Why You Need A Healthcare IT Recruiter

Recruiters. These are the people who are sending you email, leaving multiple voicemails, all without seemingly much benefit. The calls that do get your attention seem like they lead nowhere, with nary a word from your recruiter for weeks on end. So the question that begs to be asked is, why work with a recruiter?

Plenty of reasons come to mind, but I’ll limit this post to just a few. First, the recruiter is a short cut to the hiring manager, skipping past a client’s internal processes to land your resume directly into the hands of the hiring managers. The work leading up to a recruiter’s call can represent months of sales work – the ultimate goal is to getting to an arrangement where the resume can go directly to a hiring manager. So, instead of putting your resume through an online system and waiting for it to work its way through HR, a recruiter can often get your resume right in front of the eyes of a decision maker who knows their stuff.

Another reason is that you will get a lot more inside information from a recruiter in preparing for your interview. Recruiters love nothing more than repeat business with a  client, so it’s in their best interests to make sure that you are fully prepared for your first interview. A recruiter can give you tips and insight when someone setting up the interview from within the organization may not take the time to do. Often times these tips that a recruiter gives are lessons learned from other candidates they have had successfully (or unsuccessfully) interview with that same client. Depending on the recruiter’s relationship with the client, you could be getting years of hard-won advice on how to nail that Healthcare IT job interview.

Finally, if you are one of the fortunate folks who have their phones ringing off the hook with calls from recruiters, you can let the market work for you a little bit. Any recruiter worth their salt should be able to give you loads of reasons why you should choose to work with them. Ask them exactly that – “Why should I work with you?”  A good Healthcare IT recruiter should act more like your personal agent than anything else, with your best interests in mind!

About the author

Jacob Rhoades

4 Comments

  • Jacob:

    You bring up many great points in your post. Your first point is really on target with regard to candidates posting their resume online. Bad move. You become a true commodity within seconds of pressing the ENTER button on your computer. I also agree that working with a recruiter gives you an inside scoop on the company and the job you are seeking that a candidate just can’t get by using other means. And yes, a recruiter should be a trusted advisor to help candidates in their search to find greener grass. The market is changing and improving in HCIT. This might be a good time to find a recruiter and begin building a relationship for what lies ahead. Great post!

  • Hi Jacob:

    I have to wonder if there are any actual recruiters left. Certainly there do not seem to be as many retained recruiters, as the old common wisdom was not to work with any recruiter who did not have a specific job to present to you.

    I do have some friends in the HR consulting business who are genuinely happy to “put someone to work,” and you can see them get excited when they close the deal. And they are not retained! They just love what they do (and who better to be in a job they love than an HR expert?) But the only interviews they can make happen are through their network of friends, which if you’re a job hunter is often similar to your network for friends!

    But my impression is most HR people inside companies are to some extent running defense against the deluge of resumes they receive for any posted position (one recruiter says their large company, 150,000 people, just tosses any resumes after the 50th). Then there are companies that will have you in and prepare you beautifully for any interviews you may find, for a considerable amount, but again can only informally get you to someone and by-pass the HR system, which is doing its job I believe.

    But it seems to me that the recruiters are using the same on-line tools we do. Take a look at how many recruiters are using Linked-In (one of my recruiter friends, who is very credible to me, says about 70% of people are getting their jobs that way in her specialty). Linked-In, of course, is free, a real advantage to companies in bad times. Also, I see Monster buying Yahoo Hot Jobs for a few hundred million dollars as more consolidation in the automated resume mill-job placement industry, and the valuation of Hot Jobs as indicative that this Internet-recruiter thing is going to be around for awhile, and not for the better.

    Do you honestly believe there are good recruiters, and if you do, how on earth do you find them? Thanks so much for your article.

  • I feel for the HR folks – they do have an avalanche of unsolicited resumes as well as a deluge of phone calls from recruiters wanting to help them out. However, by the time one of these recruiters sees a job ad out there posted, its often too late for them. What you want is a recruiter with a good relationship with the client – they often have a line on a job opening before the position ever gets posted. These days, we see recruiters retained with specific instructions to avoid presenting candidates who already have their resume up on the job boards. After all, its easier than ever to find a resume on line, so why should the client pay for what they could easily do themselves? Customers want recruiters who will put the time into finding passive candidates (one reason why LinkedIn is such a popular option).

    Another reason a firm would choose to work with a recruiter is that while the firm may have access to resumes up on a job board, they don’t have access to a recruiter’s own personal resume database and connections. These are people that the recruiter may have worked with a year or two ago, so while they no longer have a resume up online, they still maintain communication with their recruiter.

    My advice? Ask the recruiter how long they have been in the business. Don’t agree to be presented to a client until they share who that client is – a lot of recruiters resist, fearing a candidate will just go around them, but in my experience if a recruiter can’t trust you with that information, can you trust them to put your best interests first?

  • As a Healthcare IT Recruiter that used to work for a large company doing internal recruiting, but now works for a small HCIT Staffing firm… I can attest to the fact that there ARE Recruiters in the industry that keep a high level of integrity and truly want to see our candidates happy in their ideal job and our clients happy with the right candidate to fill their need.

    Be selective when choosing Recruiters and Recruiting/Staffing Firms to work with. Listen to them on the phone… do they seem to REALLY be interested in what you’re looking for and not just your qualifications and salary requirements? Do they offer you a variety of options or try to drive you to one position? (if they’re trying to sway you on one opportunity question their motives) Are they willing to tell you “this position wouldn’t be something you’d be happy with long term” as opposed to just trying to line up as many resumes for their client as possible? Who spent the most time talking during the interview? You or the Recruiter? (if it was the Recruiter, you may want to move on) Did you seem to sincerely LIKE the person and feel like they were being honest? (go with your gut) Did the Recruiter explain in detail what you could expect during their interview process? After the interview, did the Recruiter follow up with you?

    Lets face it, there are quite a few job opportunities in the industry and the options are growing every day. Limit yourself to 1 or 2 Industry Recruiters or Staffing Firms that you trust and allow them to do the job hunting for you.

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