Podcast transcription of Recruiters Get Real! Ep. 02
ft. Gina Cardelli and Matthew Bardeleben
Recruiters Get Real! can be found on Apple, Spotify, Stitcher, and all major podcast platforms.
Recruiters Get Real! The only place where, real IT recruiters answer, real career questions asked, by real tech professionals.
Matt:
So, I’m here today with our (Peterson Technology Partner) Finance Manager, Gina.
Gina:
Hi, my name’s Gina Cardelli.
Matt:
And, Gina, our question today comes from u/Leelubell on Reddit who seems to be a regular on the Reddit forum, “Recruiting Hell”. So, u/Leelubell’s question is;
“Does anyone else get skeeved out when you can’t tell what a company job posting is for. Like, when it’s posted by a recruitment company and it doesn’t reveal the industry or anything. Does anyone know why they would want to hide this information, because, all I’m coming up with is that they have something to hide.”
So, what would you say to u/Leelubell? What do you think are some of the reasons that companies may not state what client or what position they’re posting for?
Gina:
Definitely, there are a couple of reasons.
When I was applying I had my own recruiting agency that was helping me find jobs and it drove me nuts when I couldn’t figure out, or when they wouldn’t tell me, where I’d be working. They’d give me all the other information except where it was, which I thought was important.
But then, after spending some time working in a recruiting agency, I realized that there are a couple of different reasons they don’t share that.
One, it could be expressly forbidden based on the client. Some clients are really private and don’t want their relationships with vendors or suppliers or recruiting agencies public knowledge. So it could be at the request or restriction of the client.
Sometimes there are multiple clients that have the same job posting so, as a recruiting agency, we have different clients who have a job opening for the same job. So, if we have one thing in mind and something changes, but we’ve already given you the name of a client, we’d either be going back on our word or giving you false information. So it makes it easier, when multiple clients have the same job posting, to move you around without having to go back on our word.
Some other reasons are… the applicant could be biased. Where let’s say, they love this one company and they’re going to find every job posting for that one company, well they may not be a good fit. And if they’re applying and they really want the job because it’s at a certain company they would either lie about their credentials or lie on their resume and then we’d have to waste all that time to realize they were the wrong fit. So, also, with the applicant bias, maybe they won’t want this job if they know it’s a certain client.
So applicant bias, it could be at the restriction or request of the client, it could be because we want to move people around, and also it’s competition.
We want to keep the relationships that we have private. So if we tap into a market or a different area that we’ve never had before and other recruiting agencies pick up on that they may want to do the same thing. So it’s also for privacy to protect our competitive edge.
There could be a bunch of reasons.
Matt:
So, realistically, there are multiple reasons. There’s a handful of reasons. Some of them outside of our control, right? You mentioned client confidentiality.
Gina:They could ask us not to share that information and sometimes they do. Sometimes, for us, internally for competition. Sometimes it could be affected by the applicant not wanting a job, or wanting it even more, because of the client.
Matt: It makes me think of, like, if you went to our website right now… or really any recruiting firms website… nowhere on that website are you going to find a list of their clients.
Gina:
That would be their choice and it would have to be with the permission of all their clients to post that. So, if they do have it up, they went through some type of prerequisites to do that and they