What Do Recruiters Do When Overall Economy Isn't Great

OzzyBoy1 on 15/11/2024 - 21:55

I am really wondering this for a while now.

So depending on the industry and career, you may deal with recruiters.

There are numerous posts on the internet about how shonky some recruiters sometimes can be. But let’s put that aside for now.

Everyone knows economy isn’t in great shape. There is virtually no growth in overall economy and no wonder many businesses aren’t hiring at all. Obviously depends on the industry and the job/role.

This leads me to my question. What exactly these recruiters working at small or large recruitment agencies do whole day and week if they have absolutely no roles to recruit?? Hiring can be non existent for many many months.All these agencies will probably have few to many recruiters in their wings. How do they justify their salaries during prolonged slow times?? Yes of course there is commission component involved but without any filled jobs, no commission either. Sometimes there are multiple recruiters who are trying to fill same job, so there is competition too.

What exactly do they do nice office buildings when not hiring??

Education & Work

Comments

  • Hybroid on 15/11/2024 - 21:59

    They chase people relentlessly on LinkedIn to obtain CVs, have conversations on skills/desires and create candidate profiles, so they can strike soon as clients need new blood.

    Even in a slow economy, companies still need people continously. One of the main reasons to create redundancies is to open ability to hire others with different skillsets/experience to try and pivot to market changes (e.g. if transport sector opportunities are drying up, get rid of transport-orientated people and hire health/defence/water/energy etc people instead to target those upcoming projects etc).

  • McMaferMur on 15/11/2024 - 22:31
    +3

    When slow then they will browse ozb….

  • DashCam AKA Rolts on 15/11/2024 - 22:37
    +2

    Do shifts at the call centres, selling energy plans.

    • OzzyBoy1 on 15/11/2024 - 22:42

      Any good Viofo deals you aware of?

      • zorodluffy on 16/11/2024 - 10:14

        theres was a viofo a229 with rear camera and hardwire kit on aliexpress the other day for $240

  • Gunnar on 15/11/2024 - 22:56

    Recruiters are like real estate agents and car salesmen…. people I’m happy to see suffer in an economic downturn

    • AustriaBargain on 16/11/2024 - 02:08

      Can't recruiters just be an aggressive form of hiring? Are they always a bad thing?

      • airzone on 16/11/2024 - 07:25
        +1

        I use them. Most are snakes. The good ones, like the rare good car dealer or real estate agent are worth hanging on to. When I post a job, I don't need to filter through hundreds to thousands of applicants who are clearly not even reading the job ads.

      • Gunnar on 16/11/2024 - 12:52
        +1

        Depends. As above If you find one who is about delivering a good employee to you, hang onto them. Most sadly are aggressive sales people because they have targets to meet. Like the good car salesman and estate agent there are good ones which exist but they are rare

  • freefall101 on 16/11/2024 - 00:47
    -1

    As someone who works in recruiting (although not a recruiter), I generally laugh at the agencies that are struggling. Big companies have moved all their recruiting in house these days, and we spend quiet times mapping out all the high risk roles, building pipelines and helping internal people move into new roles.

    Agencies are basically boned, they just start firing people. Agencies turns into sales people trying to tell agencies they have the best people in the world on their books. When it's really just they've done a bunch of linkedin searches. It's a dying industry.

  • ihbh on 16/11/2024 - 06:59
    +2

    What do recruiters do when overall economy isn’t great

    I assume you mean the "job economy"?

    Are you referring to the Australian "job economy" or some other countries?

    • OzzyBoy1 on 16/11/2024 - 21:14

      Aussie Job economy primarily

  • mskeggs on 16/11/2024 - 10:11
    +5

    It's unbelievable to me that with unemployment close to the lowest it's been since the 1970s people are saying the economy is bad as "everyone knows".

    What will happen if we actually had economic problems?

    • cloudy on 16/11/2024 - 11:06
      +2

      Heaven forbid a recession right?

      People just have no idea what bad is because they haven;t experienced it.

      People can only relate to the lived experience they know.

      • Protractor on 08/06/2025 - 12:14

        FTFY
        People can only relate to the lived experience they know.what social media tells them to relate to.

    • nned2say on 04/07/2025 - 14:12
      -1

      Personally, I doubt their definition of "employed". According to their criteria, a person is considered employed even if they worked just one hour in a paid job during the reference period. If someone is not in a paid job and is not actively looking for work, they are classified as not in the labour force. This means that some individuals can be jobless but not officially counted as unemployed.
      For example, caregivers who are not usually in the labour force may be hired as casual workers during an election. During that time, they are considered employed, but before and after the election, they return to being classified as not in the labour force.

      • mskeggs on 04/07/2025 - 16:37

        I understand your point that there are edge cases that make the number swell or shrink, but the definition is consistent with that used in other countries and it is mainly so you can compare over time.
        So yes, there were a bunch of people employed in May, many of whom entered the labour force that month because the particular job suited them, but you can easily also look at March and April before and June and shortly July afterwards to get an understanding of whether employment rates are improving or declining.

        It doesn't really matter if the unemployment rate is 60% because we counted everyone who didn't work at least 20hours or 4% because we ignored kids and retired people and people who only worked 1hour, as long as the definition doesn't change so we can see which direction it is headed.

  • Sal in SA on 16/11/2024 - 11:13
    +1

    Low unemployment
    Sticky inflation

    Economy is still far from "not great" .

  • Maglia Nera on 16/11/2024 - 11:36
    +1

    They go back to the UK ?

  • welcomeUniverseWorld on 16/11/2024 - 20:42

    Look for job?

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