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MEGA - Jobs, Resumes, Interviews

I did follow the advice in this thread as well as my own intuition, I just elected for them to write my resume. The thing I didn't do was hire them as recruiters, job hunters or anything like that. Just the resume.

And they fucked it up by writing a resume for someone applying for CEO. All I want to do is change the toilet paper, and they wrote a fucking novel.
 
I know exactly where you're coming from, it took me 6 mos. of serious searching to get offers. I never realized how difficult it would be - I was fucking around senior yr instead of interviewing. Consequently my classmates already had contracts w/good firms and I was going broke. Anyway, be persistent. Use your college's career center for resume help, interviewing tips, etc. Seek out employers that hire new grads. Dress impeccably. And don't give up! I'm rather unpolished and if I can do it anyone can lol Good luck :)
 
If anyone reads the economic magazine there are tons of ads for foreign jobs that pay well. A lot of financial jobs mostly.
 
It's not that hard to write a good one-page CV, Captain. There's plenty of free sites that can help you.

Shit, post it up here and we'll help you.
 
I'm in Australia and have worked in a recruitment agency, and I can assure you that two pages isn't too long.

The average number of pages for low-mid end positions, at least in Australia, is 2-3, but an unbelievable amount of people would extend to 6-7. I personally wouldn't recommend doing that, but 2 pages is fine, and virtually no one tries to sell themselves using just one solitary page.

The first couple of things an employer is going to look for is your work experience and educational history, and how they relate to the position you've applied for. As long as these sections are clearly outlined/easily accessible, and they don't have to trot through garbage to find them; I'm sure if they like what they discover, they'll gratefully read the rest of your resume :).
 
Doppelganger said:
I'm in Australia and have worked in a recruitment agency, and I can assure you that two pages isn't too long.

The average number of pages for low-mid end positions, at least in Australia, is 2-3, but an unbelievable amount of people would extend to 6-7. I personally wouldn't recommend doing that, but 2 pages is fine, and virtually no one tries to sell themselves using just one solitary page.
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i'm pretty sure captainballs in in the us so your advice, while interesting, doesn't really apply.

there is a pointless taboo in this country that anything over 1 page is unacceptable. i know it seems mad (i'm from the uk originally but live in the us) but many people here have a real problem if a resume creeps onto a second page.

i'm not sure of the extent to which a 2-page resume would materially affect one's chance at a job but i have met managers who would simply not hire somebody who submitted a longer resume.

alasdair
 
captainballs said:
I did follow the advice in this thread as well as my own intuition, I just elected for them to write my resume. The thing I didn't do was hire them as recruiters, job hunters or anything like that. Just the resume.

And they fucked it up by writing a resume for someone applying for CEO. All I want to do is change the toilet paper, and they wrote a fucking novel.
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LOL, sorry man that sucks. A quick google search is free and has the info that you need to write a resume for an entry-level position. It's not that hard. The place you went to sounds retarded.
 
alasdairm said:
there is a pointless taboo in this country that anything over 1 page is unacceptable. i know it seems mad (i'm from the uk originally but live in the us) but many people here have a real problem if a resume creeps onto a second page.
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I must admit, I'm struggling to work out how I could write anything meaningful in just one page - what do they actually include?
 
Recruiters / Head-Hunters

I am currently looking for a job. I have been dealing with a recruiter recently and have done so in the past. I have never been offered a job thru a recruiter, but this time I feel the chances are better. I was told that I would have an offer in the next day or 2.

However...

I still hate the idea that I need to find a job thru a recruiter. There are very few postings on careerbuilder and craigslist which match my skill set and still offer a reasonable salary. Most job postings are coming in 5-10k under what I should be making.

also....

They take a cut out of what you could potentially make. If the company would just post the job opening themselves I feel that I could be offered that extra 6k chunk that the recruiting firm takes out as a fee to their client.

and.....

If this doesn't work out, I will be super pissed that I spent so much time for nothing. I gave ~20% of my time communicating/interviewing with the potential employer and ~80% of my time doing extra shit for the recruiter.......who doesn't even know any technical aspects of the field I am in.

Many (not all) don't have any special skills which make them stand out from the rest. If they weren't recruiters working in the past 5 years, the same type of person probably worked for commissions trying to sell bad mortgage products.

Amazingly, I've heard some of the better recruiters can make upwards of 200k. 8o
 
i got my job via a recruiter. i posted my resume on monsterdotcom and was contacted by them. i interviewed on a thursday, got the job on friday. i didn't have to pay any commission to them and my wages weren't docked as a result of being hired by the recruiter.
 
One of the biggest misconceptions regarding recruiters is that they take a cut of your salary. I work in recruitment, and I can assure you that this is not true.

A recruitment firm will normally charge their client (or your employer, for example) a percentage of your total package. The range with most recruitment firms within Australia is 15-19%, however this does not come out your salary... the company covers this cost as a separate expense.

For example, if the company tells us they have a Senior HR Advisor position paying $100k, we do not advertise the job to only be paying $80k or whatever and keep 20k to ourselves. It is advertised at the companies offer, and their payment of a percentage of that to us is a separate issue.

Also, don't think a recruiter needs to know the technical aspects of the job - it's not their job to know these things. All the recruiter needs to know is the key selection criteria according to the client, and you either have it or you don't. If it's not clear on your resume, we simply contact you to find out.

To say recruiters don't have special skills that stand out from the rest, could be said about anyone in any job field, couldn't it? Seriously... pretty silly thing to say! There's shit lawyers, there's shit builders, there's shit customer service reps, there's shit managers. There's people who are shit at their job or fairly average in every field.
 
Doppelganger said:
One of the biggest misconceptions regarding recruiters is that they take a cut of your salary. I work in recruitment, and I can assure you that this is not true.
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is there a difference between a recruiter and an agency?

what i mean is, you can be working for a recruitment agency, and they can most certainly take a cut of your wages. this is if you are working for a client via the agency, not if you're working directly for the employer, of course.

that kind of thing is expected in my line of work. as long as you're getting paid the going rate, who cares? :)
 
No, the agency doesn't take a cut of your wage, at least not where I work, or within Australia. The client pays an agency an agreed percentage of the wage of the member of the staff they recruit, but this does not come out of the employees wage. The client pays this on top of their candidates standard salary package.

Since it works as a percentage of the employees salary, it's often misinterpreted to come out of their salary, but recruitment costs are really above and beyond all of that.
 
OK, perhaps it depends on how you look at things. the client could pay the agency £400 a day for you, and the agency could pay you £300 a day. that extra £100 a day is pure profit for the agency, and they are free to change that if they so desire. that is exactly what happened to a mate of mine, and he didn't find out till about 8 years later. the agency lied to him about how much money they were making out of him.

i'm in the UK, if that makes any difference.
 
Doppelganger, I know how recruitment agencies work, and I am not saying that they take a chunk out of your agreed upon salary. Here is an example of what I am saying:

-Recruiting frim lists a job opening in salary range of 40k-50k
-Candidate gets a job offer of 45k
-Recruiting firm charges client 8k in fees

What is the total net 1 year expense of the client? 53k

Could the candidate have a better offer, closer to 50k if no fees were involved?........That is the question that bugs me.

Question for you Doppleganger, how much do you see in commissions per placement (as a percentage of total fees)?
 
Doppelganger said:
Also, don't think a recruiter needs to know the technical aspects of the job - it's not their job to know these things. All the recruiter needs to know is the key selection criteria according to the client, and you either have it or you don't. If it's not clear on your resume, we simply contact you to find out.
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Yes they do!!! Otherwise how do you know what both your client and the candidate are looking for? I know you're only looking at keywords, but if you know nothing about what I put on my resume, you have no idea how over/under qualified I would be for any given position.

Candidates get pretty angry when we get calls on a 3rd, 4th, 5th lead and the job is far less than what we are looking for.

I'm not saying that recruiters should know everything, otherwise they could be working in that field.
 
oh, BTW, I just got an offer directly from the employer which was in my salary range :)

The recruiting firm will get their cut, but I like the fact that the employer came straight to me so the recruiting firm couldn't throw any curveballs.
 
felix said:
OK, perhaps it depends on how you look at things. the client could pay the agency £400 a day for you, and the agency could pay you £300 a day. that extra £100 a day is pure profit for the agency, and they are free to change that if they so desire. that is exactly what happened to a mate of mine, and he didn't find out till about 8 years later. the agency lied to him about how much money they were making out of him.

i'm in the UK, if that makes any difference.
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I have no idea how things work in the UK, but at my agency (we are a premium agency) we charge 19% for any casual placements. We do negotiate lower rates if our clients offer us exclusivity for a role, or if we're on their preferred suppliership list.

I can think of one specific example where a client of ours wanted to hire a candidate, who was asking $50k a year. This particular client wanted to lower their costs in general, and since we weren't prepared to negotiate our casual fee card with them (it's a casual card for a reason), they requested we offer the candidate 45k instead.

We informed the client we felt that this was unethical - we were representing the candidate at their asking salary of 50k, and if they wanted to negotiate otherwise, that would be between them and the candidate. The client kicked up a bit of a fuss and told us they would just use another agency, and we'd miss out on a placement altogether, when all the work was done.

We didn't. Three days later, the client got back to us... they wanted our candidate, they paid us the full 19%, and on top of that, they're now wanting us to be a preferred supplier to them.

It just goes to show how much a client will respect you, if you're prepared to lose all your hard work, for the sake of good ethics! :) We will never take a cut of our candidates salary, even if the client suggests it.

Stickygreen - will respond to you when I have more time.
 
19% of what? their salary as a one-off payment, or of their salary every week or month?

if it's the latter, you're still making that 19% purely for... not much.

and it's great when your great business ethics also have the by product of higher profits for you. win/win. ;)
 
19% of their entire salary package.

And a lot of work goes into earning that 19%, because if it is a casual placement, it means it's not a preferred suppliership, nor is it an exclusivity agreement. It means you can be competing against 10/20/30 other recruitment firms, and possibly for nothing.

Recruitment is an industry of highs a lows. Yes, you can earn a lot, but you'll be putting in a lot of effort too.

Also, with the skill shortage and low unemployment rate in Australia at the moment, the majority of advertised jobs are managed by recruitment firms. If finding employees was so easy, then organisations would have no problem doing so on their own - especially given they tend to have an HR department (and more and more commonly an internal recruitment department). Still, it's not easy, hence why they outsource, and hence why we're in business.

And yeah, I have no problems with organisation making profits, especially if they're ethical. Makes good business sense to me!! :)
 
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