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The purpose of this first contact with a recruiter is to:

• Let the recruiter know that you exist, you’re sort of looking around, but you’re in no big hurry
• Give the recruiter some idea of your technical talents
• Share with the recruiter your career plans and goals

Some recruiters don’t want you to call them until you’re desperate for a new job. Avoid these recruiters. Continue searching until you find a real professional.

1. Find a recruiter that specializes in your talents. Most recruiters specialize. A recruiter usually specializes by geography, technology, or industry, or some combination of the above. When looking for a recruiter, try to find a recruiter who specializes in your technical field and geographical preference. We get lots of non-I.S./telecom resumes sent to our office, and they always wind up in either the paper shredder or get processed with a ‘delete’ key.
2. Find a recruiter that you like to work with and that you trust. No matter how perfect the technical and/or geographic match you are with a recruiter’s specialty area, you MUST like working with this particular recruiter. If a recruiter “bugs you” for any reason, find another recruiter. It is far better that you find a recruiter that you like and can trust but is slightly out of your talent area, then continue to work with the “perfect recruiter” under a lot of friction and stress.
3. Don’t be too quick to send your resume to an unknown but “smooth talking” recruiter… especially if you’re still employed. When you finally find a good recruiter, your goal is for that recruiter to keep you in mind for career-building positions as they arise. Most recruiters are true professionals with very high ethics. They will gladly keep you in mind for new positions that are “right up your alley” as they are uncovered. However, there are a few unethical recruiters in the marketplace that will do whatever it takes to get you to change jobs. For example: How would you like your resume to wind up on your current boss’s desk next week? How would you like your resume “shotgun blasted” to hiring managers at every one of your current employer’s competitors in the U.S. and Canada? How would you like to have your carefully crafted resume “doctored” to say things you haven’t done, mention technologies you haven’t used, or credit you with academic credentials you don’t have?

All of the above has happened to others. Some intentional, some maybe not. Be careful! Before you send a resume to a recruiter, make sure you know exactly what they will be doing and not doing with your resume.

1. Provide the recruiter with current salary information and expectations. Most people (including most recruiters!) find it hard to discuss something as personal as compensation. And that’s fine. However, there are at least three people in this world that need to know your current salary: the IRS, your spouse, and your recruiter. The first two need to know for obvious reasons. Recruiters need to know for the following reasons:
   • Suppose you are making $50,000/year, but you wouldn’t tell us this fact. How many interviews would you want to go on where the job paid a maximum of $40,000/year? How many times would we continue to call you until we “guessed” your current salary?
   • Suppose you are making $50,000/year, but you wouldn’t tell us this fact. Suppose we asked you to interview for a great career-enhancing position that paid a maximum of $40,000/year, but since we didn’t know how much you currently make we neglected to tell you how much the new job paid. Suppose you went on that interview, you loved the company and the job, the employer loved you and made an offer of $39,000/year. What would you think of the employer? What would the employer think of us?
   • Suppose you are making $50,000/year, but we “guessed” you were making $70,000/year. Would we call you to interview for a great opportunity in your field that only paid a maximum of $65,000/year? Probably, since we seldom ask our candidates to take salary cuts.

Don’t put important facts in the cover letter you send to a recruiter. Cover letters tend to get lost in the shuffle, are often not even read, and most recruiters only keep the resume anyway. Keep your cover letter short and specific. On a cover letter, you may include:

• your salary expectations
• your geographic limitations
• specific things that you want to say, but are not normally found on a resume

Make it easy for a recruiter to get and read your resume. Don’t assume that every recruiter has every possible technology in place to receive and read your resume. We sometimes hear:

Web Browser? Download a copy? Multimedia resume? ZIP disk? Email? Quattro Pro format? A recruiter is usually a businessperson, not a technology person. Before you send your resume, ask the recruiter how they prefer to receive it (fax, email, postal mail, etc). And remember to send the best, cleanest, and clearest resume that you can. For example, when faxing a resume always use “high resolution” mode. The fax’d image that the recruiter receives of your resume is much sharper in “high resolution” mode.

• Recruiters are usually NOT good vehicles to help you change careers. For example, a technical person with great programming skills and no sales experience wants to become a sales person or account manager. Or a seasoned project manager wants to return to the “technical trenches” and become a Web Programmer. In both cases, the people described above probably have great potential to do the jobs they really want to do. However, employers do not usually use recruiters to find them people with great potential. Employers use recruiters to help them find people with a particularly well-honed skill set, and several years of practical experience in a particular field. If you’re an unrecognized “super star”, recruiters are usually quite good at helping you get recognized and accelerate the advancement of your career. We are not very effective at helping you change careers.
• Executive recruiters recruit; career counselor’s counsel! Recruiters are inundated with requests for free career counseling, free resume writing advice, free practice interview sessions, etc. Although most recruiters are very qualified in all of the above, our “real” job is to find qualified people to work for our client companies. Most recruiters spend half of their day uncovering great job opportunities with their clients and prospective clients, and the other half of their day searching for qualified candidates to fill these jobs.

Recruiters are usually pretty good at career counseling, resume writing, and interview prep sessions. However, a recruiter’s “real” job is to uncover the best career-building positions in their specialization, and then recruit qualified people for these positions. Although part of the recruitment process often includes some career counseling, some resume “tuning”, and some interview practice sessions, if you really need extensive help you may need to hire a professional career counselor.

• Executive recruiters recruit; bus drivers drive busses! Recruiters get lots of calls that go a bit like this:Monday afternoon, a Systems Analyst gets notice that he will become part of a major RIF at his current employer. He immediately calls a recruiter that he just found in the phone book and says: “I’ll fax you my resume. Now go find me something!”Two days later, the same Systems Analyst calls the same recruiter and says: “You guys find me anything yet?”Two weeks later, the same Systems Analyst calls the same recruiter and says: “You guys aren’t worth a #$%^! You never find me anything when I need you to.”

The above scenario happens much more often than you may think. We affectionately refer to these candidates as “ticket to ride” candidates! These candidates must think we are bus drivers waiting to collect their “ticket” (aka “resume”) and move them along to the next “stop” (aka “a better paying job”).

See Tip #1 for a better way to work with a recruiter!

So why did I take him on? I hired Shaq because during his interview he clearly demonstrated that he was intelligent, had a lot of energy and seemed to come out on the “glass half full” side of things during stressful situations. Because of these qualities, within three months of joining my company he was out in the field, conducting examinations on his own. Shaq had absorbed the training so fast that within a year of his hire he was testifying in court and handling our most complicated cases.

When hiring new employees, most recruiters consider qualifications first – and last. They’re looking for someone with the best education, the most experience and the most impressive skills. This is a mistake because you can teach employees what you want them to know, you can give them the experience you want them to have, but you can’t change who they are on a fundamental level. Their attitude, values, willingness and work ethic are all ingrained in them.

The most effective way to hire fantastic, loyal employees who will fit into your company culture and help you meet your goals is to hire them for their inherent abilities (that which can’t be taught), such as personality, learning style and core values. You do this by identifying behavior patterns during the interview process.

Still looking for the pattern you ask, “What about your first job?” After you get through “tell me more,” the candidate says, “I loved my colleagues, but I couldn’t stand the bureaucracy. They had me filling out irrelevant forms all the time.”

A pattern is starting to become clear. Do you see it? This candidate doesn’t like rules. If your company depends on employees adhering to strict guidelines, he’s not a good fit. If, on the other hand, you’re looking for an independent type of person, he has potential.

This hiring practice takes time. Your interviews won’t be over in 15 minutes and you won’t hire employees based on shiny resumes and gut instinct. Instead, your interviews will probably last two hours, and you’ll make a decision based on your confidence that the candidate you hire will behave exactly as you need him to – because now you know how he’s behaved in similar situations in the past. While it may take a bit longer up front, you’ll save time and money in the long run because this method reduces turnover and increases company morale.

Hire the candidates with the most potential to succeed in your company, regardless of experience. The right people will be able to handle anything you throw at them. If they’re anything like Shaq, it will be nothing but net.

Adapted from the Wall Street Journal

Good interviewing techniques, like dating advice, can increase your chances of avoiding the bad breakup.

So why is a job interview like a date’ Check out these six tips for success in your professional and personal life.

1. Dress for Success

Sorry, it’s a cruel world. Few companies are going to be impressed if you show up to your first interview wearing a hoodie and flip flops, blowing bubbles with your gum. Yes, you’re beautiful on the inside, but organizations and interviewers want you to demonstrate that you can be put-together and appropriate at important occasions.

2. Discretion – Your Best Friend

Your first date is not the time to talk about all the times you’ve messed up, gotten your heart broken or been unfairly dumped. In the same way, it is absolutely not the time to complain about past jobs. Save the emotional baggage for later…or preferably, never. Discretion is key. No matter how well you’re hitting it off with the interviewer, or how romantic the mood lighting is- remember! You are being judged. At all times. Being a mess isn’t adorable. Being incompetent isn’t charming. And bad-mouthing a past employer, for any reason, is never smart. Just stick to the basics and keep it together. Rule of thumb- do not say anything you wouldn’t want printed on the front page of The NY Times.

3. Put on a Happy Face

Quite simply, be positive. We’ve all made mistakes. But your first date-interview is a short window of time in which you get to express your many wonderful qualities and skills, not your drawbacks. Stick to talking about the time you made a positive impression on someone, took the initiative, or performed above and beyond what was asked. Lean forward, smile, be engaged, and relax. Practice your conversational skills. You are a happy, positive person and Company X would be lucky to have you as a permanent fixture!

4. Honesty ‘ Make it Your Policy

Be honest. If Company X loves football, cheap beer, and wings, and you’re more of a Madame Butterfly and champagne kind of gal, don’t try to talk about Tom Brady’s most recent stats. Instead, try to find some common ground. You’ve prepared for your interview using our tips here, so focus on what drew you to this company in the first place. Then, post-interview, be as honest with yourself as you would be after a date. Maybe Company X would make a sports-loving, beer-guzzling lady very happy indeed, but that doesn’t mean it’s a perfect fit for you. Pay attention to corporate culture and how that might fit with your own preferences and working style.

5. Q & A

Everyone says, ”ask questions” on a date, and you should do the same at an interview. Use this time to find out more about the company, the role and the expectations. What are the company’s long-term goals’ What would the ideal hire for this position look like’ What does Company X expect of you’ What will your relationship together look like’ What will you name your kids’ Okay, maybe not that last one.

6. Affirmations

A wise person once relayed some strange advice to this PYP, and I’m going to share it with you now. As you sit in the company’s lobby, waiting to be invited in for your interview, repeat this mantra to yourself over and over again: ”I am awesome. I am wonderful. I will dominate this interview!” Yes, it sounds strange, but by the time you head in for the do-or-die moment, you will be sailing on a high of your own amazingness..

And there you have it. Go get ‘em!