Pros
I really did enjoy the other recruiters that I worked with. I also learned a lot about the recruitment process and was able to kill my next interview and get a job at a better company because of all the interview practice I had prepping candidates.
Cons
The hours are long and make it difficult to have a life outside of the office. In at 7:30am and out by 6:00 - 6:30pm gets really old fast. 7:30am quickly became 6:30am in the Chicago office when a few recruiters started coming in early because of their train schedule and then others were shamed into not being there at that time too. Saturday hours were really tough too because it didn't provide employees enough time to decompress from the long week before heading into a new one. Sometimes Saturdays were mandatory and sometimes they would do a Saturday by making everyone feel like if they did they would be closer to promotion than their peers by displaying their loyalty and commitment to the company. We were constantly pitted against the other recruiters trying to get promoted. This made the one good thing about the office even more toxic. They also have a strict no dating policy that is not followed in the slightest. But if your director finds out you're both immediately fired. We had multiple hook ups and couples in the office while I was there because no one had enough free time to meet anyone outside the office. The metrics you are held to aren't practical. Recruiters have to find seven new candidates a week, interview all seven, get 10 reference checks and submit 3 candidates to reqs each week. While that sounds achievable, depending on your skill set (Architecture, Engineering, etc.) it can be almost impossible to hit weekly. The pay is decent because at $14/hr and working 60+ hours you're actually making an okay living for being right out of college. The problem is that when you aren't getting promoted because there aren't enough territories to the number of recruiters ready for promotion you'll see friends pass you in pay and then you're back to the drawing board looking for a new job and starting over. If benefits matter to you, this isn't the place for you. Aerotek recruiters and managers get the same benefits that our contractors get which are really bd unfortunately.
