Candidates

 

A new job should make sense for you, not just for us.

Affecto works with technology, data and technology-enabled transformation professionals, from senior specialists through to technology leaders.

Sometimes we’ll contact you about one specific opportunity.

Sometimes we’ll already know you from work in a market we recruit from regularly.

And sometimes the conversation starts well before there is a particular job to discuss.

Whichever way we meet, you should understand why we’re talking to you, what we know about the opportunity and whether it genuinely makes sense for where you want to go next.

We’re not here to sell you every vacancy.

We’d rather have a useful conversation about the right one.

 

You should know what you’re walking into.

A job description only tells you so much.

The more useful questions usually sit behind it.

Why does the role exist?

What is the business actually trying to change or improve?

What will you inherit?

What are you expected to fix, build or protect?

Who will you be working with?

How much freedom will you really have?

What are the difficult bits?

What might make the role a genuinely good move; and what might make it completely wrong for you?

Where we are representing a business, we want you to understand as much of that context as we reasonably can.

We don’t think hiding the awkward bits until interview helps anybody.

The clearer everybody is at the beginning, the better the decision tends to be at the end.

 

We won’t try to convince you that every opportunity is exciting.

Recruitment has a habit of describing almost everything as an “exciting opportunity”.

Sometimes it is.

Sometimes it plainly isn’t for you.

A move can look good on paper and still make very little sense once you consider the manager, commute, working arrangements, culture, scope, package or what you actually want your career to look like next.

So we’ll ask about those things.

What would genuinely make you move?

What are you trying to get away from?

What do you want more of?

What would make an apparently good opportunity a bad decision?

What compromises are you prepared to make, and which ones aren’t worth it?

Sometimes that conversation leads to an introduction.

Sometimes it ends with both of us agreeing the role isn’t right.

That’s still useful recruitment.

 

Your experience is more useful with some context around it.

A CV tells us where you’ve worked and what you’ve been responsible for.

It doesn’t always explain what was difficult about the environment, what you personally changed or why your experience might translate particularly well into another business.

That context matters, especially for senior and business-critical appointments.

We want to understand things like the scale and complexity you’ve operated in, what you inherited, what changed because you were there and which decisions were actually yours.

We’ll also want to understand where your experience is less obvious, where there may be gaps and what would need further testing.

That gives us something much more useful than a collection of job titles and technology keywords.

And if we represent you to a client, we should be able to explain why your experience is relevant rather than simply forward your CV and hope they work it out.

 

Better information works both ways.

We use real-time market intelligence, data, AI, automation and modern research technology extensively.

It helps us understand bigger markets, see patterns more quickly, retain useful context and identify people who might otherwise be missed.

That should make our conversations with you more relevant.

It shouldn’t make them less human.

Finding somebody through technology doesn’t give us permission to communicate with them like a database record.

A good recruitment relationship still depends on understanding what matters to you, remembering previous conversations and being honest about whether an opportunity actually fits.

The technology helps us know more.

The relationship tells us what any of it means.

 

Useful support, when it’s actually useful.

Not every useful recruitment conversation involves applying for a vacancy.

You might want a view on what your experience is worth in the current market.

Your CV may undersell something important.

You may be considering a new skill, qualification or direction and want to know whether employers genuinely value it.

You might be preparing for an interview and want to understand what the business is really trying to establish.

Or an offer may have arrived and the decision is less obvious than the headline salary suggests.

Where we have useful evidence or experience, we’ll share it.

That can mean helping with:

• CV and profile feedback;
• salary and package context;
• market intelligence;
• interview preparation;
• honest feedback after interviews;
• working through an offer and the trade-offs around it.

The point isn’t to manufacture another “candidate service”.

It’s to make sure useful information gets used.

If we know something that can help you make a better career decision, there’s very little value in keeping it to ourselves.

 

Interviews should feel like informed conversations, not surprises.

If we’ve introduced you to a business, we should have done enough work to help you understand what you’re walking into.

We’ll talk through the organisation, why the role matters, the people involved, what the client is likely to want to understand and where we think your experience is particularly relevant.

We’ll also tell you where we think questions are likely to arise.

That might be a gap in your experience.

A change in scale.

A different sector.

Something on your CV that needs more explanation.

Or a concern the client has already raised.

The purpose isn’t to script you.

You should still sound like yourself.

Just a version of yourself that knows what the conversation is actually about.

 

An offer is good news. It’s still a decision.

By the time an offer arrives, everybody has invested quite a lot in the process.

That doesn’t mean the answer automatically has to be yes.

We’ll help make sure the details are properly understood: salary, bonus, pension, working arrangements, notice period, start date and anything else that materially changes the move.

Then we’ll come back to the question that matters more.

Does the opportunity actually solve the things that made you consider moving in the first place?

Sometimes the answer is obvious.

Sometimes there are trade-offs worth talking through.

And occasionally the right decision is to stay exactly where you are.

We’d rather help you reach the right conclusion than push an offer over the line for the sake of a placement.

 

You don’t need to be actively looking.

Some of our best conversations happen with people who aren’t.

You may be perfectly happy but interested in understanding what else exists.

You might know the next move needs to be different without knowing exactly what that means yet.

Perhaps you’re thinking about moving into leadership, taking on a broader operational environment or working somewhere where technology has more influence over the business.

Or maybe you simply want us to know who you are so we can come back to you if something unusually relevant appears.

All perfectly reasonable.

A good relationship doesn’t need a live vacancy attached to it.

 

Keep the conversation open.

If you’re actively looking, take a look at our current opportunities.

If nothing there feels right but you’d like Affecto to know who you are, send us your CV and a little context around what you might be interested in.

You don’t need to write an essay.

A few lines about what you do, what might tempt you into a conversation and anything you definitely don’t want is much more useful.

If there’s something worth talking about, we’ll take it from there.