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Placement Firms are complaining that their clients as well as their job seeking candidates want instant service. They do!

Lima Sehgal

A sneak preview of the future of the placement industry can certainly provide a few pointers. But, this is one trade that keeps going through the wringer so frequently that it is impossible to see any semblance of shape today.

Sniffing reveals that placement firms are trying to get a focus.

Single specializations are still remote for the majority, but there is a certain trend towards sticking to a few identified strength areas.

The first steps are always wobbly.

So is the second, when a toddler grabs on to a walker, which he can’t control. But all that doesn’t matter in the long run.

Much to the relief of candidates and employers, the placement industry is finally getting navigable. I think we can look forward to the time when we can point to a placement firm, and with some surety figure out whether they can handle a specific type of candidate profile with success.

Evolution has taken a long time. Placement firms have finally woken up to the fact that the data-banks of candidates that they so devotedly nurture, and preserve, gives very limited support for their operations. The obsolescence rate is so high that their control over a candidates’ interview response or joining a company is virtually nil.

Placement Firms are complaining that their clients as well as their job seeking candidates want instant service. They do!

Head-hunting has gone back to a solo, individualized feat and candidates are quickly learning the new art of strategically zeroing in on the right placement firm.

In the interim to the future, there is a terrific demand amongst placement firms for fairies and other supernaturals with magic wands providing free services that, in an instant, produces the right candidate for a client.Which could be a whole new line of business.

Anyone qualified?

Copyright © 2011, Jobnet magazine, issue 101

Republication or dissemination of the contents of this article are expressly prohibited without the written consent of the publishers of Jobnet magazine

Courtesy: Jobnet’s Directory of Placement Firms

Posted under Articles by Lima Sehgal

The Industry Kurukshetra in India has a jobmarket Chakravyu comprising of Placement Consultants guarding the turf in the outer ring & HRD fellas guarding the precious turf as the warriors of inner concentric ring.

Bypassing The Gate Keepers

Anil Mahajan

In today’s scenario, most of the recruitment jobs for the open positions in corporates are outsourced. Pre-screening, for example, is done by headhunters & placement consultants. These placement consultants therefore form the First Ring of the gate keepers & need to be dealt with effectively.

Once you are cleared by the placement consultants, you stand a chance of meeting the Gate Keepers of the inner circle i.e., company HRD folk.

Only then can you hope to get through to the man who actually might hire you!

With an ineffective resume, your fate resembles that of Abhimanyu. You could bombard into the ring of placement consultants but could not get out of it —ALIVE. Your resume gets buried into the files of all the placement consultants. The Industry Kurukshetra here has a jobmarket Chakravyu comprising of Placement Consultants guarding the turf in the outer ring & HRD fellas guarding the precious turf as the warriors of inner concentric ring. Abhimanyu, or your resume personified, has to be totally Flawless, Energetic, Valiant & Appealing to by-pass these warriors. Abhimanyu, while in his mother’s womb, had learnt from his father Arjuna on how to effectively pierce both the rings. Extensive study of articles on resume or your Professional Resume Writer may help you in making your Resume so attractive & luring in the eyes of both the kinds of Gate Keepers that these warriors actually welcome you for meeting the precious turf comprising of Hiring Heads.

You need to develop strong interview techniques to win the fortress or an Offer letter. Career Doctors or good articles on the interview techniques can give you sufficient winning strategies. The JobMarket Chakravyu is impregnable for resumes of ordinary types. Piercing the Concentric circle-I to reach the Concentric circle-II & piercing the Concentric Circle-II to meet the precious Hiring Heads & eventually coming out with an offer or appointment letter is no joke. There are ways and means of developing the resume keeping the psycho-graphic & other factors that govern the working patterns and beliefs of both the kinds of Gate Keepers.

Bypassing the Outer ring comprising of Placement Consultants:

So, simply blasting a poorly written resume doesn’t cut ice with placement consultants. The tribe of placement consultants has developed a keen scanning eye & can easily & fatally bury your resume in his files forever.

The reasons could be many.

Maybe you have no talking personal letter addressed to him. Maybe you never spoke to him. But mainly it is because your resume is badly made & doesn’t give him the feel of a winning professional.

He is certainly not interested in proposing a professional with a losing streak(s) (amply present in your poorly written resume) to his client company. Even if you have never spoken to him, your resume speaks. And a poorly written resume talks death of the professional. Even if you have been speaking to him & cultivating him for years.

This placement consultant gatekeeper has over the years fine-tuned his senses. He is a pucca businessman & he doesn’t relish bidding on an ordinary horse or a donkey.

Your resume should appeal to a placement consultant. It should unleash substantial creative juices flow in this businessman & he should start seeing your resume as a thick wad of money or a cheque to be earned from his client company. This is a psychographic situation to be created by your all powerful & ascending resume being presented as a marketing tool rather than as a stale compendium of history. Your appropriately made resume must put most of the placement consultants in a competition to get you immediate job change.

Bypassing the inner ring comprising of corporate HRD folks is equally important & involves much more than putting together a resume in a layout and format that is pleasing to the eye.

Effective resume writing alone can help you by-pass both kinds of Gate Keepers & it  involves art, science, and a large helping of technology.

Many HRD Gate Keepers trash functional resumes as soon as they see them. Use a chronological resume format. If you apply for jobs online or through e-mail, paper quality and scannability are unimportant. Content, structure, format, and Strategy are much more important. Gate Keepers and hiring Heads view functional resumes with suspicion.

Authors of resume writing books, and unsophisticated resume writers who subscribe to their views, often advocate functional resumes for three reasons: it is a simple solution to a complex problem, the advocates do not know better, and they do not have to live with the consequences. If you assume that most people who make hiring decisions are of above-average intelligence, it stands to reason that they would recognize an overused method of hiding information. If you know how the human eye travels, and understand Gate Keepers psychology, you can hide negative information in plain sight.

HRD Gate Keepers are very fussy about the resume but at the same time they tend to accept the recommendations of the placement consultant. So, if your resume is approved by the placement consultant, most of the job is done & the Inner ring of HRD warriors crumbles to a large extent. It can disappear completely, if the mindset of a HRD Gate Keeper is kept in mind while designing the resume.

And lo! You get a date with the Hiring Head. Here the resume needs certain attributes & you need certain interview techniques to enable you to win the Offer / Appointment Letter Jackpot which we will discuss in the forthcoming issue. Maybe Abhimanyu now needs a charioteer of the likes of  SriKrishna to reveal the Srimad Bagwad Gita for winning the interview war.

By Anil Mahajan, MBA PGDIT (IIFT)

He has made pioneering contributions in the field of Resume Writing and Resume Management.

Courtesy Jobnet Magazine issue 101

Republication or dissemination of the contents of this article are expressly prohibited without the written consent of the Author

Posted under Job Hunting Tips, Job Interviews

The Gatekeepers

Anil Mahajan

The head of HRD of a company, who happened to be a client of mine, read the closing lines in my article printed in Jobnet’s last issue. He was pleasantly furious. “Anil, You are antagonising HRD people by calling HRD people GateKeepers to the companies. What do you think I am  — Head- HRD or Head- GateKeeper?.” I told him that I would call him Head- HRD in my next write-up.

Headhunters and Placement consultants are GateKeepers to the companies.

“Thanx Anil.’ He was relieved.

“Man, you are Head- HRD i.e., Head- Human Rejection Department in expanded form” I quipped.

Readers, you know your days are numbered at your current job, but flooding free jobsites with resumes has yielded zilch. It may be time to take your job search in a different direction and figure out how to get around the main obstacle in your way—the GateKeeper.

Who are the GATEKEEPERS?

What’s a GateKeeper? It is anyone who stands between you and the person who might want to hire you. GateKeepers come in many forms, including receptionists, HR executives, and even placement consultants and Headhunters who are doubling up as resume screeners. Surprisingly, GateKeepers are hired or paid by the company to reject as many resumes as possible. They are also paid by the company to reject you in an interview. This interview issue will be discussed in the subsequent issues.

Resume & GateKeepers- the profile and connexion
Do you know what happens to your resume after you send it to an employer/ placement consultant/ headhunters? Some resumes produce immediate results—others disappear without a trace.  Why?

Just try to put yourself in the shoes of a GateKeeper, in this case the HRD Manager.

Your company releases an ad in the newspaper for the position of a Brand Manager.

You receive around 10000 applications.

Now, nobody can interview all 100000 applicants. You check up with the profile given to you by the Hiring Department and tell your subordinate to shortlist resumes. You give him broad guidelines. Your Subordinate is a qualified professional in HRD with, say, 3 years experience in HRD. He successfully shortlists and flags 100 resumes out of 10000.

You are ga ga over his efficiency.

You work on the flagged 100 and finally shortlist 50 to be given to The marketing head for further shortlisting.

You & your subordinate have removed 9950 people from the live list. Maybe the real, capable person is one among those 9950 destined to die unceremoniously. This is bad for the right person and equally bad for the company.

But this is a cold reality

Neither you nor your subordinate or even your company’s headhunters are technically qualified to reject a person as you are an HRD man & not a Marketing man (the post is for Brand Manager). Even HR persons, nay GateKeepers admit that the job seekers who get interviews and offers of employment are not necessarily the best qualified. Often, they are simply the best prepared.
Anyone who has scanned, reviewed, and discarded tens of thousands of resumes knows that most resumes have serious defects; in fact many resumes have flaws that guarantee failure.  Intelligent, highly qualified candidates often write mediocre resumes because they are unaware of the cold realities of resume writing—realities that can prevent even the most qualified candidate from getting hired.

Bypasing the GateKeepers-Smart work vs. Hard work

No one enjoys searching for employment.  If you are like most job seekers, you spend a considerable amount of time and effort searching job ads, networking, and writing your resume and cover letter.  These simple activities can take as much effort as a full-time job. If you would like to work smarter not harder, you must work smartly to develop your resume to appeal to the psyche of the GateKeepers.

GateKeepers are paid to reject majority of resumes

The target and job profile of GateKeepers is to eliminate majority of resume. Your resume must get you past an employer’s GateKeepers ( HRD & / headhunters ) and into an interview with the Hiring Functional Head. Needless to say, if your resume cannot pass the scrutiny of these GateKeepers, you will not get many / any interviews.

GateKeepers are paid to be conservative and suspicious

If GateKeepers have any questions or concerns about a resume, they rarely try to contact the applicant for clarification; they simply discard the resume and pull up the next one. Most employers receive resumes from applicants who are obviously qualified; they do not have time to contact applicants who may be qualified.

GateKeepers go for 10 second scan

Most GateKeepers scan and discard each resume in 10 to 15 seconds unless the resume provides them with a compelling reason to flag it for an in-depth review.  GateKeepers do not enjoy reading resumes.  In order to process hundreds of printed and electronic resumes a week, busy GateKeepers look for excuses to reject most resumes quickly.  In order to survive a ten second scan, it must stand out and present a good snapshot of your skills

GateKeepers look for an excuse to remove flagged resume from consideration

After surviving 10 seconds scan, your flagged resume must survive a thorough examination by a gatekeeper looking for an excuse to remove it from consideration.  It should provide enough rich and compelling detail to sell you to the reviewer and answer important questions that arise during the in-depth review. These competing imperatives are very difficult to fathom.

In a nutshell- Strong Candidate + Weak Resume = No Interview

In resume writing, mediocrity equals failure. Many discarded resumes belong to qualified candidates who are not aware that they are doing substantial damage to their career prospects by using resumes that do not adequately sell their experience, skills, and qualifications. Resume screening is ruthless, cold, impersonal and unforgiving.

If only 10000 people apply for a desirable position, your resume must tell the GateKeeper in no uncertain terms that you are better qualified than at least 9950 of the other applicants.  If your resume cannot beat over 95% of the competition, you will not get interviews.  Your resume is much more important than your actual qualifications at this stage.

Your resume must sell to two audiences. You must write and format your resume to appeal to two audiences: GateKeepers and Hiring Functional Head. These audiences often have different agendas. Corporate recruiters may be in no hurry to fill all open positions because open positions mean job security. GateKeepers guard their turf jealously, so you can be certain that the Hiring Functional Head will not see any resume that has not been blessed by the GateKeeping crew. You must present a resume that can satisfy GateKeepers as well as seasoned Hiring Functional Heads. If your resume makes it clear that you meet all job requirements, the GateKeeper will be compelled to forward it to the Hiring Functional Head.

There are ways and means of developing the resume keeping the pchychographic & other factors that govern the working pattern and beliefs of GateKeepers. All these factors will be discussed in the forthcoming issue.

By Anil Mahajan, MBA PGDIT (IIFT)

He has made pioneering contributions in the field of Resume Writing and Resume Management.

Courtesy Jobnet Magazine issue 101

Republication or dissemination of the contents of this article are expressly prohibited without the written consent of the Author

Posted under Job Hunting Tips, Job Interviews

HOW NOT TO E-MAIL YOUR RESUME

Hardeep Sodhi

In a Survey we did on the effectiveness of sending UNSolicited Resume’s (Resume’s being sent without any specific requirement ) , about 70 % of the respondents rated this technique as PATHETIC in getting them any Results !

As an Executive Search Consultant on the RECEIVING end of these “ Unsolicited Resume’s” , here is my take on why they may not be working for you ..starting from the obvious reasons to some not so obvious ( as it seems ! ) to many of the Job Seekers.

a) ATTACHMENTS : If your Resume’ is being e-mailed as an attachment, chances that it will be downloaded / read may be substantially reduced. MOST Consultants / Employers prefer NO attachments ( or a “text” attachment ) to minimize Virus related issues as well as precious Internet/ PC resources. They are not interested in Photographs or Fancy Formatting, just the Content should be clear.

b) E-MAIL ADDRESS : You have sent your Resume’ to many places, mentioning an E-mail address. Is it still Correct and valid ?? Nowadays E-mail is practically the FIRST mode of contact, so if yours is not valid perhaps you are just missing out on some responses !!

c) LOCATION, LOCATION and LOCATION : While E-mail has made it easier for candidates to send their Resume’s all over the Globe, it has ALSO made it easier for Employers to source LOCAL talent first. This really depends upon your unique skill sets. For example, if you are a Secretary/Accountant working in Calcutta, sending in your Resume’ ( even if in response to a SPECIFIC vacancy ) to a Consultant / Employer in Delhi is simply not going to work out ! No employer will spend money on calling you from Calcutta for an interview when such skill sets are readily available around him !

This is hard but true.

If you are in such a situation you have to take some hard decisions. We know of people who relocate and stay with friends and finally take up an offer at a low salary just to get settled in a City with better career options / salaries for a person with their skill sets. However, you have to be very sure of your competencies since higher the salary budget larger is the Candidate Pool competing for the job.

d) NO URGENCY : A Hiring Decision is made ONLY when a need is CLEARLY established. There is a process for it and you simply can not side step it. If you are sending an Unsolicited Resume’ to a prospective Employer, one of the following could happen :

1) It will be discarded since there is no immediate need.

2) If a possible “ future” need which your Resume’ fills is clearly evident, it may be forwarded to the Hiring Authority for that particular Skill Sets for his/her opinion and comments,

3) Being in no hurry the Hiring Authority may pass ADVERSE comments on the Resume’ and send it back to the HR Department, OR

4) It may be sent back to the HR Department as “ Perhaps Acceptable” when they MAY store it for future reference.

5) If the HR Executive has some time on his/her hand, you may even be called for an interview to assess “ possible future fit “. Again, there being no immediate need, the possibility of getting adverse comments on your Resume’ is high.

Fact is, even if you get POSITIVE comments in this process, you are STILL going to be in competition with the fresh applications that will be called for when the need arises !

The worst scenario is # 3 above…many Organizations now keep track of the REJECTS as well and when the ACTUAL need does arise, your application ( even if resubmitted ) may be rejected since adverse comments on your Resume’ are already a matter of record !!

e) CONSULTANT’S FIELD OF FOCUS : Almost every Consultant who works professionally has expertise and domain knowledge by which he adds value to his Client’s Recruitment Process. Ignoring this will not help you. For example, if you are a Senior Level professional and send in your Resume’ to someone who specializes in Entrance Level Call Center kind of positions you risk just being ignored ( or – worse perhaps – being put up for the wrong positions ! ).

So, it is INVARIABLY better to check if the Consultant handles positions close to your skill sets before sending in your Resume’. Such details may be predominantly displayed on the Consultant’s Website, for example.

f) QUESTIONS AND DOUBTS ! : Sending an Unsolicited Resume’ to some Employers can have quite the reverse effect . Questions such as WHY this Candidate is so vigorously pursuing a Job Change..is he not performing well in his present job ? Is he applying to all and sundry and if so, is he worth spending time with ? Will he be a stable employee if/when recruited ? … are a natural consequence of such a submission.

g) TIME : The foundation for all of above is the fact that everyone of us has practically NO time to devote to an activity which has a VERY high probability of being fruitless. While Executive Search Consultants may still (and indeed many do ! ) spend time in glancing through and filing a Resume’ for possible future use , generally the HR Department of a good Company has many other things to take care of which demand its immediate attention. And they know that at the right time they can rely upon good Executive Search Consultants to present them with Candidates which are HIGHLY Relevant, Suitable AND interested in THEIR position at THAT moment in time !!

In fact the Resume’s being sent in by a professional Executive Search Consultant in good standing wth the Client are INVARIABLY read with much closer attention. There is a past track of proven competencies and performance of the Consultant to back up his submission. And if he doesn’t maintain the same competency levels he’ll not retain the Client for long !

We even have had many cases when the same candidate has applied direct as well as via ourselves. He was shortlisted for the interview via us !!

Bearing all the above factors in mind, the best strategy is to send in your Resume’ against SPECIFIC positions for which your profile fits very well. These positions can be found via Consultants and various Ads on Jobsites, Newspapers etc. and of course also via your own efforts. All of them will generally have well-defined application procedures which should be rigorously adhered to so that your Resume’ has the BEST chance of making to the next stage !

Hardeep Sodhi is a founder member of NAESCON

(National Association Of Executive Search Consultants)

Courtesy Jobnet Magazine issue 101

Republication or dissemination of the contents of this article are expressly prohibited without the written consent of the Author

Posted under Job Hunting Tips

Human Resources Consultants: focused on Executive selection & Recruitment activities

Placement Consultant: specializing in identifying and placing superior candidates at the highest levels of both public and private organizations 

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