How Do I Find a Recruiter?

Recruiters or headhunters tend to have a lot of jobs. At the same time, working with a recruiter or headhunter can be a mine field. It can be dangerous from the perspective that if you do not know what you are doing when you are dealing with a recruiter, it can cause a lot of problems. Many, many people have made serious mistakes using the wrong recruiter or using a recruiter when they don’t have to. Nevertheless, people get jobs through recruiters every day and using a recruiter can be a great thing. The number of recruiters out there is astronomical. In terms of recruiters that list themselves in directories and that sort of thing, there are at least twelve thousand who are known in their industries. In talk about recruiting firms, there are a couple of things you need to understand, besides the fact that they are different than employment agencies. The first thing that is important to understand is that, generally, large recruiting firms will be a little bit better than their smaller counterparts. This is a general rule and there is a reason for this. Larger recruiting firms typically have resources to research jobs or contacts in the hiring community. What do I mean by that, specifically? Typically, when you look at a larger recruiting firm, they will be better because they have more resources to serve you. Usually, this is because they are in the contingency space. When you use a larger recruiting firm, most of the ones out there–or the ones that you will be using and almost everybody uses–are known as contingency-based recruiting firms. Essentially, a contingency-based recruiting firm is one that only makes money if you are hired. They advertise and call people and try to find people to take a certain job for which they are recruiting. They do this with numerous employers. The more jobs a recruiting firm has, the better off you will be because you will have more opportunities to work in different places. When a recruiting firm gets larger, it is typically a sign that they are doing something right, which means they are having success in terms of recruiting. Larger recruiting firms also usually work out of offices and this means the people there are working and putting more into their jobs. Larger recruiting firms typically have the resources to take phone calls, speak with employers throughout the day, and reinvest into the business. Smaller recruiting firms do not have the resources to investigate all the jobs, typically. You might also find they don’t put in as much time on your job search because they don’t have the staff. These firms are often run out of people’s homes and typically are a bit limited. At the same time, some of the smaller ones may have highly developed relationships with a few employers. It is not uncommon for a very small recruiting firm or even a solo recruiter to have one or two very strong relationships with employers and those employers will consistently turn to them for jobs they have available. For the most part, however, this is not the case. In addition, small recruiters do not do a lot of advertising. To some extent, this limits the number of employers they can serve. Larger recruiting firms will do a lot of advertising, which increases the number of employers they can serve. There are drawbacks and strengths to each and you want to encompass them both in your search. However, the more reinvesting that is going on and the more jobs the recruiter has, the better it is for you. As you look at ads and look at recruiters, it is very important that you understand what type of recruiter you are dealing with. The two types that you need to be concerned with are the contingency-based recruiters, mentioned earlier, and retained recruiters. In the following sections, we’ll take a look at both. Contingency-Based Recruiters This means that the recruiter is only compensated if you are hired. This is why it is on a contingency. They typically charge an employer anywhere from 15% to 40% of your annual salary; sometimes more, sometimes less. In order to get candidates, the contingency recruiter will do lots of things. They advertise and cold call for candidates. Any way they can get candidates, they will. It is important to understand that most jobs you see advertised and most cold calls you receive are from contingency [Read more]

Finding Jobs Where There Are No Job Openings

I’m a businessperson. As a businessperson, I find I get a lot of phone calls from private equity companies and so forth throughout the day. I enjoy getting these phone calls, not necessarily because I’m looking for their investment, because it can come with a lot of strings attached. Rather, I’m interested in learning about their perspective of business. They tend to call about the businesses I’m running that are hot at the moment and doing well, where the revenue’s increasing. People in the investment banking business and private equity business are trained as a general matter [Read more]

The Best Way to Prepare for a Job Search and Interviews

Several years ago when looking for a position in Los Angeles I interviewed with numerous law firms. In virtually every one of these interviews I ran across an attorney who knew not one, not two, not three—but numerous, numerous attorneys in my current firm. If this is the case in a market the size of Los Angeles (and the market in Los Angeles is huge), I cannot even imagine what it must be like in smaller markets. For example, I am from Detroit. I grew up in a suburb of Detroit. When it came time for me to decide where to work after law school, when I started interviewing with firms in Detroit I knew many of the attorneys before I even arrived at the interviews–they were the parents of people I grew up with. The following are my suggestions for the best way to prepare for a job search and interviews: 1. Know you are always being watched, observed and judged When I was in high school I remember that one of the best looking girls in my school was known to be a prude and someone who would date boys but never let anything all that exciting happen. She was also a star athlete and a student counsel leader and a very respected student. My parents were divorced and lived about an hour apart. I lived with my father. The funny thing is that this same girl [Read more]

10 Powerful Lessons from a Turkish Rug Trader

Several years ago I was staying at a beautiful hotel on the beach on a small Greek island.  The hotel was full of young people in their mid-20′s who appeared to be having the time of their lives.  I had chatted with the receptionist several times during that week when I was at the hotel.  The receptionist was my age and very attractive.  She had a boyfriend who would sit in the lobby and chat with her at night. I think she was very surprised by the fact that I kept coming home alone each evening.  When I would walk through the lobby each [Read more]

Robin Hood and Appealing to an Employer’s Noble Motives

I grew up in a suburb of Detroit and went to school with several kids whose parents were in the Detroit Mafia. I would name them but to be completely honest I am afraid that if I did I might turn up dead. I do not want to upset these people with any slight–no matter how insignificant. I know they were legitimate members of a mafia family not just because when I was growing up everyone talked about it, but because years later when I started working for the Federal Government I met a US Marshal who told me all [Read more]

The Dangers of Getting Jobs Through Friends

Men are more ready to repay an injury than a benefit, because gratitude is a burden and revenge a pleasure. “Oh, I already have a friend there. I’ll just contact him.” In the job market, it’s one of the more common things we hear after informing a job seeker that a certain employer has a job opening. There is a lot you need to consider before you decide to apply to a job through a friend or relative, or take a job working for a friend or relative. First, it is exceedingly rare that a friend or [Read more]

The Kick-Ass Marketing Secret of the Most Successful Job Applicants and Employees

I have been going to conferences about one thing or another at least a couple times a year for the past several years. I have spent thousands of dollars attending marketing-related conferences. If I go to one more conference where someone talks about USPs (Unique Selling Propositions) I will probably get up and leave. I am going to teach you in the next few minutes what the best marketing minds in the world would charge you thousands of dollars to tell you about how to market yourself. You are going to know how to position yourself for incredible success—in life and in your [Read more]

The Godfather, a First Google Employee, Steve Balmer and Microsoft

A few months ago I had dinner with one of Google’s first employees. How he joined Google was a long and convoluted story that had more elements of luck than I can ever recount. He had been working in a midsized town in relative obscurity and at a fairly low level when, through a series of making the right choices and one random string of events after another, he was hired at Google. Early, early Google. He found himself sitting in a room with less than 15 people who were  Google’s [Read more]

You Will Succeed in Your Job and Job Search When You Are Concerned With Giving and Not Taking

The quality of our lives, in many respects, is determined by our working lives. Being able to enjoy our jobs and being able to get jobs is something that is incredibly important. A job is not just about earning a living; it is about forming a relationship with an institution, or a group of people, and being supported by that organization. For example, the organization may provide you with a good outlet for your skills and give you work you enjoy. In your work environment you will also have the opportunity to come into contact with, and [Read more]

Create Rules that Make You Feel Successful, Not Unsuccessful

I attended a private high school named Cranbrook-Kingswood. There was a lot of competition to get accepted. A couple of years before I started there, the founder of Little Caesar’s Pizza, Mike Ilitch, made a large donation to the school with instructions to build an indoor hockey rink. Mike loved hockey, and his son had also been very good at the sport. I believe he may have also “required” the school, as part of his gift, to have an exceptional hockey team. The school went out and recruited the best hockey players from all over the [Read more]

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