I helped a person at a company I'm interviewing with. He asked for the name of the recruiter I'm working with; is it prudent to avoid answering?

Question

I'm currently in interviews with a company and was looking around at their employees Linked-In profiles (very large firm). I noticed one of their senior internal recruiters (in a different business area) had a typo in the header at the top of his profile. I politely notified him via LinkedIn messaging and he made a joke about it and thanked me. I said it wasn't a problem, that I was just browsing employee profiles as I'm interviewing at the company, and wished him best of luck in his search for top talent.

He replied by asking which recruiter (i.e. which co-worker of his) I was working with. What's the best way to respond to this (if I should respond at all)?

Answer 1

If he made a joke about it and thanked you I´d say he liked the interaction. sounds like he may very well recommend you to the other recruiter. I would use that to my advantage and tell him right away.

Remember: You showed interest in the company you are interviewing with, you paid attention to the details, you managed to contact him on a potential embarrassing error in a polite and tactful manner. Translate:

• Takes interest in his Employer.
• Will improve the company´s performance even outside of his normal tasks.
• Can talk to strangers about difficult subjects in a polite manner.

That´s a big plus in the soft-skill box, why would he let this info go to waste? You did him a favor, now he can do one for you!

Answer 2

There's no reason to avoid answering that question.

At one time, in the USA, I was a contingency-based recruiter. If you are already in interviews with that company, through your recruiter, then any position they hire you for is going to generate a payment to the recruiter. At the time you are submitted, and accepted as a candidate, they are agreeing that it was the recruiter who brought you to the attention of the company, and that they were unaware of you, as a candidate, before that. This is usually good for any contact with you over the next six months to a year.

In this case, it seems like they are all internal recruiters. This one probably liked the interaction they had with you. Maybe they looked at your LinkedIn profile and saw that you might be qualified for positions they are in charge of filling. And, yet, they did not already know of you, personally, even though others in the company obviously do, if you are interviewing.

Since you are already interviewing, that other recruiter has already done much of the preliminary work, and they probably can't initiate a process on their systems with a duplicate candidate. The recruiter you exchanged messages with probably needs to make sure they aren't chasing someone who will already be hired for another position, or perhaps aren't pursuing someone who got red-flagged in that other interview process.

In any case, the most logical reason for asking is because they probably have their own positions they might think you are a fit for.

Answer 3

He replied by asking which recruiter I was working with

Since your interviewing for the company, not replying may be viewed as 'rude', however he is in a different section of the company. So it very unlikely that he will actually have some type of impact on your interview processes.

If you think that it will hurt your chances by not replying, I would recommend saying something somewhat vague "I was contacted by X department" that way your still responding, yet not giving away really any crucial information.