Headhunting: a compliment or harassment?

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These days there seem to be numerous negative comments and blogs about recruiters with it appearing to be open season on dissing the recruiter and the work they do.  Are recruiters the bottom of the bottom?

Recruiters have a bad reputation, and let us be honest about it – just like HR folks, used-car salespeople and attorneys, that bad reputation was earned. Nearly every job-seeker has a story about being spurned, mistreated, dissed or ignored by a recruiter. That doesn’t mean that every headhunter or third-party recruiter is an aggressive, greedy villain.

Plenty of ethical and hard-working search partners put brilliant job-seekers together with forward-looking hiring managers every day.  Whether an internal or agency recruiter, their commodity is talent. They are engaged to find suitable people that fit a brief for a company that either doesn’t have the time, network or ability to find suitable candidates themselves.

It is reasonable to assume that many recruiters may not have any personal experience within the industry they are recruiting for so if your resume has made it past the six seconds it needs to clearly show the ways your audience can ‘sell you’ to the right people.

You need to do this by demonstrating very quickly in your resume the ‘value’ you bring to the table.

An achievement or results based resume is the best way to market your value and communicate quickly your ability to produce significantly better results than other qualified candidates you are competing against for the same role.

How do you ensure your resume is selling you?

A results based resume should list your highlights under each role you’ve had. A highlight states what you achieved in your role rather than how you made your achievements. Show clearly what the end result was i.e. increased profit margin from X% to Y% or implemented x which had a direct result of $x on y.

The time to talk further about how you achieved these results is when you are in front of the recruiter and then the hiring manager. By getting to the point quickly you will reduce the size of your resume, cutting out the fluff and showing potential hiring managers what you are able to achieve. Most hiring managers want to know how you are able to positively impact the bottom line.

Ideally your resume should be no more than 2 or 3 pages. If you haven’t shown your value by page 2 it’s unlikely anyone is going to read further.

Recruiters and potential employers are time poor and the easier you can make their job by discovering the value you offer the better your chance to gain an interview.