When there is an opening to fill, a company has four basic
approaches at their disposal:
• Advertise the position on Internet job sites • Network • Probe
the Internet for viable candidates • Use recruiters
When a company advertises an opening on an Internet job site,
they receive hundreds of resumes. It simply is too long of a
process and financially prohibitive to review every resume and
move through each step of the interviewing and selection process
to fill the opening. Since decision-makers know other
decision-makers, a hiring manager’s network can be quite
extensive. In time, good candidates can be located. The problem
with this approach is that the hiring manager may simply be too
busy to engage in the time and human interaction required to
make this happen. Employers and recruiters utilizing keyword
searches scour the job sites in search of candidates to fill job
openings. A major segment of these openings are unadvertised.
When you post your resumes to a job site, you gain visibility,
indirectly, into the hidden job market, and have access to a
greater number of jobs. On the downside, since most people
searching will post their resume to a number of different sites,
the number of potentially viable candidates for any one
particular position is huge. Employers have also frequently
found major discrepancies between candidates and their resumes.
The fine line between reality and the realm of imagination
becomes razor-thin for creative resume writers. Screening and
reviewing hundreds of resumes for accuracy and position
viability, is time-consuming. If the job also requires a certain
type of personality which doesn’t materialize at the interview,
more time is wasted. For this reason, more and more employers
turn to recruiters for a more efficient hiring process. A
recruiter will conduct exhaustive screening procedures as part
of their candidate search process. They will charge a fee to the
employer for this service, but it is worth it in terms of time
and effort. One of the best ways to capitalize on a recruiter’s
mission is to post your resume to the career sites. Using
keyword searches, recruiters will find you as long as your
resume comes up a match. While this may not seem like a very
strong proactive approach, it is by far the most sensible.
Recruiters do not work for you; they work for employers. They
are in business to help companies find people, not the other way
around. Attempting to contact a recruiter regarding a particular
job will only lead to disappointment. Do not be surprised or put
off if your calls and emails are not returned. Their allegiance
is to their client, the employer who is paying their bill.
Having said that, it may be advantageous for you to present
yourself to recruiters as a potential fee-paying client once you
have been converted from candidate status. If, for example, you
are a middle manager or decision-maker, this point can be easily
made. You can also name-drop a referral to meet with a
recruiter. Recruiters strongly favor these types of candidates.
In a letter to a recruiter specializing in your field, make a
case for yourself in the strongest and most specific way
possible. Recruiters play a tough game yet serve a valuable
purpose. They do not work for you, yet you can formulate an
approach for working with them. By utilizing recruiters in your
overall job search efforts, you will find yourself a step or two
ahead of the crowd.
Copyright © 2005 TopDog Group All rights reserved.
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