The Three Jokes of Recruiting |No BS Job Search Advice Radio

Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter uses the three jokes of recruiting in order to teach an important lesson about job hunting.

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I want to talk with you about the 3 jokes of the recruiting business.

The 1st joke is, “How can you tell a job applicant is lying to you?”  The answer is, “Their lips are moving.

What’s the 2nd joke?

How can you tell a client is lying to you?

Their lips are moving.”

The 3rd joke is, “How can you tell he recruiter was lying to you?”  You guessed it – – their lips are moving.

 

When you basically translate it, what is being said is that everyone is posturing for advantage and the best outcome.  Everyone is exaggerating to some degree.

For you as a job hunter. You have to remember that the company may be talking with you about this great opportunity for you to advance when in most cases, what they really want to do is is hire the 4th drone in the 3rd cubicle on the 5th floor of a particular building.  You are not particularly important to them.

You may be important to that particular manager, but that manager, when times get tough, may not be they are any longer than you are.

In terms of the recruiter, the recruiter is posturing to engender trust in you. That’s because if you are unsure you may trust their words and allow yourself to take a job.

Now, if we were talking about an investment advisor and they were saying, “Trust me. Give me $50,000. Yeah. That’s the ticket yeah, trust me with the money.” You would be very hesitant. With the recruiter, you need to take your time before giving away your trust.

Finally, I understand that you are trying to get the best of the deal possible and you are trying to position yourself well. Everyone is kind of like 8-year-olds who are visiting their friends’ parents. Invariably, the 8-year-old is on good behavior over there, right? Well, everyone is on good behavior as part of the search process.

Your goal is to get the best information that you can in order to make a good decision for yourself. It’s not to be a good boy. It’s not to be a good girl. It’s to get the best information possible so that you can make a great choice, so that your career advances and you can get to where you want.

 

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Do you think employers are trying to help you?

You already know you can’t trust recruiters—they tell you as much as they think you need to know to take the job they after representing so they collect their payday.

The skills needed to find a job are different yet complement the skills needed to do a job.

Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter has been a career coach and recruiter for what seems like one hundred years.

JobSearchCoachingHQ.com changes that with great advice for job hunters—videos, my books and guides to job hunting, podcasts, articles, PLUS a community for you to ask questions of PLUS the ability to ask me questions where I function as your ally with no conflict of interest answering your questions.

Connect with me on LinkedIn

You can order a copy of “Diagnosing Your Job Search Problems” for Kindle for $.99 and receive free Kindle versions of “No BS Resume Advice” and “Interview Preparation.”

Marketing Yourself Like a Headhunter | No BS Job Search Advice Radio

Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter speaks with you about marketing yourself just like headhunters market themselves.

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Let’s talk today about what headhunters do in their work.

Answer.  They are doing business development work to identify potential clients that want to hire. [/spp-transcript]

How are they doing that?

There are a variety of different ways but the primary way is called:.  They are networking.  You’re trying to find people who will give them a name, phone number and/or email address of someone to reach out to who is hiring.

More often than not they are doing what is called telemarketing.  They are on the phone, presenting themselves as human beings who have skills and capabilities that can help an organization fill positions.

Telemarketing works.  It is still the most effective way that salespeople sell.  They may get leads in a variety of different ways but being on the phone, causes them to do the sale.

You need to be doing the same thing.

How do you get those leads?  There are a variety of different ways.  You know about LinkedIn. Have you considered data.com? Spoke.com?  How about zoominfo.com?

These are all sites that provide you with names and the position of potential hiring managers.  In this way, if you are going to submit your resume to affirm, you can use a backdoor way to reach out to someone and present yourself as a human being, different than just a resume submitted to an applicant tracking system.  Different than just a resume that submitted or referred by someone.

They can hear you on the phone, even if you are just leaving a voicemail.  It’s an opportunity to present a case for yourself.

Again, I just want to encourage you.  Get on the phone.  Don’t just simply rely on applicant tracking systems, emails or even introductions.  Reach out to people so that they know something about you.  They get a sense of your enthusiasm, passion and excitement for what you do, just from the tone of your voice.

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Do you think employers are trying to help you? You already know you can’t trust recruiters—they tell you as much as they think you need to know to take the job they after representing so they collect their payday.

The skills needed to find a job are different yet complement the skills needed to do a job.

Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter has been a career coach and recruiter for what seems like one hundred years.

JobSearchCoachingHQ.com changes that with great advice for job hunters—videos, my books and guides to job hunting, podcasts, articles, PLUS a community for you to ask questions of PLUS the ability to ask me questions where I function as your ally with no conflict of interest answering your questions.

Connect with me on LinkedIn

You can order a copy of “Diagnosing Your Job Search Problems” for Kindle for $.99 and receive free Kindle versions of “No BS Resume Advice” and “Interview Preparation.”

Don’t forget to give the show 5 stars and a good review in iTunes

Don’t Steal

Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter explains why you should not steal from recruiters.

 

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You probably don’t think of it this way but let me clear it up. When you see an ad from a recruiter and refers to a job online and you say to yourself, “hey I know that firm is! I think I’ll contact them directly,” you are stealing. You’re taking information that you learned about and using it for your own purposes.

I also want you to understand it’s not the smartest move in the world. Why? The recruiter has a relationship with this firm. They know more than you about the organization. They can handle your schedule. They can help you tailor your resume based upon the job involved and the relationship with the firm and what they may know about the job apart from what has been advertised.

Why would you go around them? To save the firm money?

It costs you so much more because 95 times out of 100 people to get the job that they apply to directly without the coaching of a recruiter.

Foolishly, you think you’re doing the company a favor. In fact, you’re hurting yourself and you are stealing. You are stealing that information to use it for your own purposes without any consideration for the impact on the other person.

Be considerate.

Be kind.

I talked to a friend of mine who is a recruiter with another firm who told me about two instances where people saw one of her postings and went directly to a client and the client dismissed these people and told her the story about them because it was real clear that these people had come to them based upon seeing the advertisement.

Let me summarize by saying, “don’t do it.” What do you get out of it? Do you feel good about it? Do you feel good that you were tricky and are better than the recruiter?

Or you’re going to get back a recruiter that you don’t even know for all the things that happened to you at the hands of recruiters?

Stop it. Seriously, be considerate to everyone that you meet professionally because you don’t know when it will come back and either help you or hurt you.

Help you because you are considered to the other person or hurt you because you acted obnoxiously.

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Do you think employers are trying to help you? You already know you can’t trust recruiters—they tell as they think you need to know to take the job they after representing so they collect their payday.

The skills needed to find a job are different yet complement the skills needed to do a job.

Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter has been a career coach and recruiter for what seems like one hundred years.

JobSearchCoachingHQ.com is there to change that with great advice for job hunters—videos, my books and guides to job hunting, podcasts, articles, PLUS a community for you to ask questions of PLUS the ability to ask me questions where I function as your ally with no conflict of interest answering your questions.

Connect with me on LinkedIn