I recently joined a fashion networking group and jumped into one of the discussions. The person who started the discussion was asking about moving from retail store line to wholesale and why didn’t companies look at transferable skills.
I said that in my 7 years of recruiting I had found it difficult to move individuals from retail to wholesale. I was addressing this person’s specific situation (store line to corporate AND retail to wholesale). I’ve placed buyers into account executive roles, moved planners, design, product development, sourcing, visual and so on back and forth; but to help someone in a situation like this as a recruiter was beyond my scope. As a career strategist, I can be much more helpful.
Another recruiter jumped into the conversation stating that they move people from retail to wholesale all the time, in fact, their clients ask for retailers.
A couple of thoughts went through my head. “Wow this recruiter is really good.” and “Boy, this recruiter must have really interesting clients.” I went with thought one first and did some research on the recruiter and their company and found the website.
Every go to a fancy website that gives you absolutely no information? After a few minutes on the site, I knew almost nothing about the company. I didn’t know who the owner/s were, if it was private or public, the size, who the staff is; let alone any background information, or how long have they been in business. This recruiting company could have started yesterday (by the way, they didn’t, but I had to do some work to find that out). With today’s web technology, it’s really easy to be the Wizard of Oz and have one person behind the scenes pulling all the levers and making a grand impression.
If you are going to work with a recruiter, go to their website and look for those things. Most companies usually aren’t afraid to tell you who they are and how to contact them and they have an ABOUT page that actually tells you “about” them. They post their bios so you can tell if they are qualified and they tell you how long they have been in business and so forth.
Keep in mind the company website might not be the recruiters fault. I happen to know that this recruiter has 9 years experience and was a retail merchant before that (nothing is hidden if you dig deep enough). I leaned more about the company from the recruiter’s LinkedIn profile in 30 seconds than 5 minutes on the company site.
Remember, you don’t work with companies, you work with people. It could be management that feels secrecy is the best policy or they could just have gotten bad advice about their website.
What’s important is to know who you’re trusting to represent you! Keep your eyes open. Research and ask for references. Pry. Does what they are saying make sense? It’s your career and your livelihood.
I realize I got away from ‘transferable skills” my original topic but that’s now for another day.
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