I am a recruiter. Recruiter, headhunter, talent-acquisition specialist, whatever. Although, that last one seems to mostly apply to modeling firms and people who scout for commercials in Wal-Mart. I recruit professionals for a living.
Luckily, I work for a recruiting startup based out of the San Francisco Bay Area. It is a visible-tattoos and flip-flops sort of office. I doubt I would have lasted this long (one year and counting) at one of the big recruiting agencies; nor "in-house," unless I really liked the company. Not to mention, commissions-based work rules for part-time workers. I make an okay living, and am always rested and eating well. I get to do things I actually enjoy, like pursue a career in writing. I let my gym membership expire, since I do not need to make up for spending most of my waking life sitting on my ass.
Nonetheless, I have put in a more than a couple hours in this field. I would not be opposed to continue working as a recruiter in the future, even if it means making coffee and combing my hair at six in the morning. Maybe.
Here we go...
A Novice Recruiter's Advice and Insights for the Workforce:
Recruiters are the gatekeepers to much of your future earnings. Not enough can be said about good connections and hard work, but your application to a good job will very likely fall into the hands of a recruiter at one point or another. For a big leg up in the business world, learn why they exist and what they do.
Hiring Managers do not sit down and look at hundreds and hundreds of resumes. This is something I was told a lot in high school: that you need to stand out because there is no way the hiring manager, who needs to go through 500 resumes and spends .3 seconds on each, will notice you otherwise. This is a boldface LIE. For professional roles that require skills, experience, education and pay above minimum wage, hiring managers look at five to forty resumes for any one position. It is the recruiter's job to actually read hundreds of resumes a day, pick out the best ones, then verify that they are true. Your resume is meant to impress recruiters as much as hiring managers. It is your proven abilities to deliver results and your capability to talk about them that impresses hiring managers.
That "one-page" resume rule only applies to actual made-of-trees paper. I have seen as many fifteen-page resume tomes as the next recruiter, but hear me out. The truth is, so much of what we do is on computers, is on Monster and LinkedIn and Indeed, that we do not mind a four or five page resume as long as it is relevant. Recent graduates may do well to stick to the one-page rule. After you have a page's worth of actual experience, take off that paragraph-long description of your duties as a sorority sister or doing beach clean-up in high school.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) should be the goal of your basic resume. This, too, is because so much recruiting happens on the internet these days. SEO is evidence of a shift in the industry since the days of old-school headhunters thumbing through phone books and lying through their teeth just to get some sexy contact information. Most recruiting today is done online via the information candidates post there, and is found by doing newfangled boolean searching. If you have used Salesforce or Oracle, know a coding language, or had an internship at an enormous corporation, put it on your resume! Spell it correctly! Multiple times, if possible!
Do not be cute, unless you are a video game developer. I will never work with a writer who calls him or her self a "wordsmith." Do not use exclamation points either, ever. You get one per year. I realize I used three in the last paragraph, but this is a blog entry, not your financial future. Do not use Comic Sans or Lucinda Handwriting. Do not use the words "I," "you," or anything that otherwise deviates from the third person. The only people who can help themselves by being creative with their resumes are graphic designers, marketing professionals, and interactive media artists.
Never stop learning- formally, if possible. It makes me sad to see "Classes toward X major" from the nineties on resumes. I know life happens, but try your very best to finish what you start. And after you finish, start something else. Learn how to do pivot tables and vlookups on Excel. If you are an engineer, learn the latest version of Pro-E even though your current role uses Solidworks. If you are in IT, get that Windows 7 Certification (I know it costs like $150 and only lasts two years, but that thing is in demand). If you are unemployed, have something to say for it. Write a book. Volunteer. Go for that CPA or CPM certification.
Learn what a screening is. Recruiters perform screenings, which are not interviews. In a typical screening, we get a lot of the basic stuff out of the way for a hiring manager. We make sure you are okay with the commute, the contract length, the pay rate, and things like that. We assess if there will be issues with background checks or drug screenings. On a higher level, we try to assess that you hit every part of a job description. Where a hiring manager may be able to talk to a Software Development candidate about C++ in-depth, we will merely try to find out how much you have used it and where. Screenings are a little bit more casual than interviews, but that does not mean you should curse or yell at your kids during one.
Like sales, a solid piece of a recruiter's income is in commissions. If a recruiter screens you and wants to submit you, remember they have a stake in your success too. If you get hired, part of the fee the recruiting company charges for its services goes to the recruiter (or recruiters) who found you. Good recruiters want to build good relationships with good candidates.
We delete your contact information. I did not know this, but now it seems sort of obvious. We contact you, and we do not want anyone on our clients' ends contacting you and stripping us of that markup for our services, which is where our profits and commissions come from. So, we take your contact information, references, and any other phone numbers or emails off your resume before sending it out to the hiring team.
It is a hard, cold, racist, sexist, and age-discriminating world out there. This merits an entry of its own. My impression is that it is a lot of passing the buck: recruiters blame hiring managers, hiring managers blame recruiters, liberals blame the culture, conservatives blame anyone who speaks with an accent.
It is a hard, cold, judgmental world in smaller ways too. A lot of recruiters hate seeing holes on resumes, but some would rather not know you were a homemaker for five years. For some reason, it is okay to talk at length about your church or religious activities in just about any industry, but you most often need to be reserved about volunteering at gay pride parades, feminist conferences, and just about anything political.
Be up-front with your background, but do not disparage who you are. I hate calling someone about a junior accounting position and hearing them say "No one likes me because I'm just in accounts payable/ have no corporate experience/ no Bachelor's degree, boo hoo." Do not lie, but do be confident! Would I, as a recruiter, feel good about you representing me in an interview?
Looking to immigrate to the United States? Be wary of exclusively corp-to-corp firms. Skilled professionals moving to the United States should advertise those skills, but need to be aware of how many entities want to take advantage of them. H1B Visas, or any variant on company sponsorship, does not guarantee an eventual green card. It may guarantee money, and more employment. Unfortunately, a lot of that employment will involve paying professionals at less than half of their profession's market rate.
Be wary of any recruiting firm that hesitates in its transparency. Look, recruiting firms exist for a lot of reasons. So corporations do not have to pay certain taxes by having all their workers on payroll. To take advantage of the uninformed. Sometimes, to make a profit providing a service that is in demand via honest means. If a recruiter calls you but refuses to answer any of your questions, politely ask why.
The recruiting industry is big and diverse, but a good relationship with a good recruiter pays off. The absolute majority of the time, an honest recruiting firm that contacts you has incentives aligned with your own. They only really get paid if you get a job, and the more you make, the more they make. Unless you are a direct hire, they are also working for your future payroll department. Finally, they will continue to find work for you if you are friendly and perform well.
This is already many times longer than I meant for it to be, but I would not mind writing more if this subject interests anyone.
If you were to have any take-away from this piece, have it be this: we are not freaking telemarketers! Give us the time of day, in a kind matter, and we can either help your career or never bother you again. What else could you want from a stranger cold-calling you?
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