How does one go about finding head hunters?

[warpedskydiver 0]

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Oh brother....I asked a few questions and I get shit from the peanut gallery.

Hey, ya gotta expect nutty answers from the peanut gallery. Come on, Shah, this is the Bonfire.

I've been at my last job for 27 years. I couldn't even tell you how to look for a job anymore.

Of course it's your last job, if you screw this one up they shoot you out back of the tower.

[SivaGanesha 2]

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If you want a job they say they've got, dig out your resourcefulness and self-reliance, find out who the employer is, find their advert on the companies website and apply through that.

A good recruitment agency will know how to close the deal with a particular company. They know the people because they talk to them every day--that represents inside knowledge you cannot hope to get from a website. If you have a friend you can trust who works for the company, that is better still, but a professional recruiter is definitely to be preferred to just replying to an ad on the web.

"It's hard to have fun at 4-way unless your whole team gets down to the ground safely to do it again!"--Northern California Skydiving League re USPA Safety Day, March 8, 2014

[theonlyski 3]

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I think I will do well.
Almost a decade of work experience.
Developed and established teams from the ground up.
Six Sigma Black Belt, and mentor.
A few patents...yeah I think I'll do well.
The question is simple...will I do well enough.
It's going to be interesting.

Decade of work experience will help, but you're wanting to change fields, consider yourself the new guy all over again.

Your patents? Sure, they sound cool, but unless they're for something in your new chosen field, well, they're just papers on the wall.

"I may be a dirty pirate hooker...but I'm not about to go stand on the corner." iluvtofly
DPH -7, TDS 578, Muff 5153, SCR 14890
I'm an asshole, and I approve this message

[normiss 622]

I walked out of an interview with EDS in Dallas once.
When they wanted to schedule the family interview and review clothing guidelines, I was no longer interested.

3 piece suits only, silver only - until you're executive management, then gold - on shoes, belts, tie clips, watches, etc, red to maroon ties only....

"Where are you going?"

FUCK THIS!

"If you're sure this is what you want, you will be considered black listed with this company."

Have a nice day!

[billvon 2,400]

>I think I will do well.
>Almost a decade of work experience.
>Developed and established teams from the ground up.
>Six Sigma Black Belt, and mentor
>A few patents...yeah I think I'll do well.

All that experience would be an ace in your pocket - if you were planning on another engineering job.

[shah269 0]

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>I think I will do well.
>Almost a decade of work experience.
>Developed and established teams from the ground up.
>Six Sigma Black Belt, and mentor
>A few patents...yeah I think I'll do well.

All that experience would be an ace in your pocket - if you were planning on another engineering job.

I know I know.....
Like I said I've had a few people come to me and offer me positions in other engineering companies but look nothing against engineers. But I've done this for 10 years now. The sausage fest was nice but now I need to work in a more diverse field.

I need to be in a place where the people are "normal" and "well dressed" and god forbid don’t do really freaking odd stuff such as buy over priced late 80's TDi's and get them to run on Veggie Juice and use said vehicle as a daily driver because it's "cool".

No I’m sorry that is not cool! Buying a sexy muscle car...SEXY! An old Vet or a 911...yell yeah! But no I'm sorry your rust bucket that smells of eggrolls is NOT COOL!

And don’t even get me started as to what these guys call "fun" if I get invited to one more dinner with the wife and the kids or the 4 times a week poker game....aaaahhhhh!!!

Nothing against engineers and scientists, they are great people but now for me, I need to move on. I need to meet new people and stretch my view of the world....but I fear that I may be stuck.


How the hell do you translate that to a placement group?

Life through good thoughts, good words, and good deeds is necessary to ensure happiness and to keep chaos at bay.

The only thing that falls from the sky is birdshit and fools!

[billvon 2,400]

>Nothing against engineers and scientists, they are great people but now
>for me, I need to move on. I need to meet new people and stretch my
>view of the world....but I fear that I may be stuck.

Well, you're not stuck - you're just not going to make anywhere near as much money as you're making now. If that's OK then you can choose another field and (effectively) start over. If you said what your masters is in I missed it, but an MBA is pretty effective if you want to go into the financial sector.

BTW you keep bringing up specific examples of people you don't like who you work with (i.e. ugly women, uncool guys etc.) Be aware that they exist everywhere, and you won't get "better people" by going elsewhere.

However from what you've said it does sound like you could use a change; maybe consider moving to a new location and trying for an engineering job that would allow you to quickly move into management? Government contractors are engineering based but have massive middle management teams. A town like Boulder will have skinnier people; a city like NY will have better dressed people, and a city like LA will have more "beautiful" people on display. But all will give you a change.

[mdrejhon 8]

Have multiple specific resumes in several different industries -- rather than one overly general resume. And be prepared to relocate.

It's tons, tons, tons easier to find work if you allow yourself to be relocatable (not house-tied, etc). I've now lived in 3 different cities in the last 3 years.

[shah269 0]

At the moment I am a Project Manager. So I'm where I want to be. I just want a change out of engineering. And thank you for understanding that.

As for location. Any place any time...just not small town America thank you. Been there done that. No thank you. But yes I'm looking from Huston to Dubai.

And I will have to create industry specific resume's accordingly.
The problem is going to be the $$$$. I make $100k now. If I go I will have to make a little more than that to cover some bills. So I think that will not be easy.

But thank you for your help. I greatly appreciate it.

Life through good thoughts, good words, and good deeds is necessary to ensure happiness and to keep chaos at bay.

The only thing that falls from the sky is birdshit and fools!

[mdrejhon 8]

You can still have multiple resumes regarding project manager, targetted at different kinds of industries, too. I am not entirely sure what your current situation is in other areas, or how long you have been working for, but some generic advice, based on my fight to stay employed in the last 3 years....

Resume re-do's....
If you have been looking for a long while, then a resume redo sometimes helps get things rolling faster. I hate writing and rewriting resumes, but they do more than double chances of getting the right kind of jobs, even if you strategically delete information from it (i.e. remove engineering keywords, or shorten that section, etc). Find some jargon/keywords that reduces reliance in engineering and increases in non-engineering areas. Try several approaches to the resume. Use a high-end resume-writing service to do one version (the kind that is experienced at everything from students through executives) -- tell them you want to de-tune the engineering aspects -- or bribe your best friend to try second version, and you do a third version of the same resume. Then get it all proofread by different parties. One of the resumes may actually end up being better and more ideal than each other, hopefully competently written. In the lack of ability to network, it becomes ever more important to invest a lot of painful time on getting your resume caught above the crowd, especially in the age of automated resume search algorithms...

Multiple methods....
And you'll want to hit multiple methods of finding work.
... career fairs ... meeting with local agencies (even pathetic ones too) ... online sites (but do not invest more than 10% of your jobhunt time on online jobhunt) ... even re-sending a rewritten resume to the same headhunters you sent a resume to only three months ago, and even making sure you have subscriptions to certain periodicals in nearby cities, so you can keep eyes on career developments (i.e. intercity career fairs), and other unorthodox/unsual methods such as even visiting a computer/electronics convention (i.e. CES) to explore what kind of vendors you'd eventually like to work for. And of course, old-fashoned footwork (whenever applicable). And ask your recently-employed friends how they landed their job, to also target some of your current time towards their job hunt techniques.

Location / Salary...
And lastly, be prepared to take a cut. Sometimes it's easier than you tihnk. I took a temporary ~20% cut to work at a city 2 hours away from home. I decided to keep my old place in my old home (Ottawa), but rent a cheap $300/month room in a house in the other city (Montreal). I took the early morning train on Mondays (6:30am), spent 5 work days and 4 nights in the other city, and returned on the last train on Fridays (6:30pm). Spent the whole weekend including 3 nights in my home city, while my spouse worked in the home city. As I did not have a car at the time because I chose to save money by living the downtown lifestyle, it was nice anyway -- the train had free WiFi, I could even telecommute, I could also nap on the train too, or read a newspaper. And I only needed to spend 4 hours commuting a week (once on Monday and again on Friday) in 'productive' commute time that didn't require me to focus my eyes on a road... The cost increase of working in another city was actually doable, and was far better than staying unemployed even for one month. But of course, it's harder if you've already got a house, or was divorced, or have a huge debt, etc.

Cost of living....
Some cities are also expensive, so factor that in your salary calculatoins. It's cheaper to earn $100K in a city such as Houston than $120K in New York City, since it's approximately 33% cheaper cost of living (especially far lower cost of houses in Texas). On the other hand, if you give up your car when you move to a condo or trendy apartment in downtown New York City, to take advantage of its public transit, you might free up enough cash to make the Big Apple worthwhile, etc. Presently, for the near term, I am leasing what is considered somewhat 'trendy' condo in downtown Toronto (24/7 coincerge, indoor pool, etc), which cost more but the cost was made up by not needing to pay for public transit (walking distance from work), not needing to pay for gym membership (gym and pool in building), very low bills ($50 for the heat pumped central air conditioning), not needing to have a car (until recently - since we're moving outwards soon), convenient access to shopping and social life, etc. It actually evened out to the same leftover disposable income as before. Toronto is Canada's most expensive city, but I was able to make it feel "not" that expensive. Calculate based on the amount of disposable income you will get in a specific location in a specific country (and how effective it will be for the stuff you plan to use the disposable income for) -- not based on an exact salary number. Some locations/places/countries/situations let you live like a king at $60K, while you're in the poorhouse somewhere else at $150K.

Of course, if you're ballchained to some legacy debt like an underwater mortgage or a divorce settlement, that makes things THAT much harder... Lots of the advice still applies; subtract these numbers from the disposable income and calculate accordingly.

[Andy9o8 0]

So many good replies in this (and the other! ) thread, I don't want to be repetitive.

So I'll offer some moral support, FWIW. And I can relate: there are TONS of lawyers who, by around the 10-15 year mark, have grown sick to death of their careers, and want to get out and move into a different field. And frequently find themselves rather trapped. So I wish you well in your search to re-tool.

And I'll add this: it's a hell of a lot easier to do when you're under 40. (Also when you're unmarried and childless.) Age discrimination most definitely exists, and it will never go away (laws be damned). So if you're really determined (and it seems you are), the time to do this is now, baby, now.

[Amazon 7]

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At the moment I am a Project Manager. So I'm where I want to be. I just want a change out of engineering. And thank you for understanding that.

As for location. Any place any time...just not small town America thank you. Been there done that. No thank you. But yes I'm looking from Huston to Dubai.

And I will have to create industry specific resume's accordingly.
The problem is going to be the $$$$. I make $100k now. If I go I will have to make a little more than that to cover some bills. So I think that will not be easy.

But thank you for your help. I greatly appreciate it.

Just sayin

[theonlyski 3]

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At the moment I am a Project Manager. So I'm where I want to be. I just want a change out of engineering. And thank you for understanding that.

As for location. Any place any time...just not small town America thank you. Been there done that. No thank you. But yes I'm looking from Huston to Dubai.

And I will have to create industry specific resume's accordingly.
The problem is going to be the $$$$. I make $100k now. If I go I will have to make a little more than that to cover some bills. So I think that will not be easy.

But thank you for your help. I greatly appreciate it.

Being a Houston native, you should really learn to spell the city if you're thinking about working there... Us native Texans be proud people!

Having been to Dubai (before the dz existed ) it's a nice place to visit, but living there? No thanks!

ETA: If you get a job in Houston, you'll need to learn to pronounce Kuykendahl.

"I may be a dirty pirate hooker...but I'm not about to go stand on the corner." iluvtofly
DPH -7, TDS 578, Muff 5153, SCR 14890
I'm an asshole, and I approve this message

[Remster 24]

---> insert joke about how funny it is to want sophisticated people in Houston (or Huston) here <-----

Remster

[shah269 0]

mdrejhon and every one else, thank you so much i'm actually going to have to print this out and take much much much closer look.

Life through good thoughts, good words, and good deeds is necessary to ensure happiness and to keep chaos at bay.

The only thing that falls from the sky is birdshit and fools!

[Nataly 38]

I skim-read all the posts, so apologies if any of this is repetitive... My advice, FWIW... Having changed careers/industries/countries a few times now I have learned a few things...

You are looking for a Recruitment Consultant, not a Headhunter. It may be a small semantics issue, but it's an important distinction:

RECRUITMENT CONSULTANT
-Someone who matches candidates (job-seeker) and roles and/or clients (companies hiring).

HEADHUNTER
-Someone who actively pulls specialist/expert personnel out of their jobs and into another position. These are "high-level" recruiters - they know their (narrow) market and limit themselves to very exclusive/selective placements (usually at Director level and above).

So if you are wanting a career change, a headhunter is not what you are looking for - it would be like going to a fancy French restaurant and trying to order a Big Mac... Any recruitment consultant that calls themselves a headhunter and recruits at low-level is just kidding themselves (and you)... The burger-flipper at MacDonald's is NOT a Master Chef!!

WORK ON YOUR "STORY" AS WELL AS YOUR CV
What people said about figuring out what you want to do is right... You need to do that *before* you send out a bunch of CV's and burn bridges... You'll look like a flake if you apply haphazardly to *anything* and everything...

Come up with a good reason *why* you want a career change and move into "x". It needs to be plausible and credible. If it isn't, you will come across as desperate/unreliable and that is never good. Desperation leads people to think you are either useless, or you are having some kind of breakdown or you can't get along with your colleagues, et cetera... Basically, it's bad.

TRANSFERABLE SKILLS
Once you figure out what you want to do, carry out some research to really understand the industry/roles, et cetera. Then spend time matching the desirable skills/aptitudes/studies you need for the new industry and the skills/experience you already have... In other words, make it clear on your CV and during a discussion how your experience relates to the new field. Use the terminology of the new/target industry (not the jargon of your current field). If you walk and talk the part, recruiters/companies can imagine you doing the job... Don't underestimate the importance of this. If you look too much like a square peg and companies want a round peg, you're shit out of luck...

Remember, your experience and know-how is VALUABLE... You just need to relate it in a way that the target industry can understand. For example, on my French CV, I didn't say I'm an ACMA - they don't know what the hell those letters mean... I told them I'm an "expert comptable" (Chartered Accountant).

There is a lot more. But the best thing you can do is figure out WHY you want to change (or at least come up with a believable BS explanation)... Then figure out what you *do* want to do. The rest becomes easier once you know those 2 things.

Finally, TRY LOOKING IN LONDON. It's still a relatively buoyant market. They are prepared to take risks for the right candidate and career changes are perfectly acceptable/achievable (provided you present yourself in a credible way).

"There is no problem so bad you can't make it worse."
- Chris Hadfield
« Sors le martinet et flagelle toi indigne contrôleuse de gestion. »
- my boss

[mdrejhon 8]

Oh, and definitely *still* network too, wherever possible, however --unlikely--. A friend working at Walmart may still be good friends with the Walmart manager who eats lunch with somebody who needs a project manager.

You'll get a lot of crap leads or advice you're not interested in, but occasionally, one of the leads ends up being a gem, or that "pathetic" lead can give you referrals to other "gem" leads! Similiar 'unlikely' situations happens to me at least a little of the time.

[NWFlyer 2]

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Oh, and definitely *still* network too, wherever possible, however --unlikely--. A friend working at Walmart may still be good friends with the Walmart manager who eats lunch with somebody who needs a project manager.

You'll get a lot of crap leads or advice you're not interested in, but occasionally, one of the leads ends up being a gem, or that "pathetic" lead can give you referrals to other "gem" leads! Similiar 'unlikely' situations happens to me at least a little of the time.

You never know who knows the right person. It's how I got my current job. I called up an old friend from college who lives in San Francisco. He's in a very different industry from mine, but he's very well-connected professionally and we had a great chat about the general state of the market, people he knew, etc. He promised some follow up on a few leads, and it was nice to catch up with my old buddy.

The very next day he emails me and says "So I was out with a bunch of friends last night and can't believe I forgot this name" and sends me the name of a guy who works in finance at my current company. Now, I don't do finance work, either, BUT, he is the finance guy supporting the VP of IT in the area I do work in. I have a quick chat with finance guy, he gets my resume in front of the VP, who sends it out to all her direct reports; turns out they're about to kick off a project using a very specific technology that I have experience with. Boom... interview ... job ... been there almost 3 years now.

When my brother was in his MBA program he volunteered as an adult leader for a local Boy Scout troop. One of the scouts' parents happened to work for a local hospital that was looking for someone to do a strategic analysis project - a perfect project for an MBA intern. Through those casual interactions, my brother made a valuable contact and got his internship.

"There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences." -P.J. O'Rourke

[SivaGanesha 2]

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You'll look like a flake if you apply haphazardly to *anything* and everything...

I'm not sure if I fully agree with this although I pretty much agree with everything else Nataly said.

If you are, as Nataly says, dealing with recruitment agencies, they may or may not actually post all of their openings on the job boards and/or their own website in a timely fashion. If I'm looking for a job, I want to start a conversation with as many recruitment agencies as possible, so I'll apply to any job that seems to even remotely match my skill set.

Like I say, it gets the conversation started with the recruiter. The recruiter and I may end up politely agreeing that the posted job is not an ideal match. But if I keep the conversation going with the recruiter, I may find out a week or a month down the road that they have something that DOES match my skill set--something that wouldn't have happened if I hadn't gotten the ball rolling.

And, yes, a few recruiters may end up thinking that I'm flaky because I'm not a match for their position. That doesn't matter if I can get the ball rolling with a significant number of recruiters.

Later in a job search, once I have had some interviews and many conversations with recruiters and have a clear feel for the realities of the current market and how my skills measure up, I will usually become more selective about what I apply for. At this point I'm trying to zero in on the ideal position at this stage in my career. But early on, I just want to send resumes out and get things started.

"It's hard to have fun at 4-way unless your whole team gets down to the ground safely to do it again!"--Northern California Skydiving League re USPA Safety Day, March 8, 2014

[Nataly 38]

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And, yes, a few recruiters may end up thinking that I'm flaky because I'm not a match for their position. That doesn't matter if I can get the ball rolling with a significant number of recruiters.

Nothing wrong with casting the net wide, but my point was that targeted research will generate better quality leads...

You *can* chit-chat and network at a bunch of different places to try to get a "feel" for what is out there... That's not the same as sending 10 identical CV's to 10 wildly different jobs at the same company - they just can't take you seriously if you do the latter...

"There is no problem so bad you can't make it worse."
- Chris Hadfield
« Sors le martinet et flagelle toi indigne contrôleuse de gestion. »
- my boss

[SivaGanesha 2]

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You never know who knows the right person. It's how I got my current job.

At certain stages of my career I've had good results getting jobs through friends.

I've had less satisfactory results getting jobs through friends of friends of friends. The reason is that I know what I want in my job search. My friends often know what I want in my job search. My friends of friends of friends--not so much.

If the person I know also has direct knowledge of the job, then that can work well. If the person I know has NO direct knowledge of the job, then they may point me in a certain direction in a well meaning attempt to help, but more often than not the position will turn out not to be a match.

At a certain point I then need to decide whether my time would be better invested doing my homework for an interview arranged through a professional recruiter--or pursuing a well meaning but doubtful lead offered by a friend.

When I'm looking for a job, I listen to all possibilities but I don't always follow up on dubious indirect leads.

"It's hard to have fun at 4-way unless your whole team gets down to the ground safely to do it again!"--Northern California Skydiving League re USPA Safety Day, March 8, 2014

[SivaGanesha 2]

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That's not the same as sending 10 identical CV's to 10 wildly different jobs at the same company - they just can't take you seriously if you do the latter...

True.

But I've gotten good results sending 10 identical CV's to 10 similar, but not identical, jobs at the same recruiter (not necessarily the same client company). For one thing the 10 identical CV's might be forwarded automatically to different employees of the agency, so, as you say, it is a way of casting the net wide.

"It's hard to have fun at 4-way unless your whole team gets down to the ground safely to do it again!"--Northern California Skydiving League re USPA Safety Day, March 8, 2014

[JohnMitchell 14]

Vskydiver landed her brother in law his dream job at Microsoft by networking with a bunch of jumpers who worked there.

[Nataly 38]

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Vskydiver landed her brother in law his dream job at Microsoft by networking with a bunch of jumpers who worked there.

Clever girl!!

I volunteer a couple of times per month at the "Mairie" (local government)... You wouldn't *believe* the leads I get there
So far I discovered where the locals go to the beach (as opposed to the shitty "tourist beaches"), I borrowed tools and found builders to carry out renovations and heard about massive sales and even met someone who knows an old classmate of mine!! I'm pretty sure knowing people there will also help with building permission approvals...

Networking is very handy and not just for finding work or getting things done - you meet some great people too

"There is no problem so bad you can't make it worse."
- Chris Hadfield
« Sors le martinet et flagelle toi indigne contrôleuse de gestion. »
- my boss