Some Tips on Recruiters and Networking

I am curious what experiences people have had working with recruiters? I was laid off on February 5th, 2009 and have been networking every since. I made a goal of trying to identify a few Recruiters and Executive Search Firms each day to add to my personal database. In today's market and economy you have to get creative and pro-active in your networking! Rather than wait for someone to call me, I forward my resume and contact information to new recruiters every day. Whether or not you hear back from them doesn't matter, they WILL add you to their database of potential matches.

They get paid anywhere from 20 - 30% of the candidates first year salary as their fee. They want to have a large pool to pull from!

Networking has never been so important as it is now. I worked as an Outplacement Consultant with a global firm for many years. When I taught our 3-day career transition workshops we would spend a LOT of time discussing why networking was so important. More importantly though, we talked about how to network. This is where most people fail. Most assume networking is just sending resume's out in mass quantities, asking friends if their company has an opening, scouring job boards etc. You quickly learn that what you doing twenty thousand other people are also doing.

Networking Tip: Make a list of ten people that are successful in life, business, outgoing, leaders you look up to and admire their feedback. Contact them and ask if they wouldn't mind critiquing your resume. Your initial approach should be something like, "Mr/Mrs successful business person, I know you are a leader in your industry and have many years of experience. I am thinking about a career path in a similar direction. I was wondering if you could do me a favor? I really respect your opinion and would like you to critique my resume for me. What would you change about it? How could I present something slightly different? Finally, if you had to do it all over again, what would you do differently and/or what advice would you offer?

Human nature is to want to help others. Especially when someone approaches you and makes it known they respect where we are and what we do. Most people in that position would be happy to give you some feedback. Now...that being said, what just happened here? You are establishing a relationship to add to your personal network! You never want to just come out and ask, "can I send you my resume, and are you hiring?" Do you think that by taking the approach I just explained earlier this person isn't thinking about any opportunities they might know of? They sure are! They are more likely to offer that information up to you if you take the approach we discussed.

Try this out and let us know what responses you get! Happy Networking!