The best recruiters do not make idle telephone calls. When one calls you, you can be sure that the recruiter is doing one or more of these three things: (1) sounding you out as a possible candidate, (2) determining whether you might be a source-in other words, whether you can suggest a candidate or two for one of the searches the recruiter is handling, or (3) repaying a favor to a client, former client, prospective client, a prior placement, a fellow recruiter, a current candidate or a gadfly. Regardless of the recruiter's motives for calling you, do something on your end of the line to cause that recruiter to have good reason to either arrange a personal visit or make a mental note to keep in touch with you. In brief, don't squander the opportunity to make yourself memorable to that headhunter.
Let's take the optimal situation. One of North America's top recruiters is calling you. She's phoned you after reading your resume, which had been referred to her by the firm's research department. You had written her after discovering that she specialized in your line of work. Your recruiter passes along some other background on the opportunity, and it all sounds interesting to you. You know you want a personal interview, but you also know that you do not want to sound overly eager.
Be savvy but not coy. You don't have to go through the normal ritual of determining whether the headhunter calling you is reputable if she's profiled in my book, The New Career Makers. In fact, she's one of the top 2 percent in the business. After her first description of the job to you, she will have some reasonably probing questions to ask you over the telephone. She needs to be as sure as she can be that she doesn't waste her time or her client's dollars on a very costly face-to-face interview.
Be prepared to respond to questions that attempt to fix the current scope of your responsibilities and the structure and nature of your current or past employer. If you've listened well when the recruiter first described her need to you, you'll pick up on some of the key background and personal experience factors the recruiter must find in your background in order to qualify you as a viable candidate. Headhunters are working from what they call a specification, or candidate profile-an outline that highlights the must-have and desirable-to-have features in a prospect's background.
Further along in the conversation your recruiter is going to inquire about your willingness to relocate, whether children and a working spouse are involved, and at least some idea of what your compensation requirements are going to be. Make no mistake about it-your recruiter is still just sizing you up against the job specifications. She'll also ask you such delicate-to-deal-with questions as why you're looking for a new position and, if you're currently out of work, the names of your most recent superior and others who know your work and circumstances. Obviously, it's wise that the reason you give for being between jobs-or "on the beach," as the recruiters put it-jibes with what your boss says. And you can be quite sure that your recruiter is going to run a reference check on you with your last superior before having you visit for a personal interview.
I hope you win your interview, and I wish you good luck with it. There is one tip I might offer: if your interview happens to be with one of the top recruiters profiled in my book, it would be smart for you to review the recruiter's profile before you make your visit. That way you might avoid the rather awkward moment that I experienced a few years ago with a job seeker who wanted to leave me with a nice personal touch. The interview happened to be in the fall, during football season, and he smiled broadly at me as he was exiting my office. Then he suddenly thrust out a big hand and chanted, "GO BIG RED!" I was momentarily stunned. Then it dawned on me. I had graduated many years ago from the University of Nevada. He had apparently misread my school somewhere as the University of Nebraska. Oh well; it was a nice try. Both schools do start with "Ne."
Cultivating a Long-Term Relationship with Recruiters
As anyone who has ever been the recipient of a pink slip could tell you, the best time to start looking for a job is before you have to. So perhaps you're one of the very fortunate who still has a job, but you're not happy or fulfilled in it. Or maybe you're still hanging on as a middle manager in some organization that has not quite flattened its organizational structure enough yet to compress you into escape velocity. But you can see it coming and you want to prepare for the worst.
It's never too soon to start building that all-important relationship with North America's top headhunters. Once again, you must start with the identification of the right executive recruiters-those whose recruiting interests coincide with your own employment interests. It's a matter of creating your personal target list of recruiters to cultivate, as outlined earlier in this chapter. Then comes the ongoing process of becoming known to the right recruiters and helping them create a file on you that causes them to call you on every search they do that is in your field of interest and aspirations.
The first step, of course, is getting your well-crafted resume into the hands of the right recruiters. Your cover letter with a compelling handle helps you accomplish this critical step. Maybe the first call-back from a headhunter will be right on target. But chances are better that it will be about a job in which you neither would fit nor be interested. Let's say your call is from a recruiter who is looking for the new general manager of the Detroit Athletic Club. You happen to be managing one of America's top country clubs. You know how difficult it is today to run a successful city club. You also have the wisdom to realize that with the dues deductibility issue and the major shift in member lifestyles, city clubs of all types are having significant difficulties. An then, of course, there is the issue of working in downtown Detroit. Besides, you like to get in an occasional round of golf, which you can do on Mondays at your current club. Do you just say, "No, Mr. Recruiter, I'm not interested," and hang up? No; instead, you put your mind in gear to help that headhunter with a suggestion.
A light bulb goes on in the recesses of your memory, revealing seldom-used but hopefully useful facts, and out comes a response like this: "I'm sorry I'm not quite right for your search, but I do have a suggestion of a possible candidate for you. Mortimer Club head and I went to school together at Michigan State, one of the top hotel and restaurant schools in the country. He is also a CIA graduate. Incidentally, that's the Culinary Institute of America, not the less reputable outfit you might be thinking of. He's been at the Cosmopolitan Club in New York for the last twelve years. He runs one of the best city clubs in the country. He grew up in Michigan, and I know he would like very much to get back there. Would you like to know more about him?" Of course your recruiter friend would.
Or maybe your response is along these lines: "Try as I might, I don't have a single individual to suggest to you as a candidate, but I can give you the names of a couple of terrific sources. They manage top athletic clubs themselves, so they aren't recruitable, but they know everybody who ever ran a gourmet dining club or bounced a hard rubber ball off the wall of a squash court." In addition, you might know of the various club management journals and the association to which virtually all club managers belong. Whatever you do, leave that recruiter whom you have worked so hard to cultivate with food for thought-and a nice warm feeling that you are a very worthwhile contact. Your name and phone number will go into the recruiter's workbook as a good source, someone for him to call again.
Then, as fate would have it, a week later you bump into Sally Donovan, the manager of your own city's athletic club. She had heard about the search at the Detroit Athletic Club and told you that she might have some personal interest but didn't know who to contact. You promptly follow up with your recruiter friend by phone with Sally's home telephone number and some complimentary comments of your own about her. By this time most of the top recruiters will very likely have started a file on you even if you have not yet become a candidate on any of their searches.
Now it's a matter of gently but regularly stuffing the file folder with your name on it in that headhunter's office. You're in no immediate hurry to make a change, but you do want to know when an exceptional opportunity opens up. Your recruiter will not only add items to your file but will also store key elements from your background in a computer. This data will be available for years to come not only to that recruiter but to all other search consultants in his firm and those in branch offices.
Don't be concerned if no acknowledgments come from your recruiter. Keep adding to his file on you. Some always-helpful items are news releases or publications that talk about your activities or clippings from a trade journal that has an article referring to you or a new program you've launched. If you happen to be with a government agency, school system, college or university, hospital, hotel or association, the same logic holds. Take advantage of articles and stories that talk about you and what you are responsible for. Please do not send complete curricula that you've worked on for your high school, a copy of the Federal Budget for the United States of America with a paper clip on the page that refers to your department in a footnote or the membership directory for the University Club-copies of each of which I received in the past.
Annual reports can be good or bad. Unless you are president, chairman or the vice-president of communications responsible for its production, do not send the full report. Select a summary page from the financials or those pages from the president's letter or from the report somewhere that refer to you and your department. Annual reports pollute headhunter's offices and take up valuable space in the circular files and recycling bins already overflowing with the monsoons of ill-directed resumes raining down upon America's recruiters.
Periodically, it's wise to update your resume and be sure you get it in the hands of every executive recruiter you've been able to build a relationship with. Try attaching a short note to it that says something along these lines: "Just thought you'd like to add this most recent resume of mine to your file. My current compensation is a base of $75,000 with a bonus paid last February of $15,000.1 remain keenly interested in a general manager position in a top country club in the desert."
Now what's this we hear? You've won election to your local school board. Or you've been selected for the board of the Club Managers Association of America. That is major news for your file, so send it in. Membership, but especially leadership, in your association is one of the most important credentials you can add to your attributes in furthering your relationship with those on your target list. One of the most well-worn directories in any recruiter's office is the Encyclopedia of Associations. Few searches neglect contacting the leadership of trade associations or professional societies. The fact that your peers think enough of you to elect you to a leadership role in your field of work is one of the very strongest credentials any professional can have. Broadcast it.
In the final analysis, what every smart professional is really after is visibility with those recruiters on your target list. Very few of us become renowned in our own field. We can dream about writing an article or a book or making a scientific discovery of great merit that catches everyone's attention. But most of what goes into our file with our headhunter friends will be a steady accumulation of little things that eventually add up to a significant record of achievement. Never forget that visibility can also be acquired by what Daniel Patrick Moynihan has called "creeping gradualism." It may not be as exciting as achieving instant fame, but it often proves far more enduring.
As one might expect, some things will go into your file that you have not provided or even knew that your recruiter contact had. The headhunter you're out to win over will have made a note and put it in your file if you were abusive, devious, or pushy with his secretary. Or maybe he noticed that you wore short socks to your interview with him or that you bathed in so much cologne that he got a headache from it and couldn't work the rest of the day. Like many firms, my own has a form in which we evaluate every person we meet on such subjective factors as presence, energy level, listening ability, language facility, and many other personal factors. This too goes into your file, although you will never see it. So will copies of the reference reports the recruiter does on you, including verification of your college degree-the single biggest item of candidate fabrication today, and yet one of the easiest things for employers to check.
Perhaps you "forgot" in your resume to add a former employer you had for less than a year; a recruiter from your target list may discover this and add the information to your file. Or you might have made a "simple error" in calculation and overstated your earnings by 30 to 40 percent. When the recruiter uncovers that tidbit, another entry goes into your file. A cardinal rule for every headhunter is no surprises for a client. Your headhunter's entire reputation as a top professional rests on thoroughness. The best sniff out every fabrication.
It is hard for me to confess this, but even these top search consultants have an endemic weakness. They are not very forgiving when a job seeker takes advantage of them. It is difficult for headhunters to build a relationship with a client and then win a search from that client. Recruiters do not take it kindly when a job seeker lets them down in a way that jeopardizes the relationship between consultant and client-or, worst of all, ends it.
Two of the most common embarrassments that recruiters suffer through are (1) when a candidate's spouse or family will not move after the breadwinner has proceeded all the way to the altar and received an offer, and (2) when a candidate has received an offer from a new employer and then used that to extract a counteroffer from the old employer. Although black balls tend to take up too much file space, Avery Label makes a nice flat black dot that applies very neatly to an individual's file folder. Only the most foolish would risk that censure with any of the top recruiters. Many a professional who has taken advantage of a recruiter has discovered that even elephants don't survive as long as the memory of a headhunter wronged.
Fortunately, nothing like this is going to happen to you. You are out to develop the most positive possible relationship with the headhunters in your future. You know that every placement of these top recruiters at one time was nothing more than a name on the recruiter's long list of initial possibilities on that search. Somehow they prevailed over all the others. Each had a file started on them in that recruiter's office, probably years before they were placed. They very likely had files in other recruiters' offices too. Some had been placed by headhunter after headhunter throughout their rise to the top.
Many of America's top executives in every field of work have never really hadto look for a job, even though they've had a number of different employers. The opportunities always came to them. In an increasing number of instances, the bearers of glad tidings were the headhunters they had met and cultivated along the way. Wouldn't it be nice to have the feeling that even while you have your head down working away at your current grindstone, someone out there is constantly sensitive to you and your aspirations? Your recruiter friends would be minding your career for you.
Even after you've succeeded in taking a new position with the help of a recruiter, don't just close the door on a relationship that took a long time to build and to pay off. A good recruiter will stay in touch with you, but that recruiter is more interested in hearing from you periodically. A time may even come when you can reward your friend by passing along a search yourself. Just because you've been placed doesn't mean that your file goes into storage. Although no reputable recruiter is ever going to recruit you away from the client organization where you were placed, the world of employment takes strange turns. Who knows when you may need your hard-earned friend again? Make that friends- you will want to keep in touch with all of those on your target list.
Cultivating the right headhunters can be the wisest investment you'll ever make-one that pays dividends for a working lifetime-and costs you nothing more than postage and an occasional phone call.
