Executive search firms are more often referred to as recruiters. They are also called by many other names, some complimentary, some not, depending on whose ox has been gored. If a recruiter has lured a key person away from a company, that concern may call the recruiter a pirate. On the other hand, if the same company has gained a good employee, the recruiter will be called a talent scout. So, head-hunter, talent scout, or flesh merchant-the name given to the recruiter will depend entirely on whether or not the speaker has been helped or hurt.
The two questions most often asked me about executive search firms are:
- Can they be of any help to me?
- Which one can serve me best?
My answer to Question Two is: "It is impossible to single out the ones which will be of most help to you. This will depend on your specialty and on the specialty of the individual search firm. Some of them concentrate on banking and investment, some on business, while others specialize in such fields as marketing, manufacturing, retailing, controlling, or general management."
Business cycles may have considerable bearing on which kind of executives are in demand. During a recession, when cost cutting and profit improvement are a necessity, presidents, financial vice-presidents, controllers, and budget directors are wanted. When production outruns sales, the hue and cry is for marketing experts. When inventories bulge, merchandise controllers and electric data processing experts are in demand. Other times there are calls for help in the fields of manufacturing, purchasing, and industrial relations. These cyclical demands are reflected in the job specifications listed by the search firm. The reception-warm or cool-that the job-seeker gets from the recruiters and employment agencies depends on whether or not he or she has the requirements to fill one of their positions.
Consultant Nevis, Templeton Road, Fitzwilliam, N.H. 03447 has compiled lists of more than 300 search firms and 50 employment agencies. They sell for $5.00.
"Job Finding Rackets-Phoney Counselers Reported Bilking Uncounted Victims" is the title of a recent syndicated article by Sylvia Porter, financial columnist.
"Thousands of executive positions are opening every day ... if you desire a change; let us study your potential. . . ."
"A $30,000 to $95,000 yearly position could be only a resume away"
"These," she says, "are typical of the lures being put before young executives by phony 'executive counselors' who promise to find the men dazzling new jobs and to multiply their salaries-but who cannot deliver.
"Masquerading under such sophisticated titles as 'management psychologists,' 'career counselors,' and 'executive search firms,' these pseudo employment agencies are now reported to be bilking uncounted victims out of 'service fees' ranging from $350 to $3,000."
She quotes John Nichols, the manager of the Chicago Better Business Bureau's financial division, as saying, "A small group of incompetent promise-makers have infiltrated the industry, leaving a trail of unsatisfied job-seekers behind them.' "
Sylvia Porter goes on to say, "Typically, the career-counseling phony moves into plush quarters, prints up an impressive-appearing array of gimmicky 'career advice' and advertises everything from 'evaluation of career opportunities' to a 'guarantee' of a job paying a five-figure salary.
"One now defunct outfit boasted a 'jet-age system of instant communication that speeds your profile to potential employers within 72 hours.' Another claimed 20 offices, from New York to Hong Kong, and the 'world's most unique and unusual career advancement program,'
"The victim is lured into signing an extravagant contract and paying an exorbitant, non-refundable 'service fee' before any of the contract's provisions have been fulfilled.
"As it turns out, the firm is nothing more than an unqualified, fly-by-night employment agency, operating on a shoe string and without a state license.
"The 'career counselors' simply send sheaves of resumes to dozens of companies-unsolicited. The resumes may or may not result in a job or better salary. The 'counseling' may be next to useless. In the words of one victim, 'The psychological evaluation was a farce. The counseling amounted to bull sessions."
The recruiting business has mushroomed in the last few years, so that today there are purported to be some five hundred search firms. This gives you plenty of selection. Do you realize that if you could schedule two interviews a day, ten a week, or forty a month, it would take you two and a half months to see one hundred search firms?
A former financial vice-president decided that because of high salary requirements, recruiters ought to be his best bet.
He told me that he spent two months making the rounds at a cost of $2,000 in addition to the loss of time. He did get a number of interviews through them, but not one resulted in it.
Before you go to a recruiting firm, you should have a clear understanding as to its purpose and objectives. These firms are not employment agencies. They work only for corporations seeking executive ability, and they are paid a fee for this service. They have a contract with a specific employer to find a very specific executive. This person may be the very top man of a corporation or a second-echelon executive. The salary offered may range from $25,000 to an unlimited top when the order has been to get the man. The recruiter may have told the employer that he would bring in the very best person in the industry, even if he had to search the highways and byways. The specifications will have all been drawn up and usually preclude everyone except someone with a specific industry or functional experience. The person the recruiter is looking for is a successful one in a strong, prosperous firm, most likely a competing one. In order to get such a person, the job offer must be made alluring and challenging, with salary bonuses, titles, and stock options. Sometimes an individual is loath to change unless he is allowed to take with him his own team of trusted assistants. He will often be granted this privilege, so great is the seeming need for his services. It makes little difference that his former company is stripped of key personnel.
Since the recruiter gets a fee for his service based on a percentage of the first year's salary plus out-of-pocket expenses, you can well understand why his obligation is to his client and not to the job-seeker who comes to him off the street or as a courtesy referral from a friend. Most recruiters will grant you an interview, not only out of a sense of courtesy but because it is good public relations. Too, there is also a vague hope that you may be the person they are seeking or that you may be able to suggest a possible candidate.
Recruiters Are Seldom Interested in Men Out of Jobs
The chance that you will be the person selected for a certain job is mighty slim. The Wall Street Journal once quoted Hallam B. Cooley, now conducting his own search firm in San Francisco, as saying, "About 99 per cent of the people we get for positions are already employed." Many of the recruiting firms state quite bluntly in the sales brochures which they give out to employers that the people they look for are rarely active job-seekers or unemployed. In spite of this, people looking for jobs swamp the search firms daily with hundreds of telephone calls, visits, letters, and resumes.
Fortune magazine published an article by Perrin Stryker on "How Executives Get Jobs." In this, he tells a great deal about the place of the recruiters in the job market. I recommend it highly. Mr. Stryker interviewed a great many of these firms. He tells about one in New York which claims to have records on 250,000 people. Other claims to have listed 120,000 names.
Several others list 50,000 names. I quote Mr. Stryker: "At Booz, Allen & Hamilton, for example, the data about job-seeking executives are carefully transferred to cards according to industry, salary, etc., and when a client asks for a particular kind of executive, the cards are quickly searched for a possible candidate. If the search firm turns up someone who looks good, the consultants begin checking his or her references, subordinates, business contacts, and general record. If these look good, the consultant may put the candidate through a battery of psychological tests before presenting him to a client. Nevertheless, it is the rare executive in the files who gets picked as a candidate." An executive with Booz, Allen & Hamilton says, "Many people let us know that they are available. Frequently, they have either been passed by or are at the top of their companies and don't know where to go from there. The chances are one out of five hundred that we'll need that guy immediately." Mr. Stryker confirms this when he states, "One of the surest ways for an executive to be overlooked as a candidate is to get buried in a consultant's file."
During the thirty years that I have been working with job-seekers, I have established contacts with a great many recruiting firms. My relations with some of them are exceptionally friendly, as I am considered an excellent source of leads for the kind of people they are seeking. I get many telephone calls and letters asking for people with specific talents. When I explain to the recruiter that I have several possible leads for him, he invariably wants to know whether or not they are employed. If I reply in the negative, practically every recruiter loses interest; but they do go on to say, "Don't you have anyone of that description who is employed?" My answer to this question is invariably: "No, I do not." I refuse to be party to disturbing someone who is employed. I do not want the responsibility of having pointed out what seemed to be a greener pasture but may turn out in the end not to have been a pasture at all-but a mirage. I equate a job with marriage; one doesn't know definitely whether it will "take" until one is in it. Who am I to tell a person that his or her present marriage would be improved with another spouse? I do not like to disturb someone who is apparently well satisfied with the status quo.
I have received hundreds of job descriptions from the search firms. I pass each one on to people looking for jobs. In all the years that I have done this, only three unemployed people have been placed through recruiters.
I have no fault to find with these firms. They are dedicated people under contract to do a certain job for the people who engage them and who pay the fees. Their job is to search for a candidate. They very rarely place one who comes to them.
My concern is to help people find jobs and while they are at it to keep up their morale and self-confidence. Neither morale nor self-confidence can be kept up for long by having a number of empty courtesy interviews. My advice to the job-seeker is to call on the executive search firms only when there is a lull in the interview schedule.
Do not turn to employment agencies until:
- You have your broadcast letter going full blast. (This means you have already mailed your letters. You will now have ten days to two weeks of relatively free time before the inter views begin.)
- You have cut out all employment agency "Job Openings" in the newspapers.
A resume will be a necessity when you call on agencies; you can't get along without it. This resume should be preferably one page long and never more than two. Have it grooved or geared to the particular job you are seeking. Pre pare several of these resumes, each pointed in only one direction. You want to sell one specialty at a time and one only,
Getting Agency Interviews
You may either telephone or write to an agency about an advertisement. When you write, adapt your broadcast letter to the advertisement. If your broadcast letter doesn't suit the requirements, refer back to the chapter on "How to Get Interviews through Advertisers," and the advice given there.
See Agencies in the Afternoon
Do not go to the offices of employment agencies in the morning unless you want to stand in line with teenage typists, file clerks, and office boys while you wait your turn to be "processed" and to fill out the ever-present card. This may undermine your morale.
Herbert Graper, who formerly operated an employment agency and who has recently retired as national personnel director from Dun & Bradstreet, gave this advice: "Never go to an employment agency in the morning. At that time, the agency people are busy interviewing the 'line-up' of applicants and looking over their cards to see whether they are complete. With a long line waiting, there is no time to go very deeply into anyone's record. Go to an agency in the afternoon when the morning interviewing and appointment-making are over. You will then find the agency operator more relaxed and willing to listen. You then have a chance to visit with him about the job opportunity he advertised. You may soon be on such a friendly footing that he will go to great lengths to get you interviews." Always try for an afternoon appointment. If you are asked to come in during the morning, you can always say you are busy; and, indeed, you had better be, if you are looking for that job. Mr. Graper says too: ''Don't go to see employment agencies on Mondays. That is the day when they get the rush from the weekend advertising, and time is at a premium."
I am asked over and over again to recommend a good employment agency. Here I am forced to give the same answer that I gave about executive recruiters. Whether an employment agency or a recruiting firm is good, bad, or indifferent depends entirely on your own personal experience with them. You will like the ones that are friendly and helpful. You will cuss the ones that treat you as a mendicant. You will dislike the ones that tell you that you are too young or too old, too inexperienced, or so experienced that you may be set in your ways. You will be disgusted with those who are as impersonal as a postal clerk selling you stamps.
A few years ago one of the people I was helping decided that while he was making the rounds of employment agencies he would make a one-man census. He resolved to tabulate them as good, bad, or indifferent, basing his opinion purely on personal reaction. He marked good the ones who took a special interest in him. He graded a few as bad. But by far the longest list contained the names of those rated as indifferent. This man had hoped to make a real contribution which would help others who were also unemployed. He had a great shock when he discussed his list with others who had been making the same rounds and found that their ratings differed markedly from his. It became very obvious to him that the differences in agencies were, for the most part, differences in personal reactions. He never did complete his list. The best agency for one man may be the very worst for another, and so I must tell you reluctantly that you alone will have to decide which agency is the best one for you.
Judging from the experiences of many individuals, there is quite a contrast in the methods of big-city and small-town employment agencies. The ones in large cities seem to be overwhelmingly busy with "bread and butter" jobs. These are the jobs for the masses of unemployed people-the office clerks, stenographers, business machine operators, etc. These people can be rather quickly processed and placed, and they are the backbone which provides the agencies with their main income.
A former president of the National Association of Employment Agencies said in The Wall Street Journal: ''None of the group's members specializes in placing high-salaried men. Employment agencies find executive placement unprofitable because it takes so long to line up a middle-aged former boss with a job.'' In the same issue, a former controller says: ''I tried the employment agencies and found that nobody wanted to talk to a 48-year-old man."
Men seem to have a much warmer feeling toward agencies outside the big metropolitan centers. Mr. W. H. wrote me, "I had four good interviews arranged for me by an employment agency in this small Connecticut manufacturing town. The job I took came as a result of one of these four leads." Jobs can, and should, be obtained through agencies. There-fore, you should follow up all employment-agency advertisements that seem to be in your field. The people who run these agencies fill an economic function. They make possible the matching of people to jobs. Inasmuch as the bulk of these jobs is at the clerical level, don't expect too much of the agency.
This is a letter I received not too long ago:
Dear Carl,
You may recall that you asked me to send you some of the statistics of my long, hard, six months' job hunt. For some reason, I feel embarrassed about them, but here they are for what they are worth:
I have had 137 "courtesy" interviews.
I am listed with 17 employment agencies.
I am registered with 29 recruiters.
I answered over 75 newspapers ads-however; I attached a resume and wrote the wrong kind of letter.
The job I landed came through answering an ad in The New York Times. I adapted my broadcast letter and did not enclose a resume. The company had been searching for six months, and my letter just clicked with them.
Use recruiters and employment agencies but do not depend too much on them for that job. Keep the initiative for getting interviews in your own hands by getting out your broadcast letters. I consider the use of employment agencies a very passive way of pursuing a job. You would be depending on chance to lead you to openings. Agency openings shrivel and dry up during depression periods. Then again, the leads that come through agencies are not of the same quality as those you develop yourself. When you go from an agency to an interview, you have not had the opportunity to do your homework for that interview. You go in labeled as someone "looking for a job."
On the contrary, when you go in to an interview as a result of an invitation which has come from your letter, you go in with the cards stacked in your favor, for your letter has pre pared the way.
My thirty years of experience in coaching job-seekers has taught me not to sell short any means of getting placed. I am a great believer in shaking every tree and turning over every stone. Nevertheless, it is foolish to spend too much time in panning streams where others have found pay dirt all too infrequently.
