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I work at a large company’s headquarters in the HR department and sit right next to our corporate (and executive) recruiters. What I’ve learned about how jobs are actually awarded conflicts with what many job coaches advise people to do. Of course, this is how it happens at one big company, but I’ve also gleaned some myth-debunking information from working for an even larger company before this one.
3000 Resumes a Day!
That was how many online job applications my previous employer received each day. That was a few years before recession, layoffs and high employment. The figure’s probably doubled by now. At my current employer, one mid level I.T. position netted about 500 applications per week. Job coaches like to say hiring managers and recruiters only spend about 30 seconds scanning your resume. No they don’t. They never look at it.
True Headhunters
The deluge of online applications has made their databases unruly. Employment qualification misrepresentation is rampant – they don’t easily trust what many desperate, unemployed people put on paper. Sad to say, but many recruiting efforts are focusing on passive recruiting – going after already-employed people who may not have even considered leaving their jobs.
One tool that our recruiters DO use is LinkedIn. Companies and independent recruiters can pay for back-end access to people’s professional profiles and search for qualified candidates. If you’re looking for a job, or a better job, it’s worth putting some real work into your LinkedIn profile including job descriptions, getting recommendations from other clients or coworkers, and automating it to pull content from your blog or social media sites (pulling professional content that is).
Networking, Really?
When I was unemployed, all the push to get a network of people generated a spreadsheet of several unemployed people. Those who were employed were not usually in positions to refer me to a hiring manager. Anyone can tell you who has job openings, but to be of real help, they have to be in an influential position that can get you an interview. Recruiters who have resumes forwarded to them from friends of job seekers usually acknowledge receiving them (very politely, of course) then go back to their “real” ways of finding potential hires.
Baby Steps
Most recruiters know very little about the nature of the jobs they are hiring for. If they knew all the technical ins-and-outs of these positions, they probably would not be stuck being corporate recruiters. What this means is that all they have in front of them when they do initial phone interviews is a bullet-point description of the job opening. They only look high-level at whether your resume or application has the matching terms, phrases and necessary experience in the field.
Your goal in that first interview is to get them to like you. They can’t really gauge true qualification for the job – they leave that to the hiring manager. The operative word for whether you have a good chance is when the recruiter refers to you repeatedly as being “sharp”. “Yes, I liked that lady. She seemed pretty sharp.” Or, “He was a real sharp guy. I think we should bring him in.” So go for sharp. I think it has a lot to do with your communication skills and articulation initially, then smiling, being confident and well-dressed when you show up in person.
Also remember, a resume won’t get you a job. The goal of the resume is to get a phone call. The object of that phone call is to get another phone call. The object of that second phone call is to get an invitation to interview in person. The object of that first in-person is to get another in-person. The object of that second in-person is to discuss salary and start date.
These are some of the things I’ve learned overhearing our recruiters’ exuberant (loud) telephone conversations. I can’t name job titles and dollar amounts, but I will say I’ve learned there are a lot of people who make a lot more money than I do! I need to learn more in order to getter better work and income!
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