'Executive career management' firms may be most interested in managing your cash

Q: You know what career counselors and coaches are, and you know what headhunters are. They offer to help you advance your career. Now you're getting calls from an "executive career management" firm that actually guarantees to get you a job. It sounds like a great deal, though the $9,000 fee seems a bit steep. What should you do?

Nick's reply: I've been getting more queries than usual about "executive career management" firms. That's no surprise, because there are lots more executives out of work.

These firms offer to assist top-level managers who want professional help finding a job. One of these outfits quotes Tiger Woods to make its pitch: "Professionals hire an expert to increase their chances of winning; amateurs don't."

Usually I explore all the options to a Challenge because the choices aren't so clear, and there are relative advantages and disadvantages among them. But this choice is so cut and dry that I'll tell you now: Head for the hills when a firm like this calls you.

Sales pitches like the Tiger Woods statement are used routinely by these firms. The message is, if you're not paying for help, you're an amateur. You're not an amateur, are you? Of course not! Pay up!

But I'll rephrase that sales pitch more accurately this way: "Professionals use their skills to get hired. Amateurs get scammed."

On my Web site, asktheheadhunter.com, there's an article titled, "The Executive Marketing Racket: How I Dropped Ten Grand Down a Hole." A chief financial officer tells how he got burned when he signed up with one of these outfits. Since I published this expose written by someone who lived it, Ask The Headhunter has turned into the place where "the burned" go to tell their tales of getting ripped off. Executives and their spouses have shared demoralizing and depressing stories of getting taken for thousands of dollars -- at a time in their lives when they need that money to survive while they get resituated.

There are good career counselors and coaches out there. But none of them go by the moniker "executive career manager." It's the first sign of a scam. Another sign: The firm in question implies that it is an executive search firm and a career management firm. In other words, companies pay it to fill positions, and people like you pay it for jobs. Come on. No self-respecting headhunting firm does that. The ones that turn to selling "executive career management" are often failed headhunters.

There is no one out there that you can hire to get you a job. Headhunters don't do it, career counselors don't do it, and career coaches don't do it. Those folks will give you advice. The honest practitioners don't promise a job, because no one but an employer can guarantee you that. You will find the honest practitioners through their satisfied clients. And I don't mean you ought to ask a coach or counselor for references you can call. I mean, find people who got good help from good practitioners -- and ask them who they used. That's who to go to, if you really want someone to advise you.

But job hunting is something you should learn to do for yourself. If you can't, you probably don't deserve to be hired. Think about it: What good are you to a company that needs a job done if you can't do the job of job hunting? Try it before you relinquish your future to someone else.

I sympathize with people who have been job hunting a long time or who are down on their luck. But paying someone to find you a job is not the answer, because no one can guarantee you a job.

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.