Job Search Universe

Passively Looking Aggressively: 10 Things You Can Do To Be Found and Why You Need to Do Them

Having been a recruiter for almost 40 years (GASP!), I started in the industry at a time where running ads meant in a newspaper and cold calling candidates from company telephone directories and lying to them was far more common than it is today (thank goodness).

We were trained to present ourselves as updating telephone books to get names, to call the operator at a company, pretend we were at the airport and . . . I'll skip telling you all the fraud that recruiters would engage in in "days of old."

One of the things I was extremely proud of was helping to create a myth that has gained such wide acceptance today--The Myth of The Passive Candidate.

The way the story goes is that passive applicants are superior to active ones because they are busy doing their job and not reading the newspaper looking for work. That you could run the largest ad in the newspaper and it wouldn't be sen by this person because they were too busy working to know.

As a result, through "aggressive recruiting," I was representing the best person available and not just the best person reading the newspaper on a given Sunday.

I started using this strategy because at the time I started my first business, I didn't have the budget to compete with the larger firms with enormous ad budgets. Thus, in the mind of many clients and firms I was marketing to, I diminished the referrals from my competitors who did advertise and put a halo around mine all at once.

Today, I read posts from recruiters who swear on a stack of Bibles that passive candidates are superior to active ones. It is ridiculous how easy it is to put a hole in the argument but, no mind, zealots exist in religion, politics and recruiting.

However, YOU need to understand that the bias exists and, in good times and bad, construct your job search in such a way as to maneuver some of the people who have this belief system, particularly if you are at a C-level.

Why?

Because to these people, the active job hunter is inferior an unworthy of their client's time.

So here are some strategies to entice and seduce this segment of the search profession.

1. Start by understanding what is your online persona by searching your name. When you run a Google search on mine, I show up in the 4th position behind the comedian, Jeff Altman (he is very funny). When you add "The Big Game Hunter" to the search, there are about 3900 answers including job ads I've written, my websites, articles I've written and much more.

What is yours?

2. Write a professional bio for yourself and post it on your own website (You do have a website, don't you).

3. Use LinkedIn, Xing, Konnects and Zaabiz.
LinkedIn is the largest in the US; Xing, the largest in Europe and growing in the US as is Konnects and Zaabiz (they are Australia/New Zealand based and growing in the US, and Asia).

4. Write articles about your competence for trade publications.

5 Become active in online communities.

6. Give referrals to recruiters.

7. Blog about your work.

8. If you aggressively look for work, only post "blind resumes." Post a resume with your name on it and a different one that does not and is different than in some respects from the public one.

9. Collect contact information from people when they leave your firm. They may be great sources of leads, particularly if you send them

10. Christmas and holiday cards that tell the detailed stories of the year for you professionally and personally.

Remember, for this class of recruiter, you can not look good to them if you are looking for work publicly. Thus, put yourself in the position to be "found" so that they can have the false feeling of success and accomplishment.

Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter™
Concepts in Staffing
thebiggamehunter@cisny.com

Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter™, is Managing Director with Concepts in Staffing, a New York search firm. He has successfully assisted many corporations identify management leaders and staff in technology, accounting, finance, sales, marketing and other disciplines since 1971.

Jeff is the author of "Get Yourself Hired NOW! The Big Game Hunter's Guide to Head Hunting Your Next Job and Every Job After That!" (available as an ebook or audio) and "Get Your Job Search Organized NOW!" (e-book only) available at www.getyourselfhiredNOW.com

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™ The Big Game Hunter, Inc. 2007