Executive Resume Branding™

Differentiate and strategically position your unique ROI for today's executive job search.

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Advice from a Recruiter on Executive Job Search in a Recession

Jim Stroud at the Recruiters Lounge shares a recent webinar he gave on penetrating the executive job market in an “interesting” economy.

Several years ago he was laid off, his wife had been laid off, and they had a family to support. His typical approach to job search was going nowhere. The more time he spent on online job boards, newspaper classifieds, career fairs, and networking groups, the more frustrated he got with the dismal results.

Then it hit him, he had to do something different. Recalling his many years in recruiting and how he found people for opportunities he had to fill, he put the process in reverse. He came up with what he calls a “push/pull strategy.”

“On one end of my process, I would strategically circulate my resume to companies I was interested in and on the other end, I would position myself to be found by recruiters looking for passive candidates.”

In his 3-part series, he offers up just what he did to get a job in the last recession and how these things, combined with updated tactics, can work for you. Although he was searching for a recruiting position, many of his suggestions apply to any executive job seeker:

How to find a job when the economy sucks, Part 1

How to find a job when the economy sucks, Part 2

How to find a job when the economy sucks, Part 3

I strongly urge you to read his 3 fairly short posts. He offers in depth actions to take to improve your chances of getting noticed by recruiters and hiring decision makers. Great stuff!

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Comments

  1. Meg Guiseppi says

    Lisa,

    I advise my executive clients to go to LinkedIn, do some searching on target companies, and connect with people who may either be hiring decision makers or are connected with them.

    I rarely hear about executive job seekers having luck with the big boards like Monster and CareerBuilder but, you never know, so it probably doesn’t hurt to post to them.

    However, it doesn’t make sense to invest a lot of one’s efforts in this direction when the results can be dismal. Networking is a much wiser thing to spend time doing.

    Thanks for your question.

    Meg