to corporate recruiters, as they do not stick to company rules, but rather to rules they created (as the start-up is theirs). Such companies expect you to do a lot of everything, fast and without questions. Humiliating enough, this unfortunately will still not be convincing for such recruiters — they would also like you to share the start-up culture, to be exactly what they are, to perfectly fit in the team and to forget your personal self for the company “us”.

No matter whether we look at corporate or start-up recruitment, the resentment is high in either case. I guess I will feel a bit more furious from receiving a no-go from start-up recruiter, who based its assessment on cultural differences rather than from corporate recruiter who was still learning the buttons in front of him while accidentally sending an automatic rejection email. The problem is that resentment today creates a desire for any type of revenge tomorrow. But resentment itself is a vice — in fact, if you are to have your destiny decided by a recruiter, then you are probably rubbish. The real professionals, those Masters, they do not write to recruiters, recruiters write them.