There are two types of recruiters: (1) those who are employed by the company looking to hire (often by large companies); and (2) those who are employed by a recruiting agency who often has a portfolio of companies that they work with to hire for those companies. I’ll be talking about the 2nd type of recruiters here.

It is very important to know that these kinds of “external” recruiters are paid by the hiring company if you are hired. So it is their best interests that you get the best offer possible so that you accept and are hired.

Step 1: Get in touch with them

You can either get in touch a recruiter agency yourself or you can wait for recruiters to reach out to you. On LinkedIn, there are multiple options to set your profile as “open to work” which can be fully public to everyone or private but viewable by recruiters. Make your contact information accessible. Most of the time, recruiters have reached out to me over email.

In another post, I’ve talked about how it’s really deliberately hard to find my email: (because I’m not looking to job hunt right now and am trying to reduce email spam)

First of all, I’ll admit that there are only 2 ways to find my email, which is on my personal website embedded in the email icon in the footer and in my resume contact info which is only hosted on my personal website. This is intentional. My website is easily accessible (e.g., via Google search, LinkedIn, Google Scholar), but it’s a couple extra steps to locate my email. Therefore, anyone who reaches out to me via email, I hope has likely already looked at my LinkedIn and read through my website to find my email. This makes me more hopeful that our conversation will not be generic and that they are reaching out for a specific reason.

I’ve noticed that the recruiters, who have reached out to me via email, often send me roles that are a much better fit. They are also much better at responding to my emails if I chose to respond back to their initial email.

Based on response rates, I’ve also guessed that the recruiters who reach out to me via LinkedIn are sending out LinkedIn messages out in mass because I often don’t get a response back if I respond to them.

Important note: Tell them your timeline. More than anyone else during this job hunting process, they are people who will adapt to your timeline and help you based on this. You can tell them when you will be graduating, if you are juggling interviews with others and expect to have news within N days/weeks, if you need to make big life decisions by N days/weeks, etc.

Tip: Even if you’re not job hunting, talking to recruiters is good interview practice

I often interview with recruiters if someone reaches out with an interesting role, even if I’m not job hunting. I’m transparent with them and usually send a message like this beforehand: “Thanks for reaching out! While I’m not looking to transition from my current role, I’d be interested in hearing more about XXX. If you’re open to a chat, I’d love to hear more about YYY and ZZZ so that I can keep XXX in mind for when I am ready in the future to move on from my current role.”

Most times, a recruiter says yes to a chat! There a few reasons to chat with recruiters:

  1. It’s great interview & networking practice
  2. It’s a great way to keep tabs on the market: research & business trends, market value (i.e., salary standards) of your current role at other companies, how your skillset fits into roles at other companies, etc. Most importantly, it’s a great way to keep tabs on companies that you might be interested in when you’re actually job hunting again.
  3. If the recruiting agency’s portfolio of companies is broadly a good fit, you can tell the recruiter to keep you on their list of contact and give them permission to reach out again in 6 months, 1 year, or more. For example, some recruiting agencies specialize in specific domain spaces. Even if you’re not looking to transition today, you are likely to change jobs in the future and want to have doors open to you. Save yourself some work by giving others permission to reach out to you in the future.

Step 2: Do the initial recruiter call

Treat this like an interview. At this stage, they are determining if you’re a good fit for the first hiring manager interview. The recruiter call is often about research fit.

Communication

Do not treat this as a verbal version of an ATS system, i.e., there is no need to name drop technical jargon for the sake of sounding impressive. If they can’t understand what you’re describing, then they can’t assess for your fit for a team/company and therefore can’t vouch for you to a hiring manager.

This is ultimately a business call tho, so don’t be overly friendly at the expense of losing precious minutes from your ~30min call.

Be prepared

Most recruiter calls are over a phone call. If you’re offered a video call, I highly recommend preparing slides of your work. Although I don’t recommend name dropping technical jargon, I do recommend “show, don’t tell”. You will be much more memorable. And I’ve noticed that there’s more richnesses to conversations with there are shared things to look at and talk about.

As an example: In my current research, I evaluate GenAI images & vectors. Rather than talk about them at a high level, I’ve found it to be very fruitful to show examples of those images & vectors (stimuli), how I break down the problem of evaluating them (methods), and then communicate that data to leadership and collaborating teams in specific type of deliverables (results).

Be mentally prepared to be asked about salary. You can read more about negotiation strategies in the post Negotiating the job offer, but for the recruiter call, I’d recommend pushing off conversations about salary ranges. You can say that:

  1. You’d need to review the total compensation package and would need time to review your own finances and compare how you are being compensated now (even health insurance is a form of compensation!)
  2. If you are offered multiple assignment locations, ask if there is a base salary difference between locations. Location assignment across different states can have different salary bands due to different cost of living.

If they are able to offer a salary range themselves, that’s great. But I’ve noticed that this range is malleable, so it’s not worth underselling yourself at this stage by agreeing to a range that is stated.

Ask about the interviewing timeline

Make sure to ask about the timeline for setting up the first hiring manager interview. This is also the stage in which you can ask if the recruiter knows (1) how many other interviews are in the hiring team’s process; (2) what are the kinds of interviews (behavioral/technical/traditional coding/AI coding); and (3) how quickly the team is looking to close out interviewing all candidates.

I would recommend not talking about start dates until you talk to the hiring manager or even until you receive the verbal offer. The recruiter likely does not know the exact details.

Step 3: Communicate during the interview cycle

Again, because it is in a recruiter’s best interest that you get the best offer possible so that you accept and are hired—and therefore, they are paid—a recruiter’s job is to ensure that you (1) progress through the interview cycle; and (2) are having not a horrible time interviewing.

Job hunting sucks. And interviewing is very stressful. But there are ways in which it is the recruiter’s job to reduce the amount of friction in this process. You can help them help you by updating them:

  • After each interview — this tells them that you actually did conduct the interview and are still interesting in the progressing to the next (if you are, in fact, still interested). This helps a recruiter keep track of timelines and “chase” the company in setting up a next interview for you. Just a quick email “Hi! I had a great interview with XYZ today. They said the next step is the technical interview, which I’m looking forward to” is sufficient.
  • If there’s been radio silence from a company/team/hiring manager — again, your recruiter can help mitigate scheduling issues if needed
  • If your timeline is shifting — e.g., if you have competing job offers (even verbal offers) or have started negotiating with other companies that make a difference (e.g., if companies are competitors to a each other, one company may expedite your process)

Step 4: Negotiate the job offer

After you receive the verbal offer, it is the recruiter who will be supporting your negotiation process. Unlike an internal HR team or internal talent partner/recruiter whose goal is to hire under the best deals for them, an external recruiter is trying to secure the best offer for you so that you actually accept it.

Again, help them help you by laying out why you have the relevant expertise to have strong business impact for a hiring team. This is when you can start to use more technical jargon — now that you’ve also learned what is relevant to the team during your interviews. The goal is to make it as easy as possible for them to negotiate on your behalf. So you can be transparent on what you value the most and want to negotiate the hardest on, e.g., base salary, equity, growth opportunities, etc.

See this other post on Negotiating the job offer for more details.

AI was not used to write, edit, or brainstorm this post. All mistakes and em dashes are my own.