June 9, 2007
The second part in my series on how job seekers can use third party recruiters more effectively
Getting a meeting
A good recruiter is aware that having a great resume is not necessarily an indicator of placeability. As long as your resume looks moderately okay, i.e. doesn’t make you look crazy or completely incompetent, a recruiter will generally meet you if he/she thinks you look like you might be ‘placeable’ . You can refer to my earlier post on placeability, but it is essentially a function of how attractive you are to their client employers, and how likely you are to accept an offer if you get one. You will be a lot more placeable to a recruiter who specialises in your area of expertise, so if you have sent an unsolicited resume, try and make sure you have sent it to someone who is knowledgable and respected as a recruiter in your area of expertise.
After you have sent in your resume, it will not hurt at all to follow up with a phone call…and then another phone call, and another if necessary. If you appear super-keen, that tells the recruiter that you are more likely to accept an offer if you get one, so your placeability increases. You shouldn’t give the impression that you are dealing with multiple recruitment firms - that makes you a much less attractive candidate to invest time in, as you may end up getting a job through someone else.
There are a couple of things to watch out for when meeting recruiters. Many larger recruitment firms have very strict KPIs (key performance indicators) which recruiters have to hit on a weekly basis. This is how large firms guarantee a certain level of performance per head of staff. A very common KPI is number of candidate meetings. If you get a call on a Thursday from a recruiter who is very keen to meet with you the next day, even though he doesn’t seem to have the perfect job in mind for you, it may be that you are just making up the numbers on his weekly candidate meeting KPI target.
Some firms have candidate ‘ownership’. A recruiter may just want to meet you so that they ‘own’ you, and get a portion of the fee if you happen to get placed. The problem with this is that it will make you a less attractive candidate for any job, because if that job is ‘owned’ by a different recruiter within the firm, he/she will have to share the fee with the recruiter who ‘owns’ you the candidate. The job-owning recruiter will prefer to place one of their own candidates.
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Using recruiters series, interviewing, job search, using recruiters | 
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Posted by Andrew
May 19, 2007
“What business now values is someone who can cross-fertilize ideas from one business to another. The formation, development, dismantling and reformation of relationships…is expected in all aspects of life in the post-boomer world.
from The Big Picture, by Bernard Salt (Hardie Grant Books)
Fortunately, in most working cultures around the world, there is no expectation that employees stay in a company for life. However, if you’ve made frequent job changes, you may well be asked to explain why in an interview. This is something that people often struggle with, getting into long-winded explanations of job changes. This can get you into real trouble, especially if you say anything negative about past employers, but even just because it takes up too much time and puts you on the back foot.
What you have to do instead is create a “career narrative”. A career narrative is a consistent and coherent story that makes sense out of your career, and most importantly makes the job for which you are interviewing the next logical chapter of the story.
The thread for your narrative will vary from individual to individual - the quest for knowledge, wealth, seniority, respect - but it must match with your reason for taking the job and with the ethos of the organisation you are applying for. At the end of the story you should be able to segue naturally into “and that is why I want to work for you and do this job.”
Questions welcome in the comments section.
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career change, interviewing | 
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Posted by Andrew
May 4, 2007
When a company is interviewing for a role, it is a process of ruling people out. They have seen that you have the right experience and skill set from your resume, now they want to know if there is anything wrong with you.
As a consequence, you want to do as little talking as possible during the interview. Create a good story to run with in the interview (and I don’t mean a fictional story, I mean a good narrative that the interviewer can buy into), and don’t stray from that story. Make sure all your answers are succinct, answer the question, and are consistent with your professional and personal brand. And most importantly, stop when you have answered the question!!! The interviewer will politely wait for you to finish, and some people interpret that as an invitation to keep talking…huge mistake…you will come across as an unfocused waffler who cannot understand a question. Also, you will eventually say something that the interviewer really disagrees with, and you will be culled from the shortlist.
Also, stopping talking will give the interviewer a chance to speak, and this is something that you really, really want to happen. In fact, some study, somewhere showed that interviewers are more likely to think that the interviewee was a good candidate if the interviewer did most of the talking. So encourage the interviewer to talk. Ask intelligent questions that the interviewer wants to answer. Ask the interviewer about their background. Ask the interviewer what they think is important for the role.
The more they talk, the less likely that you will be ruled out, and the more you can tailor your answers to the requirements and background of the interviewer.
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Posted by Andrew
April 27, 2007
When a recruiter is meeting with you, they are mostly trying to assess whether you are a placeable candidate or not. A placeable candidate is a candidate who will interview well, and take a job if offered. The quality of “placeability” is partly about how in-demand your skills and experience are, and you cannot do very much to influence their perception of this in the meeting. There are a whole lot of other factors influencing placability though, and how you conduct yourself in a meeting with a recruiter can have a huge impact on how much effort they put in to finding you a job.
A big part of placeablity is interviewing well. If you interview well with the recruiter, you will interview well with the line manager. All the standard rules apply. However there a few special recruitment agent questions to watch out for.
Why are you considering leaving/did you leave your current/previous job?This question has a lot of layers to it, and tells the recruiter a lot about you. If you answer that you don’t get on well with your boss, or that you don’t like your company culture, or indeed any negative reason, then the recruiter will assume there is at least a 50/50 chance that the problem lies with you rather than your situation. Your answer will say a lot about your view of the world, you have to avoid sounding negative or naive. Your answer will also give the recruiter some idea of how serious you are about considering other opportunities. If your reason doesn’t seem to make sense, or may be subject to changing circumstances, then your placeability will go down. Finally, if the reason you are leaving your current job would also make you unhappy in the job you are applying for, then obviously your placeability goes way down! Your answer should always be positive, and be focused on the opportunities and experience that you want to get in your next job and can’t get in your current job…even if the core reason is something like your employer closing their doors or cutting staff.
What were your achievements in your previous job/s?You absolutely have to prepare for this question by working out how to articulate your acheivements concisely and clearly. Make it clear how much you contributed individually to any group successes.
What are your salary expectations?This is a tricky question, as you don’t want to over or undersell yourself. The most appropriate answer is to tell the recruiter your current salary…if you are employed then this is your fall-back position and will give them a good indicator of what you would accept. If you are genuinely willing to take a salary cut for a great opportunity then this will raise your placeability…but you should only say so if it is true. If you are expecting an offer more than 10-15% higher than your current salary then this will substantially reduce your placeability unless the circumstances are very exceptional
When can you attend interviews?If you cannot make time for interviews during working hours then this may substantially reduce your placeability. Always be on time for interviews that recruiters set up for you. They are unlikely to give you a second chance, as it reflects very badly on them if their client is kept waiting.
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interviewing, using recruiters | 
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Posted by Andrew
April 26, 2007
A lot of professionals I meet with who have been struggling with issues around job search believe that they have some inherent value, which people are just failing to see.
Of course, everyone has value in a happy, warm-fuzzy feelings way, but in a professional context we do not have inherent value. Rather, as professionals our value is entirely defined by what we can bring to others. If you cannot create value, you have no value.
This may seem a little harsh, but it throws things into a nice stark relief. When you are being interviewed, you may be fooled by the fact that everyone is asking questions about you, into thinking that they want to know about you. No, they don’t. What they want to know is what you can do for them.
This applies in every professional context, so remember to go into every encounter thinking what you can do for your interlocutor…because that is what they want to know.
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Posted by Andrew
