What recruiters can't/won't tell you: 6 questions that good headhunters won't answer. (In the Trenches).

Wouldn't it be helpful to have an honest discussion with a recruiter?

It's not going to happen.

Job hunters and recruiters are more star-crossed than Romeo and Juliet. It's easy to excoriate recruiters for not being candid. But what candidates want most are opinions, suppositions and guesses -- not facts.

Here are six questions that headhunters aren't going to answer unless subjected to torture -- or unless you hire one to recruit candidates for your organization. Once you understand the headhunter's point of view, you will change your job hunting expectations and increase independent research and networking.

1. What are the ugly details about the hiring organization, boss or co-workers? Tell me their dirty laundry!

Most job hunters, in their innocence, believe that headhunters want to protect both parties in an employment deal. This is only true if both the candidate and the hiring organizations can bring the headhunter paying clients.

Typically, the equation tips to the hirers' side because they're paying the tab. So the headhunter isn't going to show you the dirty laundry.

If you're looking for the real scoop on an organization, you must do an independent background check and get the details from more than one credible source.

In my experience, better educated, high-level candidates are more likely to skip the research than average candidates who may be hungrier for the job. The high-level candidates walk right into a quagmire that a few e-mails or telephone calls could prevent.

2. Why are you presenting me to this particular hiring organization? Is it because I'm a good fit? And, am I a mainstream candidate or a long shot?

My clients long for this information and will do anything to get it. They will even bruise contacts in the hiring organization for details only the decision maker has.

It's especially hard to find out why an organization is interviewing you. Are they interested because you'd be a good fit with the boss and organization or are they banking solely on your technical/managerial skills and experience?

Candidates say they want to be ranked against other candidates on a scale of 1-to-l0.

But even the most seasoned headhunter can't do that, especially before the first interview with a hirer. If the headhunter guesses, it could influence how you present yourself and possibly compromise your candidacy.

If the headhunter does guess and tells you you're a long shot, but the organization makes an offer, everybody gets offended.

For example, someone once presented a candidate for CEO of a multispecialty medical practice. The candidate had instant rapport with the board. He was hired.

It turned out the headhunter pegged him as the candidate of last resort and only put him on the list of potential candidates as an afterthought.

3. What other candidates are you presenting to this organization besides me?

You might find this information out through inside contacts, but candidates tend to falter when asked if they really want names of their competitors. Most don't.

Again, candidates are basically asking the headhunter to make comparisons. ("I'm presenting you because you've done the job before. Kent hasn't, but the schools he attended will resonate with the CEO.")

Headhunters won't share this strategy because they know how you'll react.

You'll argue, fight and try to persuade them that they don't understand you, that they don't have a good assessment of your abilities.

That's one battle the headhunters want to avoid.

4. Who or what types of candidates aren't you presenting to the hiring organization?

Now we're really in tall grass. Exchanges with the headhunter about you are fine. Exchanges about other candidates -- especially detailed enough to make a person identifiable -- violates every kind of confidentiality agreement.

No respectable headhunter will ever share this type of information with a candidate. If it happens, don't hire that headhunter when you need a search done.

5. How was the compensation package determined and is it negotiable?

Many job seekers neglect salary research until the last minute. The candidate assumes the headhunter counseled with the hiring organization on what package to offer.

Maybe. Maybe not.

If the organization said, "Bring me candidates who will work for $X," both you and the headhunter may end up playing a game of, "Can we persuade the organization to pay more?"

This game is unnecessary.

If you do your homework you know what the going rate is -- independent of the headhunter's assessment or instructions from the hirer. You should be able to do a little networking to figure out if you're interviewing with a cheap organization notorious for low salaries.

Some hiring organizations are convinced that medical management is an art, not a skill. And some think managers should work for less than clinicians because they're cost centers, not profit centers.

Why waste time and aggravation? It's unlikely that you or the headhunter can change the hirer's convictions.

6. How will elements like resume, references, interview and fit with the organization he weighted?

What you're really asking for is the headhunter's best guess on what the hiring organization is thinking. If the headhunter has a close relationship with the hirer and has done previous searches for the organization, you may get some hints. But you probably won't know for sure.

Anyone who claims to know how those elements are usually weighted is lying. That's because there is no usual pattern. In 100 offers made by different hiring organizations, you will not find consistent patterns.

Who does what?

Before you conclude that headhunters are the job seeker's enemy, let's briefly review who's responsible for what:

The headhunter and client always have an adversarial relationship. "Why are you bringing me people I could turn up myself? I'm paying you to locate the perfect, flawless candidate I couldn't find without your help!" That's why they don't ever consider career changers, the promising but inexperienced people with flaws the size of Montana who need a break. Such candidate's must sell themselves -- which they can with extensive networking, prospecting and hours of work.

Headhunters present candidates closest in match to the hiring organization's wish list.

You and headhunters run on parallel, mostly nonintersecting tracks.

The headhunter wants repeat business. You want a job. The only possible intersection is if the hiring organization gets you at the price they want to pay to do the job they want done.

Clients who use only one headhunter or firm are rare. Most have a "stable" of firms they use depending on the position. Hirers believe this strategy creates a healthy competition among headhunters and one of them will produce an extraordinary candidate, mostly to spite the competition.

Any research you neglect will bite you.

Do not rely on a headhunter's assessment of the "market" -- whatever that means. Are we talking the local, regional, national or global market? How narrowly has the job been defined? Even if you find and debrief a dozen people with the job you've applied for, there will be variables in salary, responsibilities and spans of control.

Finally, job hunters work alone. The headhunter is a broker, not a guide or coach.

Once you understand this, the rest is easy.

Marilyn Moats Kennedy is managing partner, Career Strategies, Inc., Wilmette, Ill., and a long-time member of the ACPE faculty.

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If you're frustrated because a headhunter won't give you certain information about a hiring organization, get aver it. There are same very good reasons why a respectable recruiter won't answer particular questions from job candidates. Find out the questions and why they wan't answer them.