Using Recruiters in a Job Search

For many job seekers, searching for a job can be a long and time consuming task. You are constantly studying job advertisements, writing and sending resumes, and networking. It may seem like you have too much to do and very little time to do it. One way to make your search easier is acquiring the services of a job recruiter.

It will help you manage your time, focus on suitable jobs, and improve results. The right recruiter will have a great deal of knowledge about the industry in which you want to work and the employers. They will have industry contacts and know about job openings that may not be posted publicly. Sending your resume to a recruiter is good step to obtaining a job

What does a Job Recruiter do?

Recruiters work for employers or employment departments within a business or corporation. An employer will pay job recruiters a fee to find the best employee for their company. A recruiter does not work for you, but will match your qualifications with the type of employee an employer is seeking.

Types of Recruiters

Retained Recruiters: The recruiter has a contract with a company to fill a specific job opening. Retained recruiters tend to work with high level positions. They will advertise the position and find the most qualified person for the job. Their advertisement will contain all the essential information and requirements for the position. The recruiter will receive a retainer in the form of a fee for their service.

Contingency Recruiter: The contingency recruiter will only receive a fee if they make a job placement. The recruiter does not maintain a relationship with an employer. There may be several contingency firms competing to fill a particular position. Contingency recruiters generally work with mid-level management and professional positions.

The Advantages of Using a Recruiter

No Cost: Most employers pay the recruiter once the employee completes a probationary period. The job seeker does not pay the job recruiter.

Employer Contacts: A quality recruiter will have relationships with a number of companies. The recruiter will have unique insight into what employers value in their employees. The recruiter will have a relationship with placed job seekers so they will learn what is like working for a particular company.

Jobs Not Advertised: Because so many resumes pour in when a job is posted publicly, many employers will go directly to a recruiter to post a job instead of posting it publicly.

Specialty Recruiters: Many recruiters specialize in a certain career area. It is important to ask a recruiter about their specialty before sending your resume.

The following outlines a number tips that may be helpful when searching for a job recruiter:

- Recruiters prefer working with people who have a specific career objective.
- A willingness to relocate will attract more recruiters.
- Talk with people who have experience working with a particular recruiter. You will learn if the recruiter is dedicated to filling job positions.
- Be wary of a recruiter that approaches job seekers. Normally job seekers approach recruiters.
- Make sure you tell themyour salary history. This will let them know the appropriate salary range for your desired job.
- Always be courteous. Always return their calls as soon as possible because it shows them you are very interested in finding a job

Whether the economy is good or bad, finding a job can be difficult. Competition for jobs is steadily increasing. Using a job recruiter will improve your chances of securing your desired job.

Seeking for headhunters or want to become a headhunter Singapore,  visit Recruitplus today.

Executive Search Vs Contingency Recruitment

Executive Search Vs Contingency Recruitment

The lines between Executive retained search assignments and contingency search have blurred in the UK, this article highlights the essential differences between the two business models and analyses the weaknesses and strengths of each.

Executive Search
The client company agrees to work exclusively with a search firm.

The search firm will typically advertise through print and online media - Unlike contingency recruitment the clients identity and branding will be displayed. Print and media advertising in trade publications or broadsheets are billed back to the client.

In addition to a media campaign the search firm will carry out extensive research, analysing the marketplace, gathering feedback and putting together a target list of potential candidates from industry reports, news sources, Linked In, networking et al.

The list is then whittled down, the potential candidates negatively screened - informal referencing, client company input play a big part here. Once the shortlist is compiled and agreed with the client the search firm will make discrete approaches to the candidates.

This phone call is the traditional headhunting call, the part of the process familiar to executives across the world. First contact is often made at the candidates place of work, a polite but direct approach will establish if that individual is open to having a further in depth conversation outside of office hours.

This next conversation represents another cull and candidates are disqualified according to the clients requirements - not senior enough, not technical enough, too expensive etc. Equally many candidates will disqualify themselves if not sufficiently interested. Happy, successful executives while interested enough to take the call will rarely be looking to jump ship. This conversation represents a balancing act and different head hunters have different approaches but the overall aim is to draw as much information from the candidate and establish a match or disqualify where appropriate.

This is very much 1st date territory and no head hunter will want to give full disclosure at this stage - There are many reasons for this but chiefly you're looking to control the process not end up in a yes/no scenario based on an individuals perception of your clients brand. In any industry the top firms and executive talent swims in a very small pool and water cooler gossip and brand reputation of a client organisation or individual need to be carefully managed.

Pre conceived ideas about your clients brand can make for a difficult sell so be sure to make sure that there is a genuinely good match and that your clients proposed role has sufficient weight to attract and hold a candidates attention.

e.g A small up and coming cash rich company may be able to offer excellent prospects, be growing faster than all their competitors but if their brand currently holds all the cache value of a McJob the executives will walk away from that conversation the second you give them the client name

Of course if you're lucky enough to be conducting a search for the top tier, big four, fortune 500 type company the brand will sell itself but bias exists here but in reverse and there will often be a preference for executive talent coming from higher or at least top tier peer ranked organisations. Companies paying for retained search in general do not 'hire down'.'

If there is merit for both parties to meet and discuss things further then a face to face meeting will normally take place outside of work hours - hotel lobbies are a favourite. At this stage the search consultant will disclose the client company and a far more detailed conversation will take place.

Many modern day search firms and even contingency recruiters boast of being able to providing psychometric testing - In reality a basic tool that more often than not boxes people into four personality types through forced choice questions. If you can convince your shortlisted panel of candidates to sit such exams then they're a powerful value add for the end client but genuine top performers will need to be very keen on the role and client company before they jump through such qualification hoops.

Payment of fee: Traditionally paid in thirds. First one-third payment is due at signing of search agreement; next on presentation of shortlist and final payment due thirty days after that.

Fee: usually equal to 30-35% of the hiree's first annual compensation. That includes bonuses, perks (such as cars, club memberships, etc.) and anything else that is considered part of the hiree's first year of compensation.

Rebate, which is the search firms guarantee to the client company generally begins at one year and extends sometimes two years and beyond - depending on hiree level and prior agreements. Simply put the Search company will pay back a percentage of their fee if the candidate leaves or doesn't work out during this timescale.

Contingency search

Contingency search is the industry standard, it's cheaper and quicker although offers non of the guarantees that an executive search does. In some cases the contingency recruiter may be just as able as the 'headhunter' and the real difference is in the business model.

Often candidates are not interviewed in person (almost 100% true for interim/contract type assignments, particularly within IT) and sent to the client blind. The client will then decide to interview or not depending on the individuals CV.

Contingency recruiters do not charge a retainer fee and the client is only invoiced once the candidate starts work.

Non-exclusive which means the client organisation is free to advertise directly speak to other recruiters and in fact often actively do so to encourage competition and ensure value for money.

Many have formal or informal preferred supplier agreements in place with several agencies who work on a contingency basis trading limited exclusivity (2/3 agencies, direct access to roles) for lower profit margins.

The bulk of candidates submitted will come from online advertisements on job boards such as Monster, Jobsite, total Jobs, and the searching of their online CV database. Many client companies now employ in house recruiters who scour these job boards.

Job boards themselves now market aggressively to the end client reasoning that it would be a win win for any hiring company to cut out the recruiter middleman and pointing out that for the large part recruiters are simply forwarding CV's readily available to anyone with access to their database.

A counter argument of course is that Job boards can cost upwards of £2000 for a single months access and can not guarantee results - Clients pay agencies on results, job boards sell the promise of results.

Client rebate is generally up to around two months but vary from company to company.

Costs are calculated as a fee equal to the hiree's first year of annual salary. Rarely are other compensatory benefits included such as bonuses, perks, etc.

Public and Not-for-Profit: 15-20%.
Private Sector 20-25%.

In conclusion there is support for both business models, executive search may represent a more professional approach but it comes down to the individual or the firm and many 'executive search' firms now bill clients almost exclusively on a contingency basis and for far less than the industry average 30 - 35%.

Equally many contingent recruiters have excellent networks and contacts and could carry out the same services as a headhunter for far less cost, in a quicker timescale but would not back their candidates with a two year rebate. It's this provision of insurance that really marks the difference between contingency and executive search.

Looking for headhunters or want to become a headhunter Singapore, visit Recruitplus today. Click Here

Selecting the Right Recruiter for Your Sales Hiring Needs

Due to the acute shortage of experienced, good sales people, more and more companies are looking to hiring such sales people (and sales managers too) through headhunters. Unfortunately, most of the results are quite disappointing.

The purpose of companies engaging headhunters is usually to seek direct and alternative ways to source for good candidates. Alternative in the sense that the candidate will not be reading about the position in recruitment ads. Instead, companies hope that headhunters will have a large pool of ready candidates, and in lieu of that, can actually make the cold-calls and poach the right candidates from other companies.

Unfortunately, many headhunters, including some international ones, tend to be rather passive in the hiring process. If they have a good pool of suitable people, that's great. If not, they simply take out an advertisement and publicise the vacancy, something which the hiring company could have done by themselves anyway.

In many cases, the consultants working for the headhunters tend to be also very junior, and may not have the right exposure to decide what will make a good fit for the hiring company. They may be susceptible to manipulation by some candidates, and in some cases, even willfully recommend the hiring company to meet up with less-than-qualified candidates, just to prove hey are doing their jobs.

As a result, most headhunters don't really add value to the hiring companies. That's no to say that all headhunters are bad. There will be times that headhunters can save time and resources while providing candidates that fit at the same time. It's a question about how you evaluate and choose whom to work with.

Here's a list of questions that you may want to ask yourself, or the prospective headhunter, before you decide hiring them:

• How is the track record of the headhunter? How many sales or sales management positions have they filled in the past year? Can they give you references from their other clients for similar positions?
• Do they understand your business, and the qualities and behaviours needed to succeed for the candidates? Will they know if the candidate will fit into your unique sales culture?
• Do the consultants have real work experience, or are they fresh out of school? Do they have a structured interview process that allows them to identify the good-fits from the rest?
• Do they pro-actively solicit good candidates in your industry? If yes, how well do they perform for such pro-active recruitment?
• Do they guarantee you a time frame for the search?
• Will you be updated regularly on the progress?
• Do they make reference checks? How do they make them? (note: your competitor will be most delighted if you were to hire their worst performing sales person, and hence may give glowing references!)

While engaging headhunters may save some time and resources, there is still a lot of groundwork to be done in the initial process. Headhunters should not be perceived as the "all cure" that solves all your hiring problems in an instant. Instead, the good headhunters will be your partners in identifying and planning for your long-term hiring needs.

Seeking for headhunting or want to become a headhunter in Singapore, visit Recruitplus today

Recruiters at Service, Your Honour!

It's not always the white collar but the black coat rules the roost in the legal industry. Careers in law are blooming day by day. Thanks to the immense contribution of legal recruiters, lawyers are now able to attain their career goals with great success. For most lawyers, legal recruiters have become a part of life. While most of them would not like to entertain telephone calls during the wee hours, lawyers still must not completely overlook their services. Even a brief conversation with a recruiter can help you absorb valuable information on the legal market and your marketability. Besides, it always pays to build successful relations with a recruiter either for the present or the future.

Nevertheless, it is not possible to communicate with every legal recruiter. Lawyers should be able to evaluate a good recruiter and plan out a strategy to work together. This would strengthen the foundation of their relationship and assist the lawyer in stating his exact job requirements.

In order to receive some of the best job offers in the industry, lawyers need to define their career goals first. The areas in which one can guarantee 100% job satisfaction need to be outlined. Flexibility is highly desirable for one's career growth. Even a minor change can potentially increase chances of being recruited in the organization of your dreams. Besides updating one's resume, lawyers must obtain a copy of the final law school transcript.

The career success of a lawyer often depends on the kind of legal recruiter he/she relies upon. Confidentiality is one prerequisite that one cannot overlook. Prior to seeking help, lawyers or employers should demand how recruiters manage to maintain confidentiality of their customers. Your resume should not be submitted anywhere without your permission. One must also be wary of signing any contract with the recruiters. Always remember, good legal recruiters never force but earn trust. They offer adequate assistance not only to review your resume and writing sample but also help you make the right choice out of the whole bunch of lawyer jobs.

A successful relationship with a good recruiter can thus highly increase your chances of finding a satisfying position. Coming across good attorney jobs is not a daily occurrence. So the next time a recruiter calls you up, just take a moment to receive the call. You never know when you strike gold!

Looking for headhunting or want to become a corporate headhunters, visit Recruitplus today. Click Here

Performance Management - Is Your Organization Doing it Right?

When running a business, one of the key things you need to know is how well your employees are carrying out their duties. Unlike the old days when people worked on assembly lines and their work could be measured by the number of units they produced, evaluation in modern organizations is far more complex.

Performance appraisals have been a feature of most organizations for years but these have often just been administrative exercises. The modern business world demands much more and now the focus is on aligning the systems and processes with organizational strategy and goals

You need to assess such factors as overall competence with the task at hand, the extent to which the employee's skills and experience is being effectively applied, the worker's potential to gain new skills and progress, and leadership and communication skills, to mention but a few. This is no easy task.

Nevertheless, any effective operation requires a system to evaluate performance to ensure that goals are consistently being met in an effective and efficient manner, and that all work is aligned with corporate goals and strategies. If you want the corporate success that having a satisfied workforce brings, this is something you have to take seriously.

Thorough and effective performance management brings many benefits to your organization. For one thing, it creates transparency and boosts employee engagement by showing staff how their actions contribute to success.

This allows the development of incentive plans to allow high achievers to earn more. In any organization, you need to make sure that your top performers remain motivated, engaged in their work and are adequately compensated.

What's more, it assists in employee career development. By clearly understanding their current level of performance, staff can determine what they need to do to advance in the organization.

Another benefit is that you can create professional development programs that are better aligned to organizational goals. Programs can be tailored to areas where performance is not optimal to correct any deficiencies.

Performance management is complex and demanding, but fortunately technology has provided a rich array of tools in the form of employee performance management software. Other than producing results that engage and empower employees, this software also works to reduce administrative costs by automating the performance management process.

Using integrated software can deliver a significant return on investment when compared with standard methods. Another plus is that it ensures legal compliance by standardizing performance management processes.

Nowadays, leading firms offer performance management solutions that integrate performance management, compensation management, career development, goal alignment and succession planning into one seamless whole covering the entire employee lifecycle. Taking advantage of this system allows you to fully utilize data and make strategic decisions based on a holistic view of your workforce.

Utilizing one of these solutions offers benefits other than just with existing staff; it can also help with effective candidate sourcing. By assessing those who are the best in their role, recruiters can identify applicants with the same qualities for new positions.

The process, known as creative sourcing allows specialized firms to carry out top performer research and analyze the job market to find ideal candidates. Part of this procedure is also to gain an understanding of organizational culture to determine the best way to approach prospective new staff.

Performance management is a complex task in today's organizations. Real Performance Evaluation requires a way of determining real performance not just procedures. It requires sophisticated qualitative assessment and it also needs to cover the whole employee life cycle from hiring to leaving.

In today's competitive environment you need more than just quality staff; you also need to manage their performance to unlock maximum value. You can use the services of professional firms specializing in performance; these firms can offer modern systems and measurement compensation management tools thus allowing your organization to real achieve valid performance evaluation.

Performance management is not an event or a function; it is a process that works as a continuous cycle with the objective of corporate excellence. To bring effective performance management to your organization, take a look at the web sites of leading firms with long experience and latest methods. You can choose the right program for your operation and bring in the professionals to take charge.

Formulating a performance management tool for your company? Look for Recruitplus today, an award winning HR consultancy in Singapore, visit here.

Recruiters at Service, Your Honour!

It's not always the white collar but the black coat rules the roost in the legal industry. Careers in law are blooming day by day. Thanks to the immense contribution of legal recruiters, lawyers are now able to attain their career goals with great success. For most lawyers, legal recruiters have become a part of life. While most of them would not like to entertain telephone calls during the wee hours, lawyers still must not completely overlook their services. Even a brief conversation with a recruiter can help you absorb valuable information on the legal market and your marketability. Besides, it always pays to build successful relations with a recruiter either for the present or the future.

Nevertheless, it is not possible to communicate with every legal recruiter. Lawyers should be able to evaluate a good recruiter and plan out a strategy to work together. This would strengthen the foundation of their relationship and assist the lawyer in stating his exact job requirements.

In order to receive some of the best job offers in the industry, lawyers need to define their career goals first. The areas in which one can guarantee 100% job satisfaction need to be outlined. Flexibility is highly desirable for one's career growth. Even a minor change can potentially increase chances of being recruited in the organization of your dreams. Besides updating one's resume, lawyers must obtain a copy of the final law school transcript.

The career success of a lawyer often depends on the kind of legal recruiter he/she relies upon. Confidentiality is one prerequisite that one cannot overlook. Prior to seeking help, lawyers or employers should demand how recruiters manage to maintain confidentiality of their customers. Your resume should not be submitted anywhere without your permission. One must also be wary of signing any contract with the recruiters. Always remember, good legal recruiters never force but earn trust. They offer adequate assistance not only to review your resume and writing sample but also help you make the right choice out of the whole bunch of lawyer jobs.

A successful relationship with a good recruiter can thus highly increase your chances of finding a satisfying position. Coming across good attorney jobs is not a daily occurrence. So the next time a recruiter calls you up, just take a moment to receive the call. You never know when you strike gold!

Looking for headhunting or want to become a corporate headhunters, visit Recruitplus today. Click Here

Why You Should Be Using A Recruiter

I'm a recruiter so it probably won't come as a surprise that I'd recommend using a recruiter as part of your job search.

Rather than justify my existence, I think it would be more valuable to you the reader to understand exactly how a good recruiter can add value to your career search.

Truthfully, a good recruiter can help give you an advantage over other people looking for (and interviewing for) the same jobs you are.

1. A good recruiter can help you find jobs that you might otherwise not know about.

You may have heard about the "hidden job market." Sometimes it's so well hidden, you can't actually find it.

A recruiter has two main goals in life: to find jobs to fill and then to find the person to fill it.

So first off, the recruiter needs to find open positions that they can help a company fill. Then they look for suitable candidates like you to actually present to the company for consideration for the job.

In other words, a recruiter is a person who by definition needs to know where the available jobs are and who is hiring. They do this so that you don't have to.

2. A good recruiter should help you prepare for interviews.

I don't just mean that they email you a link to the company website and read directions to the company out to you over the phone, either...

If your recruiter just does that, get a new recruiter!

A good recruiter will shed light on specific information that will help you stand out from others who are interviewing for the same job as you but who applied on their own and won't have access to this information. This can only help you!

A good recruiter will know the hiring manager (or whoever is interviewing you) and will be able to fill you in on some information you wouldn't otherwise know about.

For example, information that I always pass onto my candidates include things like:

• the personality of the interviewer(s). Imagine if you always knew before the interview what sort of people you'd be interviewing with so that you could prepare for each person individually?
• hot buttons that the interviewer/company really wants to see ie. the recruiter tells you what to focus on during the interview so that you don't forget to mention the skills and experience that the interviewer really wants to know about.
• where other candidates who have interviewed for the same job have failed. In other words, a good recruiter will tell you how to avoid making mistakes that other candidates have already made!

3. A good recruiter will help you role-play for an interview.

In other words, they will help you prepare for the interview by mimicking how the interview could actually go. It's easy to surf a company website and think of a few ways to answer possible questions that might arise during the interview.

It's another thing altogether to actually answer questions as if you were already in the interview.

Role-playing where you verbally answer questions as if you are already in the interview is far superior to simply thinking about how you will answer the questions.

An interview - especially when it's for a job you really want - is not the time to freestyle it and think that you can go into an interview and just wing it and still win the job.

4. A good recruiter understands the importance of timing.

Often, finding a new job is (among other things) a case of being in the right place at the right time. Not only does the job become available at a time that suits you, but the company comes along with a position that requires the same experience and skills that you happen to have at a time when you just happen to be considering switching jobs.

How many times have you been happily working away and not thinking about looking for a new job when a position pops up that would interest you if only it had have been presented to you in say 6 months or perhaps 12 months from now?

I've seen that happen quite a bit, where the timing just isn't right to change jobs.

Timing really is everything especially when it comes to changing jobs.

And a good recruiter who knows you well will help you find a job within your timeframe which will save you from having to constantly keep your eyes open looking for the same positions or positions that would suit you that you didn't even know about.

The best part is that you don't pay to use a recruiter, the hiring company does.

My suggestion is to find a small handful (ie. 3-4) good recruiters (you'll quickly see the difference between a good one and a bad one...) that you trust and allow them to help you with your job search.

You should also quickly see the benefits of using recruiters at this time.

Seeking for headhunter or want to become a headhunters Singapore, visit Recruitplus today. Click Here