Agency recruiters do want you to get the job- that is the way they get paid, and in many recruiting firms, the ONLY way they get paid. They are trying to get your resume to the point where it gives them the best chance of getting the interview, and then they should coach you on how to interview to get the job. If they are a good recruiter, they can help you immensely. they can also deny you consideration for opportunities if they feel like you were an ass to them.
As far as working with multiple recruiters at the same time, be very careful. Unless they tell you specificall what companies they are submitting your resume to, I would avoid them. They will send your resume anywhere and everywhere, and are basically slinging crap against the wall to see what sticks.
Off the rant stool for a minute, many HR departments have no idea how to fully utilize their databases. There are a number of them where the HR database and the recruiting database are incompatible. Many recruiters don’t even bother going back in there records more than a few months to look for people, since traditionally people have moved on in that time frame anyway.
Seriously. It occured to me last time I updated my resume that of all my former employers, only HALF still existed and and not a single “supervisor” still worked for the company I worked for them at.
And you know your resume will get shit-canned if you leave off the “address” if your said demolished beachside cafe.
Bolding Mine
Magic words. So you’re serious? Companies use the same method to hire employees as I used to let friends into my fort when I was 6? :rolleyes:
To be more precise: Agency recruiters want to place you in one of their job listings and they want you to stay at that job for the length of the trial period (e.g. 30 days). Beyond that, they could care less.
I think these two distinctions are important because they highlight the fact that an agency recruiter is not interested in your career or getting you the perfect job or even getting you the best job offer. They are interested in placing you in one of their accounts as quickly as possible. If they don’t have any openings at your level, but have openings below your level they will try to place you there. The worst will bully you and attempt to scare you into going along with the position. And of course, after your trial period is over, some of the agency recruiters will try to place you again somewhere else.
It is analogous to a real estate agent that is helping you buy a home. If they are not getting paid by you, then they really aren’t working for you. I should mention that like buyer’s agents for homes, there are executive recruiters that you can hire directly. Both of these types of agents have your interests a little closer to heart.
I’m in the same situation. My last two jobs are OK because they were with large companies and I’m still on good terms with management from them, but that summer job I had at that local tourist attraction 10 years ago? I can barely remember the name of the place, nevermind the Under Secretary For Assistance To Guest Relations whom I was supposedly reporting to but never actually spoke to or saw again after they hired me.
When I was working in management and had to hire people, my main interest was “Do they have skills relevant to this position?”, “Where are they working now (or previously)?” and “Is their resume spelt properly and readable?” The more “Buzzwords” on the resume, the less likely I was to put it in the “Possible” file.
To me, “Buzzwords” say “I have no real skills in relation to this job but I want to sound cool anyway”. Also, in a retail context, they say “I cannot communicate simply and clearly with customers”, which is definitely going to be an issue…
I think there’s a difference between “Key Words” and “Magic Words”. The trick is working out which is which, IMHO.
Exactly. This is one of the reasons why I have a passionate hatred for recruiters.
Recruiters see you as their product. They want to sell their product to someone else. They are not looking out for your best interest, and will in fact lie to you and waste massive amounts of your time with absolutely no consideration for you whatsoever.
The last time I dealt with a recruiter, I responded to a job ad that I was specifically qualified for with a salary I would have been excited to get. I submitted my resume and cover letter online, and was contacted by a recruiter saying that I sounded qualified for the position. After taking off a significant amount of PTO to go through their interviews, tests, and other hoops, I was finally told, “Ok, we’re done, and we’ll let you know if we get any clients that we think you’d be a good fit for. We don’t have anything like that right now, but we may in future.”
I said, “Well, what about that job listing I responded to? Is it possible for me to get an interview?” This had been, of course, why I had hung on this long, and I had repeatedly shown my specific interest in this job throughout the process.
After about ten minutes of evading and hemming and hawing, the recruiter admitted it was a fake job ad. There was no client company; they had written it themselves, and posted an “example” salary (note: not typical, average, etc., just something they made up to sound impressive).
The other recruiters I have dealt with have always tried to put me in entry-level cubicle-mill positions in my field that pay a few bucks above minimum wage with no benefits and make me work some ridiculous schedule of overnights and weekends. When I say, “I make $10k more a year, work Mondays through Fridays during business hours, have health insurance and 401k, get every holiday off and have my own office, why on earth would I possibly want this job?”, I usually got a huffy or bullying response. One person just kept telling me to come in for the interview, or they couldn’t recommend me for any other jobs. I said “If you’re only interested in sending my information to jobs that I don’t want and are two steps down from where I am, then please, don’t contact me.”
Maybe they just get used to dealing with desperate people who will go along with anything they say. Plus, my experience from the company end is that most recruiters working for these recruiting agencies are inexperienced young people who are taught to use high-pressure sales tactics. In the end, I’ve done much better on my own and companies don’t have to pay a huge bounty to hire me.
Frankly, dealing with corporate recruiters isn’t much better. One company strung me along for five 90-minute interviews for five different jobs, after which I was told every time, “You’re great and perfect for the position, but we already have an internal applicant in mind.” It was clear I was just being put up by HR in order to meet some quota of number of people interviewed. If I hadn’t hated my old job so much, I wouldn’t have cooperated, but hope springs eternal, right?
I wish I could just always deal with hiring managers directly. At least that way it’s easier to get an impression if you are being jerked around.
I’ve never had to network to find a job; everything since 1974 (and there have been a lot) has come through the classified.
First of all, no one knows how to hire people. That’s a given. And most people – ever HR types – don’t realize that most people get hired because the person doing the interview likes them. That’s what you need to concentrate on – being personable, with an indication of enthusiasm and no fear of hard work.
Of course, you need to get the the interview. That’s where you have to understand another key fact: people don’t like to read resumes. And they probably aren’t going to read yours unless you give them a reason to.
That’s why you write a cover letter. That’s what sells you. Sound confident (but not conceited) and indicate enthusiasm plus an interest in helping the company you’re applying to. Start off positive. "I am writing to you in response . . . " is deadly; everyone else is saying the exact same thing.
Start with “With my experience in x, y, and z, I can do a first class job as Q to help your organization succeed.” Now they know you have experience, that you are confident of your ability, and that you are interested in helping them instead of them helping you. Starting like this will get you immediately on the list to be called back.
thinks about all the companies he’s seen/applied to that specifically say that they will NOT accept any application not through the online system
I hope they’re better about it. But probably not.
ETA: And to take a point from the OP, don’t “keywords” lose a lot of their effectiveness because everyone is using them because everyone is recommended that they use them? How does anyone know whether people “reading” these things like keywords from set A vs. set B?
In my experience HR is the biggest pain in the ass in the world. I will rarely consider taking an interview with an HR representative, they know almost nothing about my job, or the skills it takes to do my job. And I will never negotiate salary/benefits with an HR rep, if I’m shunted to them I will find employment elsewhere.
Again in my experience, they have been nothing but glorified secretaries and busybodies. If you see a dumb and arbitrary rule come down the pipeline, even odds are that it originated in human resources. To quote a movie, a senior HR person is “like the smartest kid with down syndrome”. If ever there was a place where the Peter principle prevailed it is in the land of human resources.
The last time I was hiring, I gave our internal recruiter a list of magic words to use to search through the zillions of resumes we get for people who were remotely qualified for the job. (My stuff is pretty specialized.) We iterated several times as I showed her the stuff that worked and didn’t work. Our internal recruiter was awesome.
Do you really think a hiring manager has the time to go through every resume the company gets, or that HR people would understand the position well enough to do so, even back in the days before most of them got laid off?
Do you mean an interview only with HR, or having HR talk to you during the interview? We did the latter, since hiring managers are not going to know the current benefits, and probably couldn’t be trusted not to promise something the company doesn’t give. I was a hiring manager, not an HR person, by the way.
As a former hiring manager and someone who got one job through a headhunter, my experience matches everything you say. I started hiring people back when I worked for Bell Labs, when there was money for HR.
I don’t know where you work, but in Silicon Valley the paragraph I left is bad advice. Almost no one here interviews in a suit, unless you are a new grad. I think it shows you don’t get it, and are not one of the in-crowd. But I suspect we are an exception to the more general rule.
Have you ever read the “Ask the Headhunter” column and web site?
So how does someone who is completely introverted and shy (meaning me or most of IT nerds) get into this networking bullshit? I don’t go to conferences, meetings, or junkets. I don’t ever talk to colleagues in my industry at all. I’m stuck here in the middle of the fucking night reading the Dope and other forums and don’t ever socialize. The job market is shit here as well, we have 11.5% unemployment and Portland is stuffed to the gills with computer nerds.
So how could I possibly start ‘networking’ if I don’t have a network? It’s like trying to get your first job, who wants you to have experience. But you don’t have experience because you don’t have a job. But you can’t get hired because you have no experience. GRHARA!!*@^@!@
Do you have any hobbies like cycling or photography or writing or painting or gardening or golf? You could join a club and meet people that way, and start to build up your network from there.
Oh yes they do. I saw an enormous change in the responses I got to my consulting resume after a kind, wonderful and efficient agent took the time to help me “magic word” and fluff it (it’s a sector where if one of your duties in a job was making color photocopies, you’re expected to have a line in the resume, within that job, saying “production of graphically enhanced documents”).
I never got a job through that specific agency but I know she still works there, I’ve sent them clients, and I’ve been in teams where we filled a hole through them after my recommendation.
Look at it this way: the people dealing with the admin side of recruiting don’t really know the positions; often they don’t have the time, the inclination or both to ask “so what does NMR mean?” So if they’ve gotten a request for “an NMR tech” they will bin any from “Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Technicians.”
I won’t answer emails or phone calls anymore from recruiters I don’t know. I know about 3 or 4 that are OK, but in the legal profession there are a lot or recruiters who are just outright liars or are incompetent.
One of my first experiences with a legal recruiter was when I received a follow-up call from a woman to whom I’d sent my resume. It was one of the bigger recruiting companies. After pleasantries and a few basic questions she asked me if I had any experience in contentious matters. I said “um…” and paused because I was thinking “Yes. Yes I do, if you’d even skimmed the resume you’d know that - it’s in the first paragraph and repeated a few times”. I didn’t know what to say and while I was silent she says, “What I mean is do you have experience in litigation?”
“Oh. She thinks I don’t know what ‘contentious matters’ means”. I’m stunned into silence again (I know better how to handle things like this now, but at the time I just wasn’t used to dealing with idiots). You can tell a lot about someone’s knowledge and experience by the expectations they have of their peers. Her expectations seemed pretty low. Like sea-level low. The rest of the interview did not go well for her.
All that shit you don’t do? You start doing it. You start going to conferences, meetings and junkets. You socialize with your colleagues. You go on LinkedIn or get involved in school alumni events. Being in IT isn’t really an excuse. And being “introverted” isn’t an excuse either. Being able to interact with other people is critical to any job.
Well you don’t need to be particularly smart to do HR work. It’s not rocket science and you can pretty much make it up as you go. But most companies have an HR rep and they are hard to completely circumvent. Even if it’s just filling out paperwork. And if you can’t convince the dumbest person in the company you deserve the job, how will you convince the hiring manager?
I’ve had one recruiter ask me these questions the other day and I thought she was an absolute moron. Would I tell you if I couldn’t pass a drug test? I realize they have a list but if you are going to mindlessly ask stupid questions you could glean off my resume, I’m probably going to think you are going to sound just as stupid to a client. “Um…do you have any management experience?” Um…yes, where it says I was a manager in my last two jobs.
The same way you approach any other task. Systematically and by following models.
I am not at all shy but I am introverted. I get along with people just fine, but I find it very tiring, like keeping my bicep flexed for hours at a time. Unfortunately, that is just too bad for me.
It is an extrovert’s world, and the sooner you accept that, the happier you will be.
“… ehm… we are speaking in English, would you say I speak it?”