A Recruiting Calculus

The Recruiting Calculus is a tricky picture. People fundamentally do not understand what they are getting when they pick up the phone to call a recruiter, and do not know how to make use of a recruiter in a "smart" fashion. I want to thank people like Lou Adler for some great words of wisdom. From Lou Adler- "For job-hunters, here's the first thing you must know about recruiters: recruiters find people for jobs, not jobs for people."

What does this mean?
1.) There are probably hoops to jump through. (A personal interview with a recruiter/References/etc)
2.) You are at the mercy of the recruiter for feedback.
3.) Recruiters for the most part don't create jobs.

Again from Lou Adler, "First find the job, then find the connection. This is what LinkedIn is all about. If you have a big enough network they show you how to get connected to the person who posted the job."

What does this mean?
1.) Social networking is great, but is only valuable when you have a sizeable network. 2.) You need to ask yourself if you are contributing, or withdrawing from your network. 3.) If you have a big enough network, you gain visibility into some HUGE network contacts.

My own personal tips for recruiting-
You work with quite a few connections, try to network to find a recruiter. Find a recruiter with tenure if you can, they typically have a better overall focus as opposed to a tunnel focus.
Most recruiters work on one job, then move on. Let the recruiter breathe before you call them four times in a week unless they submit you to a job.
If you get a feeling that they arent being honest with you, find someone else. Its SO easy to find recruiters who lie to people to get rid of them. If you aren't getting enough answers or feedback, find another recruiter.

MOST IMPORTANTLY
Stick with a recruiter who does a good job for you, look for contact with them over time, and build up that relationship. If they successfully found you a job, that's a great sign that that person is a career friend that you should keep around!

"And that was the strangest interview I ever had!"

Thinking about topics to post got me thinking about interviews that I have actually been on or listened to.  Two stand out more than others.  I had one for a candidate that I listened into.  The candidate literally said about four words during the interview.

"We need someone to do SolidWorks design at a high level of efficiency.  Can you handle that?"- Manager
"Yes" -Candidate

"Our project is under some pressure to get this done quickly, can you design quickly?"-Manager
"Yes" - Candidate

The end result of this bizarre interview was an offer surprisingly.  I would expect 99% of the time that this type of interview would lead to some pretty heavy backlash from the site manager, but in this case it worked.

I compiled a list of my favorite off the wall interview questions, and hardest interview questions:

• "Tell me about yourself?"

• "What's something you are not telling me that you should?"

• "Why are manholes round?"

• "If you are in a plane and you see a cow out the window, what happened?"

I pulled a few more from a recent post on Glassdoor.com-

• "Name 5 uses of a stapler without staple pins."

• "You're in a row boat which is in a large tank filled with water.  You have an anchor on board which you throw overboard (the chain is long enough so that the anchor rests completely on the bottom of the tank).  Does the water level in the tank rise or fall?"

• "Just entertain me for five minutes.  I'm not going to talk."

What is the strangest interview question you ever had?