Let's face it: your entire life is literally held in so many bytes of computer language all over the world. From the phone company to your credit cards, even to your church, computerized databases are what keeps today's world "clicking". So, why not learn exactly how the systems work so you can work with them? Realize that any headhunter who wiles away hours on the phone making you feel "special" when they don't even have a position to tell you about, is probably either: 1) a novice, 2) not computerized, or 3) not working on a large enough scale to have much to offer you. Stay away from them!
I don't advocate that a recruiter not spend time understanding a candidate's desires. This should be done with everyone who either fits, or could fit, current or future openings in the headhunter's niche. Yet a candidate can't expect lengthy conversations at every twist and turn of the recruiter's process unless they are discussing viable opportunities for the candidate to explore. If it's just plain chit-chat you need, get it from other folks.
The ability to listen is a major factor in choosing a headhunter. What they do with what they've heard or seen makes all the difference in their ability to serve you. As you recall, if you talk with a recruiter repeatedly about what you want but then keep hearing about opportunities that don't fit, he isn't listening-or has inefficient memory storage systems. If, however, you rarely hear from him, and when you do, it's with close matches to your desires, then you are dealing with a recruiter who remembers what you're looking for, but won't call until he has it. Work with him! What has him call with positions that interest you is his memory and note-taking system. In today's information overloaded world, human memory only goes so far. Therefore, a headhunter's memory must be expanded by the most efficient technology in the recruiting business-computerized, keyword searchable databases.
Today, clients are highly specific about the exact experience of the candidates they want to see, so ever more precise data storage and retrieval are key to a professional recruiter's success. Computers have now replaced filing cabinets.
Resumes pour in by mail, fax, and e-mail, and it is crucial for recruiters to store as much detailed information as possible for easy, accurate retrieval. Early systems were limited in that the candidate's information was saved in a basic profile form that may or may not have included all the specifics such as actual products sold, software utilized, languages spoken, certifications and/or degrees. Even if these first databases did include all vital information, it was costly and time consuming to have each candidate entered into the system manually. Today's leading-edge software for the recruiting industry solves such problems and provides the ultimate in specific candidate information storage. Databases are now keyword searchable, allowing for a resume to be input as a whole into the computer, ready to be retrieved instantaneously based on an identified keyword system in an easy-to-read text format. A mailed-in resume can be viewed by a scanner which takes a picture of the resume and then, through an internal vocabulary list, sorts out the lines forming the image into letters and words of text (called "scanning in" or "OCRing" a resume). Most faxed resumes today are actually received on the computer by one of many fax software packages on the market, enabling a recruiter to flip through his "in-box" of faxes to save or print only those of interest. These faxes are still only images on the screen and also get "OCR'd" into the computer and converted into text. E-mailed resumes are already in text form (need no OCRing) and are simply transferred into the database. Note: regardless of the arrival form of any relevant resume, it is destined to become a "text file" in a contemporary recruiter's database.
In the same way a computer can read a single resume and add it to a database, it can also read all the resumes in that database with the simple click of a mouse. This is where the term keyword searchable (KWS) comes in. A headhunter, trying to locate particular experience or attributes of candidates for her client, will tell the computer what specific, or "key," words or phrases to search for. The database then reads each resume in its memory with a fine-tooth comb, noting every instance in which those words or phrases appear. This is tantamount to having 5 or 6 people review every resume in a wall-full of file cabinets. And instead of 4 days, it generally takes the computer only minutes, or seconds, to complete the task. So, today's recruiter would be shamefully amiss not utilizing these cutting-edge, information-management tools.
The questions then arise: "If I want to utilize a contemporary headhunter, and I know that she is going to store my information in a bits-and-bytes fashion on the computer, how do I best present myself 1) in the easiest form possible to get into the database, and 2) in such a way that I can be 'retrieved' appropriately and stand out for her to notice?" Now, these are intelligent questions. Far more advanced than "Do you have anything for me now? Otherwise, I won't send my resume." Remember, working with a modern recruiter is not just about being "treated like a real person," but simply an issue of being retrieved from the database, being noticed, and then being treated like a real person. Believe me, recruiters want to help you-that's how we make our living.
