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Photo by Funk15 A reader writes:
I just had a half-hour phone interview with a recruiter. Right off the bat, she told me that she doesn't really have a job opening. She's just building her "pipeline." I almost hung up. Why do they waste my time like that?
Well, it's possible that she was wasting your time. I don't think so, though.
Recruiters build candidate pipelines so that they have people in mind when an opening occurs. For example, when I was working for a brewery, we worked hard to build relationships with all of the people in the brewing industry who might be a fit for the types of jobs we had. Then, when a job became available, we didn't have to run an ad. We just went to the database and pulled up the people we already knew from our months of relationship building.
This model doesn't work when the candidate is somehow deceived. If you're tricked into thinking there's an opening, that's not cool. It sounds like this recruiter was up front with you though, in which case there really isn't a problem. Basically, you're networking...with someone who fills jobs in your line of work. That's good for both of you.
I think we're going to see a lot more of this after the holidays. The economy isn't good yet, but one of the first glimmers of hope you'll see is recruiters starting to rebuild candidate pipelines. I'm already hearing about people who are planning to do that in January. That's good news for all of us.
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