How to Choose a Recruiter Based on Recruiting Style

Every recruiter’s individual style has certain merits. However, there are recruiters who are truly exceptional at what they do. Choosing an exceptional recruiter is even more important in a bad market because the methods he or she uses determines if a candidate will find employment. As the CEO of a recruiting company, I am constantly astonished by the methods many use. We train our recruiters very carefully to recruit a certain way and we are always very aware of how they are performing. I have been in the recruiting industry for a long [Read more]

Don’t Be Persuaded by Others Who Tell You How to Do Your Job Search

Several years ago I was sitting at my desk and my secretary ran into my office. She told me the career services dean of a major American law school was on the telephone, demanding to speak with me, and that she was extremely angry. I took the call and the dean yelled at me for several minutes. She was angry about a letter I’d sent telling her I wanted to help her students with a service called Legal Authority, which assists law students and attorneys in getting jobs by doing mass mailings of their résumés to employers [Read more]

Be Committed to What You Do

I am about to provide you some of the strangest job search and career advice you will ever receive from someone who’s in the recruiting industry. One thing you should know about me is that I’m a straight shooter. If I see a pattern repeat itself enough times, I know it’s something that must be true. The pattern I’m about to explain to you is so powerful it could change your career forever. I know it has changed mine. The secret is commitment. When I was in my 20s, I had a girlfriend who watched soap operas. She was committed to those shows. She would watch them every single day, and if she could not watch them, she would record them. I’m ashamed to admit that I would sometimes watch the soaps with her when she would catch up on the missed episodes. The one thing I quickly realized about soap operas was they were all about commitment, in that none of the characters could commit. Each person on every one of the shows would get into a series of relationships, be tempted by others, get out of relationships, get married, cheat, and so forth. This was all the soap operas were ever about. The characters would inevitably suffer hospitalizations for nervous breakdowns or horrible accidents (caused by their distractions). Then there would be horrible, drunken, public confessionals, and all sorts of other malfeasance. Moreover, the people on these shows would always be led to believe that, no matter how good their situation was, the grass was greener elsewhere. Several years later, when I got into the employment market and started recruiting, I began noticing this same soap opera pattern with clients and coworkers. People would leave a job for any lapse, no matter how small. If they were criticized by an employer, I would see them start looking for another job. If someone heard another employer was paying more, they would send a résumé. If their current company or firm were getting bad press, they would start looking for another job. The reasons were innumerable. Some might seem proactive, while others were purely reactionary. One thing seemed clear to me: There was a major lack of commitment in the marketplace. People could not or would not commit themselves to a single employer, or to anything for that matter. Commitment is key in order to experience any form of success. You should not do any sort of job if your heart isn’t in it, and you can’t be committed. If you are a public relations intern, you need to be committed to that job. If you are the president of a corporation, you need to be committed to that as well. Not being committed to your career will only have negative consequences. Several months ago, I was speaking with a proofreader in my company, who resigned because she had found a better job across the street, one that paid more. The amount of the pay increase was minimal. I was actually prepared to give the woman a raise, a higher amount than her new job. In our meeting, the young woman explained she liked working for our company, but she needed to make more money because her husband had been unemployed for some time. I told her I was very sorry about this and asked how she became aware of the new job. She was a nice girl and I was interested in talking to her about this. The job she was doing at our company was very demanding and had required her to take work home at night, and to work very hard for the most part. In response, she told me she’d been freelancing for the other company for some time, and this was how she came to entertain a new full-time job offer. Once she told me this, I was no longer interested in trying to keep this person at our company. I knew immediately she was not committed to our company to the degree I wanted her to be. She was not someone I wanted on my team. Your boss (and we all have bosses) wants employees who are committed to what they do. Whenever I hear someone tell me they are just doing something until they can find something better, I know that person will never really succeed. When I see someone leave a job for trivial reasons, I also know that person will probably not reach the success for which they’re striving. When I see people watch the clock and leave at 5 p.m. every day because they are not really interested in what they are doing, I know those people will probably have mediocre careers. Commitment shines through, and it is easy to see when it’s not there. Each morning, I read the Wall Street Journal. I spend at least 45 minutes reading it cover to cover. Most of the stories in this publication are about Fortune 500 companies and other such organizations. At least once a week, I see something along these lines written there: John Smith started out as a repairman for a local office of X company in 1977. Today, he is CEO of the same company, with 18,000 employees in 26 countries and revenues of $4.2 billion last year… It’s not coincidental I keep seeing stories like this in the paper. Without a doubt, the people who are rising up in these situations are those who are the most committed. When they join a company they join and remain in a committed fashion. They show up to work. These are the kinds of people who grow within corporations. They usually keep their jobs, but if they ever lose a job they will find another job quickly. Their commitment attracts success. Being committed also has financial rewards. I have several people working for me on salary, whose incomes have consistently risen (more than tripled) in the past 3-4 years alone, because I know they are committed. I know their hearts and souls are in the job. I have recruiters working for our company who make 2-3 times more money than the average recruiter due to their level of commitment to the job. It’s very common for people who’ve held too many jobs within a short span of time to never find a job in their industry again. This happens to [Read more]

Watching for Waste in Your Job

Several years ago I was moving from one house to another, and I hired three day laborers from outside of a U-Haul branch, where I had rented a truck. One of the workers was a man with a strong European accent, who seemed very intense. He worked as fast as he could–practically running as he moved things out of my house and into the truck. He also frequently burst out in a paranoid type of shouting at the other two men, talking about how they needed to be more careful or they might scratch or dent a [Read more]

Concentrate on the Process, Not the Results

Some time ago, I was listening to a seminar about a company that was in the furniture business. This company decided that because it was doing so well, it should expand into the piano business, and also sell pianos. They went out and purchased a Steinway and took the piano apart to study all of the pieces. Then they made the same pieces themselves and built a piano. When they finally had built their own piano and tried to play it, nothing but thuds came out of the instrument. Discouraged, not knowing what they possibly [Read more]