Contracting a Recruiter or Staffing Agency

by Leslie Jaye Goff

April 28, 2002 —

An IT job seeker preparing to relocate from Asia to North America wrote
the IT Career Advisor asking about the best way to find an IT position
in his new home. Specifically, he wanted to know what he should expect
to pay in recruiter fees, and if working with a recruiter was the
quickest route to finding a new job.

It's not as easy to relocate as it was in past years. With the IT job
market tight all over, conducting a job search in a new town at the
same time that you are acclimating to your new surroundings may take a
long time and be extremely frustrating. On the other hand, you will be
a fresh face in the local market, and that could work to your
advantage, especially when relocating to a small to midsized market.

Don't wait until you've moved into your new home and unpacked all your
boxes to start looking for a job. It's best to start a job hunt in a
new town before you actually make the move. The longer you give
yourself for your search, the better your prospects of lining up a new
position before your savings run out. Moreover, if you are fortunate
enough to land a new job before your move, your new employer may
reimburse some of your relocation expenses. (Just keep in mind that
your relocation benefits will likely not be as generous as they would
have been at the height of the IT staff shortage two or three years
ago.)

Working with a reliable, reputable recruiter will definitely facilitate
a job search when you are moving to a new market. A good recruiter will
be able to share the secrets of the local terrain, fill you in on the
best employers in the area, and help you find hidden pockets of
opportunity that only seasoned locals would know about. Try to get some
recommendations of recruiters to talk to by contacting the local
chapters of your favorite user group or professional association, or
contact the local chamber of commerce.

But don't limit yourself to working with recruiters only. Search for
jobs online, monitor the classifieds, network with anyone you know
(including friends of friends of friends) in the area you're moving to,
attend job fairs beforehand, and directly contact your employers of
choice.

As for recruiters' fees, you should not expect to pay them yourself.
While that was a common business practice in the past, it's a rather
antiquated business model, notes Dave Opton, founder and president of
ExecuNet (www.execunet.com), a career management firm in Norwalk,
Conn., for senior managers and executives. In today's market, employers
almost always pay the recruiter, on either a retainer or a contingency
basis. "Even at the executive level, our candidates aren't responsible
for paying any part of the placement fee," adds Tom Morgan, vice
president of Pencom Systems Inc. (www.pencom.com), an IT recruitment
and placement firm in New York.

In fact, beware any recruiter or staffing agency that asks you to pay
for services. It's important to distinguish between a career coach and
counselor who can help you make the transition to a new level in your
career development on the one hand and companies that call
themselves "career marketing" or "executive marketing" firms on the
other.

With regard to the latter, "job seekers need to be very, very careful
because those companies are slick marketers and they'll give you the
impression that they can solve all your job search problems," Opton
says. "Be enormously cautious, because it's an unregulated industry and
it's easy to be taken advantage of. Any time anyone in that field asks
you for money up front, get in your car and drive away -- it's not a
good investment of your time and dollars because at the end of the day,
no one is going to get you a job but you."

Over the next few weeks, this column will cover in more detail how to
plan a simultaneous relocation and job search, how negotiate relocation
expenses, and how to optimize the recruiter-job seeker relationship.

ITworld