Marketing Headhunter

I can't compete.

Wow.  I spent the last week totally covered up with epic searches -- the ones that allow me to tell great stories about my clients to my candidates and vice versa.  By Friday I was actually kinda burned out, thinking that my assistant and I really needed help.

That was before I decided to stop working on Sundays.  Yep:  Right there in the Third Commandment.  No computer on Sunday.  It's a hard habit to break.  Try it some time.  It's like breaking a nasty cigarette fix.  Anyhoo, Sunday 11:30pm rolls around, and I start looking forward to midnight so I can do something productive -- as if spending the day with my four kids isn't productive.

Then I start reading Bloglines ...

It's depressing how many great blogs there are out there -- and how trying to maintain a two blogs is a hamster wheel from hell.  Hugh.  Recruiting.com.  Recruiting Animal.  Cheezhead.  Kathy Sierra.  Tara.  Evelyn.  And that's just the tip of the iceberg.  Their content is always so fresh and connected and current and engaging and stuff.  Not mine.

Business is great and blogging sucks.  My revenues are up and my Alexa ranking is down.  One pays the bills, and the other _________.  What?  WHAT??  What does blogging actually do??  Even if I could be creative, where in the hell would I find the time?  My schedule's already ten pounds of crap in a five pound bag.  This blogging thing is a cruel mistress.  I want off.

Not really.

How to Email Decision Makers

Have you ever had a voice mail ignored?  Has your snail mail ever been trashed?  Have you ever been told by a receptionist that "we don't give out email addresses?"  As a management recruiter, I sure have!  In B2B selling situations (and in management recruiting), it has never been more difficult to get past the screeners of the real C-level decision makers.

If you want to send an email directly to your C-level prospect, candidate, or hiring manager, simply visit Whois Search and enter the URL of the firm you wish to solicit.  After entering a special onscreen code, note the format of the email address of the firm's Webmaster.  Try sending an email to your contact using that format.  See example.  This trick is especially effective for Hoover's users, who can lookup the names of the firm's officers and copy multiple recipients in on the same email.

And if you really want to increase your response rate, simply call your recipient and say, "Hi, ____. This is Harry Joiner and I was just following up on an email that I sent you this morning.  Do you have a minute to talk? ….etc…."  Studies have shown that telemarketing behind a direct mail or email promotion will increase your response rate by five-to-ten times.
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Q:  Need the number of a management recruiter?
A:  Download Harry's contact info for future reference.

Fan Picks Top Five Posts from Marketing Headhunter

This is Steven Kempton of the Asia Pacific Headhunter.  With the Recruiting Blogswap I have the honor of writing for Harry on his blog.  This is really a treat for me because Marketing Headhunter is a one of my favorite blogs.

Blogs are an interesting phenomena where it is easy to get sucked into the noise and get very little of real value.  But as Harry writes here, one of the best ideas for a blog is to "treat it like a Cookie Jar. Give the reader something tasty and nutritious.  Tell them something that they didn't already know. Or give them a new way to apply something that they already know."

Harry follows his own advice and has built a blog with some outstanding resources and information for readers involved in marketing, job hunting, and business in general.  Here are my choices for top 5 most nutritious posts from Marketing Headhunter. It took me some time to narrow this list down.

1. "Before You Apply for Your Next Job..." - Just GREAT career advice for all of us.

2. "What's a Good Marketing MBA Dissertation Topic?" - I hadn't fully appreciated the value and empowerment of good copywriting until I read this.  This is a great resource on becoming a better writer and marketer. There is enough value in this post alone to keep you busy for months!

3. Jay Abraham's "Stealth Marketing" - Free e-book from marketing guru plus a great story of how to get in touch with that CEO who will NEVER return your calls.

4. How to Recognize a Big Idea - Link to a free article which defines a core change in the workplace and business from the greatest business philosopher of our time.  PLUS, great marketing stories and advice.

5. Getting Paid What You're Worth - Spot on advice on how to get paid more as well as what you are worth.  Plus a link to a free article on how sports agents get big deals done for the stars!

If you haven't read through this blog before then I highly recommend those above.  But, this list isn't definitive and there are plenty of other gems there as well.

Guerrilla Marketing Your Open Jobs

Tom Petersson of Cheap Trick is on the cover of Bass Player magazine this month.  This I know because I went to the Publix up the road today and saw the magazine on the newsstand.

Now, I'm not a bass player.  But I am a Cheap Trick fan.  Plus, I'm a drummer and I found it perplexing that Publix did not stock Modern Drummer.  Why, you ask?  Because circulation analytics for retail distribution is a science -- and I'm sure Publix stocked Bass Player based on the historical sales of that title at store # 12365 in Roswell, GA.  From this one can surmise that there are more bass players in my store radius than drummers.  I guess that makes me a hot commodity.

As I thumbed through the magazine, I wondered how I could reach the twenty or so bass players who would also thumb though those pages -- and the handful who would ultimately buy those five copies.  Who were they?  What kinds of music do they like?  Would they like to have a beer and possibly jam some time?  After all, we're local -- and we have in common an appreciation of Tom Petersson.

Then it hit me:  Why not come back to the store and insert post it notes into the pages?  "Roswell-based drummer seeks Tom Petersson sound-alike for jamming and possible gigging. Call (678) 795-0900."  Ethics aside, it's certainly targeted -- both psychographically and geographically. And that's what you want in your advertising.

Question:  Who's your target employee -- and what do they read?  Where do they hang out?  How can you reach them?  Put yourself in their shoes, and walk through an imaginary day with them.  Then go to those place and advertise your open position.  This is called Guerrilla Marketing -- and it's worth knowing how to do if you are a specialty retailer in need of hourly employees who belong to a certain niche or subculture.
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Great Job Search Letters

Wow.  Those kids at Hah-vahd have sure got it made:  The Harvard University Career Center has assembled a really nice ebook to teach its students how to manage a letter writing campaign for their job search.  It's easy to follow, comprehensive, and FREE.  Ka-ching!  Click here -- then save that puppy to your c:drive.

Introducing "MarketingJunkie.com"

This is a hoot:  Two months ago I was fooling around on SnapNames and entered aggressive bids for several domains that were moving from "Registrar-Hold" to "Pending-Delete" status.  One of the domains was MarketingJunkie.com.  Dunno why.  I just liked the sound of it.  So I bid on it and promptly went back to sleep.

Well, good news / bad news:  Yesterday I received an email from SnapNames saying that I won the auction and that my Visa card would take a nice hit this month.  So, I own MarketingJunkie.com -- which would make a clever name for somebody's blog.

I'm undecided as to whether I'll keep it.  If you want the name, send me an email.  Who knows?  If I decide to sell it, I might even throw in a few dozen Marketing Junkie stickers to sweeten the deal.

What Matters Most

The WSJ has listed 14 dimensions of a career.  Meaning, if you are looking for a new gig, you can stack rate each of these attributes to see which ones are the most important to you.  This is a bit more complicated than my "Fun, Future, and Finance" model.  But hey, they're the WSJ and I'm not.  See whatcha think:

• Advancement
• Autonomy
• Contribution to Society
• Creativity
• Customer Contact
• Friendly Co-workers
• Impressive to Others
• Income
• Intellectual Stimulation
• Job Security
• Lower Stress
• Predictable Hours
• Work-Life Balance
• Benefits

Check out the article here.  Also worth mentioning:  If you are conflicted about how these attributes stack up in your life, I would strongly suggest you drop $199 to take the Birkman test online.  I took this test in 1999 and it is eerily accurate.  The results remain relevant to this day.

Note:  I am in no way affiliated with Birkman.

Getting Found on Monster [Part I]

I hate to wreck your high opinion of me, but I spent last night trolling Monster for candidates.  Yep.  Clearly, not all of my candidates come from Monster, but some do.  The trick is finding them.

Monster gets a bad rap, as do the other major job boards.  As I mentioned in a previous post, there are 44 million resumes on Monster, and 17 million on CareerBuilder.  And there's much less overlap than you'd think.  They are great resources, and I don't care how much you have heard about Google's disintermediation of job boards.  Not gonna happen.

Due to the volume of resumes on the major job boards, everyone assumes that the candidates are crap.  Not true at all.  Yes, Monster is a very densely packed universe, so it's much harder for the stars to shine.  But the stars are there if you know how to look.  And candidates:  You can get found a lot more easily if you know how to post your resume on Monster.

That's the point of this post.  At left is a screen grab of a daily email I receive from Monster.  All of the major boards offer this feature.  Pretty simple, actually.  I set up a search "bot" for each position I'm trying to fill, and each day Monster automatically emails to me the latest candidates who match my search's criteria.  So, if I have five searches going on, I get five Monster emails a day [plus any that come in from the other job boards].

But it's never as easy as it looks.  In fact, it's freaking tedious to look at hundreds of resumes.  Although I've never read Malcolm Gladwell's book, Blink, I've heard him on C-Span chatting about how quickly we humans make big decisions in the blink of an eye.  And let me tell you:  I can scan a resume in a big fat ugly hurry.  I feel like a triage nurse in a hospital emergency room -- deciding in an instant who gets treated and who doesn't.  And it all starts with the headline.

The Horrible Truth about Recruiters

If your Monster resume headline stinks, I won't open your resume.  No recruiter will.  Nothing personal against you.  It's just that we can't open it.  You haven't given us a reason to, and there's a resume right below yours that might look more relevant.  Look at the following headlines from my Monster email above [my observations are in red]

1. Technical Director/Sales Engineer - Too vague.  Director of of technical what?
2. Direct Marketing/Sales - Too broad.  Marketing taxonomies included B2B, B2C, domestic and international -- just for starters.
3. Vice President Supply Chain - What industry?  It makes a difference.
4. Senior level Business Developer w/MBA - See my comments about the sales director.
5. Director Engineering - Too vague.  What platforms?  Java?  .Net?  Linux?
6. Director, Product Management - Huh?
7. Director IT, Result oriented, leadership, team leader, data management - I dunno.  At minimum, the guy repeats himself.  Aren't "Leadership" and "Team Leader" the same thing?
8. Architectural Engineer Graduate with Mechanical Engineering Experience - Are you fresh out of school?  Can't tell.
9. Application Development Manager - Too vague.  What platforms?  Java?  .Net?  Linux?  Again, I'm in a hurry.
10. CHARLENE A. THARP-Human Resources/Beneifts/Payroll/Safety - No need to put your name.  Misspelled "benefits."  Next!

My advice to candidates:  Change your headline to tell us what we need to know:  Function / Company / Industry / Salary / Relocation preference.

Like this:  Email Marketing / Land's End / Multichannel Retail / $85K / Will Relo

If you can add your SIC code next to your industry, so much the better.  It won't matter to most recruiters, but it will matter to some.  At a minimum, you should use OSHA's SIC code lookup to identify your industry, even if you don't refer to the numeric code.  My point is, the more specific you can be, the better your headline will pull.

Don't believe me?  Suppose we were standing 100 feet apart on a crowded subway platform and you wanted to get my attention.  You wouldn't simply yell "Hey, you!"  You'd be as specific as possible, yelling something like "Hey, tall white guy with one eyebrow!"  Or better yet:  "Hey, HARRY JOINER!!"

The Law of Specificity applies here.  Imagine what that headline would look like in a recruiter's daily Monster email.  Trust me, your open rates will skyrocket.  Do not worry about pigeonholing yourself as "just an email marketer."  Your career objectives won't matter at all if no one sees your resume.
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Andy Lark is hiring

Andy Lark -- one of New Zealand's brightest marcom professionals -- is sifting through resumes for several open positions.  If you wish to apply, here's what NOT to do.

The Elevator Speech: Marketing U.

By Ilya Cantor
URL:  http://getcareer.blogspot.com/

I was recently asked by a job seeker to give a "formula" for constructing the 60-second elevator speech.  If only it was that easy or practical.

The problem with the 60-second shpiel is very much related to the limited time you are allowed.  Having dealt with journalists and marketing folks for much of my of my career, I can tell you why good creative people are so valuable.  It’s incredibly difficult to hone a message to 60-seconds, let alone 30-seconds as is sometimes required.  It is much easier to write a 200 word “summary” than a concise 25 word overview.

Whether you are delivering your message in person or in writing, you should set the tone up front.  By this I mean a concise headline (and read The Ugly Truth About Recruiters.)

By starting out in this way, you give people a context to absorb the information that comes next. Everything hangs off your opening statement.

Like the summary at the top of your resume, it is in the nature of an advertising promise, and you need to deliver on it.  If you are a manufacturing expert, a retailing expert, or a mergers & acquisition expert, setting the tone allows the audience to know what we are listening to and for.

More importantly, and at the risk of sounding too specialized, you need to explain your industry and the work you did in that industry that made you special.

• What made your industry difficult and what did you do to manage within it?
• How did you apply the many skills you have acquired over the years to those unique circumstances?
• What words will convey that difficulty in the most memorable terms?

So many people believe that more is more. “A two page resume is a must” they argue, and “how can you pack 20 years on one page, I’m a professional!”

Those same folks will write dense, no white space blocks in the cover letter, and those same folks, will drone on forever in person in the hope that more is more.

But the truth is that less is more.  Those first few seconds of the interview or an introduction, a discussion, a letter, a resume, or a phone conversation are so incredibly crucial.

Do you think the time-starved recruiter or hiring manager has the patience to read volumes about you when they are scanning dozens of other equally qualified resumes?  No.

Busy people nowadays don’t read, they scan.  They look for clues and key words.  Most of us are now addicted to Google-like search speed, and trust me, I will consider you to be disrespectful if you try to monopolize my time with an epic about yourself, regardless of your literary prowess.

Give your audience a headline, and let them be the judge of whether you’ve said enough.  Because it’s a lot more likely that you’ll be eliminated because of what you said rather than what you didn’t say.

That is, if what little you did say spoke volumes.