The Art of Candidate Submissions

There will always be a need for recruiters. Recruiters know how to identify and find talent for roles that require exceptional talent. A great recruiter has interviewed, assessed and researched thousands of people in that niche, and knows who the highly talented people are. They also know how to properly present candidate submissions to not only their client/hiring manager, but a trading partner.

In a recruiting network, one of the common complaints is receiving candidate resumes from another recruiter without any value-added. Recruiters receive hundreds of emails, and if you just blast them with a resume and no details/write-up/personal comment, they may think you may have just grabbed a resume off Monster or Indeed and don’t “deserve” to collect half a fee… so they won’t bother looking at the candidate or working with you. 

When you send a candidate submission to a trading partner with a job (the importer), you should include a write-up where you ‘sell’ your candidate to the partner, the same way you would pitch a candidate to your client. An importer is looking for your ‘take’ on this person, including:

• How do they fit the role and the skills your client needs? (If in response to a specific job order)
• Why are they looking to make a change?
• Have they looked internally? Is there potential for a counter offer?
• If they are interested in relocating why are they choosing certain locations? Is their family on the same page?
• Are their salary expectations realistic for their experience? If not, maybe you need to educate them.
• How long have they been looking and who are some of the employers they have already sent resumes to?
• Any details about their presentation – can they communicate well? Any “extras” they bring to the table?

Sure, some recruiters can just do searches via the internet, flip resumes, and fill lots of roles, and there’s nothing wrong with that as long as you and your trading partner are on the same page about it. There are recruiters with jobs out there who don’t mind this – they say “as long as the candidate has XYZ in the resume, I’ll do all the work pre-qualifying them.” If the recruiter with the job expects you to headhunt and find passive candidates, and that’s not how you work, the trading relationship won’t work. Trading relationships and expectations are relative, because what one person hates may be exactly what someone else needs and expects. Therefore, you need to set expectations up front. Start with a conversation – be specific, set rules of engagement, and honor the commitments that are made. If it doesn’t work out, that’s ok. Move on and find someone who works they way you work.