Stalking the Wily Hiring Manager: How to Use the Headhunters’ Strategies in Your Next Job Search
Headhunters or executive search consultants are professionals at matching jobs and people. Your job search will benefit if you learn from the pros. MedZilla examines what headhunters do and how you can use their tactics to advantage for your own job search.
For Immediate Release
Stalking the Wily Hiring Manager: How to Use the
Headhunters’ Strategies in Your Next Job Search
Marysville, WA (PRWEB)
May 14, 2004 -- Stalking the Wily Hiring Manager: How to Use the Headhunters’
Strategies in Your Next Job Search
Headhunters, more correctly known as
executive search consultants or recruiters, know how to match people with
jobs—it’s their job. So, why not use some of the tactics they use for your own
job search?
Relationships are the foundation of what makes a recruiter
successful, says Frank Heasley, PhD, president and CEO of MedZilla.com, a
leading Internet recruitment and professional community that serves
biotechnology, pharmaceuticals, healthcare and science. “They network with their
clients’ and their contacts and find out which companies are looking for people
and whether or not those companies would be interested in receiving resumes or
help from recruiters.”
The process starts by simply calling your friends
and colleagues and talking to them. You wouldn’t necessarily say you’re looking
for a job with their firm, but rather say you’re looking for a job and ask if
they know anyone that you should talk with, according to Dr. Heasley. “That’s in
a nutshell what recruiters do when they’re looking for people and also when
they’re looking for assignments as recruiters.”
Heasley was a recruiter
before launching MedZilla. He got good at looking for jobs and enjoyed the hunt,
he says. “If you enjoy looking for jobs, then you’re half way to becoming a
recruiter.”
Being a headhunter: It’s F.U.N.
Pam Lassiter,
principal of Lassiter Consulting (www.lassiterconsulting.com) and author of The New Job
Security, a book describing five strategies to take control of your career, says
that the key to looking for a job as a headhunter would is in the acronym F.U.N.
“F” is for focus on specific companies. A search firm doesn’t try to
place employees in all available jobs—it, rather, targets its efforts. So, you
should do the same, focusing on companies that are most likely to need your
skills, according to Lassiter. “There will be a finite number in your geographic
area. You can make a list of them. This doesn’t have to be a perfect company to
go on your list--it just has to be a company that might be of interest. You can
share this list with other people to get connections. If you’re waiting for help
wanted ads, that puts you in a reactive position, so you’re not focusing on
companies that might fit.”
“U” stands for understand relationships. Who
would you need to meet at the companies on your list who might be in a position
to hire you or might know other people? Headhunters have long-term relationships
with companies, Lassiter says. “You might know that the VP of R&D will hire
you if there is an opening or a need, but you don’t know that person,” she says.
The whole purpose is to get to the right person, she says. “HR can only
help with jobs that they have approved and funded and budgeted but there are
many opportunities that never go through HR. Other people in organizations might
know about developing needs.”
“N” is for needs—identifying companies’
needs. With terrorism a lot of work has been generated for biotech and
pharmaceutical firms. Think of the need for vaccinations alone, Lassiter says.
Know who has gotten the contracts, the business, which companies are spinning
off, which are acquiring other companies. There is a lot of hiring going on
around those activities, she says. “HR might not have jobs on the job specs on
their desks yet for some of these needs. If you can find the decision makers
early, you will have less competition,” Lassiter says. “You talk to them about
how you can help them meet their needs. Link it to profitability and tell them
how you’re going to help them be more profitable, which they love. The more you
can demonstrate how you’re going to be profitable to a company, the more
interested they’ll become.”
Recruiters do the same when they’re
marketing a candidate to a client firm: They talk about how that candidate might
fit perfectly into what the companies’ needs, like fitting a round peg into a
round hole, she says.
Sometimes, recruiters and candidates might even
create a need, Dr. Heasley says. “Candidates might be even better equipped than
headhunters to create a need because they know the industry and its language,”
he says. “Recruiters who tend to be most successful in placing people in
technical positions are those who have worked, themselves, in the individual
fields.”
Still, relationships are the bottom line to your success.
“Headhunters work on relationships. They work on change, and they work on
turnover. If you can be focused and understand relationships and identify needs
early on, you’re going to have opportunities before even the headhunters do. The
objective of cutting out the headhunter is that you can get some of that money
into your own salary if you negotiate wisely,” Lassiter says.
About
MedZilla.com
Established in mid 1994, MedZilla is the original web site to
serve career and hiring needs for professionals and employers in biotechnology,
pharmaceuticals, medicine, science and healthcare. MedZilla databases contain
about 10,000 open positions, 13,000 resumes from candidates actively seeking new
positions and 71,000 archived resumes.
Medzilla® is a Registered
Trademark owned by Medzilla Inc. Copyright ©2004, MedZilla, Inc. Permission is
granted to reproduce and distribute this text in its entirety, and if
electronically, with a link to the URL www.medzilla.com. For
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contact Michele Groutage, Director of Marketing and Development, MedZilla, Inc.
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Source : http://www.prweb.com/releases/2004/5/prweb125878.htm