When a Recruiter Can Help You, and When One Can’t

A candidate reached out to me this week with a story I loved. She had dropped her resume into Claude, the AI assistant, and asked which recruiting firms would be a good fit given her skill set and her region. Schechter Reed came up. So she got in touch.

That message went straight to the top of my list, and it’s worth explaining why, because the reason gets at something a lot of frustrated job seekers deserve to hear plainly.

This market has split in two. I’m watching one group of candidates who were forced into a job search, many of them here in DC after tens of thousands of contract-tied jobs were cut, and they are having a hard time out there. And I’m watching another group being fought over, recruited by old colleagues, even rescinding offers they’d accepted because something better arrived. If you’re in that first group, watching the second group get courted while your applications disappear into silence, of course you’re frustrated. Add a feed full of contradicting advice from people like me, and it’s no wonder nobody knows what to believe.

So let me be honest about my corner of it. I can’t help most of the people who contact me. That’s a hard sentence to write, because I love helping people, and my intent is always to help candidates, even the ones I can’t place. I just know that intent doesn’t always come through when the answer is no.

Here is the fuller answer. What a recruiter like me can actually do for you, and when I’m simply the wrong call.

A Recruiter Is Hired by Companies, Which Makes It Harder, Not Easier, to Advocate for a Candidate Who Doesn’t Fit

There’s a persistent misconception that a recruiter’s job is to find people jobs. It isn’t, and I always tread lightly here, but it needs saying. We get hired by companies. And because a company is paying a placement fee, we carry a burden a job board never does. We have to justify that fee, which means our candidates have to be that much better. It actually makes it harder, not easier, to advocate for a candidate whose resume doesn’t align with what the client asked for, even when I like that candidate personally.

A candidate without the exact background or education a role calls for is usually better off applying directly, where there’s no price tag attached to their resume. I know that’s not the answer people want from me. It’s still the truthful one, and it will save you weeks of waiting on a maybe that was never coming.

Now the other half, because it counts just as much. When I am working with a candidate, my hope is that they never feel like they aren’t the client. They should be prepped, debriefed, wooed, and treated to a top-notch experience, because they’re a core part of the process. I check in with the people I place long after the start date. I do a lot of coaching on self-advocacy, especially with my female candidates, who in my experience have the hardest time negotiating for themselves even after they’re in the seat. Companies pay the bills. Candidates get the care. I hold both, and any recruiter worth your time does too.

Part of that care is preparation, and it’s a good example of what a recruiter adds when the fit exists. Before any interview, I tell my candidates to be ready for three questions, whether or not anyone asks them. What is your understanding of this company? You should know when it was founded, whether it’s public, who its executives are, and be able to say in your own words what it does. What is your understanding of this job? You should have internalized the description well enough to summarize it back. And why would you be a fit? Not in general. For this role, with your specific abilities. Candidates who walk in holding those three answers interview differently, and it shows at every stage of the process.

Reach Out to a Recruiter When Something Specific About You Points to Something Specific About That Firm

The outreach that works has one thing in common. Something specific about you points toward something specific about the firm.

The woman who found us through an AI search is a perfect example, and honestly, that’s AI being used for good. She didn’t blast a hundred recruiters. She asked which firms actually fit her background and her market, and she contacted the ones that came back. A mutual connection who can speak to your work does the same job. So does being in the same market. If you’re in Texas messaging a recruiter in Connecticut who hires locally, with no shared connections, the silence you get back isn’t rudeness. It’s alignment that was never there.

And then the simplest question of all. Are you qualified for the kind of roles the firm actually places? We do executive assistants, HR leaders, and the operations roles around them. That focus is the whole reason clients trust us. If your search lives somewhere else, I might enjoy the conversation, but I’m not the person who can move it forward, and pretending otherwise would waste your time more than mine.

When the Fit Isn’t There, Skip the Recruiter and Put That Energy Into Direct Applications and Real Rooms

If your background doesn’t line up with the roles a firm works on, persistence won’t manufacture the fit. Every week spent chasing a recruiter is a week not spent applying where the alignment actually exists.

I’ll also say that some of the anger out there comes from a real place, and it deserves naming. I posted recently about having 550 applications on a single opening, and one of the sharper replies asked why the posting was still up at all. Fair question. There are companies that leave postings live long after a role is filled, and third-party boards that scrape and republish listings that were never theirs. New York has even proposed a law that would fine companies for exactly this, and the word its drafters used was predatory. When you’ve applied to a hundred openings and heard nothing, the silence is not in your head, and it is not all about you. So take what follows as triage from someone who knows how much of this system wastes your time.

A word about venting, offered gently. LinkedIn gets a lot of eyeballs. A prospective employer who sees you publicly blasting a recruiter has a quiet worry they will never say out loud. What happens when we don’t give this person the bonus or the promotion they expected? Find somewhere to process a bad experience, truly. Just keep the long view about where.

And please, don’t become a keyboard warrior. Get out of the house. Volunteer at an animal shelter or a nonprofit you care about. So much career misalignment gets solved by simply looking somebody in the eye and letting them see you in action. On a screen, everybody looks roughly the same. In person, it’s obvious who you’d want at your Christmas party.

I saw a piece of business development advice recently that said at an in-person lunch, you should never bring up doing business. Just be curious about the other person until they ask about you. Job searching works the same way, because job searching is selling, whether we like it or not, and people put their defenses up the moment they feel sold to. Be a good human. Ask good questions. Show up on time. Then trust what follows.

The right recruiter will find plenty to work with after that. And if one can’t, don’t be offended. It was never about you.