Monthly Archives: October 2009

Someone Wants To Charge You Money For A Job? Are you Crazy!

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Desperate times perhaps, but there is no need for stupidity!  Everyone knows someone who currently is out of work.  Hell, I have file cabinets filled with resumes of laid off workers.  The issue isn’t that the normal paths of finding employment have changed, its just that the paths are currently closed!  Those of us that have clients still hiring and using us to fill their roles, we are grateful for, but it doesn’t mean that some “yahoo” out there who wants to charge you money is going to help you.  The problem out there is that there are too few roles and too many sharp candidates to choose from.

Over the past year Career Coaches have been popping up on the internet more than people getting the swine flu!  The CDC needs to create a shot to give the unemployed to keep their money in their pockets.  I have been getting calls every single week from job candidates asking me about this new phenomenon.  The call usually starts like this: “Have you heard of XYZ  Career Coaching, Resume Writing, Interview Training, Action Plan Guiding, Branding Me Extraordinaire Networking Guru For a Fee Company LLC?  They say that they’ve  worked in HR for years in fact,  ran the HR department for the whole company so they seem to know about jobs”.  My response is “Really, they sound like a home run”!

There are good people out there that haven’t just thrown up a sign on a shingle announcing that this is now what they do.  If your talking with a Career Coach or someone who claims they can help you just make sure that they’re not just an opportunist looking to make a quick buck.  And just because someone wrote a book doesn’t mean anything other than, they wrote a book.  I understand if you’re like me, and can’t write well, that it make sense to pay someone to help you with your resume, that’s fine.  I understand that there are very talented people who can help you in that area.  I’m talking about the person who claims that they are this guru at finding people jobs.  If they are truly good at it then why are they not being paid by the companies?

I’ve been told that these Career Coaches charge anywhere from a thousand dollars and up. Most recruiting agencies will charge a percentage of the job candidate’s first year annual salary, typically 25%.  My question is if you are such a guru at helping candidates find jobs, why aren’t you recruiting and making a lot more? Perhaps there are more opportunities in charging people than clients willing to pay a fee for someone.  All I know is even in this bad economy we are still in business and doing quite well.

If someone is going to charge you money to help you find a job, there are things you should look into.

1)  Check with your State to see if they are licensed with the State to charge job candidates money.  I know in the States of Connecticut and North Carolina you need to be licensed and monitored by the State.

2)  Ask how long have they been legally in business.

3)  Get references.

4)  What are their fees? Do they put that in writing?

5)  What guarantee do you have that you will find me a job?

Recruiters don’t have guarantees they offer job candidates.  I can’t promise anyone that I can find them a job.  I also don’t charge them for my advice, preparation, editing of their resume, reference checks, cold and warm calling to my 10 plus year client list promoting their background and to top it off, I will negotiate their compensation package for them.

Some people don’t get it do they.  What makes someone an expert?   The best way to explain what I mean comes fromRodney movie “Back To School”.  Rodney tells the professor how it works in the real world.  How does he know?  He knows because he has done it, and there is nothing more powerful than actually doing something.  You can talk to me about theory until you’re blue in the face!  Just because you worked in HR doesn’t mean you can help someone find a job.  Just because you wrote a book and have a website doesn’t mean you can help someone land a job.

A free site that can assist you is MyJobCAST.com.  This site has been created to assist people that are not getting help from anywhere else.  I am taking the knowledge that I have gained over the years and put that into a automated web 2.0 application.  We are soon adding the free job portion of the site that will allow small businesses to list their jobs for free.

I posed this question about the rise of Career Coaches in LinkedIn and I must admit the answers were excellent even from the Career Coaches themselves.  They have said the same thing about checking the legitimacy of the Career Coach.  I would like to end with a statement that came from Charlene Norman from Toronto Canada and she summed it up by saying ” if you can’t do, teach”.  Brilliant!

Overqualified?

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With the Nations unemployment rate close to 10%, you are wasting your time sending your resume for a job that you are overqualified for.  I know what the majority of people think, and that is if they take a step back to a lower level position, it would be a piece of cake to land a job.  There is only one problem with that thought and it sounds good, but it’s not good and sound!

If you see a job that you are overqualified for the reason why people will not hire you is because when the market does turn around, they feel that you will leave for a better opportunity.  That is why your resume needs to be fine tuned for a particular job you’re interested in.

With the large number of people currently unemployed, you can only imaging how many resumes come into a company from an ad.  For years I have told people that ads don’t work well.  In this market that’s an understatement.  Clients are using us more than ever because of the bombardment of resumes.  If a company is hiring, than they are for the most part using search firms, unless they are just filling their database for the future.  I wrote about this in a blog titled Wrong Perception at the beginning of the decline. Companies staff today are without question being overworked.  They don’t have the time nor the resources to go through all of the applicants resumes that they receive day in day out.  And if they are seriously looking to hire staff, then typically time is of the essence.

If you happen to be one of the fortunate ones to have a recruiter represent you, then make sure for your sake that you do not delay the process.  The reason why I use those words is because not everyone will command a fee to be hired.  It is only a slight few whereby a company will pay a fee to hire someone.  Search firms such as JTL Services, Inc. have large networks of top talent.

This is no time to be lazy, or to procrastinate, but a time to be meticulous to detail.  And what is up with these reports I keep hearing about the people who just stopped looking for work?  How do you stop looking to get paid or to give up making an income?  What ever happened to the “never give up” attitude?

Never Give Up!

Never Give Up!

Why Use A Boutique Search Firm To Fill Your Jobs?

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Tara LeFevre Managing Partner

Tara LeFevre, Managing Partner JTL Services, Inc.

If you’re searching for customer service and someone to really focus on your needs then try a small search firm.  In today’s business environment it’s pretty easy to find out what other companies are doing.  With networking being the “word” of the new century, it doesn’t take much effort to find out what’s going on at XYZ Recruiting Firm.  Being in the business now for 12 plus years, I have made some good friends that happen to work at large recruiting companies.  All I will say is business as usual is still the norm.  I guess that works in a “burn and churn” environment.  That’s why the next call you might get is from your “new” recruiter at XYZ, because your old recruiter is no longer at the firm.

When you’re working with a company that’s business model is based on “numbers”, the problem is you as a client are up against their plan rather than yours!  I equate this to what happens to be my favorite past time and that’s shopping.

I prefer to shop at small boutique stores that focus their attention on me and quality stuff, instead of filling their shelves with mass produced stuff and no one to be found.  These large firms focus on the numbers and less on you.  At the end of the day the recruiter on the job needs to show good numbers to their managers.  The “good’ numbers consists of how many people did they recruit, how many jobs orders did they get, and how many send-outs did they have today?

Is there anything in there about you?  Perhaps you’re the job order that they got, but the focus is not on you, it’s on the numbers.  Have your ever heard the expression, “if you throw enough mud on the walls some will stick”?  Well mud doesn’t look good under my nails!

When I first started recruiting that’s what I did.  I worked the numbers instead of working for my clients.  What I found is spinning my wheels all over the place took so much time and not enough progress for my clients!  So needless to say I changed my focus on the clients that really want to work with me and their jobs?  I started to get focused on finding the best talent for my clients and help them as quickly as I could.

That is why today I work with only a handful of clients and why my success rate is much better than ever before.  My clients love the fact that I am always available for them and flexible to work the way they need me to work.  Even in this economy it has been a winning year!  Visit my profile.

Forrest Gump Had It Right!

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“Stupid is what stupid does!”  That’s a quote that is spot on.  This blog is about the things we have seen over the years that will make you scratch your head.  The things people do you can’t possibly think up!

What do you think about a job candidate showing up to an interview in green suede shoes?  Was he colored blind and thought he was wearing his blue suede shoes?

A job candidate came to my office for an interview and was wearing so much perfume that one of my recruiters had an asthma attack.

A man with more hair coming out of his ears than I have on my head.  I know your thinking that’s not that much!  Make sure you read this before any interviews and especially number 3!

A client reneging on an offer to a job candidate because the candidate misspelled 12 words on his thank you letter.

A man who’s suit was covered with cat hair.  Not just a few either, I mean COVERED.

Candidates (many) who have been extremely rude to the receptionist before an interview.  Lots of times HR and hiring managers will ask a receptionist on what their first impression was.

An accountant who could not fill out an application because they could not write!  REALLY!

A job candidate not willing to fill out our online application because the “Internet World” would have access to it.  He has been unemployed for over a year.

A job candidate canceling an interview with a company because he used his car too much the day before and didn’t want to take a chance on driving it two days in a row.

Someone pretending to be their last boss so they would have a good reference.

A job candidate flying to another state to do an interview and showing up in flip flops.

These are just a few examples of some of the things I can recall off the top of my head of stupid things people do.  We would really like to know what are some of the things that you have seen over the years.

Are you hurting yourself?

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You can always tell the true character of someone when the chips are down.  When things in life aren’t going as planned, true character is like cream rising to the top.  Perhaps some things in life may make you act a little crazy or when something dramatic happens like when you review the x-rays and things don’t look good, but when it comes to finding a job, your actions may be hurting you.

Have you ever walked into a car dealership and the androids come at you like flies on a turd?  Does their aggressive approach make you feel like buying or running?

Are you the person who left 17 voice-mail messages to the HR person that you met with or the 34 email messages to the hiring manager just to say “I’m just following up”?

I know you need to be persistent but calling everyone  in a company to get feedback on your resume really does make you an idiot.  I see it more and more practically every day.  I have hiring managers and HR personnel telling these stories like they’re growing on trees.  I know this has to be because of the economy and with more people looking for jobs people are getting desperate, but don’t be this guy.

You just might be pushing that job away.  Remember to be like a duck on water!  They can’t see how strong you’re peddling underneath the water but from the view up top you look calm.