Looking for a new job in a new country can be a bit stressful.
Being the case, this makes for a challenging starting point to establishing a good working relationship with recruiters who can get you a job overseas.
The key is to find the right recruiter with the right contacts. What is the secret to working with recruiters?
What should you look for in a recruiter?
To find out, we ran a survey to learn and share people’s experience and advice for working with recruiters. The survey was completed by nearly 250 people.
Overall, 2 out of 3 people responded that they had received an OK to a great experience when asked about “your latest experience working with recruiters”.
The number of people responding that they had a positive experience (47%) was more than 3 times higher than those that reported a negative experience (13%).
The key findings
When asked about the importance of certain personality traits, communication & service attributes, when working with recruiters. We found that “open & honest” ranked the highest followed by “keeps you informed” and “interested in your needs”.
Proactively presenting opportunities and responding promptly to queries were also considered very important attributes.
Full details of each attribute that people were asked to rate when working with recruiters:
What is the recommended number of recruiters to work with?
Another question we asked, was “how many recruiters did people recommend you use in your job search?”
Despite more than half of respondents reporting that they used more than 3 recruiters in their last job search, nearly half of people recommended using just 2 to 3 and nearly two-thirds recommend not using more than 3 recruiters.
New to the experience of working with recruiters? Here is some advice:
Working with recruiters is an important part of any international job search. Find the right recruiters and utilise their knowledge and networks.
The recurring pieces of advice for working with recruiters that came through in our survey are best captured in the following quotes:
Be 100% honest in what you are looking for”
Listen to their input, talk about it with friends”
Go with recommendations”
As a general observation of respondents’ comments, our findings suggest that people felt that most recruiters are genuinely interested in finding you the best possible job for you.
Ensure that you are clear with what you want, ask questions and do your research to give yourself the best chance to land your next dream job. And that is the best outcome for everyone!