A few months ago, the C-Suite Career Catalysts asked C-level and Senior Executives a few questions about their experiences working with recruiters. One of the fascinating responses came from a question about what they (Executives) value in recruiter relationships. Among both C-suite and Senior Executives, the #1 most-valued response was “Solid Leads / Opportunities.” I believe a few of the comments helped to clarify that selection … Here’s the breakdown of all the responses to the question “what do you most value in a recruiter relationship.”

Value	C-Suite	Senior Executives
Confidentiality Reputation Accessibility/Responsiveness Solids Leads/Opportunities Landing a Great Position	70% 58% 79% 86% 42%	73% 38% 65% 81% 31%

     

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Here are five DO’s and DON’Ts for executives in working with recruiters for job search and career management: 1. Definitely DO contact recruiters who recruit at your level and in your specialty areas, and work to develop a relationship with them. You can do this by periodically forwarding them a current executive resume and short letter updating them on developments in your career. Make sure the ... Read more

Job search today is bewildering to many. Social media. Job boards. Recruiters. Networking. Should you have your resume out on the Web? Or not? How do you get on recruiters' radar? Today I'm only going to talk about one piece of the picture: the free sites recruiters visit to source candidates and, therefore, the sites on which you may well want to ... Read more

An Executive Hire Case Study:

She had an amazing, problem-free on-boarding into the new role and the company.   From Day One, she was on a fast-track to be named as a lead candidate for the C-level succession pool.  Excellent hire – right?

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Say the word “recruiter” to a CFO and you just don’t know what response you might get … but it’s almost always emotive. There is a real love/hate relationship and most of it depends on their most recent experience. As part of a job search strategy – passive or proactive – CFOs almost always believe recruiters are a necessary component of their strategy. And there is much angst when recruiters don’t deliver … for whatever reason and despite how hard I work to manage their recruiter expectations. But flip the tables and put the CFO in the hiring seat, and you get a much different response. Here’s the poll, results, and my analysis from the December 7 edition of the SmartBrief for CFOs.

Does your company use third party recruiters to recruit executive candidates?

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I have a question for you. Why are so many hiring managers complaining about the “Skills Gap”, while at the same time, economists are reporting over 14M unemployed Americans. Wouldn’t you think with 14M people to choose from, organizations could find the right fit? It doesn’t make any sense. Or does it. Besides the obvious factors of mobility and staying up to date with skills, I think most job seekers are completely missing the mark in positioning themselves. And the Skills Gap is evidence for this. ... Read more

Regarding the Skills Gap:

College administrators are being asked to address the “skills gap” between laid off workers and the new employees needed.  How can colleges develop training programs that will result in jobs for their graduates?

You can read more about this issue via the following links:

1. Go to www. npr.org/blog  and search for “Skills Gap  or NPR: “2 Million   ‘Open Jobs’? Yes, But U.S. Has a Skills Mismatch”
2. Skills for America’s  Future - go to http://www.aspeninstitute.org/policy-work/economic-opportunities/skills-for-americas-future
3. http://californiacompetes.org/ is a California Council dealing with the issue of a skills gap. too.

In addition there is an interesting study by the Brookings Institute about the value of a degree (“best return on investment”):

http://www.brookings.edu/papers/2011/0625_education_greenstone_looney.aspx

WHERE THE JOBS MIGHT BE:

http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/where.the.jobs.are/index.html?iref=allsearch

On LinkedIn

The business networking site recently combed through millions of user profiles and came up with a list of the top 10 overused terms. These included innovative, dynamic, motivated, extensive experience, results-oriented, proven track record, team player, fast-paced, problem solver, and entrepreneurial.

The professional networking site announced a partnership with Taleo, the country’s largest job applicant tracking system provider, to allow job seekers to auto-fill basic biographical and professional history information from their LinkedIn profile into online job applications. Taleo powers the careers pages of about 5,000 companies, including Hewlett-Packard, IBM, and United Airlines. Job seekers applying with those companies will soon see that they can use their LinkedIn information to fill out job applications. Applicants already have the option of auto-filling information from the Taleo “Universal Profile” service. Users will still be able to manually fill in their data, or upload their resumes on Taleo-powered sites.

I write executive bios for the majority of my clients nowadays, and occasionally run into questions regarding what some potential uses for the document might be. A bio can be extremely useful for an executive in a surprising variety of situations:* in networking, as a "softer" alternative to the executive resume, when you don't want to be perceived as a job hunter or seem "needy"* as a meeting or ... Read more

Originally publish on Mashable.com on August 28, 2011. ... Read more

By now, the news has spread that 80 percent of recruiters look to fill openings through searching on LinkedIn. Although I don’t think this is the best use for LinkedIn (sitting around waiting for a call), there is still a chance it could happen. So learning how to rank your profile for certain keywords is a worthwhile use of your time. ... Read more