What do you think about Resume Preparation Services and Recruiter s - was Applying for a position, really...

[Ed Manley <EManley -at- Solutionsplus -dot- com>]

Thinking about this thread leads me to ask two new questions. I use a resume
prepeation shop to write and maintain my resume, and have in the past used
recruiters to represent me in applying and negotiating jobs to great
success.

What do you, the members of this list, think about Resume Preparation
services?

What do you think about using a recruiter to find, introduce you to
decision-makers and negotiate benefits for you?


I can't speak for anyone but me and my actual experiences. I am not a
manager of any sort, and refuse to accept anything with "Manager" in the
title, though I have always been in a lead role. When I had my own business
I hired people (trainers and TWs) whom I already knew, and as a result I
never had to solicit resumes.

Like you, Rebecca, I abhor sales, but if you are going to stand out, and
stand out you must, then you absolutely must sell yourself or hire someone
to do it for you. I had great luck hiring recruiters to represent (read
sell) me, but finding an honest one is tough and expensive.

I applied for work in software development shops of one nature or another,
on average, twice a year for over twenty years. Most of my work was
short-term, very specific, and high-level.

For the last decade I have billed well over 100K a year, to do SDLC process
improvement, business analysis and requirements engineering consulting, and
was rarely if ever out of work (longest unplanned spell between gigs was
four days; I usually had a new one lined up before the old one ended).
Almost all of this work was gotten by applying to a corporate or government
upper-management-level person, and I was almost always represented by a
recruiter, with W2 gigs and 1099 about evenly split.

Then I retired from traveling and the high-pressure lifestyle, extracted the
recruiters from my bank account (they were buried pretty deep in there),
reduced my billing to around 75K and started looking for a full-time
permanent gig close to home as a Business Analyst and Technical Writer. A
staff worker bee. Something that I could do for the next twenty years on
cruise control.

It took almost three months to wade through the chaff and find the first
decent offer (I am stunned that so many companies pay $25 an hour for TWs
and expect professional results, but that's another rant...STC - wake up!),
then that company died after I had been aboard only five months, and it took
almost three months again to find this one. In both cases I was interviewed
and hired either by the owner or a Sr. V.P. 

I suppose I submitted over a hundred resumes to get these two jobs. I used
my standard (it's all I know how to do) "sell-yourself" techniques and
contact methodologies, networking contacts, anything to get to talk to the
decision maker.

Obviously my approach to this kind of work needs attention.

So, I don't know if the paradigm for applying for this type of job is
different, or if the problem is that Birmingham is not a very high tech (or
high-paying) town, or that the approach to applying to a
middle-management-level person is different (it is), or what.

I know that I am currently at about double what anyone else charges as a
tech writer in Birmingham, so maybe that has something to do with it - this
time I was applying to a whole different set of people than before as far as
the decision-makers place in the organization, and I was applying to do
multiple cross-departmental roles.

I have to give the folks who are participating here close attention, though,
because applying for these jobs has indeed been a completely different,
eye-opening experience.

Anyway, I am learning something from all this, as we all are, I hope!

Thanks,
Ed



-----Original Message-----
From: Rebecca Stevenson [mailto:rjstevenson -at- sprynet -dot- com]
Sent: Wednesday, January 30, 2002 2:44 PM
To: Ed Manley; TECHWR-L
Subject: RE: Re-applying for a position, really...


At 2:08 PM -0600 1/30/02, Ed Manley wrote:

>It is standard fare for the recipient to acknowledge reciept of your resume

It is??? The only times I've gotten any return contact from a human 
being (there is the occasional automatic reply) has been when they're 
actually interested in an interview.

It's been my impression that in the current market, job openings are 
met with hundreds of resumes, no exaggeration. :-(

>and state that you are being considered, if we want ya we'll call ya, blah
>blah. I would still follow up even after that.

I'd love some advice on finding that fine line between being 
persistent and being a pain in the tuckus....

>Remember that you are selling something here, and think about how you would
>get in the door to sell this person a valuable but expensive widget. Act
>accordingly.

I knew there was a reason I hated looking for a job. I hate sales. :-)



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