Approach Recruitment Consultancies

However, recruitment consultancies or agencies can be very useful to you if you know how to manage them.

Some tips for getting the best out of your recruitment agency:

• Ask them about their corporate clients. Get them to tell you about the kinds of companies for whom they recruit. Are they the sorts of companies that you would like to work for? If not, find another recruitment agency.

• Be honest about what you want. If you want a very specific role or don’t want to work in a particular type of company, tell them. Otherwise a recruitment agency could easily try to put you into any old job – a square peg in a round hole.

• Use interviews with potential employers for practice. Even if you aren’t interested in a particular job, you might want to go along to an interview to polish up your interview skills. (But obviously, don’t tell your recruiter this!)

Avoid being seduced by a job

Once a corporate client has met you and decided they like you, a recruiter can be very flattering and persuasive in order to get you to accept a job offer. But remember that they are on commission! So refer back to your life mission (Chapter 1) to check whether the job offer is what you really want or not.

Finally, beware of any recruiting agency that asks you to pay any fee at all – they are more often than not run by people looking to ‘get rich quick’ by preying on others. These firms are not genuine recruiters and generally have a poor track record for helping people find jobs that are right for them.