I have been out of the business game for a bit, so I will have to freshen up on my information, but the headhunter tends to fall into the former category for a good many JMOs looking for a job. There are a number of them out there, and it would be beyond the scope of this post to name them all and try to dissect their style of recruitment and marketing, but I can at least talk about my personal experience to serve as a frame of reference for a marginal and a not-so-good experience. Hopefully, as this blog catches on, other JMOs who have been through the process will comment here and provide updates on the headhunter(s) they went through during their transition, and describe the pro's and cons.
The JMO headhunter outfits seem to fall into two categories: large volume with less hands-on work with you, and the smaller outfits with of course a smaller client base and opportunities. Across the two outfits I worked with when I made a transition ten years ago, none of them had any not-for-profit opportunities available, and they all centered on a fairly predictable range of entry-level management, production supervision, and sales jobs. That's not saying that they were bad, but let's face it, that dream job allowing you to showcase your talents with expository writing and critical thinking, design, or other artistic qualities, probably won't be found with a headhunter.
The headhunter process is fairly straightforward. The company develops a client base of companies and corporations that desire to recruit JMOs to work for them in typically supervisory (but at the entry-level) positions, with responsibilities for a range of production outputs, or sales positions (either indoor our outdoor, as they call it at times). There may be a random research analyst position thrown in here and there, but I don't recall them when I was in my campaign.
From that client base, the headhunter receives the requirements for the number of positions the company has open, as well as the hiring requirements for the individual jobs. They in turn look at their pool of JMOs who have signed up for representation, and then try to make a match. Once the JMO is hired on, the company receives the commission agreed upon by the client company. If this all seems fairly straightforward, it isn't. In fact, the headhunters themselves can use slightly shady marketing tricks at times to pull JMOs in and get them to use their "services" as opposed to another outfit. Once you are on board, the various outfits can treat your transition with widely differing styles and techniques, and various results you may or may not like. At the end of the day though, there is one truism, and that is you are not their client. Just as a guest blogger has mentioned already, the company retaining the services of the headhunter is the client. You are just one blip on the headhunter's corporate timeline, and may not enjoy the experience of a headhunter representative laboring to tailor a plan that suits your goals. It is, after all, about money. Time is money, and if you are taking up time then the amount of effort on their part is going to decrease, from what I have seen.
I'm not going to mention the names of the companies I was involved in at the moment, as I do not know if their practices are the same as what I experienced years ago, and I don't want to color anyone's decisions by mention of a name alone. It's been years, and they may have changed their strategies wholesale for all I know.
My headhunter experience began with a large company with regional offices in all the big cities, and teams of recruiters who worked fairly aggressively in getting applicants hooked into their pipeline. I had heard from other JMOs that their process was largely one involving long-distance contact (even though email was still something fairly new and a bit cumbersome at times), job fairs that brought HR reps from the client companies together, and a client base that ranged the standard brick and mortar companies traded on the stock markets, as well some privately held companies that were still large. It relied on mass mailing to advertise, but word of mouth was still fairly strong and in their court. Although they had a large client base, their throughput only allowed the recruiters to follow a basic model of getting the resume, touching it up a bit, and then working to find the opportunities to line the candidate up with the company. My recruiter had been a JMO just a couple of years prior, and we worked exclusively by remote means, except for one face-to-face visit when I stopped by the Atlanta office, and it was clear to me he was not comfortable with that sort of contact in the environs of his cubicle. He was paid a small salary, supplemented by commissions from landing candidates for companies.
This company used a process involving large job fairs sponsored by the headhunter company, where candidates got all dressed up, piled into a location, and then had a chance to browse the HR booths of the client companies in attendance. More often than not, your resume and cover letter would be dropped off, you might be able to chat with the HR rep about the opportunities at hand, and other contact information would be exchanged. Job interviews did not uniformly occur, and often because every candidate at the fair was dropping off a resume! Overall, that was not the route I wanted to go, so I worked with my recruiter and looked at a few breadcrumbs he had, but I did not invest too much time in that avenue. Out of the blue though, near the tail end my campaign this headhunter landed a bigger nibble. I was flown out to the Dubuque, IA plant to interview with John Deere for a $55K production supervision job, with heavy responsibility for safety management. I got the job offered to me, but it was Dubuque for crying out loud, and being a fairly homogeneous place, it didn't suit the sort of life I wanted to start for my family. I was fortunate, however, that the job I ultimately took fell into my lap through networking at the same time, and I had the luxury of turning down the offer.
The second outfit was a smaller setup regionally located in Atlanta, with a few offices in other eastern seaboard cities, but nothing north of Washington DC. I became very interested in them due to their program. They advertised a process where they took your resume, refined it to the point where you had effectively translated all that military stuff into something a HR rep could go off of, and then they brought you in (on your dime though) to one of their regional development seminars where they spent the first part of the week grooming you in job hunt skills, interviewing techniques, and other small group activities that I think better prepared all of the candidates, and then brought HR reps in during the last two days for interviews in their hotel rooms.
The best thing I got out of that company was the work my recruiter and I did in unscrewing my resume. I had a lot of good stuff (or so I thought) that read like I was a badass in an personal award context, but it didn't tell the company anything about me and why they should hire me beyond my good looks. I had come up with a concise and well-laid out format that followed a style from the Knock 'Em Dead book of that year, but the recruiter knew I could highlight more with substantive edits. That's where he coached me to look at my time and my work as an interaction with a variety of processes. This was a novel way to look at things, because as junior officers we don't see the military as a number of processes; they are though, when you sit back for a moment. He wanted me to think about times where I had identified ways to improve the processes to save time in man hours, lower material costs, or increase productivity. It was hard, but he gave excellent advice and insight into what a large company's HR department would be looking for, and I had not picked that up from the other headhunter or KED.
I remember going through an insane number of edits with that resume prior to the seminar in Houston, but in the end I believe they were all justified and beefed it up. At the seminar, I gained a variety of new skills from the small group discussions, like making a point to drop the "sir" or "ma'am" when greeting the rep, and remembering to relax and avoid the left-hand-left-knee sort of posture I might revert to under stress. I was also reminded that although the Corps might like intensity in action, words, and deeds, it could be a little unnerving to the rep to give them the "crazy eyes" during the interview. Although they would enjoy seeing focus and sincere interest from the candidates, we all needed to bring it down a notch or two in terms of intensity.
The only thing that put me off about that headhunter was the fact that their client base had a lot of sales jobs, and I was nudged on more than one occasion to look at some of the sales positions, despite my flat out proclamation that I was not interested in sales in the least.
Across the two days, I think I interviewed with about seven companies, ranging to production line work in the central Florida area at pharmaceutical and check printing companies, to a production supervisor position in the Houston area for a homebuilding company. None of the jobs really inspired me, and although I went on to a follow-up interview at the Orlando check printing plant, nothing panned out.
The biggest benefit gained from this headhunter was the resume and interview skills work. Yes, I paid for airfare, rental car, and hotel room for the seminar. but it was a good investment.
Although I had one job offer and a few other serious nibbles as a result of my two headhunter experiences, the job I ultimately landed came as a result of networking with contacts at my Orlando duty station. I had talked about my intention to leave the Corps, and an acquaintance saw an opportunity to line me up with a small business that was getting into the DoD contracting game after performing on a number of INS and VA contracts. I ended up getting a painless interview, was able to negotiate my salary based on a few techniques I learned in a Karass Seminar I attended on the govt. dime, and landed the job.
I want to highlight that the strength of networking is what the guest blogging JMO from the 5 February post made mention of. He provides excellent advice in that regard, and I recommend that everyone in their campaign should sit back and do some thinking about how to network themselves towards job opportunities. It is a good way to supplement any work done with headhunters or cold interviews through the want ads.
One final point to this post and it is time to close. With everything headhunter related, you have to remember that the recruiter is looking out after the client first and foremost, because lining a candidate up with that company puts food on their table. Although they espouse a lot about integrity and principles in their work, it still boils down to money, and we all know what that can make a person do. It's nothing malicious, but the guidance, advice, and coaching they provide might not be up to par with what you expect or want based on your career goals. Don't be afraid to tell the recruiter that you simply are not interested in what they have to offer at the moment, and want to keep looking. More importantly, start your campaign early enough so you can avoid becoming desperate for a job, causing you to hire on with a company that is less than optimal for what you want to do for a job, and in a location that is less than ideal as well.
If the recruiter's performance seems sub par to you based on what they advertise, ask for another recruiter to work with you. Trust your instincts and judgment. It could be that your recruiter is brand new, inefficient, or simply an idiot, so don't settle for poor effort and performance on their part. Make them work for their commission and do what they say they are going to do. Expect a little bit of car salesmanship along the way as well, but don't allow yourself to be patronized. Again, it's not necessarily malicious, just the way they end up doing business.
Okay, get out there and work towards your goals. Here's a dose of moto in that regard:
The lyrics don't have any connection to job hunting. I just think that SSPU rocks. If I ever became a superhero crime fighter, this would be my theme song.
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