I worked in recruitment for a while and I’m another who had an awful experience, OP.
I was in IT recruitment for a very well known agency. I was young, new to a big city. In fairness, I worked with some lovely people but expected hours were very long and the stress of constantly having to meet targets was horrific. In my agency, you were given a target for EVERYTHING- number of calls made a day, number of new clients you’d met face-to-face that week, number of interviews arranged etc. There was a decent level of integrity in the team I worked in, but there was zero flexibility and, if you missed your fee target three months in a row, you were pretty much out the door.
Our team was probably one of the quieter ones, socially, but there was an expectation to party hard. There were fantastic incentives including overseas trips. I’ve never been into drugs but was once on an overseas reward trip that got so messy, an actual food fight broke out. Directors off their tits on coke firing prawn skewers at each other. It was nuts. I remember standing there as food flew past me, watching people openly snorting lines and thinking “what the fuck am I doing?!”.
So I moved into another smaller agency that promised the sun, moon, and stars. I was doing Executive search. Great salary (unusually), huge commission and incentives. I pretty much had a breakdown and had to leave the workforce for a while. Calls were literally monitored. Targets were huge and you’d pretty much be shamed on the floor if you didn’t reach them. We were encouraged to do anything to get a sale over the line. It was awful. Literally being pressured to lie. So many times I’d come back from lunch and realise a colleague had cleared out their desk and left in the half hour I’d been gone. On the outside, it looked quite glamorous- constant nights out, European city breaks, always had top of the range work phones and cars, incentives like designer handbags etc. We even had a quarterly scheme that gave us vouchers for designer work clothes, plus lots of hair/nail/beauty appointments paid for.
Apart from the culture, recruitment is very difficult because so much of what happens is outside of your control. You could work you ass off to have the best relationship with clients, you could have the best candidate for the job but it can fall apart in seconds and suddenly you’re not going to meet target that month. I had candidates accept roles only to then decide a week before they started that they didn’t want it for any amount of reasons. Often they were things I’d discussed with them- commutes etc.
If you were considering it, I’d suggest asking the following at interview-
What are the targets? Not just for fees, but other metrics like candidates registered etc.
What happens to targets when you’re on leave/out sick- is absence taken into account or will you have to exhaust yourself before a holiday to ensure your deliver your target.
What’s their commission structure? Usually, it’s staggered so you get a higher percentage as you bill more.
What’s the monthly target and what’s their fee structure- you need to figure out if you’re expected to fill 3 vacancies a month to reach target, or 30.
What hours are expected?
What client events are you responsible for?
What candidate evens are you responsible for?
Will you have a book of managed clients, or be expected to develop all of your own clients?
What are their payment terms? Some agencies do not pay commission until the client pays the fee so you could be waiting months and months to get your commission.