What If I'm Not Currently Employed?

Being unemployed does not make you unemployable. I have hired several people who had left their jobs, either voluntarily or otherwise. Some hiring managers will specifically ask the candidates why they left their last job, but I usually don’t bother.

In many of these cases the candidates were victims of unfortunate economic forces striking down their company or department. It’s certainly possible they were underperformers who were cut loose at the first opportunity, but if I’m doing my job right their weaknesses should come out during the interview.

Some candidates will just come right out and tell me they were laid off from their last job. Apparently they believe that honesty is the best policy. And in this case it certainly is, or at least it’s better than trying to hide the fact they’re not currently working. To me, misrepresenting your status is worse than the stigma of having been laid off.

But what if you are in the unenviable position of having been terminated from your last position? It’s not the end of the world; just present your side of the story without sounding like a victim or a bitter malcontent. Explain that your work might not have been the best, but that it was a difficult environment not best suited to your skills or the most conducive to top performance. And say that you have learned from that experience, and are now eager for a fresh start where you can prove yourself. Of course, you actually do have to believe all this when you say it, as insincerity is quite easy to spot.

I even had one candidate who straight out told me he quit his last position because it didn’t offer him any opportunity for growth. That smelled fishy to me – why didn’t he just keep working there while he looked for a new position? It’s more likely it was a mutual separation. Still, I didn’t dig into it – and I offered him a job anyway.

Why Do You Want to Leave Your Current Job?

This question often comes up early on in interviews, and sometimes it’s asked as the very first question. Some hiring managers will ask this of all candidates, though I generally do not. The only time I might ask this is if the candidate has only been at their current position for a few months. In those cases their current job is clearly not working out, and I might wonder why that was -- just in case they end up having the same issue at our company.

There are many safe, generic ways that people can respond to this question without much thought. And yet some people will fidget and equivocate, hemming and hawing, generally making it much harder for themselves than it needs to be.

For instance, here are some common safe answers:

• There was not enough growth opportunity / I wanted a more challenging position


• I could not deal with the commute.


• The company was having financial difficulties and layoffs were looming.

And here are some not so safe answers:

• I didn’t get along with my boss. (Hmm, will this guy get along with me?)


• My company treated its employees poorly. (A disgruntled employee? Generally you should not speak ill of your previous employer)


• I didn’t like the work. (Hmm, but you’ll be doing much the same type of work here…)

One-On-One vs. Group Interviews

Some companies will have the candidate meet with a series of interviewers one-on-one. Typically, the interviews last about 30-45 minutes each, and there may be 4-6 such interviews back to back. Other companies prefer to do group interviews where two or more people sit at the table with the candidate.

My current company does group interviews, and it’s also the format I prefer as a hiring manager. With 1-on-1 interviews I don’t know what went on or what was discussed in the other interviews, so I can’t be sure what the interviewers mean when they say later that the candidate couldn’t answer their questions satisfactorily.

In my interviews we typically have one or two managers and one or two engineers present as interviewers. I generally ask most of the questions and the other interviewers chime in as needed with follow-up questions. And after it’s over we all know what exactly was discussed. Hence I find that with the group interview format there’s a lot less disagreement afterwards between interviewers on whether the candidate should be hired.

As a candidate you should also prefer the group interview format. It takes up much less of your time, and you avoid repeating the same things over and over again. How many times have you had to say during an interview day, “As I mentioned to the previous interviewer,…”?

Still, group interviews can seem imposing to candidates. You might feel like you’re being ganged up on; in addition, maintaining eye contact, and figuring out whom to maintain eye contact with, can be a challenge. Typically there will be a primary decider in the room, most likely the hiring manager, along with supplementary interviewers to make sure all the right questions are asked. If you do manage to spot such a dynamic you should keep your focus on the Alpha interviewer for most of the interview, as that’s whom you’ll need to impress the most.

The Interview Format

If you’ve been to more than one interview you probably already know the drill. But there are some differences between companies and between interviewers, and also differences based on the position being filled. Personally when I conduct interviews I try to be as consistent as possible so as to evaluate all candidates fairly. For a web developer position it goes something like this:

1. The candidate arrives in our building and asks the receptionist for the HR contact person.


2. The HR rep greets the candidate and takes their completed paperwork (application, release forms, NDA, etc) and escorts them to a conference room.


3. I (the hiring manager) and other managers and/or developers join the candidate in the conference room for a group interview.


4. We ask the candidate to talk about their recent work and projects and toss out some ’soft’ questions.


5. We ask the candidate some technical questions on a range of topics. I usually work off a “‘Cheat Sheet” of questions for consistency.


6. We ask the candidate to go up to the whiteboard and work through some exercises and write code and markup.


7. We ask the candidate whether they have any questions for us.


8. The other people exit the room, and the candidate and I talk about salary expectations and company benefits.


9. I tell the candidate what the next step in the process is, thank the candidate for coming in, and then walk them out.

Most of this is pretty straightforward and about the same as what you can expect at most companies. However, there are some variations.

For one thing, most companies do a series of one-one interviews rather than group interviews, meaning that you may repeat steps #3-7 multiple times, typically with four to six people in total. Personally I consider that a waste – but that’s a subject for another post.

At some companies HR will perform step #8 instead of the hiring manager. Some companies will skip this step altogether in the in-person interview and negotiate later by phone. The benefits package may also be treated as an afterthought, although for some people it may be nearly as important as the salary.

Finally, step #9 is important, but it’s also one that’s often skipped by many companies. With them it’s usually just a “Thanks for coming in” without any indication what will happen next. In my case I tell the candidate that if we decide to extend an offer we’ll contact them within a few days.

And while I don’t explicitly say so, this statement also implies that if we decide not to extend an offer, they won’t be hearing from us again. Which probably sucks for the candidate – but they’ve been warned. And the supposed ‘professionalism’ of such a policy is a topic for yet another future post.

Must I Wear a Suit to the Interview?

This topic seems to come up again and again on the job and career discussion boards.

Fact is, you don’t HAVE to wear a suit to an interview, just as you don’t have to wear a suit to a wedding or a funeral. But wearing one shows respect for the process and those involved. And fact is, unless you’re going to the beach it’s generally better to over-dress for events than to under-dress.

Some people claim that they’ve never worn suits to interviews, that their interviewers were always dressed casually, and they’ve never had problems. I don’t doubt those accounts. But do you really want to gamble that your interviewers will be tolerant of casual dress to an interview?

An interview is a formal ritual, one of the very few serious rituals left in our modern society. The only others I can think of that are comparable are, as I noted, weddings and funerals. I wear a suit to all three rituals, and they’re the only times I wear a suit nowadays.

If you have to, change into a suit in your car.

The Day of the In-Person Interview

On the interview day you should make sure you have the contact information for the hiring company’s HR representative as well as the name of the person you are going to meet. Keep this information with you in case something goes awry. The following are examples of things that have happened to me or the people I interviewed:

• Candidate forgot to bring the directions to the interview location


• Candidate misread directions and got lost on the way to the interview


• Candidate got stuck in traffic


• Candidate woke up sick that morning


• Candidate had a family emergency


• Candidate decided to take the building stairs instead of the elevator and got locked in the stairway vestibule (this happened to me once!)

If any of these things happen, it’s perfectly legitimate to call your HR contact and ask to have the interview rescheduled. However, if at all possible you should do this BEFORE the scheduled interview time. Otherwise the interviewer(s) may be sitting in the interview room tapping their fingers on the conference room table and wondering where the heck you are.

As a hiring manager I know that the times I had an interview rescheduled or postponed, it didn’t bother me much at all as long as the notice came at least half an hour ahead of the scheduled interview time.
Of course, things can go wrong on the hiring company’s side as well. Here are some real-world examples of our screw-ups:

• The interviewer got stuck in an important meeting and no replacement could be found


• The interviewer was otherwise MIA and could not be found


• The interviewers all declined the interview meeting request at the last minute and no one showed up

Flying In for an Interview

Sometimes as a candidate may have to fly into another city for an in-person interview. Here are some tips to deal with such situations.

• Make sure the job is attractive before you commit up to two days of your time to travel and interview in a distant city.


• If you are travelling from the West Coast to the East Coast, try to take a flight leaving no later than noon. That flight will land around 9 pm with the time zone change. Chances are that with a baggage claim, car rental, drive to the hotel, and check-in, you won’t be at your hotel room and unpacked until 11 pm. That’s about the latest you want to go to bed to be fresh the next morning.


• If you are travelling from the east coast to the west coast, you should be able to take a flight as late as 6 pm and get to your west coast hotel by 11. However, late afternoon & early evening flights tend to be busy and heavily booked, so you might want to take an earlier flight.


• Make sure you have a clear understanding with the company as to whether you should rent a car or take a cab from the airport. If they expect you to take a cab, the bean counters may not reimburse you for a rental car (yes, I’ve seen it happen).


• If you arrive early in the target city and have a rental car, make a test run from the hotel to the target company so the drive will be familiar the next morning.


• Don’t skip breakfast the morning of the interview. It will be the most important meal of your day.


• Make sure your schedule allows at least 3 hours after the completion of your interview before the return flight. Interviews often get delayed or run long, and traffic can slow you down returning to the airport. Not to mention the time spent returning your rental car, if you have one.


• You’ll be told this by the hiring company of course, but keep track of all receipts so you can be reimbursed for them later.


• Depending on the company, it may take 30-60 days for you to be reimbursed for miscellaneous expense you submit after your interview trip.

Work Samples

Requesting samples of your work is more common in the creative fields, but it does happen on occasion that a tech company will ask for a code sample. In most cases you won’t be able to provide them with actual code from a previous employer because of legal reasons. So for this purpose you should dabble on some side projects in your spare time, and create a website or a program that you can show off to the employer.

Another way to deal with this situation is to ask the hiring company for a problem statement – basically an exercise, so that you can code up a solution from scratch. This avoids the legal issues by providing a fresh code sample.

Of course, there is the possibility that someone other than you could have written the solution to the exercise, but that is a problem with any code sample: you can’t really tell who wrote it. For this reason I never ask for code samples; rather, I ask candidates to write code on the whiteboard during the in-person interview.

Preparing for the In-Person Interview

If you are invited for an in-person interview, you should take time to learn everything you can about the company ahead of time. This should go without saying, but you’d be surprised how many candidates I’ve seen who had no idea what my employers did.

Sometimes you’ll be interviewing at a small company or startup that exposes very little public information. Other times you may be talking to a department within a large company and have little idea what that team actually does. In both these cases you should pump your recruiter or HR contact for all the information you can get ahead of time.

Don’t forget to bring a couple of extra copies of your resume. Sometimes people get pulled into interviews at the last minute and may not have a copy of your resume already printed out.

The recruiter or HR rep will ask you when you are available to come in for the in-person interview. I would encourage you to be as flexible as possible when stating your availability. Often it’s a challenge for the company to schedule the interview around peoples’ calendars, and it doesn’t help if you’re only available from noon to 1 pm on Mondays and Fridays.

After the interview is scheduled, make sure you find out how long the interview is expected to take. This will determine whether you can do it over a long lunch, or else take a half day or full day off for the interview. You should also allow at least an hour of padding in case the interview runs late.

In most cases I would recommend you take a full day off to interview if you can manage it. I would also discourage you from taking a sick day. Not only is it dishonest, it’s possible you could be called at home if something comes up at work – and it would look bad if you’re not home.

The Phone Screen

Assuming you pass the gauntlet of the outside recruiters and/or the HR screeners, your first contact with the hiring company will be a phone interview.

The purpose of a phone screen is basically to filter out any candidates who are obviously wrong for the job. Sometimes an HR person will screen you first, followed by a techie. They will have different approaches but the goal is the same in both cases: to look for any glaring problems that will keep the company from bringing you in for an interview.

Your job then as a candidate in a phone screen is simple: Don’t screw up. This means you should not try to dazzle the phone interviewer with your brilliance; such attempts often backfire over the phone in the absence of body language. Just answer the questions in a straightforward manner and don’t get too fancy.

Another reason people get rejected at the phone screen is communication skills. I have had many phone conversations where I just could not understand what the other person was saying. Either they had a heavy accent, or the answers they gave just didn’t make sense (in terms of grammar). So as a candidate you should make sure you enunciate clearly and give clear, lucid answers. And by all means, if you don’t understand a question, don’t say, “Huh?” or “What?”

Local vs. National Job Search

As a candidate, should you only look for local opportunities, or should you conduct a national search? In most cases you already have an answer that’s driven by your individual situation. Perhaps you don’t want to pull the kids out of school and relocate your family to another city, or you don’t want to move away from friends and family. Maybe you don’t want to deal with the hassle and headache of moving. Or possibly you just really like it where you live right now.

But consider that most people will move several times in their lives, whether for work, school, or other life changes. So is it really such a bad thing to pick up and move for a new job? Unless you have deep roots in a community, I’d say you should at least consider it.

Perhaps you’re a bit too comfortable in your job and your current life, and that sense of comfort is keeping you from making the next move in your career. That move could bring a new job with more responsibility and more pay, and which also opens up new opportunities for growth. And who knows, you might even enjoy your new home and your new friends better than your old ones.

I personally have relocated several times myself for work and for school. Each time it was a pain to pick up and move, though being single and unattached made it a bit easier. But as I look back, I believe each move was, if not necessarily a clear move forward, still a step in the journey that brought me where I am today. And all in all, I don’t think that’s such a bad thing.

Networking

I’m sure you’ve heard many times by now that applying directly to jobs or spamming recruiters with resumes is not the ideal approach, and that networking is the best way to find a job. And while I agree about the importance of networking, I think the case for it may be a bit overstated.

First of all, how many people do you personally know who got their jobs through networking? You probably know a few, but I’ll bet most of your acquaintances got their jobs through more ‘traditional’ methods. I believe this is the case because landing tech jobs, at least for individual contributors, is still less about whom you know and more about what you know (or at least, how well you interview).

In most cases when your friend refers you to their company your resume lands in HR’s resume queue, at which point you’ll be treated like any other candidate. Your friend might provide words of praise for your skills, but you’ll still have to back that up in the interview. So in the end the only difference is that if you’re hired your friend will probably get a referral bonus that they’ll refuse to share with you.

Still, having a good network means you can learn about jobs that are not widely advertised, and for which the hiring company is being quiet and selective. For this purpose I recommend LinkedIn, the largest electronic networking site / professional social network. Make sure you connect with all your current and past co-workers and any other tech people you know. And if you get an invitation from a recruiter, don’t turn it down just because you don’t know the person. The power of LinkedIn is that the more contacts you have, the more valuable the network becomes to you.

In fact LinkedIn is the closest thing you can get to a job search without actually doing an active search. It’s no secret that many recruiters use LinkedIn primarily to find candidates, and that most people are there in turn to be seen for new opportunities. And LinkedIn is free to candidates -- unless you need to contact strangers for some reason, in which case you’ll need a premium account. But I’ve personally never needed that feature.

Do I Need to be a 100% Match for the Job?

You’ve probably seen all too many job postings that are a mishmash of buzzwords and countless skill requirements. Assuming these are not NonJobs™, should you apply if you don’t meet all the qualifications?

In reality we hiring managers ask for the perfect candidate but know we’ll never get such a person. For instance, while I might ask for someone with experience in C#, ASP.NET, .NET CLR, XHTML, CSS, XML, JavaScript, AJAX, WCF, and SQL Server, I fully realize that no one (or very few) will be strong in all those areas.

What I’m looking for then is a few core skills that are key to the job (e.g., ASP.NET, HTML, & CSS). If the candidate is strong in those areas and has at least a passing awareness of the other technologies, that may be sufficient for a hire. So the lesson here is that if you feel that you are not a 100% match in terms of skill set but do possess the core skills, you should definitely go ahead and apply for the job.

But that begs the question, what exactly are the “core skills” for each job? Well, sometimes the job description itself breaks out the ‘Core’ vs. “Nice to have” skills, but other times the skills are all jumbled together into an alphabet soup. But you can usually read through the lines and glean some information from the rest of the job description. Are they looking for a UI guru? A scalability expert? Someone who can optimize data access? Or an all-around utility infielder? That should clue you in on what skills are essential for the job.

The Hiring Chain

Although as a candidate it may seem like your recruiter is doing all the work to get you a job (or doing nothing at all, as the case may be), there are many elements involved in the chain between you and a job.

First is the independent recruiter. They are the ones that pull your resume off the boards or put up the job listing that you respond to. Alternatively, a sourcer may find your resume in a search or by probing your company’s org structure.

Next is the HR representative at the hiring company. There may actually be several HR people involved: for instance one that works directly with the recruiter, one that sifts through the resumes, and another that does interview scheduling. In these cases likely you’ll most likely only have contact with the scheduler.

Next is the hiring manager. You’ll inevitably meet this person during the interview, even if it’s only for a brief introduction and handshake. This is the person you’ll need to impress since they will make the ultimate decision on whether or not you get hired. They may also determine your salary, or at least have significant input on it, though your actual negotiation will likely be done through HR.

There are also other engineers and managers who will sit in on the interview. These people may have had varying amounts of notice; in fact some of them may have been pulled in at the last moment. They have less riding on the hiring decision than the manager, but that doesn’t mean they won’t grill you thoroughly.

Finally, there are the senior executives who have to sign off on the offer. These people rarely meet the candidate in person unless it’s for a fairly senior position. Their only input is likely to be in approving the offer and adjusting the amount if necessary. If they decide that your offer is too high, there’s unfortunately not a lot that you can do to change their minds – especially since you won’t have a clue as to who they are.

Contract vs. Full Time?

Sometimes this question is put as Contract vs. Perm. However, both the “Full Time” and ‘Perm’ terms are misnomer. Contractors generally do work full time, and a ‘Permanent’ position is by no means guaranteed to anyone these days.

There was a time back in the late 90’s when contractors had it pretty good. Independent contractors (i.e., 1099) enjoyed high hourly rates, in some cases staggeringly high, perhaps combined with overtime, netting some lucky individuals annual pay well into the six figure range.

Alas, those days are long gone. When the dot-com boom imploded companies found it easiest to cut the contractors before their own employees, so they were the first to go. Pretty soon the shell-shocked contractors were out staggering in the streets in search of new gigs, and the going pay dropped. Triple-digit hourly rates became a thing of the past.

Also exacerbating the situation were the IRS rulings in the 90’s that made it more difficult for people to work as independent 1099 contractors. More and more companies required contractors to work through agencies as W-2 employees. That meant the agencies would get a big cut of the hourly rates, sometimes 50% or more, though the contractors now got at least token benefits.

Fast forward to 2008. The contracting market is now such that virtually every contractor works through an agency as W2 employees. Rates have come down such that contractors make no more than perm employees on average, at least with benefits and downtime taken into consideration. And contractors are less likely to be contacted about good opportunities and more likely to get calls from disreputable “Body Shops”.

So what is the advantage now to working as a contractor? Perhaps if you are interested in working with new and different things, constantly learning and challenging yourself, contracting may provide that – at least in an ideal world. But in more cases it’s a lifestyle choice; many contractors don’t want to be tied down to a single job, dealing with politics and the career ladder, and want the freedom to be able to pick and choose their assignments -- even if that results in some economic tradeoffs.

Recruiter Spamming

(Some) recruiters can be just as guilty as (some) candidates of spamming. And as I often have my resume on the job boards, I get my share of spam and scam e-mails. Here are some that I receive regularly, paraphrased and disguised to protect the guilty.

• Hot! 3-month contract in Podunk, Mississippi, $18/hour


• Become an Insurance representative today!


• Reminder - Update your resume on SomethingOrOtherJob.com (to which I‘ve never actually submitted a resume)


• Hi there – I’m hoping you (and the 3,000 other people I’m e-mailing this to) can help me fill this position.


• Join us working as a funds transfer agent processing payments (apparently this scam has ‘graduated’ from eBay and PayPal)

I’m not even including the various ads for V1agra, Canadian Pharmacies, and solicitations from officials in Nigeria, as I can’t definitely tie them to my job board postings.

So what can you do to cut down on the spam? Not much, really. You could try taking down your resume from all the job boards; still, with the Internets being what they are, once you post your resume somewhere it’s going to float around pretty much indefinitely. And that means some lazy recruiters and bottom feeding scammers will continue to pollute your inbox with these e-mails. Probably the best you can do is tweak your spam filters to weed out the clutter.

Recruiting-Speak

Every industry has its euphemisms. For instance, in real estate a ‘cozy’ apartment means ‘tiny’, and a house with “great potential” means “a dump in need of repair “. Tech recruiting is no exception, and you may see some coded terms here and there. I’ve provided an English translation for some terms I’ve encountered as both a candidate and a hiring manager.

“Fast-Paced environment”, “Challenging work”: Long hours

“Consultancy”: Slave labor far from home

“Competitive Pay”, “Pay DOE”, “Please Submit Salary Requirements”: Low pay

“Great Benefits”: Low pay

“Web 2.0”, “Riding the Social Networking Wave”: Me-Too Company

“Next Big Thing”: Company with a flimsy business plan and a questionable future

“Could be the next Google”: Yeah, right

“Stable Company”: CRUD work with poor pay

ERP, CRM, SAP: CRUD work that might pay well but can be stultifyingly boring

“Candidate with rough edges”: Wacko candidate

“Purple Squirrel”, ‘Unicorn’: That elusive (possibly non-existent?) candidate with a very specific set of skills

Dealing with Recruiters (as a Candidate), Part II

As a candidate, perhaps the most important thing you should remember is that recruiters are not working for you. That is to say, they do not take your resume and look for a job that matches your skills. Instead it’s the other way around; they take a job req and look for resumes that fit.

So with that in mind you need to actively help the recruiter help you. You need to be up front and honest about your skills, interests, and goals. Because the better a picture they have of you, the more likely they can match you to a position they need to fill.

Also, you should be on the lookout for shady recruiters. Although most recruiters are upstanding people, there are some that engage in questionable practices. Watch out for behaviors like these:

• Asking for all your references up front. They may be trolling for additional contacts.


• Inviting you into the office to chat – I’ve never found these meetings with recruiters to be of much value, and I have yet to get a job through a recruiter that I’ve talked to in person. Often the meetings lead to the next bullet point:


• Asking where you’ve been interviewing. If they ask this to avoid double submissions that’s okay, but if they ask who you talked to at each company, they’re likely just pumping you for leads.


• Claiming they have an inside track with hiring managers at certain companies; or even worse, claiming they can fast-track your resume even when the company already has it.


• Trying to convince you to consider a position below your current pay, claiming either “poor market conditions” or “a learning opportunity”. Clearly they are just trying to fill a position and don’t care about your needs or even the quality of the fit.


• Finally, run, don’t walk, from someone who wants payment to “market” you. Candidates should never have to pay for a recruiter.

Dealing with Recruiters (as a Candidate)

By now most candidates should know that a recruiter’s role is not to find you a job, but rather to find candidates for their client, the hiring company. So how exactly do such arrangements work?

Recruiters generally fall into two categories: retained and contingency. Retained firms are paid a fixed fee by the company to help them fill a position. It doesn’t matter how many candidates are provided, or whether the job is even filled; the company still gets the same fee. Contingency firms on the other hand are paid only when the company actually fills the position.

There are some hybrids; a recruiting company may take on both retained and contingency searches, for example. Also, there are some companies that do only resume sourcing. For instance, the hiring company provides the recruiter with general parameters, and the sourcing company provides a stream of resumes that roughly match the criteria. This is similar to a retained search except that it may not be based on a single position, and the sourcing company may be paid on an ongoing basis.

Generally retained searches are only done for high-level executive candidates; virtually all software development positions are filled using contingency recruiters or sourcing firms.

Recruiters should never submit your resume to a company without getting your approval first. If a recruiter violates this code and you are caught off guard when a company contacts you, you can let the company know of the recruiter’s behavior. That will likely discourage the company from doing business with that recruiter in the future, and help drive the bad recruiters out of the business.

Also, if a company receives your resume from two or more recruiters they will drop you like a hot potato. This is because the recruiters are likely to argue over who gets paid the placement fee, and the company wants nothing to do with that mess. So you should resist the temptation to have multiple recruiter ‘advocates’ selling your resume to a company.

Using Recruiters vs. Applying Directly

If you have not been submitted to a company by a recruiter, you can often apply for a position directly through their website. Almost every corporate website has an “About Us / Careers” type of link you can click on, which lists available positions along with a form for submitting your resume and applying to a position. And at companies that don’t use outside recruiters, this is sometimes the only direct option.

Admittedly, most of these resume submission websites are truly horrid examples of UI engineering. They typically have dozens of fields for you to fill out, often spread over several pages. Some attempt to be clever and parse your Word resume, invariably mangling your text and formatting in the process. One wonders why they can’t just accept an uploaded Word resume and be done with it, since that’s what HR ultimately ends up passing around internally in 99% of the cases anyway.

Anyhow, some people wonder whether anything happens with the information after they click ‘Submit’. You might get an e-mail acknowledgement that the company has received your submission, but most of the time you won’t hear anything back after that.

Well, I can tell you that the submissions do not indeed fall into a black hole. In fact, they usually go into the same pool of candidates as resumes sourced from outside recruiters. I can attest to this not only because I’m a hiring manager, but also because I’ve personally gotten two jobs from applying directly on company websites! There were no recruiters involved in either case.

Having said that, using a recruiter is still the easier approach. You don’t have any silly web form to fill out, and the recruiter can market your resume to a larger number of companies.

It is true that if you apply directly to a company instead of going through a recruiter, the company can save on the recruiter’s fee. However, the fact that a candidate came in through a recruiter should not normally stop a company from hiring the person – assuming that the company uses recruiters, that is. The fact they’re using recruiters means they’ve already mentally swallowed the idea of paying the recruiting fee.

And in case you’re wondering, in my experience a company has NEVER offered a candidate more money just because they applied directly and the company has saved on recruiter costs. It just doesn’t happen.

Targeted vs. Broad Job Search

A commenter to my last post criticized the idea of pursuing maximum exposure for your resume (the shotgun approach). I welcome the criticism, as it means someone is actually reading my ramblings and I’m not just writing this blog as an exercise. And besides, if everyone agreed with everything I wrote this would be a very boring blog indeed.

Now as the commenter said, it is indeed true that you can be successful by focusing with laser-like intensity on the job you want. You visualize the position, research companies that do the type of work you’re interested in, and if possible try to make contact with someone on the inside. Basically the idea is to focus all your efforts on the job(s) you’re most qualified for and which you most desire.

However, you can also be successful by conducting a broad search, posting your resume to the job boards and applying to all jobs you’re a reasonable match for. As I noted, this is playing a numbers game; assuming that your chances of landing a particular job are low, you pursue as many jobs as possible to maximize your odds. That’s what most people instinctively do.

Which of these two avenues you choose is up to you. However, I feel that a targeted search is more appropriate in certain circumstances, such as with specialized fields. For instance, I once knew an aeronautical engineering major who told me there might be only one or two companies in the country that might possibly hire him. Clearly it made sense for him to conduct a targeted search, and to contact alumni in those companies who could provide him with an introduction or any other sort of an edge.

Likewise, other circumstances may direct you towards a targeted search. Perhaps you live in a geographical area that has few attractive employers in your field, or maybe you are really interested in working for a particular company (e.g., Microsoft in the ‘90s or Google in the early 2000’s). Then by all means, you should focus your efforts on those companies rather than spamming your resumes to anyone with an e-mail inbox.

On the other hand, where would you focus your job search efforts these days as a general web developer? There are many companies in Southern California doing web development, and I personally am not drawn to any particular one, nor do I know of anyone who is either. Perhaps I’m just jaded in my old age, but to me every company has its good points and bad points. That doesn’t mean all companies are the same, but I do consider each position on its own merits, and a company’s reputation is just one of many things I look at when I decide whether I want to work there.

Also, as I alluded in my comment response, I’ve gotten at least two jobs at companies I’d never heard of through recruiters who found my resume online. They both turned out to be pretty good companies, and ones I most likely would not have found on my own. I think that result was well worth having to put up with all the recruiter spam.

Again, this is just my opinion; that’s why it’s called a blog. Feel free to beg to differ with me (though of course you don’t actually have to beg). I look forward to any and all feedback.