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A local theater company is heading off to Germany to perform an award-winning play. The company is excited about the opportunity, but needs someone to join them on the tour to help coordinate plans, event dates and accommodation, and to act as a translator.

The production manager has difficulty finding an event planner who speaks German and understands the workings of a medium-sized theater company. To get help, she calls a personnel recruitment agency. The recruiter offers to help, but even still, it's not easy to find a match.

"Sometimes finding the right person for the right job can be like finding a needle in a haystack," says Marti Stites. She is a personnel consultant who owns a staffing company in Berkeley, California. "In some fields, the requests can be pretty specific."

Once, Stites was trying to locate someone who could translate package writing into both French and Spanish. "That's not too easy to come by."

However, the reward of finding just the right candidate for a job is what keeps personnel recruiters happy with their work. "It's pretty satisfying to make that perfect match," says Stites. "It's enjoyable to place people in careers that help them grow and develop, and that they will take pleasure in."

Carla Perry is a personnel recruiter who specializes in office staffing. She couldn't agree more. "This is the best job in the whole world," she says. "It's quite an adrenaline rush to find the perfect match."

Recruiters are generally hired by companies to find employees, not the other way around. However, the recruiters end up helping both parties if a match is made. The employer gets the employee they were looking for, and the applicant lands a job.

Perry compares working as a personnel recruiter to being an agent for a sports player. "It's sort of like working for management, looking for the right player, and also like working for the player's interests too."

Of course, a perfect match isn't always made. Sometimes the recruiter feels she's found the right candidate, but the company disagrees. "The [downsides] of this work are the pitfalls of not finding the right candidate," says Perry. "Not getting that match you need can be difficult."

Part of finding the right candidate is knowing how and where to look. "You have to get a thorough understanding from the client about the type of candidate they're looking for," says David Spry, a personnel recruiter.

Once they know what the client is looking for, the recruiter needs to know where to find just the right person for the job. "We're constantly looking for ideal candidates and networking to find the right person," says Perry.

This can mean visiting colleges and universities, giving talks and presentations and honing interview skills to be able to determine who would be the right person for a job. "The more work we do, like going to universities, the better the candidate is that comes to us," adds Perry.

Candidates aren't always bursting down the door to fill job vacancies. "As the economy changes and shifts, so does this work," says Stites. "Three years ago, we had lots of job opportunities in the Bay area but the applicants were hard to find."

Now, with the economic slowdown, the reverse is occurring. "There are many more people looking for work, but less jobs available," says Stites.

"It's all about trying to find a good balance between the two situations."

Stites adds that another downside of the job is that a lot of work can go into finding an ideal candidate, only to discover that a client has changed or cancelled their request.

"It can be frustrating to do all that work and then find that the job is cancelled or that they found someone else in the company to do the work."

On the other hand, it's a wonderful sense of accomplishment when a client is entirely satisfied with the way a recruiter filled the job opening.

Sometimes a match can work out so well, the recruiter sees a job applicant return to their office. "It's happened to me quite a few times that I've had someone come in and fill a job, and then to return later as a client who wants to hire people," says Spry.

"It's enjoyable seeing people come in and really assisting them with their career development," he adds. "It's a lot of fun to see people and find they are a perfect fit for a job."

Perry adds that seeing new faces every day keeps the job interesting. "We meet new candidates and customers all the time," she says. "It's a wonderful, dynamic field to work in."

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