When A Recruiter Becomes A Job Seeker The Irony Of It All

When A Recruiter Becomes A Job Seeker â€" The Irony Of It All I assumed recruiters would be my silver bullet to a short job search.   If I could just get a few good recruiters to see my resume, and find my job for me, Id be set. That wasnt the case at all.   I learned a lot about recruiters and the candidate/recruiter relationship.   Powerful, yes they are.   Silver bullet, not necessarily. In the last 30 months since I started this journey Ive seen some of these powerful recruiters become job seekers themselves.   Geesh, who better to successfully do a job search than a recruiter?   After all, they know how jobs are found, know how to network, and should have a TON of contacts with decision makers at companies. Alas, some recruiters who become job seekers flounder as much as we do.   And it always shocks me.   Heres why I think recruiters dont necessarily become good job seekers: They arent ready for it. Who is ready for it?   Even if you think you are getting ready for it, the reality of were going to have to let you go doesnt hit until you actually hear the words.   Then you can lose all hope of it maybe not happening, which means you really, really have to shift gears. Their network relationships are weak. Sure, they are on the phone all day.   But many candidates I talk to dont like recruiters.   Passive candidates (the ones who are NOT looking for a job) are annoyed that recruiters bug them during the day, and active candidates (the ones who are desperately looking for a job) are annoyed recruiters never call them back!   And some recruiters dont deal with companies, who to them are the clients, because someone else in their office is taking care of the client relationship. They dont really understand the job search process for themselves. Working with candidates to get their resume good enough, and helping them prepare for interviews, and cold-calling and working LinkedIn to find the right candidate youd think this was good training for a future job seeker.   Have you ever noticed that its a lot easier to tell someone how and when to do things, than to actually do them yourself?   If a recruiter enters a job search, and it goes on and on and on and on (like mine did), I bet they are struggling with the same things I struggled with (self-doubt, lots of introspection, changing of strategies, etc.). There is little-to-no career management. In programming theres a term: heads-down programming. I first heard it when describing a worker who did nothing but program.   He was great at churning out code, but there was nothing else this guy did.   Thats okay, but if we treat our job like this, heads-down doing our job but not ever looking up or getting involved in something else. we are in for a big surprise when the boss lets us go.   Many recruiters Ive met are in heads-down-recruiting mode, doing their job, working on their work goals, making X number of phone calls and trying to place Y number of candidates, that they are blind-sided by were going to have to let you go.   HUH?   I was just doing my job? Principles of job search and career management are the same regardless of who we are.   Recruiters arent any different than we are some are extremely prepared, and others arent.   Id love to hear from recruiters what they think theyd do if they lost their jobs anything different than what most of us normal job seekers are doing? When A Recruiter Becomes A Job Seeker â€" The Irony Of It All I assumed recruiters would be my silver bullet to a short job search.   If I could just get a few good recruiters to see my resume, and find my job for me, Id be set. That wasnt the case at all.   I learned a lot about recruiters and the candidate/recruiter relationship.   Powerful, yes they are.   Silver bullet, not necessarily. In the last 30 months since I started this journey Ive seen some of these powerful recruiters become job seekers themselves.   Geesh, who better to successfully do a job search than a recruiter?   After all, they know how jobs are found, know how to network, and should have a TON of contacts with decision makers at companies. Alas, some recruiters who become job seekers flounder as much as we do.   And it always shocks me.   Heres why I think recruiters dont necessarily become good job seekers: They arent ready for it. Who is ready for it?   Even if you think you are getting ready for it, the reality of were going to have to let you go doesnt hit until you actually hear the words.   Then you can lose all hope of it maybe not happening, which means you really, really have to shift gears. Their network relationships are weak. Sure, they are on the phone all day.   But many candidates I talk to dont like recruiters.   Passive candidates (the ones who are NOT looking for a job) are annoyed that recruiters bug them during the day, and active candidates (the ones who are desperately looking for a job) are annoyed recruiters never call them back!   And some recruiters dont deal with companies, who to them are the clients, because someone else in their office is taking care of the client relationship. They dont really understand the job search process for themselves. Working with candidates to get their resume good enough, and helping them prepare for interviews, and cold-calling and working LinkedIn to find the right candidate youd think this was good training for a future job seeker.   Have you ever noticed that its a lot easier to tell someone how and when to do things, than to actually do them yourself?   If a recruiter enters a job search, and it goes on and on and on and on (like mine did), I bet they are struggling with the same things I struggled with (self-doubt, lots of introspection, changing of strategies, etc.). There is little-to-no career management. In programming theres a term: heads-down programming. I first heard it when describing a worker who did nothing but program.   He was great at churning out code, but there was nothing else this guy did.   Thats okay, but if we treat our job like this, heads-down doing our job but not ever looking up or getting involved in something else. we are in for a big surprise when the boss lets us go.   Many recruiters Ive met are in heads-down-recruiting mode, doing their job, working on their work goals, making X number of phone calls and trying to place Y number of candidates, that they are blind-sided by were going to have to let you go.   HUH?   I was just doing my job? Principles of job search and career management are the same regardless of who we are.   Recruiters arent any different than we are some are extremely prepared, and others arent.   Id love to hear from recruiters what they think theyd do if they lost their jobs anything different than what most of us normal job seekers are doing?