Effective recruiters need fire in the belly, a high profile and good relationships

Q: I am an independent recruiter looking for strong job candidates. What should I do other than refer to purchased lists of industry people? I also need advice about putting the right "corporate words" in candidates' profiles. This is the cover page that I send to my client companies along with each candidate's resume. You can only say "strong leadership skills" and "team player" so many times. Any suggestions?

NICK'S REPLY: I conducted a workshop for 40 internal recruiters at a major company, and they asked pretty much the same questions. Here's what I told them. (The first suggestion is for headhunters and a company's internal recruiters. The second could also be helpful to savvy managers who do their own recruiting.)

-- Forget buzzwords. Learn what each manager needs. As you point out, jargon isn't effective. The best way to present your candidates is to get to know the employers better and to do your pitch on the phone or in person. You need to learn a manager's business from the inside out. Then you'll know what kinds of candidates to present and what the hot buttons are for that manager. There's no faking it and, as you've learned, those buzzwords wear out quickly. This takes time and effort, but there's no replacement for knowing what your clients need.

-- Become an active participant in your professional community. Get to know the key people in the industry you recruit for. Join and participate actively in professional associations. Read relevant trade publications, attend training courses your "targets" go to, and be known as the insider to call for the scoop on the business. That's a challenge, but it's the only way to be a great headhunter (and a great manager). Give the people you want to recruit good reasons to come to you first.

Recruiting is not an armchair business. The only way to get better at it is to do it more actively. (I hope that job hunters reading this will find some good ideas about job hunting in between the lines.)

THE HEADHUNTER TIP:

You need just one yes.

The news about jobs is discouraging. Don't let it influence your job-hunting efforts. Ignore the economy and jobless claims, or you're doomed. You don't need one of the thousands of jobs that went poof last month and left someone on unemployment. You need just one job that you can do profitably for one good company.

When I started headhunting, the woman who hired me said this: "Your job is to find great workers for our client companies and to add new companies to our roster. You will consider a lot of prospects. You will be told no every hour of the day, every day of the week. You will hear no all the time. You need just one or two yeses to be successful."

That goes double for job hunters. The jobs are in the companies that drive the economy, in companies that manage for the upturn. And they're hiring.

Copyright 2009. Distributed by Universal Press Syndicate

Nick Corcodilos is author of "Ask The Headhunter: Reinventing the Interview to Win the Job" and the host of www.asktheheadhunter.com. He can be reached by e-mail at seattle@asktheheadhunter.com or at North Bridge Group, P.O. Box 600, Lebanon, NJ 08833. Sorry, no personal replies.