Why is the agency recruiter chasing me daily while the internal recruiter takes a week to reply?
The agency recruiter chases because they are paid when you are hired, and keeping you warm is part of that job. The internal recruiter goes quiet because after the first round most decisions sit with people they do not control, and they are not allowed to tell you much while they wait. Neither speed says very much about your chances.
What the speed does tell you is who stands behind the recruiter, and what they are allowed to say.
Why does the agency recruiter call every day?
An agency recruiter works on placements and volume at the same time. A common target in agency recruitment is three submissions a day. With 22 to 24 working days in a month, that is more than 60 candidates to keep warm, without counting the ones still live from previous months.
Let's face it, nobody keeps 60 relationships warm. So when your agency recruiter calls every day, it usually means you are near the top of their list for a live role. Agencies also run on urgency. A recruiter with hundreds of tasks cannot afford a bottleneck, so a good one is a doer who pushes every process forward, yours included.
It is not only about money, either. Some of the best agency recruiters I have worked with invested time in candidates with nothing to ask in return, and those candidates came back to them for years.
What happens in the internal recruiter's silent week?
After the first round, the internal recruiter is rarely the one who decides. The silent week is usually spent waiting: for the rest of the interview wave to finish, for a hiring manager pulled into something bigger, for budget, for a decision on whether the role is still a priority, or for an internal or referral candidate who appeared from nowhere.
As candidates, we tend to read a silent week as a no. From the inside, each of these reasons is very different, and the internal recruiter often cannot tell you which one it is. It is a bit like a waiter in a busy restaurant: they did not cook your dinner, they cannot tell you the chef is arguing with the owner, and all they can do is keep walking back to the kitchen to ask.
What they can do is chase, follow up and push, and the good ones do exactly that. If you have a real deadline, such as another offer on the table or a trip already booked, tell your point of contact. A concrete date gives them something to take to the decision makers, and sometimes that is what moves the process.
Why will the internal recruiter not tell me where I stand?
Internal recruiters are part of HR, and that comes with rules about keeping a process fair, professional and consistent. In most cases they will not tell you how you rank against other candidates. They will not share the real reason for a rejection, and they may not be able to explain why things have stopped.
The agency recruiter is not bound the same way, and that cuts both ways. The bad version overpromises, underdelivers and keeps you on the bench while prioritising someone else. The good version uses the client relationship to put you at the top of the list, sells you to the people who decide, and explains your strengths where the CV does not show them. That difference is one reason the route you apply through matters.
Who really decides, and what each person in that chain is worried about, is where Not in the Room starts.
Does daily chasing mean I am the first choice?
Not always. If you are second choice, the agency may keep you warm or may tell you honestly, and which one depends on who holds the first choice.
When the top candidate belongs to another agency, yours has every reason to find a way to move you up, and which agency got a CV to the client first matters more than you would think. When both candidates belong to the same agency, you are both the safety net that makes sure the deal closes. And when the margin on one of you is larger, that one may be pushed harder. From your side, the calls can feel exactly the same in every case.
What surprised me once I moved in-house?
Once I moved in-house, what surprised me most was how long some decisions took, and that the candidate was the one who paid for the wait. Every step had its own people, and every one of them had a reason to wait a little longer.
What helped more than I expected was a follow-up from the candidate. We chased the decision makers internally anyway, usually every three to seven days. One message from a candidate in the process gave me a reason to do it sooner, and it turned a decision that could wait into one that needed an answer. Your urgency can become the recruiter's excuse to push.
So which one is on my side?
The speed of the reply tells you how the recruiter works, not how much you are wanted. Internal recruiters will always work for their employer, and most agency recruiters do the same. The very few who work for you are worth keeping around, long after this role is filled.
The person you talk to is rarely the person who decides.
Not in the Room maps who really decides: recruiters, hiring managers, panels and the approvers you never meet, and what each of them is worried about. It covers contracting too. €5.
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