WorkInsight: How to be Your Own Headhunter!

Jun 05, 2002

by David Perry, Managing Partner of Perry-Martel International, Inc.

This article is adapted and rewritten for Fusion Authority from Workinsight: A Headhunter's Guide to Finding the Perfect Job by the author, David Perry. We hope that these insights will help those of you who are in the midst of job searches, and that you'll check out Dave's sight, Workinsight.com.

When looking for ColdFusion jobs, most people will limit their search to the traditional approaches like answering want ads, surfing job boards, and asking friends. That's a great start, but everyone else is doing that too. Now your "friends and colleagues" are probably competing against you. You need to work smarter, which requires rethinking some of the old job search sources.

Here are some new twists on traditional approaches:

Newspapers

Although many companies have switched part of their recruiting budgets from newspapers to online classifieds, major dailies are still a rich source of job openings. Most major papers have their own online classified section where jobs are archived, often for 30-60 days. Go back through those in your area because many jobs don't get filled the first time they're advertised.
ALWAYS check the classifieds. Display Ads, or the "Career section" as it is commonly referred to are very expensive, and most companies switch from Career advertising to Classifieds during belt-tightening exercises.

When searching through the classifieds remember companies always try to hire locally first for expense reasons, so don't rush out and buy papers from another city unless you are prepared to move there and pick up your own expenses. On the other hand, if an out-of-town company is recruiting in your local paper, you can bet they're desperate so jump on them quickly.

Here are the largest daily newspapers in America:

http://www.bizmove.com/media_directory/top_100_newspapers.htm

Job Boards

Job boards do not share information with each other so you need to register with as many as you can find time for. Only those companies, which pay for access, can post a job or review your resume.
If you are looking for a start-up job don't look on the big boards. Small and medium sized companies, where all the growth (and ironically, the job security) is, use lesser-known niche boards like: justcoldfusionjobs.com

Some Examples:

Like:

http://cftips.tech-engine.com/
http://www.cfvault.com/
The CF-Jobs mailing list at http://www.houseoffusion.com

Newsgroups

Newsgroups are the best source of jobs. There are more jobs on newsgroups than anywhere else because they're free for everyone, for employers, recruiters and you. Headhunters use newsgroups 50:1 over job boards. It was impossible to keyword search newsgroups until www.workinsight.com was invented. Workinsight, of which I am a part owner, aggregates jobs from all the technology newsgroups in one place. CF jobs are spread-out on all 410-technology newsgroups pretty evenly because people tend to search for jobs locally when looking through newsgroups so employers post to city-specific newsgroups. There is no mega newsgroup for ColdFusion jobs.

Referrals From Friends and Relatives

Personal referrals are an excellent way to find a job. You need to involve ALL your friends and colleagues in your job search. Most companies post jobs internally before going to newspapers or Third Party Recruiters. It's not just because it's cheaper; it's because the employer has someone on staff who is interested and morally accountable for the new person they refer.

The best way to highlight your recent availability is to use a Networking letter - a one-page overview of your accomplishments and job interests.

What matters is NOT that you built a multivariate nonlinear statistical model in CF for cost analysis (achievement), but rather, the $157 million first-year savings from its use (value of the achievement). Keep it to three bullet points.

Sample Networking Letter

The Hidden Job Market

Newspaper ads, job boards, newsgroups and friends will only lead you to 30% of all the job openings available at any given time. To reach the "hidden job market" you need to take a more proactive approach. You need to learn how to direct source job leads the same way a headhunter does.

HOW TO Direct Source Your Next Job.

Internet Searches

By far the best way to discover new opportunities is by doing structured search engine queries. And it's fairly easy to do. Here's how to do Targeted Research, step by step:

*** Step #1 Develop a Target List of Companies ***

Decide on key words that are specific to the type of job you are looking for. We'll use Coldfusion and JavaScript. The generic words you'll need are job, resume, submit and free. We are using this search string to instruct Google to return the lists of websites that have Coldfusion jobs but are not ads for resume submitting businesses.

Our Targeted Search on Google

Choose the advanced search option. Entering the words one by one brings you the following results:

Words	Number of Hits	Relevance
Coldfusion	512,000	Low
Resume	16,300	low, includes candidate resumes
Submit	2210	low, includes job boards
Job	1190	high, all Coldfusion jobs
JavaScript	658	very high, Coldfusion and JavaScript jobs
Not "free"	483	Very, very high, this excludes all the resume submittal sites and shows just the jobs.

To drill down to the local level, use your telephone area code as a search criteria -- for example, 212 for New York. That'll narrow the hits down dramatically. You can easily work through a response of less than 100 hits in an hour or two.

*** Step #2 Find People Who Can Hire You ***

Once you have a target list of companies to work with, you need to find out who the people are in those companies that can actually hire you. A headhunter would likely pick up the telephone and ask a series of mind-numbing, thought-provoking questions that would deliver all that golden info to them. You might not be so inclined, so here's another way to do it.

Go to each company's web site and gather names. If you're lucky, every web site will provide the complete identification of all their senior executives, including names, titles, phone numbers, career summaries and sometimes email and photos! Web information should be up-to-the-minute accurate, but if you have any doubts, make a phone call to confirm it.

In my case I'm looking for a programming job so I am likely to be hired by a VP of Engineering or VP of Marketing.

If you're having difficulty finding the name on the site go back to Google's advanced search box and type in the company name in the first box and (Vice President Engineering Director Marketing) in the 3rd box. You don't need the brackets and do not put any punctuation in.

This search string will bring you:

All the people who are, or have ever been, VPs OR president OR Directors of engineering or marketing for that company.
The resumes of a whole pile of people from that company whom you may be able to phone to coax information from them.

Once you have the name of the individual who is one rung up the ladder from the job you want, you need to process their name through Google again. This time you put their first and last name in the 1st box and the company name in the 3rd box.

This will produce a list of Press Releases, News Articles and conferences they've attended. Read an article or two and clip something memorable to use in your NarrowCast letter. When you send them the letter you'll be able to say. "I read your article in… about… which prompted me to write." Very powerful.

Below you'll find an example of a good narrowcast letter. This letter got a response from the VP of R&D less than one hour later, which started a dialogue, which may lead to an offer of employment.

Sample Narrowcast Letter

The world is enjoying a huge rise in prosperity, powered by the "new economy." This economy is fueled by brainpower -- the consenting, enthusiastic contributions of high-tech workers like you. And the more your efforts succeed, the greater the demand for your services. As you learn to use these new techniques for finding opportunities, remember that whatever goes down must go up. Using these techniques will put you right back on the crest of the wave.

David Perry is managing partner of Perry-Martel International and author of Workinsight: A Headhunter's Guide to Finding the Perfect Job. He may be reached at dperry@perrymartel.com

Proceeds from the sale help pay for English education in Quebec.

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