Job hunting? Try an employment agency
By Sue L. Blanchard, MBA, ABC by IABC, CAAP. A job hunter.
The new job’s a dream. While you work hard and have a master’s degree, each day brings extra responsibilities added pressures and tests you in fresh ways. The salary’s excellent, the bonus scheme blew your socks off and the perks are progressive. Few people command your heady new salary. Since last fall you’ve already grossed $150,000 or more. Who else enjoys such supercharged earning power?
Headhunters and recruiters, that’s who—the intermediary at the employment agency (recruitment firm) who helped recruit you. The person who talked you into your career switch when you reached the top of the pecking order, learned the truth about you from your employment references and compared the details on your resume to the statements on your LinkedIn profile.
Did your recruiter mention she will collect a fee from your hiring manager and invite you to apply for another position in two years?
Not yet, but by placing you in one job she’s earned her first fee. The recruiter neatly eliminated the communication managers who can’t write decent strategies, posts, and stories; the brilliant but inarticulate digital ‘experts’; the candidates who didn’t finish their degrees; the obsessive clock watchers and the abusive team leaders. She found the right candidate: An articulate marketing communication strategist and writer. And now that the strategist and writer is a team leader, she might hire the recruiter one day.
Recruiters often thrive on repeat business and referrals, and like all professionals, they must shake the trees for new business. They also have access to droves of hiring managers and can reach them more easily than their candidates can.
Job hunters ask, “Will my recruiter’s commission take away from the salary I could earn my first year?” The answer is ‘no,’ your salary will be equal to—or more than—the industry average for a similar position in your city and province. After all, recruiters want to attract A-player candidates.
Candidates may think recruiters charge high fees, but consider the cost of an unfilled position. One CEO I know says he once spent $60,000 on executive headhunting fees for an abortive search that went on for a year. He concedes that the sales executive position was a beast to fill, but it kind of annoyed him that nothing came of his search. Considering that the CEO’s company lost $60,000 plus sales income for a year, I understand his annoyance.
But even more expensive is slotting the wrong person into a key job and being forced to give him or her the boot 10 months or a year later because the recruiter didn’t do his homework properly. Doing homework is not only about checking a candidate’s background, it’s also about following the laws set out for recruiters. Only contact the people you’re allow to, and don’t listen to anyone who’s never met the candidate.
My message to hiring managers is this: Hiring great employees is not about searching for that one hard-to-find, candidate. The perfect employee is a myth. It’s about breaking expectations down into must-haves and like-to-haves. It’s also about using tools such as pre-employment assessments, which can reduce turnover.
Finally, you could be disappointed to learn that your top candidates don’t know all the software you want them to. Consider the many types of software (including Cloud-based systems) for each type of position. Now consider the number of candidates who know all the software out there. With the number and types of software growing daily, employers will soon be training candidates on the job.
Another consideration: experts say a lot of job success comes down to honesty, good listening skills, eagerness to learn, positive attitude, and other traits that make a candidate a good fit. Do first impressions and a knock-’em-dead job interviews count? Follow your instincts. Which candidate would you like to work with?
Some of the best candidates around are accredited by the International Association of Business Communicators (IABC), the Canadian Public Relations Society (CPRS) and the American Marketing Association (AMA). These associations post jobs and the names of accredited professionals on their local, national or international website. Only a handful of IABC and CPRS members are accredited, and they earn their stripes by passing tough exams (some last 3.5 hours), and sending their strategies (plans) and work samples to judges for evaluation. Both associations host award competitions and training.