When there is an opening to fill, a company has four basic approaches at their disposal:

• Advertise the position on Internet job sites • Network • Probe the Internet for viable candidates • Use recruiters

When a company advertises an opening on an Internet job site, they receive hundreds of resumes. It simply is too long of a process and financially prohibitive to review every resume and move through each step of the interviewing and selection process to fill the opening. Since decision-makers know other decision-makers, a hiring manager’s network can be quite extensive. In time, good candidates can be located. The problem with this approach is that the hiring manager may simply be too busy to engage in the time and human interaction required to make this happen. Employers and recruiters utilizing keyword searches scour the job sites in search of candidates to fill job openings. A major segment of these openings are unadvertised. When you post your resumes to a job site, you gain visibility, indirectly, into the hidden job market, and have access to a greater number of jobs. On the downside, since most people searching will post their resume to a number of different sites, the number of potentially viable candidates for any one particular position is huge. Employers have also frequently found major discrepancies between candidates and their resumes. The fine line between reality and the realm of imagination becomes razor-thin for creative resume writers. Screening and reviewing hundreds of resumes for accuracy and position viability, is time-consuming. If the job also requires a certain type of personality which doesn’t materialize at the interview, more time is wasted. For this reason, more and more employers turn to recruiters for a more efficient hiring process. A recruiter will conduct exhaustive screening procedures as part of their candidate search process. They will charge a fee to the employer for this service, but it is worth it in terms of time and effort. One of the best ways to capitalize on a recruiter’s mission is to post your resume to the career sites. Using keyword searches, recruiters will find you as long as your resume comes up a match. While this may not seem like a very strong proactive approach, it is by far the most sensible. Recruiters do not work for you; they work for employers. They are in business to help companies find people, not the other way around. Attempting to contact a recruiter regarding a particular job will only lead to disappointment. Do not be surprised or put off if your calls and emails are not returned. Their allegiance is to their client, the employer who is paying their bill. Having said that, it may be advantageous for you to present yourself to recruiters as a potential fee-paying client once you have been converted from candidate status. If, for example, you are a middle manager or decision-maker, this point can be easily made. You can also name-drop a referral to meet with a recruiter. Recruiters strongly favor these types of candidates. In a letter to a recruiter specializing in your field, make a case for yourself in the strongest and most specific way possible. Recruiters play a tough game yet serve a valuable purpose. They do not work for you, yet you can formulate an approach for working with them. By utilizing recruiters in your overall job search efforts, you will find yourself a step or two ahead of the crowd.

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