Category Archives: Recruiters
Warning Signs: Are You Interviewing with the Wrong Company?
Warning signs: What should you look for when you are interviewing for a job? Should you be interviewing with a better company?
As the owner of a recruiting firm, I worked with applicants who dealt with troubling issues during the interview process. Here are some of the things I learned from my experience in helping these applicants
Interviewers Fail to Keep their Commitments
In some cases, interviewers have valid reasons for cancelling an appointment, and they explain those reasons to you. An easy way to handle the situation is to show understanding and simply reschedule.
However, some interviewers raise warning signs when they fail to keep commitments.
- The interviewers cancel appointments without attempting to reschedule.
- They cancel appointments more than once.
- Worth of all, the interviewers completely fail to call you or to meet with you without calling to cancel or reschedule.
If interviewers can’t keep their commitments, you should see that as a warning sign that you are interviewing with the wrong company.
Interview Interruptions
For interviews allowing interruptions is unfair to you. The interruptions are a distraction to you. The interview loses continuity and you may lose your ability to focus. Furthermore, these people can fail to focused on you and to give a fair evaluation. This type of behavior is a warning sign that the interviewer is not interested in you or, perhaps, simply does not respect your time.
Remember that the way an interviewer handles an interview is a sign of how a company deals with its employees. This behavior is uncommon, but when it has happened, applicants have often complained to me about it and rightfully so.
The interviewer is the face of the company. If the interviewer doesn’t respect your time, how well will you be able to at a company where people do not respect your time. This type of company is the wrong company.
Withholding Information Benefits and Salary Range
The company withholds information on benefits and salary range during the interview process.
The company benefits and compensation are confidential information. For competitive security issues, companies must protect the details of their operations. However, to avoid wasting their own time and the applicant’s time, the best interviewers provide general information on benefits and compensation. Often, companies include a general statement on benefits and compensation on the job description.
You need to work for companies that put the information out front. Companies that are not forthcoming during the interview are companies that show warning signs that you are interviewing with a company that runs its business that way. This type of company is the wrong company.
Warning Signs
Take heed of warning signs. To summarize here common warning signs that I have seen during my experience as a recruiter.
- Interviewers fail to keep their commitments
- Interviewers allow interruptions
- It is difficult for you to get a general idea on benefits and salary range
Recruiters: What Job Seekers Need to Know
Recruiters: If you are in a job search, you may find it helpful to understand the relationships of recruiters, hiring companies, and job seekers.
As a recruiter, I contracted with over a hundred companies to fill their vacancies. I have friends who are recruiters. My broader understanding of the types of firms started when I began my career with a company that had two departments: one for search and one for applicant placements. This article will help you understand recruiters and perhaps the best way to work with recruiters effectively.
Recruiters
Hiring companies contract with recruiters to find applicants that are often not on the market. If you are a working with recruiter, you are valuable to that recruiter. The recruiter will not charge you a fee. The hiring company pays the recruiter.
This distinction over fee payments is one of the differences between recruiters and some placement agencies.
A recruiter does not find jobs for people. Instead they find people for jobs. Some people call recruiters “headhunters,” because they hunt for people to fill positions for the hiring companies.
Placement Agencies
These agencies often work to find jobs for job seekers. In some cases, employment agencies may charge the applicant a fee. The successful employment agencies have a strong network in a local market. Although employment agencies may recruit candidates for a specific job, these agencies are typically working with job seekers who have come to the agency’s office and completed an application.
Contingency Recruiter or Retained Recruiter
Both contingency recruiters and retained recruiters have a contract with the hiring company. Also, both seek to find people for jobs. The difference is that a contingency recruiter makes no money until a hire is made. On the other hand, retained recruiters receive scheduled payments as they work on the search. Additionally, both types, myself included, are listed in national directories of professional recruiters.
You and the Recruiter
Recruiters get on phones and call people. They may publish job listings on their websites. My initial use of this website was to promote my recruiting efforts. Most recruiters specialize in searching for specific types of jobs.
If you have the skills that match a recruiter’s specialty, you might find this recruiter a valuable asset, because he or she will often have a number of jobs that fit your background.
The Limitations of Recruiters
I have a separate article on why you might not want to work with a recruiter. You should be aware that recruiters are working to serve their own interests to fill jobs quickly. These recruiters may not refer you to companies where they already have successful candidates in progress.
Success Story: Resumes that Land Job Interviews
Success Story: Is your resume a success story? Have you included job information in a way that makes your job history stand out against the competition?
Even employers who do not know what they are looking for are going to get more excited when they read a resume that reads like a success story than a mere list of job specs.
~ www.jaywren.com
My Experience
The following information is based on the feedback I have received from hiring managers, staffing managers, other recruiters, about that they look for in a resume and from talking with thousands of applicants about their resumes.
Accomplishments
Most people use bullet points in their resume. A way to make the bullet points count is to list the things that you did to make things better, not simply list the things you did.
For example, instead of saying things like “Managed seven-person sales team,” you might consider saying things like “Lead a seven-person sales team to double-digit growth in a declining market.”
What Staffing Executives Want to See
A staffing executive from a major consumer company once said to me that his company is looking for people who are going to make the castle larger and not someone who just wants to hold the keys. When you are writing your resume or in an interview or on any other occasion that requires self-reference, a few facts about your success weaved into your list of experiences will increase your opportunities to get a job offer.
Resume Musts
Your resume must show at least four things:
- How your experience and skills match the job requirements
- The ways your accomplishments set you above the competition
- That you want to do the type of job the hiring company is trying to fill
- How your background shows that you want to do the type of job the hiring company is trying to fill
Resumes
Resume Suggestions That Can Get You a Job
Is a List of Core Responsibilities a Resume?
Resume – Management Level
Resume Headlines: What Good are They If No One Reads Your Resume?
Resume Headlines: Do headlines help or hinder in compelling the recruiter to read your resume? What you say in the headline makes all the difference.
“Writing headlines is a specialty – there are outstanding writers who will tell you they couldn’t write a headline to save their lives.” – The Score Takes Care of Itself: My Philosophy of Leadership, Bill Walsh
Additionally, my LinkedIn banner looks like this:
There are benefits and risks to using a headline. On one hand, they can raise the number of times your resume appears in keyword searches. Furthermore, an effective headline can increase the number of people who will read your resume.
On the other hand, based on the wording of your headline, a recruiter can decide whether to take time to read your resume or toss it. Additionally, they take up space where concise, compelling wording is critical.
My LinkedIn Headline
For my LinkedIn headline, I chose a title that I have used for over thirty years as a recruiter and combined that title with keywords that describe my services.
The World’s Noblest Headhunter, Business and Career Builder
I had an advantage is selecting this headline. Over thirty years of experience have demonstrated that to me that the headline is memorable and that people respond to the headline.
Headlines Instead of Objectives or Summaries
A good place to insert the headline is in place of the objective statement or a summary of skills. I generally don’t recommend stating an objective, with the possible exception of when the objective specific to the job and the company. For example: Objective: To apply for the project manager position available at ABC company.
Likewise, as I have written elsewhere, stating a summary of experience skills at the opening of a resume is redundant to the content section of the resume. Therefore, I would recommend a resume headline over with an objective or a summary of skills and experience.
Resume Headline: A Distraction or a Compelling Title
Resume Headline: Do headlines help or hinder in compelling the recruiter to read your resume? What you say in the headline makes all the difference.
“Writing headlines is a specialty – there are outstanding writers who will tell you they couldn’t write a headline to save their lives.” – The Score Takes Care of Itself: My Philosophy of Leadership, Bill Walsh
Additionally, my LinkedIn banner looks like this:
There are benefits and risks to using a headline. On one hand, they can raise the number of times your resume appears in keyword searches. Furthermore, an effective headline can increase the number of people who will read your resume.
On the other hand, based on the wording of your headline, a recruiter can decide whether to take time to read your resume or toss it. Additionally, they take up space where concise, compelling wording is critical.
My LinkedIn Headline
For my LinkedIn headline, I chose a title that I have used for over thirty years as a recruiter and combined that title with keywords that describe my services.
I had an advantage is selecting this headline. Over thirty years of experience have demonstrated that to me that the headline is memorable and that people respond to the headline.
Headlines Instead of Objectives or Summaries
A good place to insert the headline is in place of the objective statement or a summary of skills. I generally don’t recommend stating an objective, with the possible exception of when the objective specific to the job and the company. For example: Objective: To apply for the project manager position available at ABC company.
Likewise, as I have written elsewhere, stating a summary of experience skills at the opening of a resume is redundant to the content section of the resume. Therefore, I would recommend a resume headline over with an objective or a summary of skills and experience.
12 Reasons Why Junior Military Officers (JMO) Should Avoid Recruiters
As a junior military officer, I progressed from pay grade O1 to O3 in thirty-six months. As a recruiter, I have placed 100’s of men and women. I made a fee for these placements. I have helped many more people network their careers and got no fee for my help. The best recruiters want to help people first and make money second. The best recruiters also make the most money. For a partial list of my clients, click here.
12 Reasons Why Junior Military Officers (JMO) Should Avoid Recruiters
Based on my experience, I recommend that junior military officers transitioning from military service to civilian careers avoid recruiters.
The information in this article will help anyone decide whether to use a recruiter. The point of this article is to help job seekers avoid trading their marketability for the sake of a potential connection with a recruiter’s client.
There are great recruiters in all types of industries. There are also incompetent recruiters, unscrupulous recruiters, dishonest recruiters, and any other negative type of recruiter you can imagine.
I have no intention of praising or condemning recruiters. In this article, I take a critical position to look at the value and lack of value of recruiters. I have focused this topic on junior military officers as the basis for taxonomy. I want to examine where recruiters help job seekers and companies and where recruiters are more self-serving than they are a service to job seekers and hiring companies. Junior military officers make an ideal classification of job seeker as a basis to create taxonomy for employment service companies.
Countless recruiting firms place military officers. These firms make a lot of money putting military officers into civilian jobs. What is the harm in junior military officers working with third-party recruiters when making a career transition to civilian life? I will let you decide. I list twelve things to think about in this article. You will find other things discussed in articles on the Internet.
Junior military officers do not need recruiters
Google search. You will see articles from Forbes, Harvard Business Review, CNN/Money, Business Insider, and others explaining why so many leaders have gone from the battlefield to the boardroom.
The second issue is the nature of applicant pooling.
If highly marketable applicants go to a job fair and everyone at the job fair has equally strong credentials, the applicants have eliminated any advantages they have in the talent pool. If junior military officers engage recruiters who specialize in placing junior military officers, these JMOs have gone from sharks to shiners. They become one in schools of fish that mesh together with little personal identity. Do you want to lose your identity in the job market?
Recruiters do not find jobs for people.
Recruiters find people for jobs. The difference is that hiring companies pay recruiters 20-30% of the first year’s salary. The job seeker pays the recruiter nothing. If a job seeker paid a recruiter $10,000 to $30,000 or more to find the job seeker a job, the relationship would be very different.
Working with recruiters takes time.
Members of the military and job seekers in general have other, sometimes better resources that take less time.
For example, junior military officers and other veterans have job search help that is not available to nonmilitary job seekers. Using Google search and enter the phrase “government programs for jobs for veterans” or other similar wording in Google search.
On LinkedIn, job seekers can search the phrase “junior military officer” or search the names of branches of the service. In the results of the search, the profiles of former military officers include the name of the companies where these people work today. Using that information, job seekers can search job boards for job listings with those companies. Even better, job seekers can make direct application to the companies where the former military people work.
Nearly every company has job listings on their website. Sometimes companies list jobs under a tab on the website menu. Other companies list their jobs in the “About” section of the website.
Recruiters charge the hiring company a fee.
Job seekers who connect with hiring companies through a recruiter cost 20-30% more than job seekers who come to the company directly.
The extra cost is in the recruiter’s fee. When the hiring company has two equally strong applicants and one costs 20-30% more the first year of employment, the hiring company will hire the less expensive, equally qualified applicant.
Recruiters present the jobs that they want you to take.
You need to look for jobs that are in your best interest. Most recruiters do have your interest in mind when they refer you to a job. They do not want you to take the job and then quit. However, recruiters can only show you the jobs they have to fill. Some will put a persuasive hard sell on you to push you into taking one of those jobs. These recruiters behave like cattle herders. Their real interest is just getting the cattle to market.
The better approach is to plan your career. Make a list of the answers to these questions.
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What do you want to do?
What companies have those types of jobs?
Who are the contacts you need to make at those companies to get the job you want?
What are the best ways to contact those people?
With this approach, you will end up with a job that you want and enjoy.
Confucius: “Choose a job you love and you will never have to work a day in your life”
The seventh issue is employer perception.
If you find a hiring company and show that you offer solutions and opportunities that the company needs and may not have without you, you become a different person from the person who came in with the rest of the herd in the recruiter cattle drive. I had one client who hired two-dozen people from me. The best person she hired was a person who came to her directly and presented a business plan to improve her company’s customer loyalty programs. She hired this person for a job that did not exist before he came to her company.
Recruiters who specialize in placing junior military officers have no special industry-specific value.
For example, I have close to 40,000 connections in my database. Some of my connections are CEO’s and business owners I have known for over a decade. These people are all in the consumer products industry.
Occasionally, highly marketable people contact me who cannot get where they want to go through my network. I let them know that my network just does not offer the value they need for their career.
Junior military officers have distinctions similar to the distinctions of graduates from the top ten universities. The JMOs have credentials that are not industry specific. A recruiter in this process adds no value.
However, once junior military officers gain industry experience, working with a recruiter with dynamic connections in that industry offers real benefits to the JMO and any other job seeker.
Recruiters cut applicants from the process based on the recruiters’ perception and convenience.
In the process of referring applicants, recruiters base decisions on their perception of what the hiring company will hire. Recruiters also stop referring applicants when they believe they have the job filled with the applicants they have already sent to the hiring company.
Recruiters contribute little value as career coaches to junior military officers.
I have 100’s of articles on this website on how to write a resume, how to dress for an interview, how to interview, how to negotiate job offers, and other job-seeker topics. I add more articles weekly. To find a helpful article, just enter any subject in the search field at the top of this page.
You can also find information on these subjects on other great websites.
When you interview, you should prepare by researching the company and the people you will meet. That information is on the Internet.
Rather than spend your time over at the corral with the recruiter, take a few minutes a day to research the things you need to know for your job search.
Working with a recruiter guarantees the job seeker nothing.
Recruiters have contracts with hiring companies. The terms and conditions of these contracts guarantee certain conditions to the hiring company. When applicants use a great deal of time in emails, phone calls, and perhaps personal interviews with a recruiter, the applicants expect to get interviews through their effort. However, the recruiter guarantees applicants nothing.
If you have plenty of time to do the things that will really get you a job and still want to work with a recruiter, certainly contact a recruiter. However, do not expect any guarantees of anything.
Recruiters work with your competitors too.
Recruiters will ask you for referrals. They will ask you for information about the companies where you are interviewing. Giving recruiters this information hurts your chances of getting interviews. Because the recruiter is working with your competitors in your job search, any information they ask from you about your connections or your job search efforts is a conflict of interest.
If a member of the United States military gives information about our military to a foreign nation, even an ally, the person compromises our national security. If a member of the military of a foreign nation even asks a member of our military a question about United States military operations without a need and clearance to know that information, the foreign military person is behaving suspiciously. Yet some recruiters will probe for competitive information that benefits them and works against the job seeker.
In conclusion, there are great recruiters in all types of industries.
There are times when some people just will not find a job without the help of a recruiter. There are some circumstances where recruiters serve themselves and not the job seeker. Junior military officers are mature, intelligent, and marketable. They can find a job by applying directly to hiring companies. It is in their best interest to do so. However, once junior military officers gain industry experience, working with a recruiter with dynamic connections in that industry offers real benefits.
“The World’s Noblest Headhunter” in San Diego, CA.
The Types of Recruiters and Agencies
The Types of Recruiters and Agencies
There are four types of staffing agencies.
- Temporary Agencies specialize in referring people for positions that are temporary or part-time.
- Placement firms specialize in placing people in hourly positions. These firms may charge you a fee for their services.
- Contingency firms get paid by the employer upon filling a position and typically place people in management and middle management positions.
- Retained search firms specialize in filling positions at the executive level and are paid for a scheduled period of service plus an override based on the income of the position filled, and receive reimbursement for their expenses.
Recruiters usually specialize.
Individual recruiters and, in most cases, recruiting firms specialize in a particular industry such as healthcare, consumer products, technology.
Also, recruiters and firms may further specialize in the type of jobs they fill. For example, they may only staff for jobs for nurses, accountants, engineers, sales managers, marketing managers, and so forth.
Recruiters specialize, because by specializing they are able to build a network of hiring companies that recruit applicants with similar profiles. Quite often, recruiters have worked in similar positions and industries in which they recruit. Because recruiters specialize, they can contribute added industry information to help an applicant prepare for a job and plan a career path.
What do the different titles for recruiters mean?
People refer to recruiters with a lot of different names: employment agent, headhunter, corporate recruiter, executive recruiter, career or recruiting consultant, and other titles. There is little difference among recruiters in their basic functions. They typically spend most of their day contacting companies to get job listings, interviewing applicants, scheduling interviews, checking references, and sourcing applicants.
Should You Work with a Recruiter?
Should You Work with a Recruiter? Whether or not you should work with a recruiter depends upon your personal comfort in working with other people.
- Resume guidance
- Interview preparation
- Company information
- Access to hiring companies
- Industry knowledge
- Income information and guidance
When working with a recruiter, you should set up an understanding about how the recruiter manages your information. Depending on your need for getting a job relative to your need to keep your information confidential, you and the recruiter can set up guidelines on whether you need to approve of each place the recruiter sends your resume.
I recommend that you be selective in the number of recruiters you use. If you place your resume with several recruiters who are competitors, you will not be expanding your opportunities, but will discourage recruiters from wanting to help you. Never send an email with a “Send to” list that displays the name of more than one recruiter. You will appear thoughtless, desperate, and will probably discourage the recruiters on the list from trying to help you at all.
The type of firm you need to contact depends on a two factors: the type of position you are seeking and the firm’s client base relative to your experience.
Most recruiting firms have websites. You should be able to determine from the information on the website whether the firm is right for you. In addition, you may know people who have worked with recruiters and who can recommend recruiters and firms you might want to use.
Working with Recruiters: The Different Types and What They Do
Working with Recruiters: The Different Types and What They Do
If you are working with recruiters, you will find it helpful to understand the relationship between the recruiter and the hiring company and the relationship between a recruiter and a potential employee.
Recruiter or Placement Agency
The companies that use recruiters to fill a position pay recruiters for their services. Hiring companies do not accept unsolicited resumes from recruiters. Therefore, all recruiters are working under contract, and they work on behalf of the hiring company. If you are a working with recruiter, you are valuable to that recruiter. The recruiter will not charge you a fee.
There is a different type of staffing firm called a placement agency. These agencies work on behalf of job seekers and may charge job seekers a fee for finding them a job. The distinction between a placement agency and a recruiter is that placement agencies find jobs for people, and recruiters find people for jobs.
Contingency Recruiter or Retained Recruiter
Sometimes, people try to explain the difference between contingency recruiters and retained recruiters in terms of the compensation. There was even a benchmark set at $100,000-a-year for a point where a person would rise above contingency recruiters and pass into the realm of retained recruiters. At that time, I had contracts for retained work under $100,000 a year and contracts for contingency work above $100,000 a year. My relationship to the applicant did not change based on these contracts. I had jobs to fill and needed people to fill them. At times, a recruiter may have some contracts that pay them a non-refundable advance payment (a retainer) for their services and have contracts for payment after the job has been filled. More recently, retained firms have also done contingency work (The Directory of Executive and Professional Recruiters).
In practice, how hiring companies pay a recruiter is not important to you as a potential employee. The contacts the recruiter has in relation to the type of contacts you need to further your career is important. Since contingency recruiters and retained recruiters both work under a contract and given that financial benchmarks are not that useful in the changing landscape of compensation, the best way to work with a recruiter is to help the recruiter understand your experience and the type of job you are seeking. If the recruiter has jobs that fit your experience, he has a network that is valuable to you. Typically, the sterling silver of retained search firms are conducting searches where the level of contact is with the board of directors and the level of search is for “C” level managers, that is, Chief Executive Officers, Chief Revenue Officers, and so forth. When people at that level of experience contact me, I refer them to Tom Snyder, who hired people from me when he was an executive in the CPG industry. Tom has placed over 50 C-level executives. The Chicago office of Spencer Stuart, where Tom works, is the most effective consumer goods executive staffing practice in the country.
You and the Recruiter
Recruiters hunt for people: they are, figuratively, headhunters. They get on the phone and call people. They email people. They research for prospects. They are looking for fits like ring sizes. Hiring companies pay recruiters for their skills in finding those fits. Applicants as a potential employees have value. They are the diamond ring. The hiring company is the ring buyer, the customer. The recruiter is the jeweler. He takes a measure of what will fit the hiring company. If recruiters do not have a fit in their jewelry case, they hunt for one by calling people in their network. They often look for rings that are not yet on the market. Therefore, whether the applicants are rings in the jewelry display case or ones who are not yet on the market, the applicants and the hiring companies have value to a recruiter. If recruiters have the network to fit the needs of the hiring companies and the experiences of the applicant, the recruiters have value to both based on that network.
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