# Working in Recruitment - what's it like?



## z106 (27 May 2008)

Does anyone here work in recruitment?

What is it like?

What percentage of your salary is commission?

Is it enjoyable ?

Is it hard work?

ANything of interest i should know about?


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## katiecurls (27 May 2008)

*Re: Working in Recritment - what's it like?*

Hi Qwerty, its very hard work, commission is based on the percentage of salary of a person you place in a job, basic salary can be low if only starting off, but if you are willing to work hard - you can earn great commission, its a bit of a burn out job though!  the highs and lows take their toll!!  the market is saturated and therefore there is loads of competition even within the same company - its like running your own business - then again the market in Ireland is not great at the moment which can make it harder to make placements!
Hope this helps!


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## Flax (28 May 2008)

*Re: Working in Recritment - what's it like?*

You could work for a recruitment website, e.g. jobs.ie, irishjobs.ie, staff.ie, monster.ie, etc.

They work slightly differently to typical recuitment agencies.

They do require cold calling, but there's a lot less pressure as companies are paying €xxx - €xxxxx for a bunch of job adverts on the site, rather than €xxxxx for a single employee. This means you'd typically make a number of sales per month rather than one or two.

From people I know who work within that industry, a beginner would start on around 20k basic + roughly 15 - 20% commission. This would bring your salary above 40k.


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## annR (29 May 2008)

From what I remember of recruitment work, it's very much a sales, target driven environment and pretty unregulated as well.  There are a lot of operators out there who do nothing but match CVs to jobs and there are some with real industry expertise.



> 20k basic + roughly 15 - 20% commission. This would bring your salary above 40k.


 
do you not mean 24k for 20% commission on 20k.


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## Satanta (29 May 2008)

annR said:


> do you not mean 24k for 20% commission on 20k.


The ~20% commission is based on the salaries of staff placed and not the base salary.

At 20% commission and an estimated value of €20k, that would suggest a total value of placements ~€100k. That would suggest to me that each recruiter would be placing ~4 staff each year @ €25,000 (or 3 at €33,333)? 

Is that a realistic figure? I have no knowledge of the recruitment business, but would have guessed they'd have a higher hit rate than 1 person every 3 months.


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## lightup (29 May 2008)

AFAIK the commission is based on a percentage of the commission that the agency makes on the placement e.g. 
Salary of role placed= €25,000
Agency makes 15%=€3,750 
Recruiter makes 20% of that= €750

So to make €20,000 commission in a year you would need to make 2/3 placements a month.

In low salary jobs (i.e. around €25k as above) this sort of volume would be required.

This was how it worked in the UK a few years ago, I would imagine it is a similar system here.


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## Satanta (29 May 2008)

lightup said:


> So to make €20,000 commission in a year you would need to make 2/3 placements a month.


Cheers lightup, that clears it up a bit. As I was posting I realised something was wrong as the commission was eating up all the incoming funds so nothing to cover overheads etc..


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## Guest116 (29 May 2008)

I know 2 people (very close friends) who do\have worked in recruitement. It is very competitive, long hours, no flexibility and everything is about the money. Its a bit like the idea of the stock exchange where everyone is climbing all over each other to make more money than anyone else. As the bulk of your income is determined by commission you will feel constantly under pressure to meet ever increasing targets.

You won't learn new skills over time, there isn't much of a career path and its a very repetitive job, always making and taking the same phone calls etc etc. 

I would be careful about going into it. In fact its a bit like a pyramid scheme where part of your commission goes to your direct manager and it all feeds up to the top where the owners mint it.


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## MandaC (29 May 2008)

Have also spoken to a couple of recruitment consultants and with the present economy, I would think that similar to the Estate Agents who just opened the front doors and got sales, the weaker ones will now leave the business.


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## ccraig (29 May 2008)

I spoke to someone recently who works with sigmar recruitment and loves it there. Ive met some of the lads running it too and they're top guys. I have no association with them by the way.


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## ninsaga (29 May 2008)

aristotle25 said:


> I know 2 people (very close friends) who do\have worked in recruitement. It is very competitive, long hours, no flexibility and everything is about the money. Its a bit like the idea of the stock exchange where everyone is climbing all over each other to make more money than anyone else. As the bulk of your income is determined by commission you will feel constantly under pressure to meet ever increasing targets.
> 
> You won't learn new skills over time, there isn't much of a career path and its a very repetitive job, always making and taking the same phone calls etc etc.
> 
> I would be careful about going into it. In fact its a bit like a pyramid scheme where part of your commission goes to your direct manager and it all feeds up to the top where the owners mint it.



... to that point, I got a call from a recruiter a few days ago - this is a large enough firm, but what took me back was the high level of background noise, phones ringing, chatter, it was like getting a call from a call centre.....


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## ice (13 Jun 2008)

I think you would need to think of it in terms of your longer term plans...many people use a year or two's recruitment agency experience to move to an In-House recruitment role. Is your background sales ? Is sales something you'd like to do long term or would you like a HR role?

As everyone has said its pretty sales focused. You need to enjoy meeting targets, be motivated by being a top biller and not be put off by the highs and lows of working on commission. 
If you are suited to the profession, can generate fee income and work as a consultant for 2-3 years you can progress your career within the industry, particulary with some of the larger agencies who have offices worldwide. 
I think to succed you need to have a bit of a hard neck and be a bit pushy. It can be a fun, exciting environment when you first start but like someone said burn out can happen quickly.
You tend to find people either work in recruitment for years (moving to manage a team, run and office etc) or they do 1- 2 years and then move to something else
Hope that helps


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## creme egg (16 Jun 2008)

I worked in a recruitment agency (as support)  

if you are driven to make money and don't mind having a monthly "target" hanging over your head then it can be a rewarding job, both financially and personally.   I have seen a lot of the recruiters in here get thank-you cards, chocolates / flowers etc from placing people in roles.

It can be tough, and there can be a lot of micro management, and if you are not doing well you can get the boot fairly fast.

Your day can be very structured  as in  9 to 9.30 you are doing x
9.30 to 9.45 y   

If you think you are good at sales and cold calling then you could give it a go.  Also, some of the agencies have long working hours,  so you could have a 9 hour day.

The commission...  usually you have your base salary of say 20K  then your target might be 10K a month.  when you make this target you get your basic salary and commission.  
Sometimes the commission can be tiered as in if you make your target of 10K and then another 20k on top you might get a higher percentage.

best of luck with it


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## Staples (16 Jun 2008)

It sounds like the whole recruitment business is voulme driven at the possible/probable expense of quality and that employers have a good chance of being sold a pig a poke.

For those employers among you, are you happy to recruit in such circumstances?


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## creme egg (16 Jun 2008)

Staples,

A lot of the time companies use the same agencies for recruitment.  I doubt they would keep going back and using the same agencies if they were not happy with the candidates.  
Anyway, speaking about the agency I worked for if the candidate left within X time the agency would have to replace the candiate for free, or reduced fee (depending on the length of service) so from my previous employers point of view there was little to be gained just sticking anyone into a role, it effectively doubles or triples their work load for the same return.


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## BobbyFowler (9 Oct 2008)

I checked out this post earlier as I was starting a recruitment position over here in Oz.  It's a bit of a nasty, underhand business - well the place I'm with anyway.  Most of the roles here aren't live at all - bogus positions are put online & the idea is to gather CV's.  The guys reckon that 30% of the positions online don't actually exist. When you talk with the candidates, it's drilled into us to ask them where else they're interviewing. It's asked in passing & the idea is that, if they've had an interview with "Mrs X in Company Z", well that shows there's a position there & the idea is to get on the phone to Mrs X to tell her about all the excellent candidates you have on your books.  It's opened up my eyes as to the whole industry - I used to wonder why agencies never seemed to deliver the jobs I'd applied for in the past.  So word of advice for anyone who's talking to agencies - don't say where you're interviewing if they ask.


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## Nutso (9 Oct 2008)

Interesting, I had an interview with an agency yesterday and was asked those questions!  I have also had the problem of applying online for jobs that don't exist - lots of bogus jobs up on Irish websites too it seems.


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## MandaC (9 Oct 2008)

A very interesting point Bobby Fowler - a friend of mine is out of work since June and despite checking the likes of Irish Jobs, recruit ireland and all the sites, some of the same jobs are sitting there since June and are advertised as having a current date on them.  If they are gone, they should be taken down from the websites, but in reality if all the jobs were taken down that are gone, there would probably not be much left.  It is still very disheartening to be out of work,  and wasting your time applying for jobs that are not there.

Some of the agencies do not now even return your call if you ring to look for work.

I also noticed one particular job advertised directly by the client.  No joke, about 12 different agencies had the same job advertised, so obviously all of these do not have the job to advertise and they are misleading people into thinking they have.

Also, last time I spoke to a person from an agency, they asked me the exact same questions too!  So thanks for the heads up on that.  I hate that sneaky type of behaviour.

I actually think the recruitment consultants here are going same way as Estate Agents, too many candidates and not enough jobs.


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