headhunter – CONUS Battle Drills

I’ve made it no secret that attempting to get out and find a job without a headhunter is a moronic move. It’s already incredibly tough when you’re in the marketplace, your resume mirrors job requirements, and you’ve made contacts in the industry (plus you still have a job). Try and find a job with a military resume, no market knowledge or contacts, and a drop dead date when you will no longer have employment without a recruiter and you are setting yourself up for failure. That begs another question, however, how do I know my recruiter is any good? Well, here are 5 things that if your recruiter does, you should probably start looking around for someone else.

1. Requires Exclusivity

If your recruiter is adamant that you cannot work with any other agency and asks you to sign an exclusivity contract, go somewhere else. A good headhunter knows they are going to find you the best jobs and by allowing you to work with another headhunter, it makes YOU the commodity to be bargained for. This will push them to listen to YOUR needs and make sure they are delivering what you want so you don’t go with someone else. These companies that require you to sign exclusively with them for 6 months, when you’re 7 months away from getting out, know that as your ETS date approaches, you’re going to be more willing to accept whatever they throw at you. They get their commission and you get screwed. Don’t do it.

2. Ask You to Pay

Recruiting services should be free to you. Companies have a need to be met and they are willing to pay for someone to go out there, sift through the tens of thousands of candidates, and return with who will be the best fit. It saves them thousands of dollars in infrastructure and Human Resource employees to simply outsource the candidate search to a headhunter agency. I’ve seen offers out there, and even people emailing me about these companies that “help” veterans write resumes, update their LinkedIn, and find them jobs for a price. Don’t pay for that crap. Some of the resumes I’ve seen lately coming out of TAPS are decent and your recruiter knows exactly what the industry standard is at the time of your application. They also know the jobs you’re going to be applying for, so they can guide you through that process. Save the money and go out on a date with your spouse instead.

3. They don’t care what’s important to you

At the beginning of your relationship with a headhunter, you should have a long phone conversation where the recruiter gets to know you better. They should have reviewed your resume and provided some feedback, then they are going to take some time to get to know you and what your needs/wants are. How much do you want to make, where do you want to live, what do you want to do…sound familiar? Yeah, it’s a lot like the four big questions. Generally, you all think that when you get out you’re going to double your salary, which you aren’t, so I expect your recruiter is going to tell you that your expectations there are unrealistic. The rest of those questions, however, are your personal preferences, and if the recruiter is marginalizing what you want or pressuring you to interview for jobs you don’t want, drop them…they don’t have your best interests in mind.

4. They are critical of your background

This one seemed unbelievable to me, but I have heard guys get told they have the wrong MOS/Rate for the civilian world, or their degree is no good. If your recruiter is trying to talk you into hiding the fact that you were a grunt because of some civilian perception about infantry, drop them. They won’t be a good advocate for you.

5. They weren’t in the military

There might be a case where using a recruiter that has never been in the military can be beneficial, like someone who specializes in hiring for a field where you have a degree, but generally civilians don’t understand what you have done and therefore can’t translate your skills effectively. Because I was an Intelligence officer, I can tell you that the job is very similar to Marketing. The intel analyst has to put himself in the mind of someone from another culture and look at the world through their eyes to make an assessment about what they are going to do. Marketing is the exact same thing, except instead of making an assessment about the enemy, you’re looking at a product the same way a customer would and determining what actions that customer is going to take. A civilian will never put those dots together for you, and that means fewer interviews and a lower salary for you. A civilian also isn’t going to understand that there’s a vast personality difference between a guy that served in Ranger Battalion and another who was a quartermaster. One isn’t better than the other, it just means that you come from different cultures and may not fit into the same role.

Stay vigilant and keep an eye out for any of these warning signs. Good luck and God Bless!

-LJF

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I can’t stress enough the importance of having a headhunter in order to get a job. Unless you already know someone in the company you’re applying with, as much as they like to tell you otherwise, monster.com isn’t going to get you the job. You have to get a headhunter, more on that here.

I spoke to a friend of mine, Eddie, that works as a headhunter for Lucas Group. I’m not getting paid to say this, I just honestly believe they are the best firm out there. If you’re talking to someone else, I recommend you give Lucas Group a call, they’ll work with Officers and NCO’s alike, but there are some people they won’t work with. So here’s an hour long conversation about a candidate they won’t work with given to you in 700 words…

“You must have the right attitude”

I’ve said this before, and I discuss it in great detail in the book, but you are starting a new career and you need to realize that. Look, I don’t care if you were a Brigade Commander in the military, you don’t know anything about my business. If you think that you’re better than my team because you wore a uniform, then you don’t belong on my team.

You need to come out of the military with some humility. You can be proud of what you did, and you should be, but if that pride makes you look down on others that didn’t, then you’re going to have a tough time and i’m not going to hire you. Tell me instead that you don’t have a problem starting at the bottom. Say, “It’s an opportunity to learn about the business and I’m confident my skills will get me promoted quickly.” Bam! That’s what I want on my team!

The right combination of “shuns”

“You have to have the right combination of the 3 ‘shuns’: Location, compensation, occupation. If you tell me ‘I want to be a program manager in west chicago and make $120k a year,’ I’m going to say ‘good luck.'”

You need to have realistic expectations of what kind of job you can find when you get out. There was a boot shop in Fort Bragg that had a sign that read, “we do 3 types of work: Good, fast, and cheap. Pick any two.” That saying is very similar to what you need to consider in your job hunt.

Location

“I can’t tell you how many times i’ve heard, ‘I need to stay in Dallas, my girlfriend is from there.’ Then I have to take my recruiter hat off and put on my life coach hat…”

Location is the 3rd question of the big 4 questions, go read more about that here. Although there are occasionally good reasons to limit yourself geographically like a special needs child or a sick family member, generally you should consider a wider net.

Compensation

“I had a guy tell me, ‘well with BAH, Flight Pay, and Jump Pay i’m making about $130k a year, so I expect to make something commensurate to that.’ With a history degree? There’s no way.”

You need to be realistic about what you’re going to make. That’s one of the reasons why finances are the 1st of the big 4 questions. You are going to take a pay cut, just wrap your mind around that. Plan to live off your base pay and understand what that means to your budget. This way, if you get a job higher than your base pay, you’ll have extra spending money. Don’t worry, I have the utmost confidence that if you want it, you’ll be able to get promoted quickly above and beyond your peers. More on finances here and here.

Occupation

“I have guys tell me that they only want to do program manager jobs. Dude, you don’t even know what’s out there and what you’re qualified for.”

The 4th big question is to understand what you want to do, and i’ve explicitly said “lead people” is an acceptable answer. It is important for you to want to do something that you find interesting, but you should keep your mind open to possibilities that you might not have considered.

“If the alarm goes off in the morning and your feet don’t immediately hit the floor, you have a job not a career and there’s very little compensation or location that is going to make up for you being miserable 40, 50, or 60 hours a week.”

So basically if you’ve read the book or follow the blog, chances are you’re going to get a headhunter to work with you because you’re not going to make those mistakes right? I’ll close with one final quote:

“The biggest obstacle in these guys’ career is themselves.”