Employment Digest

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How to Negotiate an Employment Contract

While working as a managing director in charge of IT infrastructure, Christopher Barron noticed some inadequacies in his company’s effort to comply with federal regulations. He didn’t think his company, which he declined to name, was doing enough to comply with the regs. Although he pressed and pressed, he couldn’t convince his CIO and the rest of the senior management team that what they were doing was deficient. The CIO felt the measures his company was taking were adequate, but Barron, who was leading the compliance effort, knew it wasn’t enough. Due to this disagreement, Barron and his employer decided to part ways, and Barron left the company with what he describes as a sufficient severance package. (He declined to disclose the specifics.)

Barron was entitled to that severance because he had bargained for an employment contract with the company upon being hired. “Had I not had an employment contract, I’ve been told I would have been summarily dismissed from the company,” says Barron, who is now vice president and CIO of CPS Energy in San Antonio, Texas. “Having the employment contract allowed me to maintain my ethical and professional integrity without sacrificing my financial security.”

Employment contracts are written agreements between an employee and an employer that define an individual’s role at a company over a specific period of time, usually from two to five years. They often outline the employee’s responsibilities, reporting relationship, salary, benefits, perks, and in some instances, the terms and conditions of a severance package.

As Barron’s experience shows, employment contracts are worthwhile documents to draw up when you’re negotiating a position with a new employer. These documents can protect an employee’s personal, professional and financial interests in the event the employer decides that it no longer needs the employee’s services. Such a scenario might arise if a new CEO comes on board or there’s a “change in control” because the company has been bought, sold or merged with another.

“If you don’t make earnings improve by 10 percent in the first six months, you’re out of a job. That’s the kind of risk an employment agreement protects against,” says Susan Egan, an employment attorney with Egan Law Firm in New York City. “You’re protecting against the risk that you’re going to end up out the door.”

Employment contracts are standard for CEOs and are often inked for other high-level executives like presidents, chief operating officers and even chief financial officers. However, they’re not the norm for IT executives, according to IT executives and headhunters. What’s more, many executive recruiters and employment attorneys observe companies moving away from employment contracts because they see the contracts as a liability. They’re also tricky for employees to negotiate.
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Crafting a resume requires knowledge of changing rules

Remember the rule about getting your resume on a single page? Well that one has been thrown out. Here are some more.

Have you ever noticed that just when you figure out all the rules, the rules change?

For years now, recruiters have been preaching to job seekers that they should keep their resumes to one page. But a new survey conducted for Accountemps has discovered that just more than half of executives still believe this practice is necessary.
Sword Medical

The national poll found that a full 44 percent of recruiters actually prefer two pages. This is significantly more than the 25 percent who said they preferred two pages a decade earlier.

And when it comes to resumes for executive roles, 31 percent cite three pages as ideal.

“Many employers are willing to spend a little more time reviewing application materials so they can more easily determine who is most qualified and act quickly to secure interviews with these candidates,” says Max Messmer, chairman of Accountemps and author of Managing Your Career For Dummies.
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Tips on Finding Your Next Job!

As a recruiter it is completely frustrating to know that there are so many truly good industry folks out there looking for jobs right now…and more importantly really struggling to find that right opportunity. It is always a bit of timing and dumb luck at my end with the opportunities that I receive or drum up to recruit for and unfortunately that does not help all those great candidates who I know find that next job any quicker. As such, I thought a quick list of tips, sites or sources that I would personally recommend and/or use if I were in my own job hunt might benefit some of you.

Recruiters. Connect with an industry qualified recruiter. Benefits being they are typically tapped into the industry very well and know many people and contacts throughout the country. They also usually know of many confidential searches that are not advertised on the mainstream job boards. The downfall here with recruiters is finding a recruiter who will hang with you and not give up on finding you that right position. I am not saying that a good recruiter can work miracles and find you a job in record breaking time…yet a good recruiter will stay in touch with you and always keep you in mind. The biggest complaint I hear from candidates is that recruiters seem to call you when they need you, leaving them feel used.

The typical job boards. While I think the job boards are great…I also view them as a major distraction in anyone’s job search. Everyone goes to and frequents the top sites…Monster, HotJobs, Careebuilder, The ladders. There are many downfalls to relying strictly on the job boards for that next job. Due to the number of candidates that search and apply through job boards that by the time your resume gets to whoever the “screener” at the company you are sending your resume to…it can quite easily get lost and dumped into a vault of never to be seen or found again resumes. For example, when I typically post a job on Monster, say for a sales position, I get back easily hundreds of resumes. Multiply that one job posting by several for larger companies…and you’ve got a major administrative mess on anyone’s hands. Best bet for pursuing a job you see posted on a job board or company website is to see if your favorite recruiter -Carlyn Burns! : ) has an in with that company, or simply ask them to call the company on your behalf. Having a recruiter present you to a company often, if not always gains you instant credibility for being an extremely worthy candidate!

Network, network, network! This is honestly one of the leading ways that candidates find their jobs – regardless of industry. Don’t be afraid to reach out to those you have worked with in the past and get your name out there. Let everyone you respect and know in the industry know that you are looking for that next job…you would be amazed how quickly news travels and how many referrals may pan out for you. Don’t forget to contact former peers, bosses, customers you called on or dealt with, suppliers, association members, no one is off limits here…network! You’d be surprised at how many candidates I have recommended this to who tell me they would be too embarrassed to call old bosses or co workers and let them know they were out of work…don/;t let your pride get in the way…again, this is one the best and most reliable ways to get a job these days!

Join the club! There are many industry associations, networking opportunities out there. Think outside the box and join your local chamber or better business meetings – most cities have networking meetings frequently – check out eth business section in your local newspaper. My best recommendation for networking with others is by far Linked in. You can find the site at www.linkedin.com It is free to join and you can connect and communicate with people in and outside of the industry all over the country. I personally know of several people who found their last job this way.

Unemployment Office. Believe it or not, often the unemployment office in your city receives several job openings that are not always publicly posted on major job boards or anywhere for that matter. Many companies are trying to be more and more economical with their advertising costs for job ads, and can place free job ads with eth unemployment office, as well as online at: http://www.dod.jobsearch.org/ (site comes up as dept of defense, but allows you to post resumes and search for jobs for free. Downside of this site, there are a lot of hourly waged jobs listed here…sometime you have to dig or keep checking back.

And finally….never ever, ever pay anyone, any service, etc, to find that next job for you. I have heard way too many horror stories from many candidates who have been “taken” for lots of money and time in grand promises from companies who promise to get your resumes to thousands of companies and hiring authorities, etc. If it sounds too good to be true…it probably is. Good luck in your job search & rest assured your dream job is probably right around the corner!

Market Yourself with a Resume that Gets Results

Your resume should be like any good marketing plan — designed to sell! It needs to hook potential employers as soon as they see it, so they bypass the discard pile and take a second look. Creating a resume that accomplishes that can’t be done in just a few minutes because there’s much more to it than listing your work history and year of graduation. Try thinking of it as an art form, because it is. Great resumes get a second look and an interview, but bad ones don’t get a second thought.

If you’re serious about scoring as many interviews as you can and for the jobs you really want, then learning how to market yourself with a resume that grabs attention should be one of your top priorities.

Know the Market

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Advertising companies do market research before they put together an ad campaign. Why? Because they need to know who they’re selling to and what those people want. The same strategy should apply to your job search. You have to know what jobs are available to know how to market yourself to them. Scour the job boards and classifieds to see what’s out there, and know what kind of job you’re looking for — finding a job can be pretty tough if you have no goals or ideas about what you want to do.

Target Your Resume

Determine which jobs you’re interested in and target your resume to each one. Don’t submit the same version of it for every job you apply for — change words and move things around so your resume uses some of the same lingo as the job descriptions. Use keywords to highlight your experience and accomplishments that best match those sought for each job. Your goal should be to match the content of your resume as much as possible to the qualifications and duties described in each job notice.

Make It Stand Out

A visually appealing and easy-to-read resume gets attention. Skip the fancy fonts, long paragraphs, and flowered stationary. Use as few words as possible and make creative use of white space, bold letters, sectioning, and bullets. A potential employer should be able to scan over your resume quickly to determine if it deserves a longer look. You want them to notice what’s great about your resume, not the color of the paper.

Shift Your Priorities

For each job you apply to, shift items around on your resume so that the first thing any potential employer sees is exactly what they’re looking for. If they’re specifically looking for someone who speaks Swahili, put it at or near the beginning of your resume (as long as you actually speak it, of course!) It’s a simple strategy — the things they want go first, the things that are less appealing or less important to the job go last.

Highlight What’s Important

Yes, you are multi-talented and of course, your resume needs to sum up your skills and abilities. However, you don’t need to list everything. You just need to let them know what skills you have that are assets for the job. As far as your education goes, unless you’re right out of school, your degree doesn’t need to be the first thing people see on your resume. If you’ve been working for five years or more, list your education last and focus on your skills and accomplishments. However, if you’re just starting out, it’s perfectly acceptable to list your degrees, as well as your GPA, courses relevant to your job search, and any awards or scholarships you’ve earned. Any special training you’ve completed should be included, so long as it’s pertinent to the job at hand (so skip the blurb about Clown School if you’re applying for an accounting job).
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Job history is important, but to highlight your experience that best relates to the job, a chronological rundown may not always be the best approach. You may want to consider emphasizing what you know instead of what you’ve done, although in most cases, a job timeline is more than adequate.

Accomplishments you’ve made on the job could be included in your job history, or they could be highlighted separately on your resume, along with off-the-job accomplishments and any special skills you can bring to the table. Decide how you want to emphasize these aspects of yourself so employers will notice what’s most important to them.

Perfecting your resume can be tough, but it really does help to think of it as a marketing tool. Know your audience and tailor your resume to them each time. If you don’t, you may not appeal to the people who are reading it. With a little time and patience — and perhaps a little extra advice — you can put together a resume that’s sure to get you in the door for an interview. The rest is up to you!

Networking for People Who Hate Networking

Today’s careers are made and broken by one’s ability to network.

Please don’t post comments about how unfair this is — I know that people who are bad at networking think it’s not fair that the world rewards networking so much. But that’s the way the world is. You’re not going to change it by whining.

Instead, be giddy: Networking is actually a lot easier than you think. Here are five reasons why:

1. You don’t have to be a manipulator.

Networking is about being nice. It’s about figuring out what someone needs, and determining how to help him get it. Be aware of what people are trying to accomplish in their lives so that you can help them reach their goals — either by helping them yourself or putting them in touch with someone who can help them.

People who are ineffective at networking think you have to manipulate people to get what you want. These are the same people who fail at office politics because they don’t understand that office politics is about being nice. Networking is what you do when you’re doing office politics well.

Networking is about adding value to peoples’ lives. If you do that as much as you can, people will be happy to help you. Be generous with your time and energy as well as your contacts.

You should understand what you have to give, and then look for people who need it. Not only is that the place where you can add a lot of value, but those are also the people who likely have skills and connections that you don’t have, so they’ll be able to help you. The more diverse a group of people you can help, the more diverse the type of help you can get.

2. You don’t have to be funny and clever.

The people who are most afraid of networking think they have to open up a conversation with something really smart or witty. You don’t have to be either of those. The best way to start a conversation is by being nice.

If you pontificate on your brilliant ideas you’ll seem smart, but you won’t necessarily connect with people. And if you tell a lot of jokes you’ll seem funny, but that, also, is not necessarily inviting more conversation. Being nice, though, makes people want to talk. By being nice, you’re saying, “I’m safe to talk to. I’ll listen.”

People want to be listened to, and they want to feel interesting. So you can be good at networking by caring about other people. And you can’t fake being interested — it’s almost impossible. That means you have to genuinely care about other people.

The best networkers understand that everyone is interesting if you ask the right questions. So ask someone an open-ended question, figure out what they’re interested in, and ask them about that.

Your job is to discover what you can learn from people, and you can learn something from everyone. If you really try, you’ll be genuinely interested in what they have to say.

3. You don’t have to network when you’re job-hunting.

Don’t talk to me about job hunters who are networking. Let’s be real: When you need a job, you’re not networking, you’re calling in favors. You’re asking people for jobs.

Networking is something you do when you’re feeling great about your work. After all, who wants to network with someone who either hates her job or doesn’t have one?

This is how networking works to get a job — you make friends. Real friends. Not like the 46,000 “friends” Barack Obama has on MySpace, but the kind of friends to whom you’ve revealed something significant about yourself, and who have revealed something significant about themselves to you.

If you have 30 such people in your life who have diverse networks of their own, you’ll be able to get a job when you need one. So focus on making real connections with people instead of trolling the Internet for jobs. It’s not only a more effective use of your time, it’s a more fulfilling one.

(Wondering if you’re good at it this kind of job hunt? Test yourself.)

4. You don’t have to be agreeable.

Connecting with people doesn’t mean agreeing with them, it means growing with them. Personal growth is one of the best things you can get from a relationship. So it’s fine to disagree with someone you’re getting to know. You send the signal that you’re the type of person who challenges friends to think more clearly. Just be sure to disagree in a non-confrontational way.

A couple of weeks ago I met Annalee Newitz, editor of the book “She’s Such a Geek: Women Write About Science, Technology, and Other Nerdy Stuff.” In the short amount of time we spent together, we managed to disagree on a lot.

For example, on the question of whether little girls’ affinity for pink is an issue of nature or nurture (I say nature). But I liked Annalee. She was easy to talk to and full if energy. That we could disagree on a wide range of topics means that we both think about the same wide range of topics.

So don’t assume that networking requires you to agree with everything someone says. It just requires you to care about what the person says. Caring is how you make a connection.

5. You don’t have to get off the sofa.

Here’s a big secret about the blogosphere: The people who are blogging seriously aren’t college kids writing about beer parties. In fact, college kids are generally mystified as to why someone would spend four hours a day writing a blog entry.

That’s because the serious bloggers are professionals, and they’re investing four hours a day on their blog because it’s an incredibly effective and efficient networking tool.

If you want to start a blog, here are some quick and easy steps to get started. But most of you won’t click that link, because blogging is, after all, a big commitment.

Nevertheless, most of you can leverage the blogosphere to do your networking in a way that never requires you to leave your computer. Instead, you can comment on other peoples’ blogs.

This is a very effective way to meet people who wouldn’t normally give you the time of day. For example, companies like Yahoo! and Sun have thousands of blogging employees, and CEOs of small startups often blog as well.

Liz Strauss explains on The Blog Herald that many bloggers focus primarily on building relationships. So find people you admire who blog, and start reading their blog every day. Leave intelligent comments. Most bloggers know the people who leave thoughtful comments on a regular basis. And bloggers like to help people in their blog community.

So you can sit on your sofa and surf all night, typing your opinion on your favorite topics. And after that, you can call yourself a great networker.

Best jobs if you’re over 50

Maybe you’re financially secure enough to try a career you’ve only dreamed about. Or you’re burned out after toiling away in the same field for three decades.

“Most people over 50 plan to continue working beyond traditional retirement age,” says Howard Stone, co-founder with his wife Marika of 2Young2Retire.com. “A high percentage want to do something more satisfying than what they’ve been doing.”

The search for meaning prompted AC Warden to become a celebrant - an officiant at life events who isn’t necessarily affiliated with a particular religion - after 25 years as a documentary producer.”

With budgets shrinking, timelines speeding up and the quality of productions diminishing, I began looking for a more fulfilling option,” says Warden, 55.

She took classes for a year that cost about $1,800 and earned her certification in 2003. Warden officiated at more than 60 weddings in 2006, and also does funerals, house blessings and commitment ceremonies. Though she makes just $30,000 a year after expenses, she loves the work so much that she can see doing it for the rest of her life.

It might be hard to imagine making a switch at this stage, but the biggest job gains for the past few years have been among older workers, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. And some industries, including health care and education, are actively recruiting people over 50.

Still, when you’re making a big change, you’ve often got to overcome stereotypes about older workers being stuck in their ways.

Here are five essentials to making a successful transition.
1. Make age an advantage

Sure, bias is out there. It’s up to you to put your age in a positive light. Talk up your experience and how it fits into what a potential employer is looking for. Is the company trying to launch a service, cut costs or find new customers?

Use examples from your work history that show how you tackled similar problems, and explain how that will help in your new job.

After a 20-year career at Polaroid that included stints in sales, marketing and operations, Roberta Hurtig, 58, became executive director of Samaritans, a suicide-prevention organization in Boston, in 2002.

“A lot of my corporate skills translated. The heart of what we do at Samaritans - training people to provide great customer service - is essentially the same,” she says.
2. You’re cool. Prove it.

Half of hiring managers in a 2006 survey said the biggest disadvantage of taking on older workers is that they don’t keep up with technology. In an interview, talk about the Web research you did on your prospective employer or the new software program you mastered.

“It’s critical to show that you’re knowledgeable about even basic things,” says Deborah Russell, director of economic security at AARP. “Put your e-mail address on your résumé or mention that you pay your bills online.”
3. Look the part

Wear an up-to-date suit for interviews, and during small talk drop in your weekly tennis game or that 10-k race you ran. Appearance counts, but energy is more important.

“You can dye your hair and minimize your wrinkles,” says Russell. “But really it’s about being enthusiastic and showing you can help a company succeed.”
4. Plan ahead

If you’re going to take a lower-paying job, you need to prepare financially. On the flip side, transitioning to a career that you can see doing beyond 62 or 65 may allow you to put off tapping your savings.
5. Get real

Don’t get too seduced by the idea of saintliness. It’s easy to romanticize life as a teacher, a minister or an environmentalist. It’s still work.

“People are looking for greater meaning,” says Marc Freedman, CEO of Civic Ventures and author of Encore: Finding Work That Matters in the Second Half of Life.

“Unfortunately, some of these fields are the most dysfunctional and low paying.”

Prepare, breathe, nail the interview

Teresa Bartlett felt confident going into her interview at Manpower staffing agency, but she still needed a glass of water to quench the dry mouth she gets when she’s nervous.

Local experts say nerves often come with an interview, but steps can be taken to quell the butterflies and allow you to more effectively market yourself to a potential employer.

“An interview can make or break getting a job,” said Janine Papenfuss, director of career services at the Minnesota School of Business in St. Cloud. “The first impression is the most important.”

Bartlett overcame her nerves to make sure her prospective employer saw her positive attitude, computer skills and outgoing personality. The 43-year-old Royalton woman started this month as office manager at Farmers Insurance in St. Cloud.

Soothing nerves becomes more important as job seekers work to stand out in a larger pool of applicants. Job vacancies fell 9 percent statewide in the fourth quarter from the year before, according to the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development. St. Cloud-area unemployment increased to 5.9 percent in January when not seasonally adjusted.

Do your homework

While nerves may seem to go hand-in-hand with job interviews, local experts say applicants can conquer this side effect with preparation.

“You should do a little bit of research (about a position and company) before you even apply for a job,” Papenfuss said.

Visiting the company’s Web site, looking at its stock or calling the company and asking questions can impart knowledge that will help you in the interview.

Another way to calm nerves is to practice interviewing, including knowing answers to commonly asked questions. These can include listing strengths, weaknesses and accomplishments.

Local experts say more employers now ask behavior-type questions. These can include scenarios and how an employee may handle them. This allows employers to further determine if a job candidate is a good fit.

“Once a person is invited for the interview, the person (company) has determined they have the skills,” said Mary Wiese, a career planner with the Stearns-Benton Employment & Training Council.

She suggests videotaping a mock interview. This can help determine if more practice is needed, she said.

It allows interviewees to look at negative body language, such as a lack of eye contact or frowning when thinking of answers, and change that behavior.

Job seekers also gain confidence with each interview — whether it is mock or not. Bartlett said she felt more relaxed during her interview at Farmers Insurance after interviewing at the staffing agency.

The way job candidates present themselves can add or subtract confidence.

Papenfuss suggests dressing better than what a typical day is like at the company.

Stay positive

Staying on an employer’s radar and eventually gaining a position requires keeping a positive attitude — and nerves can prevent that from showing.

Bartlett believes her positive attitude helped her land her position.

Papenfuss suggests keeping the interview positive by answering negative questions in a positive way.

If a question is asked about past termination, answer with how it helped you learn life skills or how it turned into a positive result, she said.

And job seekers should try to be themselves.

“I think that most people, if they are being honest and being themselves, makes them more at ease,” said Lisa Schroeder, director of Human Resources at Aria Communications in St. Cloud.

The Grapevine, Working with Recruiters

In the last five or so years, I have, despite being employed, always kept my resume updated at a number of job sites. I even occasionally call recruiters I have worked with to get a feel for the marketplace. Most times I am not really looking for a job, but I want to keep my eyes and ears open just in case that opportunity of a lifetime comes by.

The drawback to this is that at least once a week I waste five to ten minutes of my life talking to a recruiter, most of whom really stink at their job. They call, ask if I’m looking for work and then say “We have some really great opportunities that I think you might be a perfect fit for, just email me your resume and I’ll get back to you.” Most of them never get back to me, not even to just say “Hey, got your resume, but it looks like we don’t have anything for you, sorry.” This is why I say they stink.

The recruiters that I stay in touch with are the ones who know how to handle a job candidate. They didn’t just ask for my resume, they asked about my jobs, my work. They took notes, often making recommendations for how I might punch up my resume to get me what I’m looking for. When it comes to sending me on an interview, the good recruiters give me a run down of the company, the people I’ll be talking to, and what I can expect. The bad ones never do that, they just set up the time and say “Call me after so I know how it goes.”

This is where I come to the reason I titled this post “The Grapevine”.

Have you ever played that game as a kid? Where you line up and the person at one end is whispered a couple sentences that convey information, then each person in turn whispers the sentences to the next person in line, and at the end the last person says the sentences out loud and it is compared to the original sentences. Often times its hilarious how much the original content can change as each person relayed what they felt was the most important parts. This, in essence, is often what happened in job recruiting.

A company needs to fill a position, but they don’t feel they have the time to personally sift through applicants and only want to interview the most qualified, so they hire an agency to do the leg work. The company gives a description of the position to the recruiting company contact, who is often times not a recruiter themselves. This person then enters the job requirements into their system, and this is where, I feel, the first errors begin to creep in. The job description will get altered just a little bit to fit the recruiting companies standards, emphasizing key words and phrases, trimming to fit, elaborating out of thin air.

Meanwhile, on the other end, I, the job hunter, builds a resume, trying to outline my skills. I then go to a job website, where I’m forced to break down my resume into key words and phrases for searching. Some times breaking down the resume completely distorts the information.

Now enters the recruiter who searches the job site using the key words from the job description looking for matches. He reads the resume and the requirements and tries to decide if the two marry up well.

The result: 9 out of 10 interviews I go to usually ends up in disaster. Sure, the key words of my resume matched up with the key words of the job description, but the realities of both are completely different. I say I’m a .NET/C# programmer for web applications, the job is looking for someone with .NET/C# experience but for desktop applications and really they don’t use the .NET platform, just the C# language to support old C++ DLLs and COM Interop, but I’m here because my resume and their job description were both boiled down to simply .NET/C# and looked like a perfect match!

There is nothing quite like the feeling of spending ten minutes shooting the shit with someone, getting a feel for the person and liking them, only to start the technical interview and realize that your skillset and their needs are on opposite ends of the spectrum.

And the recruiters always ask “Are you working with any other recruiters?” Yes. Of course I am. With results like these, how can I afford not to?

Getting resume to stay in pack is first step when job hunting

Unfortunately, there are a whole host of things you can do in a minute or less to knock yourself out of consideration for a job you want even if you may be right for the gig.

Here are some tips on what to do and what not to do in order to land the right job.

Today’s job market is a process of weeding out candidates as aggressively as possible. It’s hard to blame employers for shortening the list of candidates when there are so many good people on the job market. It’s a matter of survival for recruiters and hiring managers.

While it’s true they hate to overlook a great candidate, there will be too many people to interview if they don’t knock people off their interviewing list. Their first impulse is to take a resume out of the stack and pitch it — sometimes for very trivial reasons.

Your goal as a job seeker is just to keep your resume in the stack. You can impress a hiring manager at the interview. Your resume just needs to get you in the door. That won’t happen if any of the following mistakes happen along the way:

# When you send your resume by e-mail, send it in a cleaned-up plain text version along with a Word attachment. Being on the receiving end of this e-mail traffic, I’d rather print out and read plain text resumes all day long than have to deal with some attachment that won’t open because of compatibility problems.

# When you send e-mail to a prospective employer, include your contact information prominently on the message. When listing your contact information, you should use the phone number at which you can be reached most often.

# Many hiring managers and recruiters get a strong resume and instantly pick up the phone for a quick phone screen. If your phone number is hard to find, it slows the process and that’s the last thing you want.

# Because they’re calling you, you get to ask questions before you start answering them. For example, who is the employer? What is the job? Where is it located? Don’t give out salary information on a phone call with the employer (you can get to that later).

On an interview, be your usual professional, friendly, engaging and intellectually curious self. Avoid asking a lot of nut-and-bolt questions before there’s evidence of a strong mutual interest. Though I’m sure you’ve wasted time on going-nowhere opportunities before, that still doesn’t mean you can ask about the comp plan, the benefits and the size of your office on the first interview.

Some candidates think when they sit down with the junior HR person that it’s OK to ask these questions because no one else talks to these people. Wrong. When I was one of these people, I got the real lowdown on job candidates because they thought they were talking to the wall.

I would rat them out in a second, so use discretion in every conversation.

Lastly, find out about the CEO. Though you probably won’t meet this person (unless it’s a really small company), make a gut observation if you are lucky enough to even shake hands with him or her in your visits to the company. Is this person ethical, competent, smart and a good leader?

If it’s a large company, ask around. Remember that no element of a business influences what it’ll be like to work in a company anywhere near as strongly as the personality of the CEO.

I know jobs are tight, but if the CEO leaves a negative impression on you, the job will be bad. Don’t take it.

How to get a recruiter’s attention

A lot of readers ask me how to find a recruiter to help them find a job. In general, my answer is: Forget it. Headhunters don’t work for people who need jobs. Headhunters work for people who have jobs to fill.

The way this works is the hiring manager has a specific type of person he needs to hire, and that person is hard to find. The hiring manager cannot spend all the time it will take to locate this person, so the hiring manager pays a recruiter to find this special person.

“Few headhunters are in the talent management business,” says Terry Gallagher, of the search firm Battalia Winston International. “Most executive search firms only represent their client’s interests and executive staffing needs.” This means, recruiters start with a specific position to fill, not a specific candidate to employ.

Recruiters are expensive. Often 20% of someone’s starting salary. This is not peanuts. So you can be sure that companies do not hire recruiters to find people with general qualifications. General qualifications are easy to fill. If you are a generalist, there are lots of people like you.

So look, if you are entry level or you are changing careers, you are not going to be attractive to a recruiter. Entry level people do not have any special skill that would make them fit a job that retained recruiters get hired to fill. And people changing careers do not have specific skills in their new career, they have specific skills (at best) in their old career.

Headhunters don’t work with career changers. Headhunters work with superstars. And maybe not always superstars, but the less star power you have, the more of a specialty you have to have. Are you the only person in the world who knows how to build an inventory system like Wal-Mart has? Call a recruiter. Are you the number-one salesperson in all of Yahoo? Call a recruiter.

But the thing is that those people don’t need to call recruiters. Recruiters call them all the time. Recruiters know who the amazingly talented are. It is no mystery. So if you want to get on recruiter radar, you need to focus on making yourself look amazingly talented — in a proven-track-record way, not in a my-mom-says-so way.

If you think you are at place in your career where a recruiter would be interested, Michael Keleman at Recruiting Animal says, “Do a search of recruiters on LinkedIn. There are zillions of them there and some might indicate that they are in your area. Contact them and ask if they work with candidates like you. You don’t have to contact them through LinkedIn, just call.”

If you’ve got great experience, you might get special treatment from the recruiter. Recruiter David Perry, for example, has been known to represent candidates like they are movie stars. But most of the time, Keleman says, “You resume will go into a database until a company hires the recruiter for a seach you’re suited for.”

So go ahead and try getting a recruiter’s attention. But focus more on networking on your own, and doing great work, because those are the keys to getting good job opportunities.