Posts Tagged ‘recruiter’
Recruiter Training: How to Talk Money with Your Candidates
Candidate screening involves gathering information about salary, bonuses, benefits, commissions, and a wide range of other factors in the total compensation package, many of which are hidden or not so obvious. What a recruiter learns about a candidate’s compensation will play a critical role in the placement process and whether a job offer is accepted or declined.
Video Rating: 5 / 5
The Rules For Job Hunting Have Changed
Reposted from HR News
Paul Anderson wants you to forget just about everything you think you know about finding a job.
“Many changes have happened in the job market since 20 years ago, since 10 years ago – since last October,” said Anderson, a former hiring manager for Microsoft and Expedia.
Even since March. Three months ago, roughly 100 résumés an hour got posted on job-search Web sites. Now that number exceeds 400 resumes an hour, Anderson said.
You want a job? Join the club.
Some 13.7 million Americans want jobs but can’t find one – up by 6 million in the last 12 months. The private sector dumped 611,000 jobs in April, according to the latest report from U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
“You have so many people out there looking. Revenues are down at companies in most industries. Needs are becoming very specific. Fewer jobs are available. Some companies are trying to hire people at bargain prices. There’s fierce competition and overqualified candidates willing to take anything,” Anderson told a congregation of job seekers in Tacoma recently.
Anderson, principal at Kirkland-based ProLango Consulting, says job hunting these days has morphed into a new industry he calls Career Search 2.0. With his background in psychology, he doesn’t call himself a career consultant. No, he’s a behavioral specialist, because job hunters need to understand human behavior and outfox the system.
He offered five ways to tackle a job search in the new world.
First, scrap the elevator pitch – your 30-second soundbite that describes what you do so you can sell yourself in a flash, Anderson said.
“Why the elevator pitch doesn’t work,” Anderson said, “is that nobody cares about you. They care about themselves. You have to change your mindset from self-serving to serving others.”
That means finding out what need you can fill for the recruiters and other hiring authorities you meet.
Second, at job fairs, don’t bring a sheaf of résumés and hand them out to recruiters like Halloween candy. They’ll wind up in the garbage.
Instead, get business cards from the recruiters. Ask them what kinds of jobs they need to fill and what kind of candidates they like. Note that on the back of the business card. If you know a lot of people in town, tell them so and say you’ll steer qualified candidates their way. Then follow up when you get home. Ask the recruiter to meet for 15 minutes over coffee.
“People buy from people they like and trust,” Anderson said. “You can’t build a relationship at a job fair. Instead of being a desperate jobless person looking for work, turn yourself from a stranger into a contact. When you contribute first, reciprocity will kick in.”
Recruiters have extensive networks of contacts. If you help a recruiter fill a job, you have just tapped into that recruiter’s vast network. Even if they don’t recruit for your expertise, Anderson guarantees they know someone who does.
Third, leverage online social networks, primarily LinkedIn.com, the No. 1 online business network, to connect with as many people as possible.
Online networks allow you to find and seek advice from contacts who work for the companies you have targeted for your job search, it allows others to endorse you, and it allows you to post specific information about the job you want, Anderson said.
Other online social networks, such as Facebook, focus more on users’ personal lives – where you should “show yourself as a stable family person who’s serving the community. If you have a dog, put up a picture,” Anderson said.
“When you submit a résumé, three things happen,” he said. “The hiring manager will look for you on LinkedIn to see what kind of endorsements you have. They’ll look on Facebook for pictures of you at drunken parties. And they’ll ‘Zillow’ your address to see where you live, the value of your property, how long you’ve lived there and if you can reasonably commute to a job.”
Fourth, get your résumé off of all job-search Web sites such as Monster.com and Dice.com, Anderson said.
“They’re too expensive. Plus 85 percent of jobs are filled from word of mouth,” he said. “Use LinkedIn instead for targeting people at companies you want to work for … and get into conversations.”
Try to secure informational interviews, informal conversations where you seek advice from someone at your target company.
“Many times open positions don’t make it to online job boards,” Anderson said. “You want to build rapport with those hiring managers you met informally” so they remember you later.
Finally, Anderson said, stay off the recruiters’ blacklists.
You didn’t know they had them? Anderson told his class of job seekers that recruiters have begged him to delete this tip from his seminars. He hasn’t.
Every major company has a computerized database to manage its applicants, their résumés and notes about all interactions. Those companies also have a separate database – the blacklist – where they kick out all the problem applicants who have no chance to get hired, he said.
How do you kill your chances? Multiple ways. Visit a company’s Web site, put 80 jobs in your job cart and click “Apply All.” Anderson said it shows you as desperate rather than focused. If you come across as rude to a recruiter screening you by phone, you’ll get kicked onto the blacklist. If, during a meeting, you complain, have bad body language or appear depressed, it’s the blacklist for you.
“Every time you show up, you have the opportunity to become one of the good ones,” Anderson said. “Take it.”
Dan Voelpel:
dan.voelpel@thenewstribune.com
http://www.thenewstribune.com/voelpel/story/770211.html
How to Get the Executive Job Interview
“Just get me in front of the CEO!” says Josh Furman, one of my executive job search clients. Josh has been laid off his lucrative Vice President position at a local high tech company, and has no patience with learning the art of keyword populating, or search engine scouring. He just wants to get in front of as many hiring authorities as possible. Why? Because he is positive that he can talk his way into a job if he can just get the face-to-face executive job interview.
Well. There is a lot to say regarding this theory in today’s hiring climate. Yes, it used to be true that executives could network their way onto the CEO’s schedule – a golf foursome, a chance meeting at the local Starbuck’s on Saturday, comp tickets to a Mariner’s game, a coincidental airport introduction – all schemes that used to work. That was before CEOs were saddled with the long, iterative “best practices” for hiring that now include reams of due diligence, behavioral interviewing processes, corporate culture match screening, background checks, and all sorts of rules for the actual executive job interview that will take place after all candidates have been properly vetted.
So, as an out-of-work candidate seeking that executive job interview in today’s market, what are your options for jumping right into that face-to-face meeting?
- Ignore the new hiring realities and keep trying the old ways to get in the chair across the desk from the CEO.
- Seek out a Recruiter who will market you into the CEOs
- Be proactive and provide the CEOs with all that best practices data they need upfront in order to qualify you for an executive job interview sooner.
Selection 1. is simply an approach that is no longer effective in today’s hiring market.
Selection 2. has its problems since professional recruiters don’t market candidates out to CEOs. They make their money by obtaining a specific assignment from a company to fill a specific job within that company. The company pays the Recruiter for presenting only the exact matches for that position. However, on occasion, you will find a Recruiter who offers to “market you” to several companies, but beware of this. If a Recruiter sends your resume to several companies hoping for some interest, and any of those companies have a policy not to pay recruiter fees, then you will be ignored for the next 6 months as a candidate for any position within those companies – since your hiring would now be associated with a headhunter fee. IF you choose to use a recruiter, make sure they will only “market you” to companies with whom they have a written fee agreement. And even then, you’ll have to consider that companies in this economy may prefer non-fee-bearing candidates.
Selection 3. brings us to a definitive market advantage that executive candidates can possess. If you put yourself in the shoes of the hiring authority, you’ll realize that they may give preference to a candidate who does most of the due diligence work for them. This is a world of full disclosure now. No longer do you play cat and mouse in the interview process. Hiring companies want to know, and have ways to find out, EVERYTHING about you. For instance, candidates who provide not only a resume, but the results of recent skills tests, assessment tests, or annual reviews will be put in the pile that is further down the line in the process and closer to the actual executive job interview stage than those with only a resume submitted. Providing written references or endorsements pushes your candidacy further, and a professional video interview can actually put you over the top of the uphill climb for position, since it can eliminate the entire first interview phase of the executive job interview process.
In this candidate-rich market, competition is tough enough for those few executive positions that open up. And internal HR and Recruiting departments are swamped with applications, making the hiring process that much longer.
Just get yourself in front of the CEO. Get a jump on the competition. Be first in line. What this means in today’s market is to take the initiative to do the upfront work for the hiring company. Provide a complete package of yourself as a candidate including most of the due diligence that they will need to collect in order to make a decision. Increase your chances of getting that executive job interview. And by that point, you’re practically hired.
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