Talent Recruiters Inc.

And you’ve come here to get some insight.

Recruiters are a selfish bunch.  There, I’ve said it.  We recruiters are always performing a tight-wire balancing act whereby we balance the needs of our clients (who pay us) with the needs of our candidates (who don’t).  In that environment, we by necessity must cater to the whims of our clients because going where the money is keeps the doors open.

You understand that, right?

So when we post jobs that we are interested in filling, it is usually at the request of our clients and they have specific needs.  After all, if the jobs were easy to fill, why would they pay recruiters their fees?  If they could post an ad and have the perfect candidate arrive the next day, neatly dressed and ready for work, there would be no market for recruiters.

We get the hard jobs.

Ninety-five percent of hires take place without the intervention of recruiters.  This means, basically, that if you want to get a job, the best way to go about it is to use the network you already have in place.  Talk to your friends, see where they are working. Ask if their companies are hiring.  Call up old bosses and see if they might have a position to take you back or, if that doesn’t work, the HR staff at previous jobs. Dig your well, the old adage goes, before you are thirsty.  Once you are working, keep the network alive and humming.  Talk to your friends. Make new ones.  Keep your options open.

Be honest with yourself.  Why did you leave your last job?  The time before that?  How about the job prior to that?  Is there a pattern?  Do you find that you talk yourself into an exciting new job only to become unsatisfied and unfulfilled, updating your resume and looking within nine months?

Most of us spend our lives trying to find a situation we can live with, whether in a marriage or in a job or even finding that delicate balance within our own families.  We struggle against conformity, strain against the boundaries that are imposed upon us by outside forces.  Job seeking is a lot like that.  We need to be honest with ourselves as to what motivates us to take a job.  Most importantly, what motivates us to stay at a job.  It starts within ourselves.

Review your previous employment situations and draw up a comparative list.  See what caused you to be initially excited about the work and what caused you to leave.

We work through this process with all of our candidates.  We want to know what motivates you so that we can figure if the open position we are trying to fill will capture your interest.  If not, we will move on to another candidate.

Nothing against you, you see.  We are just trying to make sure that we don’t create yet another opportunity for you to leave an unsatisfying job.  Because this time we would have stamped you with our name.  And we so much don’t want to create a situation for you…or for us…where we didn’t do a good job for you or our client.

So, back to the initial question:  You want to land a job.

We can help.  Upload your resume, watch our job board, subscribe to the RSS feed if you so desire.  Let us know when something appears that you are interested in pursuing.  Call us up and talk to us about it.  Be prepared for us to deviate from typical recruiter talk and delve into your personal satisfaction requirements.

If you are happy and working in an IT environment and you look around and find that you’re pretty happy and not looking?  Let me know!  I am always searching for clients that engender loyalty and have a very low turnover rate.  These are the best clients I’ve found and I want just a few more in 2011.  If we could find three new clients who maintain a high level of employee satisfaction, I want to be the recruiter that your hiring managers turn to.

When it comes to landing the right job, never dismiss the internal motivations of personal satisfaction.  It makes all the difference between a long-term employee and a short-timer.  We pursue our dreams relentlessly.  It helps to know what they are.

Yes, we are celebrating our second anniversary in business by moving to new office space. Our Open House is Wednesday, June 1st, between 5 and 7 PM.

We are serving drinks and finger foods and would LOVE to have some notice of your attendance by 5/28. You are invited!

If you are interested in coming, please RSVP to Lou Berger at 303.539.9350.

Met with Scott Birkhead the other day and had a great conversation over lunch.  Scott owns Most Placeable Candidate (http://www.mostplaceablecandidate.com), a company that specializes in helping candidates (job-seekers) maximize their ability to navigate through the dark foreboding waters of an interview.

Scott shared with us some of his advice on how to get a candidate through the process, and I thought I’d write up a sort of codification of the Talent Recruiters, Inc. approach to helping candidates.  It’s not terribly different from Scott’s approach.

Here, then, are the rules for making sure that we maximize our relationship with you, the job-seeker:

THE RULES

1)       Always be honest. Never lie to us.  We make a living out of creating what are, in effect, marriages between job-seekers and job-holders, so it’s in your best interest to tell us the bald truth lest you end up in an ugly marriage.  We firmly believe that a paycheck attached to a job you can’t stand is never worth it.  Candidates who have succeeded with us NEVER lie to us, even if the truths are painful to admit.  We’ve probably heard it before.

2)      Be engaged in our process. We’ve been doing this for a long time. What may be a rare event for you (an interview) isn’t for us.  We spend ALL of our days working with candidates and grooming them for successful interviews.  Let us drive the process and listen carefully to what we say.

3)      Be respectful. We are usually working between a dozen and two dozen job openings at any one time, company-wide.  Respect our time, please.  If we call you, we need you to call us back immediately, as soon as you possibly can.  If we email you, we need a reply as fast as you can get it to us.  We’ll try to do the same for you and not waste your time calling you about things that can’t help you or aren’t a match.

4)      Be generous with feedback. Once you’ve interviewed, we need you to call us before the hiring manager can.  Fast feedback is non-negotiable for us because we promise it to our clients.  We cannot afford to lose even a single client because of a candidate who slows down the process.  You want to get hired?  We WANT you hired…so help us help you.

5)      Don’t approach us with money questions up front. Sorry, but this is a huge red flag.  We want to understand the parameters of your job search, what motivates you, where you’ve been, why you’ve been there, and what makes you move.  We don’t work with clients that are hamburger mills, so don’t assume we think you’re just a piece of meat.  We partner with clients with low turnover, we make relationships happen.  We’re not interested in helping feed you into a staff augmentation role.  That’s not our style.  So if you ask about money before we’ve established the FIT of the role for you, we will move on to the next candidate.  Your motivations need to be more than the bottom line, dollar-wise.

Please know what you’re looking for…really. Wishy washy motives and outlooks aren’t going to help us help you.  Why you’re looking, and what you hope to gain, are MUCH more important to us than your skills, so if you can’t articulate your position, you probably need more than recruiting help!

6)      Follow our instructions carefully, please. Every opportunity we post has us asking for your resume in WORD format and then a phone call.  Fail on either of these two and you’re just wasting our time.  Please don’t waste our time.

7)      Don’t assume we are like other recruiters you’ve worked with. Yes, we have “Recruiters” in our company name.  But we don’t make a living churning out waterfalls of keyword-matched resumes, and we take pride in making the right FIT.  Help us see why you’re the exception to the rule, why your particular skillset would benefit our client and why we should entrust your resume to be stamped with OUR name on it.  Show us how you’re different, and help us help put YOUR best foot forward.

There you go.  The Rules.  What do you think?  Comments are welcome.

So the holidays are fast approaching and we find ourselves with twenty-two open positions to fill before they get here.

Busy? You betcha.

Some suggestions for the candidate who is looking to land a job before the new year:

1) Take the time to review your resume and make sure that it’s telling the truth. Monster (the job board) did a survey and found that up to 50% of resumes have some sort of untruth (read: lie) on them. Don’t be that person.

2) Misspellings cost you a lot. Accountemps did another survey and found that misspellings cost you the interview. (Reference link: http://bit.ly/9EgDHu)

3) White space is your friend. It’s completely up to you, but try and glance at your resume from the point of view of a hiring manager. Is it a massive edifice of text, with little space? Managers want to read stories of success, so gear your resume in that direction. Don’t overwhelm the reader with buzzwords like “paradigm shift” and dry statistics about specific bug-fixes, etc. Take the time to tell your story, but keep it readable.

As we enter into the holiday season, take a moment and remember the folks who made the last year special. If you can, call them and thank them.

It’s not the destination, after all. It’s the journey that makes us who we are.

We are super-proud to announce that we’ve landed a HUGE client.

We can’t tell you who they are.  It’s secret.  But we love working with them, they have offices all over the United States, and they are a lot of fun.

Watch the new job postings and get ready to work!  Polish up those resumes, shine those interview shoes, and make sure that you have nice clothes to wear to the interview.

To the right, click the “See Active Jobs” button to see what we are trying to find right now.  If you think you’re a fit, or know somebody who is, please share with us?

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I’ve heard quite a bit lately about how dire the economy is, and how things are shaping up for the end of the year.  I will state that we have FIVE different clients that we are sourcing for right now, and there are more opportunities on the way.  If you are interested in working through Talent Recruiters, Inc. to land a job, or you are a hiring manager trying to find the right fit for your in-place team, give us a call.

Heck, you can call me directly:  Lou Berger at 303.539.9350.

Some things to remember:

1)  Interviewing with a recruiter is the first step in the process.  Don’t think of a recruiter as your servant.  We are paid by the clients, so we represent the client when you speak with us.  Try not to call us morons in your emails. 

2)  Don’t forget that it is our job to represent you in your best possible light.  To that end, please send us a resume after you’ve thoroughly read and understood the job description we’ve posted.  If you are sending in a resume for general purposes, make it the long one, chronologically formatted (not functionally), and with as much “story” to your job history as possible.  We don’t want to read bullet points.  We want to see how you responded to adversity and succeeded.  If necessary, fill in details that the job description calls for that isn’t now represented in your resume.  Example:  If we are searching for a Business Analyst with Bolo experience, please make sure we have Bolo in the resume.

3)  Minimum things we’d like to see:  Your name.  Your address.  All your phone numbers.  What your work status (US Citizen, Green Card Holder, H1B)  is, if applicable.  Resumes without these bare minimums are discarded without comment.  Not being mean, we just don’t have the time to track that information down.

4)  Don’t ask “how much” as your first question.  We’re building relationships, not selling jobs.  We want to know where you come from, what you’ve done, what you are interested in doing.  What motivates you?  Why did you leave your last job?  What causes you to remain loyal?  What drives you away?  We are in the business of making a match between great jobs and great candidates.  Don’t kick yourself out of the game early by demanding what the pay scale is.  If money is your primary motivator, we aren’t interested in representing you.

5)  Talk to us as mentors.  We do this every day.  Most candidates haven’t interviewed in years.  Trust us.  We know what we are doing.  Listen to our advice and work hard to follow it.  Ask questions if you must.  Assume that your landing a job is our highest priority.  You’d be right.

Questions?  Shoot either Wade or me an email:  Lou@TalentRecruiters.net or Wade@TalentRecruiters.net

“Lou, we need a Senior developer with Salesforce.com experience, preferably Apex development experience. They can work remotely, and we need to start them as soon as we find the right match.”

“Gotcha!”

I had Wade (one of my recruiters) take point on this assignment and help find the right fit. We checked our internal database, a couple job boards and then delved into our network. I found what I thought was a great fit, a guy out in North Carolina, who was very up front and honest:

“Lou, I can’t.  I do this for a living, but am working 80 hours a week as it is.  I tried once before to help out another company by doing work for them on the side, but it didn’t work out and I let them down.”

This reply, as you can guess, threw me. I appreciated the honesty, how he wasn’t trying to talk himself up or position himself as “all that.” Rather, he was subverting his own ego for the greater good.  Instant credibility!  This is a guy I can work with!   I like that honesty and empathy for getting the job done RIGHT!

So I do what any good recruiter should do. “Well, thank you for your open honesty. Who do you know that MIGHT be a great fit for this role?”

He volunteered a name, I called that name, and we made the placement late yesterday afternoon!

Yes, we turned a position around in just a few hours. Now we have helped find a new consultant a new job, and we’ve demonstrated to our client that, not only are we quality-oriented, but we are FAST too!

This brings the placement total, just for the month of July, to SEVEN.

How can we help YOU?

A client of ours called me last week.

“Lou, I need two COBOL developers who can help certify code.  Do you have a resume you want to send my way?”

“Sure!”

So I dove into our database and found some resumes we had stored from a recent COBOL development search.  Say what you will about COBOL developers, but I must admit that it is a pleasure speaking with them, overall, as a group.  Is it because they tend to be older?  (COBOL is, after all, an older software language.)  Is it the calm competence that they radiate, having worked with the technology for years, sometimes decades?  Is it the superior work ethic that older employees think of as second nature?  I don’t know, and I don’t care.  What I *do* know is that filling this job could not have gone more smoothly.  I was able to very quickly speak with three candidates who were both available and looking.

I presented each of the three resumes to my client, who informed me that I had a single competitor, and that my competition had only managed to come up with a single resume.  We quickly agreed on an interview schedule and two of my candidates interviewed on Monday afternoon, with the third slated for this morning.

Immediately after their interviews, I spoke with each of the two candidates, found out what they thought of the position and determined that they were both interested in moving forward.

One of the candidates laughed and said “Lou, your hiring manager has you figured out!  I asked what the next step would be and she said ‘Well, Lou will call you to figure out what you think of this interview, then he will call me within a minute of hanging up with you.’”

And, boy is she right!

I called my client and shared the good news:  my candidates were impressed with the company, they wanted to move forward.  Her reply was immediate.

“Lou, let’s stop the interviewing process. Let’s have the two I’ve interviewed report for work on Thursday.”

Just like that.

Talent Recruiters, Inc. is proud to announce an additional two placements yesterday, bringing our monthly total to six placements for July of 2010.  We are proud of what we do, and humbled by the opportunities afforded us by our clients, and the gracious competence of our candidates.

How can we help YOU succeed?

Today we made another placement, this time for a Sharepoint Architect. My client called me yesterday evening, during my drive to my writing critique group.

“Lou, got a sec?” he asked. “We need a Sharepoint Architect for a six week assignment. It starts, get this, on Monday!”

“Um,” I replied. “Not really a big fan of last-minute contracts. What’s the urgency?”

“Brand new project, they wanna start immediately. Oh, and the candidate will have to spend a week of that six weeks onsite in Houston.”

“Got it!”

Finished writing group, went back to the office and worked between 10 and 11 PM, looking through our internal database for folks we’ve worked with in the past. Sent out twenty emails and went home.

This morning, we checked the inbox and found that seven of my twenty had replied. I spoke with each, outlined the situation, set up interviews for three of them. By noon, my client had hired the right fit. Our newest addition to the Talent Recruiters, Inc. family begins work on Monday.

As Louis Pasteur once said, “Luck favors the prepared.”

In this case, Talent Recruiters, Inc. was prepared to step up and find the right fit on, literally, a last-minute basis.

Are you registered in our database? Our recruiters check the internal database FIRST every time we receive a new job order. Take a moment, look to the right of this text, and click the Registration button. It only takes moments to get your resume uploaded into our database.

Are you a hiring manager? Looking for a recruiting company that will provide you with just a few highly qualified and screened candidates? Look no further. Talent Recruiters, Inc. is here to help you meet your deadlines with the right fit for your new open positions!

We found another candidate a home today, and it’s a great feeling. One of our clients, a startup, has a fantastic idea that will change the world. All startups do, and the hope is that their idea will catch hold, smolder and then burst into flame, igniting a passion that fuels the new business and drives it into tomorrow, ever profitable, ever soaring.

We helped make that happen today, by finding the initial architect to implement the ideas of the visionary. A short two month contract, a dream to be solidified using C#, ASP.NET and the Model View Controller pattern: these are the ingredients for success, especially in the heart of our client, the visionary.

This is what business is about. It’s about the introduction of a person with a dream to the folks that can bring the dreams into reality.

Talent Recruiters, Inc. made another placement today. We’re grateful for the opportunity. We’re humbled by the gift.