Why Use A Recruiter – Job Boards vs Recruiters
How does working with a recruiter provide value versus posting my resume on a job board?
Recently the topic came up of job boards vs. recruiters and I was asked if I would ever post my resume on a job board? The answer is definitely not! Knowing the inside secrets of Executive Search and the employment marketplace, the only time I could see myself ever personally posting my resume on a job board is if I was desperate and unemployed and even then I still don’t think I would do it. You ask why? Here are some good reasons.
Be an exclusive candidate.
If I were wanting to make a job change, I’d want to distinguish myself as an exclusive candidate. It’s a challenge to stand out when you are one of the masses of resumes, hiring managers receive from job boards or even through their own company website. Your odds of being noticed increases greatly when you align yourself with a good recruiter. If you are aligned with a good recruiter, you show your worth and stand out from the crowd!
Get the inside info.
A recruiter can give you valuable insight into the company environment and culture and can give you a feel for the hiring manager’s personality, hot buttons as well as the hiring manager’s expectations. A recruiter can give you an up close view of the company and can also provide interview feedback and help with salary negotiations. You would not be able to obtain this information from a job board.
Avoid being bombarded by phone calls.
Some candidates have told me they had to remove their resume from job boards because they were getting hounded with phone calls. When you have a good recruiter on your side, you have one point of contact and fewer dinnertime phone call interruptions!
Remove some of the stress from your job search.
Recruiters are experts when it comes to interview techniques. Our firm holds our candidate’s hands through the interview process and we prepare them for each interview and every step of the way. Many of our candidates have told us that it was our coaching that got them the job and that they would not have gotten the job through their own efforts. These are personal touches that you would not be able to get from a job board. In fact, some of our hiring managers have stated that our candidates are better prepared walking into an interview than those candidates they get through other methods which increases the chances that our candidate is going to get hired over someone who comes in the door on their own, without recruiter representation.
Maintain control over your resume.
When you post your resume to a job board you lose control. Just about anyone can view your resume, even your current employer. Have you ever thought about that? Some companies have set up searches so that they will know if one of their current employees has posted their resume to a job board. Hiring managers and HR professionals often scan the job boards looking for employees of their own company who have their resumes posted. If you post a resume on certain job boards you don’t know where your resume is going. It could end up just about anywhere.
Avoid overexposure.
Hiring managers want people who stand out from the masses. If three recruiters are calling that same hiring manager to talk about you, it has a negative effect and can result in you looking less credible. It makes you seem desperate in your search and you don’t stand out much when the hiring manager keeps hearing your story from three different people. Some of our hiring managers have told me it sent them a red flag when the same candidate kept coming into the company through more than one source and they actually started questioning the credibility of that candidate. The hiring manager started to wonder, is this candidate about to get fired or do they change jobs often?
Confidentiality
Working with just one carefully selected Search Consultant, you have a partner and an advocate, who can strategically market you into the right opportunities, while maintaining your confidentiality. Back to point 5, if you post a resume on a job board, you run the risk that your current employer will find your resume and you risk jeopardizing your current employment situation over the long haul. Your employer may view you as a short timer and you may get passed over for a promotion or opportunity to advance and your loyalty will be questioned.
Get access to the “hidden job market.”
Did you know that many job opportunities are never advertised? This could be for a number of reasons. Sometimes a company does not want to advertise an open position. Perhaps they are about to expand or introduce a new product and they don’t want their competitors to find out what they are doing. Or, they don’t want the job to be available to everyone, just the most qualified people. For confidentiality reasons a company will partner with an Executive Search Firm and the Search Firm will conduct a confidential search to identify the very best talent for their client company. If you are aligned with a good recruiter and are a top candidate you are likely to hear about some of these hidden job opportunities that aren’t available to the masses.
Statistics.
When a large company posts an ad to a job board, they could receive as many as 5,000 or even 20,000 resumes and statistically, only 10% of those resumes are actually read by a real person. This can also happen when you send your resume directly to a large company. Recently I was speaking with one of our clients. His company had just posted an ad on a job board and received 750 resumes. Our client said he had better things to do than to sort through and read 750 resumes so I told him I would send him our three best candidates for him to interview so that he didn’t have to spend his weekend looking at 750 resumes. I wouldn’t want my resume to be one of those 750 resumes that had a good chance of not being seen!
Conflicting interests.
Companies do not have an interest in finding you a job, only in filling their current openings so if you apply for a job and are not the right fit, your resume may go into a file drawer or database and stay there. Consider that your resume is a tool that doesn’t tell the whole story about what you bring to the employer’s table. A recruiter on the other hand can often get your qualifications in front of the hiring manager to be reviewed and often granted an interview Once you are in front of the company in an interview your changes of getting hired are much greater.