Why risk being a cooked goose like Candy? After all, the recruiter specializes in looking at opportunities for you, very much like a Real Estate Agent when you search for a new home. Therefore, its not necessary to use your own precious time when you could continue to earn a living in your own area of expertise. Now, if you are currently unemployed, much of the following will not apply-and try to not get depressed while reading it. However, if you are employed, stay with it! Before buying into some myth that you are better off pursuing a job "full-time," consider that:
1. A hiring organization always values something another employer has more than something it can get free. Call it human nature or whatever, but if some-thing free is offered at your door, don't you wonder why? Companies do. I can't tell you how many times I've been asked "But why isn't he working?" Fortunately, in today's candidate-driven market (meaning many more jobs available than quality people to fill them), this particular problem is generally not a death knell. Because companies are in such dire need of talent, they are more accepting of a candidate's reason for leaving their last job. Ironically, in less robust economic times, employers are even more emphatic about not considering those who are unemployed. They assume that there must be something wrong with the candidate (rather than with the economy). Also, in those employer-driven markets (many more quality candidates available than jobs for them to fill), as seen back in the recession of the early '90s, there are simply so many other good candidates available who are employed that it becomes a screening mechanism. It's a Catch-22, but in a recession, if you don't have a job, it's tougher to get a job.
2. Staying with your current job, you continue to earn a paycheck until you find the right opportunity. Hopefully your life is not simply about a paycheck. But it is a basic requirement that your financial needs be met while you are searching for that next perfect expression of who you want to be. Believe me... your decision will always be better when you come from a place of finding something that really speaks to you rather than settling for a job out of desperation.
Internet when you needed a job right now? You knew the "process" meant that you were a long way from working-first sending out resumes, making follow-up calls, going on interviews, etc. Besides depressing, the classifieds are so damn cold and impersonal. Staying in your current job, you keep your mind occupied and less stressed about the transition. Less stress means better decisions.
Don't accept the notion that you can "focus" better on getting a new position by leaving your current one. If you are a strong, viable, marketable candidate, recruiters and employers will always flex around your schedule for interviews. Why? Because they always place greater value on a working candidate. If, on the other hand, you are not a "strong, viable, marketable candidate," then simply having more time won't help. Perhaps you will be able to bob around to interview with more headhunters, but there is little worse in salability than a less-marketable, out-of-work candidate. The "why unemployed?" question becomes a louder death knell. So, for both the strong and the not-so-strong candidate, the benefits of remaining employed far outweigh the perceived costs of time and frustration.
