Quality beats quantity in dealings with headhunters and employment agencies

Q: When starting a job search, how many headhunters is it best to put to work on your behalf?

Nick's reply: Less than 3 percent of jobs are filled by headhunters -- real headhunters. A headhunter will come looking for you, not the other way around. A real headhunter will not shop you out to dozens of companies. She will evaluate you for a specific job with a specific client. If you're not a fit, she won't present you to other companies. That's how real headhunters operate. Don't confuse headhunters with employment agencies, which will distribute your resume to several (possibly too many) companies all at once.

Whether we're talking about headhunters or agencies, it's best to work with one good one. Be aware that flaky agencies will plaster your resume all over kingdom come, including online resume databases, hoping to make a random placement. (You can do that yourself.) A good agency has solid relationships with good companies that give the agency first crack at filling good jobs. Give that agency an exclusive opportunity for a fixed period of time to show you what it can do (say, three weeks). If you work with multiple agencies (even good ones), none of them will work very hard to place you because they know they're competing with one another. (Don't try being sneaky; they'll find out because it's a small world.) Let's discuss a few ground rules.

-- Select a reputable agency. Make sure it has solid connections in your industry and that the placement agents are knowledgeable about the kind of work you do. Check their references, including people they've placed and managers who hire from them. Meet with the agent who will actually handle you. If you give an agency an exclusive, you can demand a lot and expect to get it because a good agency will earn a sizable fee from placing you.

-- Don't let an agency mass-mail your resume. That will create two nasty risks for you. First, it may accidentally send your resume to your current boss or to someone who knows him. Second, if too many people in your industry find out that you're job hunting through an agency, it can make you look desperate. That's not good, and it's a terrible position to be in at salary negotiation time. A credible agency will target specific companies, and it will report to you on its activity.

-- Don't use more than one agency at a time. If you do, some employers will get resumes from multiple sources (including you, if you're sending it out). Some companies will automatically disregard any candidate whose resume arrives from two or more sources because multiple submissions can lead to "fee fights." Companies don't want to deal with that, and you're the one who loses.

-- Get a commitment from the agency. What can it accomplish for you within three weeks? How many first and how many second interviews will it commit to getting you? (Counting second interviews is a good way to protect yourself from phony interviews an agency may schedule to keep you on the hook.) Mutually establish a cut-off point, but remember that it may be worth extending if you feel the agency has been diligent. Using an agency doesn't guarantee a quick job search.

You won't get to select the headhunters you might work with. They will select you. But you can select the agencies, because their business depends on having a roster of solid candidates to present to their client companies. Select an agency carefully, establish clear ground rules, and give it a reasonable opportunity to find you the right job before you move on to another.

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.