I enjoyed your article. Thankyou for your advice and critique, in behavior management. I for one, can train people to write resumes, but then they are short a quality proofreader and editor. You do get hints though–Like…pop-up–what can YOU do to make your resume stand out to recruiters? Free resume reading—yeah right! Let’s rethink this one from the inside out. If I give more than I get, am I still worth something?

Dear Ms. Graziano:

Very interesting article. I would like to offer an opinion from the job seekers point of view.

I recognize that recruiters are working for the client and that they (recruiters) have the client and there own best interest in mind.

My experience with recruiters from all size firms has been less than a positive experience.

All of the recruiters (male & female) have little or no knowledge about the positions they are trying to fill.

For example, my field is purchasing. The majority of companies utilize some type of purchasing software packages to process purchase orders and

prepare purchase order reports. Since this one of the key job skills for this type of work, you would assume that the recruiter would be able to tell the

candidate what type of system the company utilizes. All of the contacts that I have had no idea of what type of system the company utilizes and would

they train a new person in the use of the system. Additionally, to get the recruiter to get an answer on the subject, you swear that you were asking for a

major trade secret. I could say more on the subject, but I believe I made my point.

Best Regards,
GM

Bravo! You’ve hit it right on the head.

I’ve recruited Recruiters for internal roles and also placed recruiters as a third party vendor and agree with you completely.

The only slight dispute is with time-to-fill ratios. Let’s face it, many hiring managers suffer from the “hurry and wait syndrome.” They want star candidates now but fail to interview them quickly and subsequently they go bye-bye.

OH and Rogue is spelled like this… no accident that as I am making the recruiting world wrong for typos I had one…..hmmmmm

Either way, opinions (including mine) are like books…. everyone writes one to sell their idea, and that is what makes the world go around.

For the record, to me being accountable and aware are different than micro managing. Fun to me is producing results. I work in the Silicon Valley the 1st thorugh the 15th every month, and it looks like by the phone number you are in the bay area. Can I buy you a coffee to learn more about your busienss as we do completely different things. Margo

As far as being replaced by someone who makes a lot less than we are currently making, I’ve been maintaining for years that if you’re basically a “resume slinger” (however creative, intelligent, and hardworking), the outsourcers are going to eat your lunch.(See below) You need to find an “angle”: something high touch, high value-add, being a niche-guru, maybe being able to convince folks that the sucky company you are recruiting for is better than the really sucky company they’re working at now. I can believe in a realistic scenario that within a few years a large percentage of us are no longer working in recruiting, but most of us who still work in it are doing quite well, because we’ve done just as Margaret says and kept our skills up-to-date.

Keith Halpern keithsrj@sbcglobal.net 415.586.8265
…………………………………………………..

I Active Sourcing & Calling/Resume Screening/Job Posting:
A. A recruiter with experience in dealing with clients and candidates in the required industry will be made available as per hours and time zone required by you.
B. VOIP-designated telephone line with a local number, voice mail and Caller ID.
C. 24/7 support for work classified as ‘urgent and top priority’.
D. Personal monitoring of progress by senior management on a daily basis.
E. Our fees: USD $2500 per month (based on a three month contract).
F. As an alternative, we can do searches for you on Monster, Hotjobs, Careerbuilder, for USD $85 per week per position or less for longer periods or more positions. You keep all the resumes and candidates to hire now or to develop as a pipeline for future needs. We can also do a variety of postings on the various *sites. If you are dissatisfied with the searches for any reason, we offer a **100% refund for the first 3 days.

II. Marketing for candidates or “on-the-bench” consultants that you need marketed and interviewed?
Our fees: USD $1500 per month.

III. Passive Sourcing for candidates not on any job boards and from other/competing companies?
Our fees: USD $1250 per month.

IV. Lead Generation for positions other companies have advertised on the Internet and compile information to enable you to map a market by skill, qualification, profession, region, industry segment, etc., so you may market your services more accurately to your prospective client companies.
Our fees: USD $1000 per month.

V. Interview Scheduling and Coordinating:
Do you need to schedule and coordinate interviews between candidates and the hiring team?
Our fees: USD $800 per month.

This is easily one of the best articles for Recruiters I have read in a while. It touches upon the most overlooked and ignored challenge our profession deals with every day – that Recruiter’s as a whole are not treating our profession with the respect and regard it demands. I am shocked as well at what I have seen.

In my business, even after an initial scrubbing is done on the total resumes we receive, I still screen out probably 80% of the resumes that get to my desk simply due to the issues you point out. And given the fact that most of us SHOULD be VERY good at knowing what makes a resume great, one that the Hiring Manager will look at and say to himself “I HAVE TO SEE THIS ONE!” and not “ehhh, he can do the job.”, we should also know the weight it carries in the decision process.

Sales people have business cards and product brochures, actors have head shots, and designers have portfolios. It is guaranteed that if they do not take the time to make those “marketing tools” as clean, professional, and on target as possible, they simply will not get the call, much less the job. The same applies to Recruiters.

Thanks for the post. I hope this one is read and printed enough times that it effects the size of my resume inbox.

This is right on the money – outstanding article.

One sentence I wanted to expand upon is – “This seems easy enough to understand; however, sometimes when we are too close to something, we catch a case of running on automatic, or a case of entitlement.” In my line of work, I’ve also noticed that working with a professional writer can circumvent this problem as we have no problem seeing the forest as well as the trees and enjoy marketing our client’s high value. Most people really struggle with bragging on themselves and their descriptions end up stiff and boring as a result.

This, curiously, is also true with many sales and marketing professionals, individuals trained in the art of persuasive communications. We are raised to be modest and it is often difficult to disconnect and look at oneself as a product.

I recommend considering professional services for crafting the best career documents possible. After all, we are experts at what we do just as you are in recruiting.

At the very least, everyone should submit their resume to a couple of writers for an evaluation and recommendations for improvement. Ask your networks to recommend someone reputable so you aren’t wasting your time with the “template” scare marketing tactics that some companies are known for.

Thanks for a valuable read. I truly enjoyed it and learned from your expertise.

GREAT article. I will use this in trainings in the future. every point was spot on, and this was, as someone mentioned, an article that unfortunately needed to be written!

…”If there are instructions to follow, don’t demonstrate what a rouge you are.” …

My metrics are solid, my requisition load is consistently high, my sourcing goes beyond job boards, and my vernacular is the recruiting language and I believe in behavioral-based interviewing. Email me if you want to talk about a virtual position. :)