Executive recruiters are the most sophisticated professionals in the business. As an adjunct to their normal activities, management consultants and CPA firms perform essentially the same kind of recruiting functions. CPA firms normally are confined to only financial jobs, but many of them are becoming less active in this function.
All these organizations locate and screen executives for middle- and senior-management positions. They are hired and paid by the employer, who often pays a fee whether or not a recommended candidate is selected. The minimum salary of the positions that they recruit for is roughly $40,000, with a typical fee being 20 percent to 30 percent of the hiree's annual compensation. As a rule of thumb, executive recruiters are looking for candidates who are earning a minimum of $1,500 per year of life. Hence a 40-year-old candidate should be earning $60,000.
Banks and law firms
There are a number of narrower entries into the visible job market, one of which is banks. Numerous large banks run an informal placement service and, of course, they tend to handle primarily financial jobs. To a lesser extent some law firms serve a similar function.
A key loan officer is your best contact to learn about bank job openings. Generally, this can be accomplished by sending a letter and a resume with your job requirements. However, if you have contacts at the bank, try to see them. Bankers who take a real interest in you can often be very helpful.
Trade associations
Many trade associations have a service to match open jobs and available people. Normally this service is free or available for a nominal fee, and although it is usually open to members only, you should try to register with associations in your field, even if you aren't a member. Many maintain placement services on a local chapter as well as on a national basis.
When an association's service finds a potentially good match of a candidate and a job, it usually sends the candidate's resume to the employer. The employer then takes any further action. You might, however, have the association refer any opening to you rather than referring you to the employer. This enables you to make a tailor-made presentation to the company. It is best to contact these services face to face. In addition to placement activity, some associations maintain a voluntary counseling committee which can provide a useful service.
Numerous trade organizations publish a newsletter with a section listing jobs available and available people, with brief descriptions of both. Good copy for such a situation-wanted ad is of course your advertisement, and it should show your accomplishments (not just your responsibilities). There are probably only a couple of these newsletters available in your area, but they can often be a source of a few job interviews because they may have a large mailing list.
College alumni placement services
Many alumni placement services-college, fraternity, and sorority-have expanded considerably because of the increased demands for them. Most of them are geared to graduating students, but some provide these same kinds of services to alumni, though usually to the younger and highly marketable. Services vary but they usually include an available job-matching program as well as limited counseling services, often at a modest fee. These services invariably have access to vocational counseling services and sometimes know of good professional job counselors or psychologists. They sometimes have a good resource library of information on companies and industries. Some college career counseling services provide a monthly newsletter listing available people. You should register for this service.
If you no longer live near your college, try other good college placement services in your area. Often they will talk to you and sometimes accept you on their rolls. Such college services are among the few services that work primarily for a job seeker.
Therefore they are quite knowledgeable about local market conditions and available resources.
Personnel executives
If you are seeking a senior management position, personnel executives ordinarily are of very limited use unless you know one personally. If you are seeking a lower-level position, they may be of some use - but most personnel executives' basic responsibility in hiring is to fill the job requisitions sent to them. Only rarely do they try to find a job for somebody within the organization, unless the candidate is in the elite. Because of this, if you are making a blind prospecting contact with a company, it should be to a line executive, not to personnel.
Personnel executives, however, because of their skills in evaluating people, frequently take an important part in the process of screening executive job candidates. And they may have veto power over hiring.
Because the visible market is the source of such a large number of good jobs and it is so easy to make a wide variety of contacts there, you can easily find yourself devoting far more time to it than is warranted. Unless you have a really outstanding record, spend no more than a quarter of your time approaching it.
