HOW TO MANAGE THE JOB SEARCH / RECRUITMENT PROCESS

I think most people would agree that the single most important part of any job search is for the candidate to be noticed by the person making the hiring decision. This is how recruiters make a living. They develop relationships with the right person to understand their business issues, which leads to understanding their talent needs, which leads to recognizing the right candidate, which leads to the personal introduction and recommendation. A personal recommendation from a recruiter who has a good trusting relationship with the decision maker is like a good friend telling you to try the restaurant down the street- YOU LISTEN!

Sure, you can send in your resume through a company website or Monster ad, but face it- you'll inevitably wind up in a stack (or worse, a data file) of hundreds or thousands of resumes with a slim chance that the right person will notice how special you are! If you ARE the right candidate, a personal introduction is nearly essential to make you stand out from the pack of misses. That's what a good recruiter brings to the table.

Inherent in this message is an unfortunate fact: if the recruiter does not believe you are right for the job, they will not make the personal introduction and they will not vouch for you. Their reputation as a trusted business advisor to the hiring authority would be tarnished, because they'd think, "this recruiter must not understand my business or he wouldn't be sending me people who don't fit!" If you ARE right for the job and the recruiter agrees that you are, you'd be crazy to be 'one in the stack' as opposed to getting that personal recommendation.

The same goes for posting your resume on a job board. There is an unfortunate assumption made by many recruiters (yes, I'm guilty) that if you're on a job board, you're probably not an 'A' player. Oh boy, have I just opened the email floodgates! I'm sure I'll be bombarded by angry messages from those who disagree. So how can I say that? Look at it this way- 'A' players in general are valued by their companies and well taken-care of, so they're generally not looking. When they make a move, they use their trusted networks and know the players that they might be interested in exploring. They know how to use recruiters and how to avoid winding up as 'one in the stack'.

My clients' HR people are downloading resumes from job boards to fill their databases and look busy for their bosses. They place job ads (frequently when they don’t even have an opening) to fill their contract commitments to the job board sites. BTW, I too will occasionally place an ad and each time I get hundreds of responses- most of which are so far off the mark that it proves to be a huge waste of time. I seriously once got a response from a candidate for a VP spot (at $175K salary) who had no more experience than working at Mickey D’s! Placing ads is a curse more than a blessing!

I guarantee that the HR folks are feeling the same way. It's like trying to find a trophy Marlin in the ocean by casting a massive drift net and sifting through every fish in the sea! Smelly!

Would I stake my reputation on someone I found on a job board? Probably not. There surely are diamonds in the rough, but there's an awful lot of rough out there! I'd rather spend time networking and asking people in the field who the 'A' players are. Refer back to the 'personal recommendations' references above.

OK, so you're going to call a recruiter. Now you have to manage the process. This is absolutely critical in getting you to the right hiring authorities. I speak to candidates all the time who find that their resume has been sent all over the industry without their knowledge or permission. They then call me and find that I am not in a position to help make the personal introductions to the proper decision-makers.

The deal is simple. Any recruiter worth their salt will ask you for permission before sending your resume anywhere. It makes a candidate as well as a recruiter look stupid if they introduce a candidate who has already been introduced, either by another recruiter, an existing employee, or by sending in a resume via a website or job board. After all, if what we sell is relationships, it's a pretty thin relationship if I don't even know that my candidate sent their resume in a month ago.

In return for that level of respect, a recruiter should ask for and deserves to be kept informed about where you have been introduced and when, or any other developments as they come up that might affect your candidacy. A candidate that compromises my relationship with my client is poison- I don't care how great they think they are.

OK. That's enough of my rambling for now. I've only scratched the surface of how the recruiting process goes from my end. I believe that for both candidates and hiring authorities, a good understanding of how our end of the business works can only help everyone involved.