Recruitment agencies are essentially tools for both job seekers and employers. These agencies specialize in finding and matching appropriate job candidates with careers that match their skills and educational degree. There are several different types of recruitment agencies, but the fastest growing types are graduate recruitment agencies. These recruiters focus solely on students and college graduates who are searching for jobs in their chosen fields. Graduate recruitment agencies approach students and graduates at colleges, or students and graduates can approach the agencies for representation. Most often, however, companies will hire graduate recruitment agencies to find appropriate candidates who have recently or are about to graduate from college.
Like other types of recruitment agencies, graduate recruitment agencies will require applicants to first fill out online forms that will introduce the student, his or her skills, and his or her level of education and expertise to the recruiter. From here, the recruiter will take the applicants preferences on job location, salary requirements, and the student's general career objectives before finding a career match.
As was mentioned above, many graduate recruitment agencies will approach students who have not yet graduated from college. Sometimes these students are in their junior or third year of upper-level education, though most often, college seniors are recruited. The goal of graduate recruiters and the companies that hire them is to find people who are new to the job market. These people will often take lower salaries than candidates who have several years of experience. But more importantly for other companies is that the company can effectively train the new employee to perform his or her new job according to the company's standards. This is also more effective than trying to teach someone with five years of experience at a job how to do that job differently.
For potential job candidates who already have a specific company in mind, there are options. By calling the desired company's personnel department and finding out what graduate recruitment agencies are used, the candidate can submit his or her resume through that agency and hope to get picked up by the company. It is important to remember that for companies using recruitment agencies, resumes should never be submitted directly to the company. Companies use graduate recruitment agencies to cut down on the number of resumes their personnel department has to process. Blind submission is often grounds for your resume to be thrown in the garbage.
Since recruitment agencies are paid by the companies, the recruitment services are free to the potential job candidate. While some recruiters will be motivated only to find a job for a candidate and will not pay attention to correctly matching you to the job, other recruiters will be more thorough in their search. Find an agency that you are comfortable with and that works for you.
