Negatives:
*NO work life balance (730am start and some nights leaving 7pm is the norm)
*Only Sales is valued --- sure you can be a long-term recruiter or other roles, but its a SALES company through and through and they only value people that live and breathe sales. They don't care about actually recruiting.
*Micromanagement - you will be reporting to an Account Manager, so it can depend on who your Manager is, but you meet with your Manager 2-3 times a day and you have very little autonomy. Be ready to hear "Constructive Feedback" all the time.
*Management has no training in regards to actual management, they just promote people with the highest commission, so you're essentially being managed by a Sales Rep who only cares about their commission. They only care about you if you fill their positions
*Have to put up with a lot of factors when dealing with candidates
* Very "Cult" like culture -- everyone here went to either a Big Ten school and was in a fraternity or sorority, so expect for people to only talk about what bars/ what they did over the weekend. Can be fun at times, but it does get old pretty fast.
*High turnover rate -- you will have to cover all of the recruiters that quit candidates/ maintenance work for their clients without getting commission transferred over
*Unrealistic Performance Expectation - There is not enough TIME in the day to hit their activity metrics for recruiters. They expect you to conduct an unrealistic amount of phone screens, in-person interviews, submittals, etc. that is impossible if you actually stay in touch with people you place or talked to previously. They want you to make 60-70 outbound calls a day, but this leaves NO time for any of the people you have spoken to previously calling you back. Aerotek has a reputation for being AWFUL at follow up / returning calls and this is the main reason.
*They make you believe that they have the candidates "best interest" in mind, but don't believe that BS. They only care about filling the current opening. Most times you are recruiting for contract/temporary jobs that quality candidates are not interested in so you have to find someone who is not working, and with a low unemployment rate you are essentially always working with candidates with red flags/ unreliability.
*Dealing with candidates can be stressful, as you can do everything right and spend a lot of time going through the process and then the candidate accepts another offer or gets fired or etc. Nobody what happens, it is always the RECRUITER's fault.
Typical Day:
Meet with your manager to discuss the position you will recruit for. Then, depending on the role, you will spend an hour or so "Sourcing"/ Building a call sheet by finding resumes out of their database and Careerbuilder. (Usually this is done the night before....) You are then expected to pound the phones all day until you find someone. (60-70 calls is the expectation).