Who am I to talk about finding a job? I am a domestic helper. But I decided to go the extra mile and discover the recruiters’ point of view. Let’s say I wanted to make this fair and focus my frustration elsewhere. It’s not that I wanted to gossip about my experience with endless interviews this past year… Not at all! But since you’re wondering so hard (I can feel it), here we go.
My Experience with Interviews
I’m not going to lie, I’ve had 10+ interviews this past year until I gave up. And I don’t mean I don’t want a better job, I just mean I’m not personalizing no cover letters anymore nor filling in my whole CV again in countless forms. It seems like no matter how much I want recruiters to know me better, something always becomes a deal-breaker. At one point I started to calculate my interviews as “manipulation strategies”. It didn’t work that well. We better leave that to the lawyers… Joke, love you guys.
But it is true. About on interview #7, I decided to say I left my previous job because I felt that it was like breastfeeding, which is no longer nutritious after some time. I said I needed real food. Was that creepy? Yes. But at that time, I thought I needed to prove I was a real story teller. So this came with a whole intro story about my father being a doctor and my daughter crying all the time when she was a baby. Which is crazy because my father is a farmer and I have zero kids.
Too much joking, but the truth is I left my previous job because it was no longer financially beneficial now that I am in Europe. I never said I was working as a domestic helper by the way, which I think was the right choice. They only care about what’s relevant to the position, not about how I am possibly becoming a dumb migrant. And that leads me to my next point, what do recruiters care about?
The Recruiters’ Point of View
There are some things that have helped me understand the hiring processes a bit more. Coming from a small company, guess who the recruiter was there? Me. I was the recruiter, a Media Manager and one of the first people that they hired abroad. So that’s why only now I came to understand several things:
- Recruiters need to reach weekly quantitative goals. So if they contact you for an interview, chances are they just needed to fill up their agenda to make themselves busy.
- Recruiters face rejection too. Did you know some people don’t even show up for their interviews? This kind of rockstar behavior forces recruiters to be good hustlers too.
- As any employee, some recruiters care and others most definitely do not care about their job. That’s why you will find very different experiences along the way.
- Landing a job will mostly depend on the recruiter liking your personality. This open secret was told to me by one that liked me. Unfortunately, the client didn’t (it was a recruiting agency).
Once I understood that basically, recruiters are humans too, things got easier to handle. I believe that the actual problem with me is that I haven’t worked in a real corporate environment before. So that rules out any decade-long experience that I’ve had before. Even for entry level jobs.
Recruiters Vs. Job Seekers Melee
So far I have read many recruiters posting online about what they’re looking for. But I have some complaints and I will say them here because it is my blog in the end. So let’s go through these really quick before I regret it:
Make the Job Posting Cohesive
They ask for you to state your relevant skills clearly on your CV. Yet it has happened to me many times that the job posting description has little to do with what the company actually needs. Recruiters: if you’re using ChatGPT to write these things, please curate them before publishing.
Are you reading all the CVs?
If any recruiter reads this, I need answers. There are rumors that you use software to pipeline all the CV’s through special keywords. Honestly, that sounds badass, but again, sometimes it doesn’t matter if you have the expertise, it will still be a “no” and that makes me wonder if you really read them after the first selection.
Discarding “overqualified” applicants
Let’s get one thing straight: if I am applying for that job it’s because I am willing to work for no pay or little pay. I know this may not be my life changer but it could most likely be a nice boost for your company, so why not?
Surprisingly, by the end of this post I am a little bit drunk because it is Friday and life is short. But in my country we say that drunk people never lie. So this was written from the bottom of my heart with a slight recoil on my liver. If you’re a recruiter, feel free to let me know your thoughts, especially if you think I am wrong. Have a great day and tot ziens!