3rd Party Recruiters

[Anonymous]

Recently received an email from a recruiter directly to my email. She says I referred. I am looking for jobs but I would prefer to limit the number of third party recruiters I work with. I ask who referred me and she replies that it is confidential.

I feel like she is blowing smoke. Thoughts?

[Anonymous]

I agree, she's likely blowing smoke. Why would it be confidential who referred you to her? That makes no sense. A more likely scenario is she just pulled your email off of linkedin or someplace else and is trying to drum up business for herself.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Recently received an email from a recruiter directly to my email. She says I referred. I am looking for jobs but I would prefer to limit the number of third party recruiters I work with. I ask who referred me and she replies that it is confidential.

I feel like she is blowing smoke. Thoughts?

As a 3rd party recruiter, I have a couple thoughts:

1) Reasonable chance she's blowing smoke on the referral thing, or it could be somewhere in between. If you're well-known and respected in your industry, someone may have tossed your name out there without explicitly saying "Tell Debra that I recommended her for this role..."

2) From a job hunting perspective, you may be doing yourself a disservice by limiting the number of recruiters you work with. The reason I say this is a recruiter is only as good as his/her clients and their relationships. For example, I recruit for a couple of top-5 banks, and we have some great relationships and strongholds within some highly sought after groups (Regulatory Compliance, certain PMO's, etc.). However, there are still other great hiring groups that use other agencies or recruiters (often based on lasting business relationships). It's not that I want to tout my competition, but I don't want my candidates turning down potential great opportunities just because they are loyal to me.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Recently received an email from a recruiter directly to my email. She says I referred. I am looking for jobs but I would prefer to limit the number of third party recruiters I work with. I ask who referred me and she replies that it is confidential.

I feel like she is blowing smoke. Thoughts?

As a 3rd party recruiter, I have a couple thoughts:

1) Reasonable chance she's blowing smoke on the referral thing, or it could be somewhere in between. If you're well-known and respected in your industry, someone may have tossed your name out there without explicitly saying "Tell Debra that I recommended her for this role..."

2) From a job hunting perspective, you may be doing yourself a disservice by limiting the number of recruiters you work with. The reason I say this is a recruiter is only as good as his/her clients and their relationships. For example, I recruit for a couple of top-5 banks, and we have some great relationships and strongholds within some highly sought after groups (Regulatory Compliance, certain PMO's, etc.). However, there are still other great hiring groups that use other agencies or recruiters (often based on lasting business relationships). It's not that I want to tout my competition, but I don't want my candidates turning down potential great opportunities just because they are loyal to me.

Thanks for the advice. I think it just seems more hassle. Many come off as used car salesmen and I can't handle that. I had a really bad experience with the first one I used to get my job now (he got extremely pushy) and it has left a bad taste in my mouth. However, perhaps I should be more open to the idea.