“Purple squirrel” is recruiter-speak for a candidate whose qualifications are rare and for which a recruiter can charge a higher fee to the company due to the difficulty of the search. When sourcing candidates, recruiters will look first at resumes posted in the last 1 to 2 weeks and will generally not look at older resumes, unless they are searching for that elusive purple squirrel.
Read MoreAn article entitled “25 Things You Should Never Include on a Resume” published a few days ago over on HR World’s blog made me chuckle. Not because most of the items on the list seemed so unbelievably obvious and stupid for a job candidate to include in a resume, but because of the fact that I have actually seen most of them at one time or another in the thousands of executive resumes I have reviewed over the years.
Read MoreThey all have the exact same tactic. Fear. They build fear about the career situation, tell you the resume is horrible and then they have the answer. It’s important to realize that these firms are NOT recruiters. They are retail outtplacement or direct mail firms.
Read MoreCareerHub, a group careers blog I co-author, has released a series of free eBooks featuring advice from some of the country’s top career experts. The latest is on networking–which is a valuable skill whether you are currently in the job market or happily employed. As one of several co-authors of this eBook, I know that it contains valuable information from the first page to the last.
Read MoreIs online networking something that you as an executive need to be involved in as part of your career management strategy? All the statistics seem to show that career transition and advancement for the executive is most likely going to occur through networking or referral, …
Read MoreAccording to ExecuNet, now may be the best time in the last 15 years for executives to launch a search for a new position. … For quite some time it has been the conventional wisdom that an executive could expect to wait at minimum one month for every $10,000 of annual compensation, which of course for the $120K executive meant a long year of searching and for the $300K+ executive painted a pretty discouraging picture.
Read MoreBe aware that any documents you may be forwarding in connection with an employment opportunity (executive resume, cover letter, etc.) that were created on Word 2007 software (which is the version bundled with Windows Vista Operating Systems) CANNOT be opened on another computer that does not have Word 2007.
Read MoreHackers successfully breached security at Monster.com this week in one of the largest such online incidents in recent history, stealing personal information on more than 100,000 job candidates who had posted their resumes on the site.
Read MoreOnline job search has truly revolutionized career transition in many ways, and I have personally witnessed many success stories of those who have leveraged job sites to identify leads, win interviews, and land great positions.
Read MoreAre you using the Web as just one item (I hope) in your comprehensive executive job search toolkit? If so, the following rankings of the most popular websites gathered by Weddles will interest you.
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!”
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