Though a Headhunter’s ultimate goal is to place good managers and chefs with good restaurants and hospitality companies, there are couple of things job candidates should be aware of and understand when working with an independent recruiter.
The recruiter’s ultimate fiduciary responsibility is to the restaurants, hotels, and/or clubs they represent. This is not to say that they don’t also have the job seekers interests at heart. It just means that recruiters have to comply with the job description and qualifications set forth by their clients and are unable to present candidates that do not match those requirements – no matter how much a candidate prods or pesters the recruiter.
Headhunters are not miracle workers. Some job seekers will not be viable candidates for any mumber of reasons. These reasons can include: consistently short job tenure; poor job performance; lack of direction and career goals; less than desirable personality traits (abrasive, know-it-all, condescending,etc); skeletons in the closet (i.e. sexual harrassment, termination for cause, etc); lack of work ethic; and many other reasons.
A recruiter can not present a candidate to a company that they have already interviewed with unless at least a year or two has passed since the original interview. Even then the company may decline the interview.
Ideally job seekers should work with no more than 1 or 2 recruiters at a time. Working with, or submitting a resume to, multiple search firms at any one time can work against the candidate as there tends to be overlap between the companies that recruiters represent. By working with too many recruiters at once, you are actually reducing the incentive for any of them to work very hard at finding you a new position because they may assume that one of the other recruiters may have already beaten them to the punch.
Ideally, recruiters would love to place every jobseeker they work with, unfortunately that isn’t always possible do to any number of factors.