The greatest executive resume in the world will do you no good if the person responsible for making the decision to hire never sees it. The executive candidate who identifies and gets to the hiring manager first is most likely going to be the winner, so make the extra effort to find and contact that person!
Read MoreThere really is no good reason for prospective employers to insist you reveal your salary requirements or history… You can “Just Say No” to demands for salary history information. As a matter of fact, recent court rulings in many states have made it illegal to ask a person’s last or current salary, primarily in an effort to combat gender discrimination through wage disparity.
Read MoreWhen you forward your resume to recruiters you know or send it via e-mail to a targeted group of recruiters you have identified, you may get one or more calls immediately, or you may experience total silence–at first.
Read MoreWondering what happens to your resume when you e-mail it to an executive recruiter as part of a job search campaign? Contrary to long-standing conventional wisdom, many recruiters are actually more receptive to receiving unsolicited resumes than used to be the case, and they do generate some good responses.
Read MoreOne of the most misunderstood aspects of executive job search among executive candidates seems to be the nature of recruiting firms and how they operate. I have addressed this topic on several occasions, but the fact that I continue to encounter clients who have major misconceptions regarding the recruiter community tells me that this is a message worth repeating: “Do not expect an executive recruiter to ‘market’ you!”
Read MoreRecruiters are finding good talent in a place that most executives would probably not even think about: Craig’s List. Many of you are likely familiar with Craigs List as an online community site where classified ads for furniture and housing, personal ads, and discussion forums are to be found. There are also jobs listings, but the surprise is that recruiters are using it as a primary resource for candidates.
Read MoreSeveral of my colleagues indicated that recruiters seem to prefer Word format for ease of editing and tweaking for the particular job order they are working on, which confirms my experience. A neatly formatted text document is also welcomed by most recruiters, but this does not mean doing a “save as” of your Word document to text and sending it as is!
Read MoreA retained recruiter typically will NOT recommend a candidate for interview for several positions at a time, whereas a contingency recruiter will. Retained recruiters normally work at executive level exclusively, while in general contingency recruiters also work extensively with more junior level candidates.
Read More“In my 16 years of headhunting, not once has an HR rep ever been the ultimate decision maker for any hiring outside of the HR department.” The bottom line in my view is the following: Where is the benefit to anyone on either side of the hiring equation—especially management and executive-level candidates—in meekly accepting the verdict of HR and quietly slinking away?
Read MoreSo now you know that all other things being equal, a candidate’s chances are far less than 50/50 that they will receive any kind of response at all when they submit a resume to a potential employer. Of course, “all other things being equal” is the operative phrase here.
Read MoreWhile it is true that many companies do retain these firms for their important high-level candidate searches, contingency firms, properly used, can be of great value as well.
Read MoreThe truth is that a high-caliber executive recruiter will learn about you through your reputation in your industry, previous and current peers, supervisors and subordinates, and from publications that quote or talk about you.
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