Has anyone found a job this way, or hired someone this way?
I finally passed all the exams I need to pass and I’m qualified to work as a medical technologist in the States, but the job hunt isn’t progressing very quickly, probably because I’m Canadian and I’d need visa sponsorship to get my butt down there. My boyfriend gave my resume to a recruiting agency at a job fair in his area, and someone called me back today wanting to know more about my qualifications and what I’m looking for. It seems like this is good news - I mean, barely anyone’s called me back, so I’m cheered up by the simple fact that I was noticed - but are headhunters a good thing?
He sounded like he really knew his stuff, and I checked out his agency online and they seem to be legit. But I can’t help feeling like it’s a little too good to be true. He’s going to run around to all the hospitals, telling hiring managers that I’m great, and then negotiate a good salary for me? And it won’t cost me a thing?
What’s the catch? There has to be a catch, but I can’t really see it.
Well, not quite, if my experience is anything to go by.
He’ll put you in his database. Should an employer come to him asking for someone with your qualifications, he’ll pull your name out of the database. Then he’ll compare your qualifications against those that the employer wants. If there’s a reasonable match, he’ll set up an interview for you. If you impress the employer at the interview, they might offer you a job. If they do, negotiations will occur through him. Finally, you start work, shortly after which, the employer pays the headhunter his fee.
Simply put, he doesn’t run around on your behalf. He runs around finding people like you for his clients (that is, the employers who pay him), in case they someday might need somebody like you. In other words, you’re just part of the inventory to a headhunter.
Having said that, I will admit that I’ve got one or two jobs though headhunters. Most headhunters I’ve had experience with are pretty good, some are just okay, and a couple have been downright unscrupulous bastards. But I don’t think the one or two jobs I’ve received through them (compared to the hundreds of leads they have mentioned to me over twenty years of working) have justified the amount of time I’ve spent drafting new resumes at their request, meeting with them at their request, calling them at their request, and otherwise doing what they request when they request it.
If you’ve got your name in with a headhunter, great. But don’t sit back and wait for him to get you the job–be proactive, and continue your job hunt using whatever resources you have. If he comes up with something, look into it; but always have some initiative of your own on the go as well. That way, you will never be disappointed by the headhunter. Good luck!
I got my current job through a headhunter. I think he was just working off his inventory of listings, but he did find me what is pretty much my dream job. He didn’t do much negotiating for me, but honestly, their initial offer was good enough that I wasn’t going to cavil.
I have gotten professional jobs twice through them although I have literally talked to hundreds of them over the years. They often want you to meet with them and a surprising number of their jobs just go poof. There isn’t a real catch other than they can be sleazy and lying and manipulative. OTOH, no reputable one would ever charge you a cent and that has never come up. They get big bucks for matching a person. It can be in excess of 1/3 of year first years salary (charged to the company) although there are all kinds of arrangements. They just need a few matches to make a good living.
My advice is that it is Ok to work with a good one but drop the tricksters hard and without warning.
A TN petition is very simple; in a nutshell, the employer (or their law firm) just puts together a detailed written offer of qualifying employment in one of the TN categories, you show that you meet the education/experience requirements, you show up at a prefligth inspection point in Canada or at a designated land border inspection point, pay a nominal fee ($50 for adjudication of the petition plus $6 for an I-94), and you’re generally in like Flynn. Yay NAFTA!
I think there’s little to no risk in using one. The only thing is they can be annoying when they try to match you up with a bad fit. Their involvement in the process varies. Some simply call you up, tell you their client is interested, and set up the interview. Others will meet with you, talk about your background, find you a couple leads and prep you throughout the process.
Good advice given so far. I would offer this one - there are some that will act as if they are your normal headhunters. They will have you come in so they can talk with you about some exciting opportunity. Then they will tell you that they offer services to actively advertise you to major firms in your profession – for a fee – from you – up front, of course. Of course, all this comes about after they have wasted half your day.
:eek: I’d been looking into the TN visa, but I didn’t realize it was that easy! I suppose it makes things more complicated that I’m moving all my worldly belongings with me when I go, but I’ll look into the details of that once I start interviewing.
So, in general, headhunters aren’t all bad but I have to keep looking on my own. Which is good, because I was planning on doing just that. I was just worried that there was some hidden catch that I was somehow missing, and I didn’t want to get myself into a mess. He asked for a lot of information, including references, my salary history and salary requirements, and a list of the places I’ve already applied to (like I can remember - half of them were through Monster and other sites where you “click to apply”). I guess there’s no harm in sending that to him and seeing what he can do with it.
Any of you guys hiring in labs in the DC area, by any chance? I’m a good tech! I’m really, really good!
Most of the time, yes. In fact, sometimes I think it’s a little too easy. At my job, all immigration petitions are supposed to come through my team as soon as the offer is accepted, but every once in a while we get a recruiter who isn’t familiar with immigration issues, and the employee-to-be will just take the offer letter up to the border and process the TN without any help from us. Which is amazing, because the offer letters just have the job title (which may or may not vaguely resemble any of the allowable TN professions) and salary, along with a lot of typical “welcome to our wonderful company, provided you pass our drug test and background check!” mumbo-jumbo.
When I prep a TN petition, I put in a lot more detail than that about the job duties and how the person qualifies for the category. Also, it’s not fun to get a call a year later from the person’s manager wanting to know why the employee’s status expired, which, of corse, is because we didn’t know anyone had hired him. If we prep it, we track the expiration date, too.
Eva Luna, Immigration Paralegal at Humungo Company
You probably already guessed this, but I’ll add it anyway: he asked for such information to save everybody’s time (yours, his, his client’s) and to avoid embarassment (his and yours).
He doesn’t want to waste anybody’s time by trying to place you in a job that won’t pay what you want it to. So you probably won’t hear from him if he’s asked to fill a position in a company for which you might be a perfect fit, but which won’t pay what you are looking for. Your best approach here is to know what your field pays people with your experience, and come up with a suitable range to give him.
Neither does he want to embarass himself (or you) by trying to “sell” you to a company for which you might be a perfect fit, even including pay, if they have already rejected you after you applied to them on your own.
But don’t worry if you couldn’t respond fully. Most of the headhunters I’ve dealt with have been pretty flexible on such things–if you don’ have references handly or want to speak with them first, that’s OK. If you don’t know a salary range, they can often suggest something. If you cannot remember the companies to which you have already applied, that’s OK too. They deal with these things every day.
At my last job I did all my hiring through head hunting. We had to pay 25% of the salary, but if you quit or were let go before 90 days, we got some or all of that pay back. My understanding is, if that happened, the head hunters expected their client to make up for it (but I don’t know that for sure.)
Basically I always felt it was the head hunter’s job to do the qualifications for me. Occcasionally I would get one who just sent me anybody. When that happened, I stopped looking at the people that they sent.
I got my current job through a headhunter (and get ongoing calls from headhunters - including the one who placed me here to begin with).
They’re a reasonable resource - but like any single job hunting resource, you don’t really want to pin all your hopes on them.
A lot of companies (mine included) do some or all of their hiring through headhunters/agencies. They pay the headhunter/agency a premium (usually based on the yearly salary of the person placed), some or all of which is refundable if the placement fizzles in the first 90 days or so. What they get out of the deal is not having to wade through a thousand applicants to find the 100 who are at least minimally qualified before starting the interviewing. They pretty much pay the headhunter to do the wading and provide them with the short list of people who are at least minimally qualified and at least potentially what the company is looking for. After all, typically the company only has to shell out money if they actually hire from that headhunter - and quite often they’ll take say the top 10 picks from four or five different headhunters. This eliminates a lot of manhours of winnowing through the chaff.
The reason he asked all those questions was pretty well explained above.
