After You Send Your CV: How a Luxury Hospitality Recruiter Actually Works With You

What happens in the first conversation?

A serious recruiter does not match a CV to a vacancy and forward it. The first step after your CV arrives is a conversation, by phone or video, about where you are, why you would move, and what you want next. Expect to be asked about your current package and notice period, the markets you are open to, whether you would relocate and with whom, and the roles you would decline as well as the ones you would accept.

This conversation is not an interview, and it is not a formality. It is how the recruiter calibrates you: which briefs you fit, at what level, in which markets. Professionals who answer vaguely to keep their options open usually end up presented for fewer roles, not more, because the recruiter cannot place a profile they do not understand.

It is also your chance to assess the recruiter. Ask which sectors and markets they actually work in, how they approach employers, and what happens to your information. A specialist in luxury hospitality will answer in specifics. A generalist will answer in generalities, and you should calibrate your expectations accordingly.

Will my CV be sent to employers without my knowledge?

With a professional recruiter, no. Your profile is presented to an employer only after you have agreed to that specific opportunity, and before you agree you are told who the employer is, what the role is and what will be shared. Nothing is circulated speculatively, nothing is posted, and your current employer is not contacted.

What is shared, once you agree, is more than the CV. At Sustera it is a candidate report: your CV in our format, our notes and assessment from the conversation, and the facts the employer needs to decide whether to meet you, such as availability, expectations and right to work, where you have chosen to share them. That report is why a recruiter's conversation with you matters: it is written from it.

If a recruiter ever sends your details to an employer you did not agree to, that is the moment to stop working with them. In a sector where references travel fast and informally, your name circulating without your consent is a real cost, and the discipline of consent is the first thing to check in any recruiter.

How does a recruiter decide who to present?

The employer's brief sets the frame: the role, the property, the package and the kind of person the leadership team wants beside them. Against that brief the recruiter reads your experience, but also your service culture, your composure under pressure and your cultural range, because a luxury guest experiences all three before they notice your technical skill.

In practice this means the interview questions will be behavioural. How you handled a guest who was wrong, how you led a team through a bad week, how you responded to a standard you disagreed with. The answers are compared against what the recruiter knows of the employer's culture, not only against the job description.

The recruiter is also checking facts early so that nothing surprises anyone late: your right to work or visa position, your notice period, your salary expectations and your willingness to relocate. Being precise about these in the first conversation is not a weakness. It is what lets a recruiter present you with confidence.

What should I expect between presentation and offer?

Once an employer wants to meet you, the recruiter organises the interviews: scheduling across time zones, briefing you before each stage on who you will meet and what they care about, and gathering feedback from both sides afterwards. You should hear the employer's feedback honestly, including the parts that are not flattering, because that is what lets you adjust for the next stage.

References are taken at offer stage, with your permission, from referees you nominate. A good recruiter will tell you what they intend to ask and will never approach your current employer without your consent. Prepare your referees: tell them the role, remind them of what you did with them, and make sure they are reachable in the week it matters.

When the offer comes, the recruiter's job is to help you read it as a structure rather than a number and to carry your questions back to the employer without the awkwardness of negotiating directly. Use that. The questions you do not ask before signing are the ones that are hardest to revisit afterwards.

What if there is no suitable role right now?

Most of the roles a specialist recruiter fills are never advertised, and many are confidential until the leadership team is in place. If nothing fits today, the useful outcome of your first conversation is that you are now in the recruiter's network, understood and calibrated, for the brief that arrives next month.

Keep that relationship live. Tell the recruiter when your situation changes: a promotion, a new notice period, a change in the markets you would consider, a partner's job that now makes a move possible. A profile that is current is the one that gets the call when a brief lands on a Friday afternoon.

You can also ask to be removed, or to pause contact, at any time. A professional recruiter holds your profile only for as long as you want to be in their network and acts on a deletion request promptly.

What does working with a recruiter cost you?

Nothing. In professional recruitment the employer pays the fee, and a recruiter who asks a candidate for money to be placed is not operating professionally. Joining a network, being presented and being placed should cost you nothing at any stage.

Some consultancies, including Sustera, also offer paid one-to-one services that are separate from placement: interview coaching for a specific role or market, CV optimisation and LinkedIn positioning. These are optional, priced in advance and never a condition of being considered for a role. If a recruiter blurs that line, ask them to draw it again.