May 28, 2018 1 Comment

How recruiters can help you get hired

My clients often ask me how to connect with recruiters to help find a job, and whether it is worth the effort. There isn’t one simple answer to this question – it depends on the profession, the job seeker and on the demand for their skills in the job market. For some job seekers, recruiters can be very useful when looking for work.

What do recruiters do?

Recruiters work for the employer, not the job seeker. They help collect resumes, screen applicants, and conduct job interviews, either for one company or via an agency. Recruiters are most useful if you work in a field where there’s a large demand for your skills, experience and expertise — often more senior staff, who might work in larger companies. Recruiters also hire temporary staff.

There are two different types of recruiters: in-house and agency. In-house recruiters are employed by a specific company to hire employees. Agency recruiters work for an employment agency, to help multiple companies find employees; they get paid when they fill a position – often a percentage of the salary paid to the candidate.

Recruiters use multiple methods to find, connect with, and monitor potential candidates, including online job boards (such as this), recruitment agency boards (such as those listed here), company websites (such as this), as well as LinkedIn.

How do agencies work?

To get a job through an agency, applicants need to register either via a posting found on a job board such as Monster.ca or Indeed.ca, or directly on the agency’s site. If the agency is a reputable one, candidates who register will be contacted by a recruiter for a brief discussion about their eligibility for the position. Suitable candidates will get called into the agency to be interviewed and possibly skill-tested. References will be called. Candidates might be placed in full-time or temporary jobs, many starting on a temporary basis first before considering them for full time employment.

For candidates, it’s important to treat the recruitment agency interview as you would any job interview: be prepared to speak about yourself clearly, confidently and honestly, to build a trusting relationship with the recruiter. Remember that it is the recruiter’s job to represent you to an employer, so give them the information they need to do so effectively.

Candidates are not limited to only one agency. It is well worth registering with multiple agencies, to access a variety of jobs in your area. Recruiters won’t necessarily refer every candidate to a position, no matter how well qualified they may seem. Recruiters may have their own personal preferences which impact on their choices. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that candidates can’t apply for the job independently, according to some recruiters: “Sometimes a company will be more willing to hire you without the recruiter’s fee attached.”

Connect with recruiters on LinkedIn:

Update your profile. LinkedIn reports that adding detailed work experience will result in 12x more profile views; it also makes your profile 36x more likely to be found by recruiters.
Signal your availability to recruiters. LinkedIn recently introduced an option for job seekers to quietly indicate their availability to recruiters, called Career Interests. This allows candidates to provide some basic information about their career goals to recruiters privately.
Seek them out. LinkedIn offers recruiters and job seekers an easy and effective way to connect. There are two main ways to find recruiters on this platform: Use the search bar to find people who call themselves “recruiter” – review their profile to identify whether they recruit in your field and location, conduct a job search, and look through the job postings for the name of the poster (some job postings include the name and profile of an individual poster)
Reach out and connect with the suitable recruiters. Include a brief introductory note, telling them about your employment goals.

Communicate with the recruiter:

When the recruiter accepts the connection request (and most will!), thank them for connecting with you.
In the next message, briefly introduce yourself and tell them what you want “I saw a position on your website” (share links to the job, if you have) or “I am interested in a __________ position.”
Mention if possible something you might share — like LinkedIn contacts, location or anything else, to break the ice.
Tell them what you would like them to do “Can you please pass along my resume to the person responsible for hiring XXX?” or “I recently applied for XXX and I’m trying to get a status update on my application. Would you mind checking for me?”
Keep it short and focused.
Stay in touch: Thank the recruiter for their efforts on your behalf, follow their instructions regarding the opportunities they provide you. Check in regularly; update them on your job search and availability.

While recruiters can be a source of good job opportunities, don’t rely on them exclusively to find your next job. They are only one tool in a job seekers toolkit. Do what you can to reach out and be available, but keep looking for work independently.

September 11, 2017 Leave a Comment

How to be easily discovered by recruiters on LinkedIn

A recruiter friend recently suggested that LinkedIn has made him, in his words, lazy. LinkedIn has changed how he recruits candidates, making it much easier to find new candidates, using the search bar. LinkedIn allows recruiters to easily search through thousands of potential candidates, regardless of whether they are actively seeking a new job or not, to identify the most suitable candidate and reach out to them.

As a candidate who is hoping to be easily found by recruiters, there are certain things that you can do to make yourself more discoverable:

Strengthen your profile:

Most importantly, make sure that your profile is complete. Fill in all the sections, as recommended by LinkedIn, until the profile is rated as All-Star. The important sections include the photo, summary, your jobs and education, as well as skills and, if possible, any recommendations you might be able to get. Don’t underestimate the value of obtaining recommendations and skill endorsements. Recruiters will make a special effort to review any recommendations you might have, especially if they are about the important jobs in your profile.

Grow your network:

Make sure to have a large network, especially in your own field. It’s important to have a large number of contacts, preferable over 500, but it is also important to have professionals who are specifically in your field.

Connect with recruiters, whenever you can. You will find them mentioned on job postings. Recruiters can also be found by searching for them on the search bar. Remember that recruiters search for candidates from their own profile, which means that the more contacts you have in your field, the more likely you are to share 1^stor 2^nd degree contacts with a recruiter, and therefore, the more likely you are to appear in their search results.

Include the right keywords:

Once your profile is found by a recruiter, you want to make sure that they can immediately see how well matched you are to jobs in your field. To do this, you need to include all the important keywords in your profile – in your job title, your summary, in the various job descriptions, as well as in the skills for which you are endorsed.

Remember, also, that recruiters search for candidates by skills, so if you don’t have those skills on your profile, you are less likely to appear in a search. To identify the most important skill keywords, conduct a job search and review which words are chosen by recruiters and employers to describe the qualifications and characteristics of ideal candidates. Add those terms to your LinkedIn profile, as well as to your resume.

Search for jobs on LinkedIn:

Utilize the job search tab to look for jobs. Use it fully by searching for jobs, as well as saving and applying to jobs. You can also check the ‘Jobs You May Be Interested In’ and ‘Jobs In Your Network’ sections on the Jobs page, as well as set up email alerts for new postings in your field.

Recently, LinkedIn introduced an exciting new option, titled Career Interests, which allows you to flag yourself to recruiters and thereby make yourself more visible. It allows candidates to specify to recruiters exactly what and where are the jobs that they are seeking. This function is active for 3 months at a time, allowing you to update it every three months and keep it current and in line with your interests.

Participate in Groups:

Recruiters have been known to browse through LinkedIn Groups of professionals in the sector for which they are recruiting, to identify potential candidates. Join groups and take an active role. Remember also, that if you share a group with a recruiter, you are more likely to appear in their search results.

To be more likely to be discovered by recruiters on LinkedIn, make sure to present the best possible, most focused, coherent and easy to understand profile. Growing your contact list, using the job search function, signalling your openness to recruiters and participating actively in groups will also help recruiters find you and be impressed by what you bring to the workforce.

August 1, 2016 Leave a Comment

Ask the Employment Specialist: What to do when nothing is working

Dear Joanna,

Nothing is working with my job search. I’m not getting any interviews, my networking doesn’t lead to any jobs and needless to say, I’m stuck and feel like giving up. I’m doing everything in my powers to look for work including meeting the employment support staff, participating in the workshops and attending job fairs.

What is wrong with me?

Signed: Stuck in the Search (SS)

Dear SS,

One of the most painful experiences of being a job developer/job coach is working with job seekers who are seriously engaged in their job search but for whom none of the available employment support services seem to work. Consider reflecting on the excellent insights offered by blogger Louise Fletcher, where she presents advice on how most people “get the job search process all wrong” and make mistakes. You can explore her solutions on this site as well.
[Read more…]

October 26, 2015 Leave a Comment

Not-to-be-missed Resume Tips from a Top Recruiter

An excellent article caught my eye recently. Written by a top recruiter who has worked with a range of sectors, it focuses on the mistakes that job seekers make on resumes which most get noticed by recruiters. It’s well worth reading the entire article — especially if you are looking for work in the IT sector — however, I would like to point out a few key points which, from my experience, are particularly true and somewhat universal for all job seekers.

1. Don’t bother with paper.

The recruiter plainly says “I hate paper. I do everything online.” She later suggests that resumes should be emailed, not faxed, nor hand-delivered. Stay away from using an outdated approach that inconveniences the recruiter — insisting on handing a paper copy of your resume to the employer in person might make you stand out, but not in a good way.

2. Make sure to include all the important keywords.

Besides the convenience of not having to deal with paper, the recruiter’s main reason for insisting on electronic resumes, is that she searches the resumes electronically for certain keywords. Keep in mind, though, that it isn’t enough to simply list the keywords — make sure that the words are included in the relevant work experience, so the recruiter can understand how and when those skills were used.

3. The recruiter will focus on your recent work experience

Expect the recruiter to be curious about why the last job ended and whether your recent experience is relevant to the job to which you have applied. She also will focus on career progression — have you moved upwards in your career? Is it clear how the job to which you are applying fits into your career path?

Interestingly, while she is interested in what you have done over the years, she mentions that she doesn’t mind a gap in your resume. It’s all in how and whether you explain yourself:

I don’t mind gaps so long as there’s a sufficient explanation. Oh you took three years off to raise your children? Fine by me, and might I add: #respect. You tried your hand at starting your own company and failed miserably? Very impressive! Gap sufficiently explained. Whatever it is, just say it. It’s the absence of an explanation that makes me wonder.

4. Share your online profile

The recruiter mentions that she particularly enjoys reading up on candidates online, if you share links to your personal websites or social media profiles. So make sure to include your LinkedIn URL, blog, Twitter handle or other relevant (and appropriate, of course) on your resume.

5. Try not to be too boring

If you have something to share that makes you more interesting and perhaps helps the recruiter better understand who you are, share links to them. Try to be a little creative on your LinkedIn profile — share some personality together with all that valuable information. Remember to stay professional in your tone, though — for example, she warns against writing in first person, recommending that you:

…eliminate pronouns (e.g. my, I, she, he) from your resume altogether. Instead of writing “I helped increase overall sales by 300% by breeding rabbits in my garage,” eliminate the “I” in that sentence. Go through your resume and remove all the pronouns and rewrite the sentence to make it sound like a bullet point. By “past tense” I mean that your resume should always be voiced from the perspective of something you already did, not something you’re currently doing.

Bottom line: “recruiters move quickly”

When prescreening candidates, recruiters rush through resumes.

Total time it takes me to do all of above: < 25 seconds.

August 17, 2015 Leave a Comment

Job Seekers: Pay Attention to What You Post on Social Media

Reviewing your social media profile may be just as important (if not a whole lot more) than preparing a good resume, picking an interview outfit or preparing your interview questions. Your social media presence can directly influence your employment prospects, and can impact on whether employers will find you, and whether they will consider you a good match to the job and the company when they do come across you in their search for candidates.

According to Jobvite, a leading recruiting platform for the social web, employers turn to social media to find, assess and recruit candidates, and they pay close attention to what they see online about potential employees.

Think about your online presence:

If a potential employer searched for you online — do you know what they might find?
Are you present on more than one platform? Facebook? LinkedIn? Instagram? Twitter?
What do your platform choices say about you?
Do you appear as someone who knows how to use the platforms appropriately and effectively?
Do employers learn valuable and impressive information about you when they find you online?

Strengthen your profile:

Grow your network:

Include the right keywords:

Search for jobs on LinkedIn:

Participate in Groups: