Good recruiters use their connections and social skills to endear themselves to good job candidates regardless of how happy they are with their workplace. They keep in touch, and when you want to make a change, they contact you at the right time or you contact them.
They use the same skills to maintain relationships with firms looking for talent. Good recruiters are capable of finding and assessing talent within specialized industries, so they need to know what makes a good engineer, or architect, or salesman, or executive. Prior experience in these fields is often required for effective recruiting.
Recruiters can be paid by candidates but more often by firms who aren’t attracting the people they need. The exact nature of their compensation varies. In some cases, they have an incentive to depress compensation, in some cases they have an incentive to get it as high as possible. When you talk to a recruiter, be sure to ask about this.
If you are in an in demand field, recruiters can help you find firms that you’ve never heard of and who are willing to pay you well. If you are in a field with a lot of people having the same experience, they can be just a middleman to find grist for the mill.
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