In order to attract the attention of recruiters you must first: contribute as much as possible to the success of your employer, accept responsibility, and put the interests of your employer and customers first.

Recruiters earn their fees finding exceptional individuals, so the first step is excellent on-the-job performance. If you are not an above-average employee, getting your resume in front of recruiters is pointless. On the other hand, excellent performance by itself may attract the attention of a recruiter. Recruiters frequently ask the question: “who are the top performers in your field?” and those top performers then become recruiting targets.

Is it a good idea to contact recruiters directly? Yes, this is the best way to get your resume seen. Forward your resume to the recruiter as an email attachment. In the email message, briefly state: why you are looking, what career goals you would like to meet in your next position, if and where you will consider relocation, and what general compensation requirements you have. Keep it brief, or it won’t be read. Include a cell number so you can be reached during the day.

The recruiter may or may not respond to your emailed resume. Recruiters are busy trying to fill jobs that are open now and don’t usually have time to respond to each unsolicited resume received. Rest assured, however, the recruiter will enter your resume into his or her database so any search matching your experience will prompt a review of your resume.

As you may be aware, recruiters tend to focus on one or more specialized business sectors. There are sectors in which many recruiters are active, and others in which you will not find even one recruiter. It is a complete waste of time to contact recruiters who do not work in your industry.

There are two ways to learn about recruiters working in your field: 1) a recruiter seeking candidates in your industry contacts you; 2) search the web for recruiter lists, websites and job postings using keywords to narrow the results to your area of interest (for example, Google: recruiting jobs “free market” organization).

If called by a recruiter, ask about the areas in which they work and get a phone number and email address for future use. When the future arrives, it will be too late to get contact information from the recruiter who called two years ago.

When searching for recruiters in your field, don’t stop when you’ve found one or two. Some industries have hundreds of recruiters and each one works with just a small number of firms. Build a list of potential recruiters, then narrow the list by evaluating each one. Keep those who have been in the business the longest, whose positions and client companies are the most desirable, and whose specialty is the closest to your field. Drop those whose positions are consistently lower paying or much higher paying than your current level, whose clients are not well-regarded in the industry, or who seem overly aggressive about getting information without providing any in return.

There are other strategies to attract recruiters who work in your field. Make use of networking sites such as LinkedIn, where you can provide information about experience, qualifications and interests, that a recruiter will need. Recruiters often use LinkedIn to find candidates, and to learn more about candidates. (See “What is the most common mistake job seekers make“.)

Place your resume online at Monster and CareerBuilder; don’t wait until you need a new job, as months may pass before a recruiter with the right job finds your resume.

Finally, keep in mind that recruiters you’ve contacted will call more often if you are helpful to them. When starting a search, my first calls go to contacts whose past candidate recommendations have been valuable. Not only do these contacts get first crack at any opening, more frequent conversations enable me to become better acquainted with them and their career goals.

Michael G Smith

Shocking as it may seem, employers rarely read cover letters. Yet many job seekers believe that elaborating on their experience and skills in a cover letter enhances their chances of getting an interview.

Hiring managers have limited time and nearly unlimited resumes to screen. The most efficient way to screen resumes is, well, to screen the resume and not bother with the cover letter. A quick review of a resume is all that’s required to place it in one of three categories: not qualified (the vast majority of all resumes); possibly qualified; and, almost certainly qualified.

In most cases, the number of almost certainly qualified candidates must be reduced, so the employer will take a more detailed look at each of those resumes and possibly read the cover letter. If the letter is long-winded, contains stupid comments ("out-of-the-box thinker"; "I'm a people person"), contains some otherwise benign detail that is viewed negatively, or any one of a thousand other problems that the job seeker may not anticipate, the resume will move out of the "interview" pile and into the "not now, maybe later" pile.

Since one cannot know with certainty how the person reading the cover letter will react to any particular bit of information, packing a lot into the cover letter can backfire. It is best to let your resume carry the full load of securing an interview and avoid the risk that your cover letter will undo what your resume may have already accomplished. The ideal letter may simply say, "Please consider me for the position you recently advertised".

Nevertheless, if you feel obliged to write a cover letter, do not use a "boilerplate" letter that is not specifically tailored to the job for which you are applying. Nothing is more frustrating than reading a page-long cover letter in an effort to learn about the candidate's interest in a position, only to find vague generalities with no tie-in to the position being filled.

To sum up, I prefer candidates who respect my time by keeping the cover letter mercifully short. If the candidate has something important to say, the resume--where it will be seen--is the correct place to say it, and not just in the cover letter. The letter may exceed a paragraph if the candidate is providing answers to the following questions: How does the candidate's work experience satisfy the specific requirements stated in the job posting? Why is the candidate interested in this job?

Michael G Smith

Question: I am older (50+) with a career spanning 30 years, the past 20 years as a self-employed owner/operator of small companies. How do I go about rejoining the workforce in a management position?

Answer: Many believe it is difficult to find a job after a long period of self-employment. Yet, I have reviewed thousands of resumes which often show that individuals find desirable work after a long period of self-employment. Therefore, I have concluded that it’s probably no more difficult for the self-employed to find career opportunities than those who have not been self-employed.

That’s not to say there are no challenges, but 20 years of self-employment confers significant and unique advantages on a job seeker.

First of all, most job seekers today have resumes characterized by job instability: too many jobs that lasted for two years or less, and too few jobs that last for more than four years. Aside from not meeting the position requirements, job instability is the chief reason candidates are rejected, and the more senior the position to be filled, the more heavily it weighs. So twenty years in any job–self-employed or otherwise–is a strong asset.

Next up for consideration is the match between your work experience and the particular position you may be seeking. Every employer has certain qualifications in mind when filling a position and these may be categorized as: 1. industry experience, 2. work experience, and 3. responsibility experience.

Industry experience refers to the knowledge and familiarity with normal expectations one acquires from working in a particular field or industry. I still recall much of what I learned in the first few years I spent in the printing business, but I would be quite lost in a modern graphic arts facility due to technological advance.

Work experience is “on-the-job-training” from which we learn to perform a range of tasks and projects appropriate to a specific job and industry. Up to a point, greater work experience increases efficiency and decreases “spoilage” or bad outcomes.

Responsibility experience refers primarily to experience in management, including the management of staff, budgets, facilities, resources and, in some cases, profit and loss. When filling management positions, employers typically consider both the scope and extent of experience in each of these categories.

Hopefully, you can see where this is leading. You must inventory your work experience in each of these three areas; list everything, not just the big stuff. For example, experience using Quickbooks accounting software is a marketable skill and should be on your list. Order the list based on the amount and recentness of your experience, since the passage of time depreciates its value, particularly in the case of industry experience.

This list will serve as your guide for three purposes. First, you can use it to brainstorm the types of employers and positions to which your experience and skills may be applicable. Second, it is a checklist of essential assets that should be mentioned on your resume. Third, it will aid in marketing your experience to potential employers.

The first and third points require further explanation. The applicability of your experience to certain fields or types of work will be immediately obvious, but with some reflection and creative insight, you may recognize that your experience is quite applicable to other fields as well. The logic supporting the applicability of your experience to a seemingly unrelated field must be honed and internalized so you can easily demonstrate the connection in a cover letter and interview.

Now you should see that several key factors (job stability; industry, work and responsibility experience; and applicability of experience and skills to the open position) constitute the basis for hiring decisions. These factors have little or nothing to do with whether one is currently self-employed.

If you understand the depth and breadth of your experience, and can quantify and communicate an accurate description to a prospective employer, you are ready to go job hunting. If you pursue jobs that fit your experience, you will actually have a competitive advantage in the job market.

Michael G Smith

The most common mistake, surprisingly, is that job seekers don't anticipate that hiring managers will perform an internet search to find out more about them. This oversight can result in two different problems: 1. negative information that comes to light; and, 2. positive information is available, but not found.

It is always prudent to consider the potential career consequences of our actions, but with an increasing amount of real-time and historical information available on the Web, the likelihood is now much greater that missteps will be discovered by potential employers, even many years after the fact.

Some sources of information are obvious: photo posting sites, forums, blogs, and social networking sites. But less obvious sources are just as important. Google, for example, keeps Web pages cached and available to searchers. So even if a page has been taken down, it will come up in a Google search and can be accessed by clicking on the “Cached” link in Google’s results. ZoomInfo.com permanently stores Web pages that mention individuals by name and can be retrieved from their cache at any time.

In addition to your name, employers will Google your phone number, email address, former employers, and anything else on your resume that might produce a “hit” when combined with your first or last name, city or state. Before you send out a resume, perform each of these searches so you know what potential problems await you.

There are sources other than Google that employers may check; the most intimidating, perhaps, is Lexis-Nexis, which can search and retrieve nearly every newspaper, magazine, radio or TV story from the last twenty years, or more. Though not as extensive as Lexis-Nexis, public and university libraries offer full text access for written and transmitted stories.

Finally, there are many ways in which “legal” records can be retrieved at little or no cost from online databases. If you have a corporation registered in your name, marriage, divorce, bankruptcy, tax delinquency, civil or criminal court proceeding, or any type of state professional license, the records are generally available. Even traffic and parking tickets can sometimes be retrieved.

Information that enhances your reputation will aid your job quest. Attention must be paid, though, to assuring the information will be found. A Google search may miss something if it is associated with a less common variation of your name. I consistently use “Michael G Smith” as my name online, since anything associated with “Mike Smith” or “Michael Smith” will be listed so far down in Google’s results they won’t be seen. It’s important to decide what your name is and then stick with that exact form. “Kate Smith” is not the same, in Google’s eyes, as “Kathleen Smith,” “Bill Board” is not the same as “William Board,” and “James R Towne” is not the same as “James Towne.”

Finally, sites where individuals create and edit their own records are of critical importance. You have no control over much of what comes up in a Google search, but the employer knows you alone control the information at sites such as Linkedin, Facebook, MySpace, Flickr and so on. Content you post can be a liability if it is inconsistent or potentially embarrassing—your resume and your Linkedin work history, for example, had better agree. On the plus side, if you anticipate that potential employers will view your profile, then you can emphasize your accomplishments and achievements in order to make a good impression.

You must decide what your purpose is in having a presence on these sites. Your profile on Linkedin—currently, the most important business networking site—should not feature activities that detract from your “day job,” as that will give the impression your focus is not on work. If you are a fundraising professional and have a political blog that is compatible with the outlook of the organization you work for, that’s fine. But if your profile emphasizes a personal business you operate on the side, a reasonable person will conclude you are stretched too thin and your attention is divided.

Michael G Smith

One of the chief reasons that recruiters are hired to fill job openings is that the employer lacks the time or manpower to deal with job seekers responding to ads. It makes more sense, for a number of reasons, to outsource that responsibility by hiring a recruiter.

One might assume that providing the employer's name in a job posting would be fine, so long as interested candidates are instructed to apply through the recruiter rather than the employer. But an astounding number of people think that it is perfectly OK to ignore those instructions and contact the employer anyway. They figure that, by applying to both the recruiter and employer, they increase their odds of getting an interview. Or, if they don’t hear from the recruiter (which only happens if they are unqualified for the job), they then contact the employer directly, figuring they have nothing to lose at that point.

The large number of utterly unqualified individuals who respond to a job posting is a sight to behold. Then there are those who feel the need to apply two, three or even four times. In fact, these two categories constitute the majority of responses to most postings.

Unlike most employers—especially those lacking a human resource department—I deal with this every day; I know what to expect and have put in place automated systems to handle the avalanche of responses. From the employer's perspective, I reduce the workload arising from job postings in two ways: pre-screening qualified candidates, and insulating the employer from unnecessary outside contacts.

Michael G Smith