How To Remain Informed About St. Albans Neighborhood Watch And The News Of Your Ward

Instead of fliers stuck to your doors or in your gates, start looking for meeting announcements and other St. Albans Neighborhood Watch news in the Charleston Newspapers and in the St. Albans Monthly.  Since neighborhood watch groups are not funded by the city, we need FREE ways to reach out and inform our neighborhoods. 
Debbie Shull, owner of the St. Albans Monthly, gave us a lot of free space in the current (June) issue and we really appreciate it. 

Look for us on Facebook. "Like" our page "The Saint Albans Neighborhood Watch, St. Albans, WV" and join our group "Public Group For St. Albans, WV, Neighborhood Watch".

We have both a page and a group for this reason: No matter how the Googler spells the name of our town (Saint or St.) the page shows up in a Google search and directs the Googler to our group. We want you to join the group because members get notifications when new things are posted.

In addition to joining the "Public Group For St. Albans, WV, Neighborhood Watch", there are two other groups we recommend: On Facebook, join the "St. Albans Police Department" group. Captain James Agee of the SAPD runs this group and it's a good forum to discuss everything from stolen property to lost pets to meth lab busts and other arrests.

On Linkedin, join LinkedSt.Albans. LinkedSt.Albans is a discussion forum about all things St. Albans. 

People who attend a meeting and give us their smart phone numbers and email addresses are added to our roster. It's essential that all members know how to reach one another so rosters are updated each month and sent in Excel format to members who have given us their email addresses.

Job Seekers: How To Use Linkedin To Network Your Way To A New Job

The most underused skill in modern business (including job seeking) is empathy. Without empathy for the customer, companies cannot imagine why their customers hate them and want a new supplier. Without empathy, employers can't fix whatever's causing their high turnover.

Without empathy, the job seeker cannot imagine how employers seek and find the talent they need to run their organizations, so the first step in understanding how to use Linkedin to network your way to an employer is to understand how employers use Linkedin.

Empathy doesn't come naturally to everybody. Some of my readers don't have the "empathy gene" so let me walk you through what an employer wants and how he uses Linkedin to get what he wants. if you've never done so, go to the advanced people search function in Linkedin and look at the fields that are available there. If you do this, it will quickly become obvious why employers use Linkedin and not Facebook to network their way to the candidates they want. In Linkedin an employer can search by location, by education, by job title, by keyword and more. Employers can't do that in Facebook. Don't make the mistake of creating a bare bones Linkedin profile that doesn't contain the keywords, educational facts, job experience and so on that may cause you to come up in an advanced people search.

Let's say the employer is looking for somebody who lives in Charleston, WV, knows some obscure computer programming language and belongs to a certain professional group. He can search for only those candidates by populating the appropriate fields. Candidates who appear in this advanced people search will have a little "2nd" or "3rd" next to their names if they are connected to the searcher through mutual friends or a friend of a friend. Regular readers of this blog know that employers try NOT to hire people to whom they aren't connected by a friend or a friend of a friend.

And, increasingly, hiring managers and HR people are stocking their companies with the kind of people they want to socialize with. It's not accidental that young recruiters try to screen out older job seekers or that recruiters hire people who graduated from their college or belonged to their sorority or share their interest in scuba diving.

After identifying a few candidates with the "right" credentials, the employer can ask your mutual friends about you. If one of those mutual acquaintances says good things about you, you're golden.

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For more straight talk on how job seeking REALLY works and how you can network your way to a new job, go to the archive (at right) and read my last 4 posts.
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Job Seekers: Is A Naked Man Offering You His Shirt?

Beware The Naked Man Who Offers You His Shirt. It's a book by Harvey MacKay but, more importantly, it's a way to say don't follow the advice of people who can't offer the advice you need.

A so-called employment expert who can't show you how and why to use Linkedin is a naked man offering his shirt.

You wouldn't take French lessons from somebody who doesn't speak French or guitar lessons from somebody who doesn't play guitar, so why would you take career advice from somebody who isn't on Linkedin and can't show you how to use the most important job search tool there is?

Savvy HR people, recruiters and headhunters use Linkedin to network their way to job candidates they'd like to hire so if you ask for employment help from somebody who isn't on Linkedin, doesn't know how to use Linkedin, doesn't know why people should use Linkedin and can't show you how to use Linkedin, a naked man is offering you his shirt.

Learn how HR managers, recruiters and headhunters use Linkedin to network their way to the job candidates they want. If you learn that, you can learn how to use Linkedin to network your way to employers faster.

If you live in or near St. Albans, WV and you need to learn  how to use Linkedin, call me for a free tutorial. (304)550-6710 or JosephHigginbotham@gmail.com.
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For more straight talk on finding a job, go to my archive (at right)  and read my previous 3 posts.
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Open Letter To An Undisclosed Advisory Board : How To Promote Your Events Without A Budget Or A Marketing Guy

Your recent hand-wringing discussion about how to publicize your events was painful to hear. I was just a guest so I couldn't offer advice but I wanted to stand up and shout "Why are you pretending that you're still living in a time when you couldn't get your message out unless you owned a radio station, a newspaper or a TV station or unless you paid those media gatekeepers to publicize your events?"

In an age when every one of you can instantly notify hundreds of people abut your events through Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin or through your own personal blog or website, you're like a man who freezes to death in the middle of the forest when he could have gathered some sticks, built a fire and kept warm.

While I like your idea of buying a sign, I'd like you to start using the free means of information dissemination that are already available to you.

And don't wait for your org's marketing department to do this for you. You can do it better, faster and cheaper yourselves. Let me prove it to you.

A few years ago I was part of a community-based effort to provide a job search seminar/workshop to help "older workers" who had recently been "right-sized" out of their jobs and were experiencing age discrimination as they attempted to find new jobs. We put together a coalition of headhunters, staffing agencies, a major university and, of course, AARP.

The AARP rep told us AARP would take care of publicizing the event. They had been involved in these workshops before and they knew that if they sent 5,000 post cards to members in the area they'd get about 30 attendees. Yeah, that's right; AARP's plan was to spend a lot of money to send 5,000 pieces of mail and only get 30 attendees. Phooey on that.

Had we left it to the AARP marketing department, we would have provided a workshop for about 30 older workers when we knew we should be reaching HUNDREDS of older workers. So we didn't leave it to AARP's marketing guy. We did it ourselves and we reached hundreds of older workers - and we did it at almost no cost at all.

First, we took advantage of "Earned Media". I took it upon myself to write a simple media release which I sent to a handful of radio stations, newspapers and TV stations. I think I mailed about 10 releases at my own expense. As a result of these media releases, I was invited to be a guest on 2 local radio talk shows and was given free space in 2 local newspapers.

And, of course, we used social media. Linkedin. Facebook. (I don't think any of us had Twitter yet but you do.)

Registrations for our older workers job workshop went through the roof. Even after our university partner provided us with a larger venue we had to waitlist hundreds of people and repeat the workshop. It was a smashing success. The only people who weren't happy were the AARP experts who had been shown up by our amateur efforts.

Don't freeze to death in the middle of the forest and don't wait for your marketing people to come save you. You can build your own fire.  Let's see, there are 12 people on your board. Let's say each of you types your event as a  "status update" and puts it on your Facebook pages, your Linkedin pages and your Twitter feed. Let's say some of you put it in your blog or your personal website. How many people will you reach? Hundreds? Thousands?

St. Albans is a small town. It's easy and free to reach most of the households in town. Don't pretend you don't have the means. I just told you how to do it.
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Why Employers Should Learn To Use Linkedin (Instead of Paying For Employment Ads That Bring The Wrong Candidates)

Paid employment ads are helpful when you need to hire 100 call center workers or 50 temps but they aren't very useful when you need to hire a one-of-a-kind professional with very specific SKEs (skills, knowledge, experience).


For example, Charleston area DME (durable medical equipment) companies recently paid Charleston newspapers for ads they hoped would attract sales reps, customer service reps and managers. Whether the ads said so or not, these DME companies were hoping to attract applicants with DME experience. In fact, they hoped to attract applicants who were currently doing these jobs for a competitor but they probably didn't because people who already have a job aren't usually looking at employment ads. These people are called "passive candidates" because you can't attract them by running an ad, you have to go out and find them. You could hire a headhunter to do the job or you could learn how to use Linkedin and do it yourself. Over the years I've found respiratory therapists, pharmacists, physical therapists, sales reps and all levels of managers and executives for DME companies and collected some ridiculous fees for doing so but I never, ever paid for ads since, as I said, ads only bring in people who are looking at ads, so why didn't these three Charleston area DME companies use Linkedin? 


With my free Linkedin account and a few minutes of my time I found dozens of  "passive candidates" within 25 miles of Charleston who currently work in the DME industry. Do you suppose some of these people might know somebody with DME experience who would be interested in a DME management, sales or customer service job? I also found hundreds of health industry people within 25 miles of Charlelston who work in places where they come into contact with DME people. Social workers. Physical therapists. Case managers. Respiratory therapists. Nurses. Pharmacists. Do you suppose some of these people may know people with DME experience who might want to talk to these paid advertisers about their management, sales and customer service openings? Of course they do. 


There are also dozens of DME-specific and health industry groups in Linkedin where these paid advertisers could meet thousands of DME professionals who might know somebody who wants those management, sales and customer service openings.


During my decades of headhunting I never found a DME sales rep or manager that the client couldn't have found on their own had they simply networked a little. In fact, on several occasions I was paid 5 figures for "finding" candidates the employer already knew. 


To find such passive candidates all they need is a free Linkedin account and the willingness to learn how to use it.
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Top Ten Reasons Blind Employment Ads Are Fishing Expeditions And You Shouldn't Bite

10. Blind ads are only seen by a small segment of the workforce, e.g., "active" job seekers.


9. Blind ads are not seen by "passive" job candidates, e.g., people who are currently working, are relatively happy in their current jobs, and aren't actively seeking new employment.


8. Smart job seekers won't answer blind ads since they can't know who is behind the ad and what that person may do with the information received from respondents.


7. This leaves stupid job seekers, therefore, the employer ends up with resumes from verifiably stupid people.


6. Top employers wouldn't knowingly hire stupid people.


5. Employers stupid enough to hire demonstrably stupid people are probably employers you wouldn't want to work for.


4. The smart employers who don't hire people stupid enough to answer blind ads know there are better ways to find great employees.


3. Smart employers know that using headhunters brings candidates who would never see an employment ad.


2. Smart employers who are proud of their brands know that running branded employment ads helps overall recruitment while running blind, unbranded ads does nothing to build the brand.


1. Smart employers have Linkedin accounts and know how to use Linkedin advanced search to generate lists of passive candidates by geography, by experience, by skills and by education.


For more on blind employment ads read my archived 17 Feb 2010 post.




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A Job Search Fact Job Seekers Can Use To Network Their Way To Their Next Boss

Not once have I placed a candidate who the paying client couldn't have found on their own just by using their existing network of employees, colleagues, vendors, clients and other professional contacts.

Let's backward-engineer that fact. Not once have I placed a candidate with a paying client who couldn't have networked his or her way to that job on their own. In every case where I've been paid a ridiculous fee for "finding" an executive, a sales rep, a marketing guru, an architect, an engineer, a nurse, a respiratory therapist, a pharmacist or other professional, that successful candidate was already socially and professionally networked to the hiring client and could have networked themselves to the job had they simply worked their existing networks.

If you haven't been living under a rock and you have any work experience at all you probably already know somebody who can introduce you to your next boss.

I've just divulged a fact that other headhunters don't want you to know.

There are two major reasons employers pay ridiculous headhunting fees instead of just becoming their own headhunters: (1) laziness and (2) total cluelessness about how to use their existing networks of employees, clients, vendors and other professional contacts. At a recent trade show I was approached by a man I didn't know who wanted me to find him a selling branch manager in Carbondale, IL. Since I didn't know the man and perform search work by referral only, I declined the search but offered to show him how to do the search himself. I promised him that I could sit down with him and show him how to fill this job himself by using Linkedin. Free. He didn't want to do it himself and asked me again if I would do the search for him.

Invariably, when I "find" the candidate my client wants to hire, I do so by networking with people who could have introduced the client to that candidate if only the client had asked.

Most of what headhunters do is simple networking.  Employers and job seekers can use that fact to become their own headhunters and network their way to solving their problem.

Read my February 28 thru March 5 posts on how to get a "social co-signer" to introduce you to your next boss.

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For more on how to network your way to your next job, read my February 28 thru March 5 posts.

Why I'm Exhausted From Defending Linkedin: An Open Letter To The Investors, Board, Management And Other Linkedin "Suits"

Remember Velma Hart? She's the black lady who made national news when she stood up in a televised Town Hall Meeting that she was "exhausted" from defending Barack Obama.

I feel like the Velma Hart of Linkedin. I'm exhausted from defending Linkedin.

I just spent hours composing a message to members of the three Linkedin groups I own and manage explaining to them how the latest ham-handed "anti-spam" Linkedin technological change will adversely effect members' ability to send messages to each other unless they do so as 1st level connections or unless they do so as participants in a group discussion.

To thwart spammers, Linkedin no longer allows me to look you up and send you a message from an advanced search screen. Let's say a recruiter, HR manager, department head or other heavy LI user sets up an advanced search to find everybody in her network with a degree in accounting and let's say some of the people who show up in that search are members of some of the same groups as the searcher. The searcher no longer has a "send message" option at that screen unless the searcher and the intended recipient are 1st level connections.

This is another example of how the technological geniuses and engineers who run Linkedin don't understand the first damn thing about the humans who use their technology. The harder Linkedin makes it for people to "talk to each other" via Linkedin, the less often Linkedin account holders will log on and the less time they will spend there.

Is there NOBODY at Linkedin who understands this? If the suits who run Linkedin - Reid Hoffman, Nick Besbeas, Jeff Weiner, Deep Nishar, Skip Battle, Leslie Kilgore, Michael Moritz, David Sze, et al,  don't understand this then the investors need to rise up and make them understand that people with Linkedin accounts are just giving up on Linkedin in droves.

If I didn't know better, I'd swear Linkedin is deliberately driving users into the messaging-enabled arms of Facebook where, if I can see you I can send you a message unless you have disabled that messaging in your account settings. Of course, most Facebook account holders have not disabled that function. Why would they? The whole point of "social media" is to be able to talk to people via the social media platform you're using. Facebook makes that easy. Linkedin makes that hard.

In my 01 September 2010 blog post I said that Linkedin's artificial distinction between "professional" networking and the "social networking" of Facebook is not shared by the typical Linkedin user and has not survived first contact with the enemy (Facebook). Linkedin tries to say they don't compete with Facebook and, therefore, don't care if the Facebook user experience is making Linkedin users expect Linkedin to be more like Facebook. That's like a beer maker saying he doesn't mind losing sales to wine makers because their target markets are different. People have a limited amount of time to spend on networking platforms and if they are choosing to spend it on Facebook instead of Linkedin, that's going to cost Linkedin investors money. Don't they understand that?

Doesn't Deep Nishar, VP of User Experience at Linkedin, understand that the reason Linkedin has so-called "users" who haven't logged on in a year and can't remember their passwords is because Linkedin keeps making it harder, not easier, for users to talk to each other?

Isn't there a Linkedin investor out there who understands that "the Facebook effect" has forever shaped and elevated Linkedin user expectations?

Look, Linkedin, I get it. I do. You are trying to use your technology to enforce a particular networking philosophy. I understand. In a perfect world, the best way for me to "meet" a person I don't know is for me to be introduced to that person through a mutual friend. I agree, that's best. The mutual friend serves as a kind of "social and professional co-signer". I get it. I agree with it. But your average Linkedin user doesn't know how to use the "get introduced through a connection" function.

And what's the deal with asking us for the recipient's email address before we can send a connection request to that recipient? It may be that I haven't seen the recipient since 3 jobs ago but the recipient would gladly reconnect with me. Why do you make me go find them on Facebook so I can get their email address? If I have to find them on Facebook, send them a message, get their email address and then connect with them on Linkedin, what's to prevent me from just deciding that Facebook is easier to use and facilitates rather than hinders my communication with other people?

So, just as Velma Hart is "exhausted" from defending Obama, I am exhausted from defending Linkedin. Just the other day I told one of my Friends of Linkedin group members that I hope somebody who understands people as well as engineering will buy Linkedin and fully enable messaging between Linkedin account holders.
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Read my 01 September 2010 post, "How Linkedin Must Change" at ::http://higginbothamatlarge.blogspot.com/2010/09/how-linkedin-must-change-adapting-to.html
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Higginbotham at Large no longer accepts or publishes reader comments here. if you wish to send me suggestions or hate mail, email me at JosephHigginbotham@gmail.com. If you wish to discuss current events or politics with me, meet me at LinkedLiberals on Linkedin. If you wish to discuss the future of St. Albans, WV, meet me at LinkedSt.Albans on Linkedin. 

Why Linkedin Should Eliminate The "Open" Groups Option

Yesterday I left 4 Linkedin groups because their owners made the irreversible mistake of switching from "members only" to "open". In "members only" groups, only members can post and read discussions. In "open" groups, only members can post but anybody with an internet connection can read and follow discussions.

Being in an open group is a little like installing one way glass throughout your house so that outsiders can look in but you can't see who's looking at you.

I think open groups is one of the stupidest things Linkedin has ever done. I love the power of LInkedin. There are things you can do with Linkedin that Facebook doesn't even know you need to do but sometimes I think the suits who run Linkedin have never used it themselves. If they did, they would realize that "open" groups are an attack on group member privacy and that the only people who benefit from "open" groups are the exhibitionists who try to fill the new discussions carousels of every group they belong to and update their status every 5 minutes. (By the way, I have recently removed connections who constantly update their status and I have ejected or changed the posting permissions of group members who lack the empathy, consideration and impulse control to exercise posting restraint. I warn them first, refer them to group rules, then eject them if they persist in making a nuisance of themselves.)

When Linkedin first announced that groups could switch from "members only" to "open" I announced to my groups that I would never betray them by making my Linkedin groups "open" and that my 3 Linkedin groups would only go "open" when Linkedin pried the  "members only" option from my cold, dead hands. They thanked me for it. Except for the exhibitionists, Linkedin users don't like "open" groups.

I've done my part to prevent group owners from switching to "open". I've sent other group owners personal messages in which I predicted that switching from "members only" to "open" would have a chilling effect on discussion. Several group owners who already made the switch and regretted it have asked me how to switch back to "members only". As far as I can tell, the door from "members only" to "open" swings only one way; once you've gone open the only way to go back to "members only" is to delete the group and start a new one.

If you own a Linkedin group and you've already made the mistake of switching from "members only" to "open", I suggest you go ahead and bite the bullet and delete your group. It's easier if your group is small because you'll inconvenience fewer members. The group owners with a really big problem are the  ones with really big groups - unless those groups are full of exhibitionists who want as many people as possible to see their mug shots and read their spammy discussions.

I don't have any data to support this but I suspect there are two reasons group owners make the mistake of switching from "members only" to "open". The first reason is laziness. I suspect that some group owners, upon discovering that there's actual work involved in owning a Linkedin group, make their groups "open" because they think they'll have to act upon fewer membership requests.

The second reason some group owners switch their groups from "members only" to "open" is lack of empathy, inability to imagine how naked and invaded and betrayed members will feel when they find out anybody with an internet connection can spy on their group discussions.

It's because of these lazy and unempathetic group owners that Linkedin should do away with the "open" groups option and switch all groups back to "members only".

Higginbotham At Large Is Not Affiliated In Any Way With Anonymously or Pseudonymously Published Sites

Last night I got an email from a print media publisher who mistakenly thought me to be the publisher of a website that prints unflattering photos and news stories about St. Albans and its elected leaders. This was the first I had heard of the site so I Googled it and found that this anonymously published site prominently features a quote from one of my blog posts and links to my blog in at least two ways. I was never asked for permission to quote from my blog or to link to it nor would I have ever granted permission for any unaccountable, anonymous publisher to link to or quote from my blog.

Let me be clear: I, Joseph Higginbotham, have no connection whatsoever to any pseudonymously or anonymously published site, have not granted permission to quote from my blog and do not know the identity of the person or persons responsible for the aforementioned site that portrays St. Albans as a meth-making "badlands".

This is not to say that I disagree with everything the anonymous site says. The difference is that when I have something unflattering to say about St. Albans or its titular leaders I say it under my own name where I can be held accountable for what I say. Three of my July 2009 posts dealt with bad leadership and one of them seems to have provided some inspiration for the anonymous site.

The difference between me and the anonymous website publisher is that when I have something unflattering to say about St. Albans or its titular leaders I am accountable for what I say.

I hope the anonymous web publisher doesn't fancy himself (or herself) some kind of modern day Thomas Paine or his website a kind of 21st Century Common Sense just because Paine's tract was first published anonymously. Paine was committing treason against England and might very well have been arrested and killed for what he wrote. I doubt that Mayor Callaway would order the St. Albans police to shoot the anonymous website publisher on sight if he were to disclose his identity.

I, for one, would have greater respect for him (or her) if he/she boldly published his name.

Nor do I disagree with the anonymous website's determination to provide an online forum where St. Albans residents can interact with one another and become better engaged with their elected leaders and their neighbors. In fact, I've met with Mayor Callaway and with members of Council and asked them why the mayor's office has not provided this leadership and this online forum.

But I strongly disapprove of any online forum that allows anonymous posts.

If you want to tell the police about the meth lab next door, you can already do so anonymously but if you wish to get St. Albans talking about its crime problems and its rising median age and its declining population and its lack of citizen engagement, you need to do that publicly. That's why my LinkedSt.Albans group is on Linkedin, a site that is all about accountability and real IDs.

In fact, let me put in a plug for the only St. Albans discussion forum with which I am affiliated, LinkedSt.ALbans. I started LinkedSt.Albans in hope that it would kickstart some citizen engagement in a town where 4 votes will get you a seat on city council because nobody else bothers to run.

If you would like to join LinkedSt.Albans just go to :: http://www.linkedin.com/groups?mostPopular=&gid=2053370.

Higginbotham At Large does not publish reader comments but if you identify yourself I'll read your email and even reply if necessary. Send all comments, questions or hate me to me at JosephHigginbotham@gmail.com.

"What Are Headhunters Looking For?"

I'm often asked what headhunters are looking for.

Headhunters are looking for their next check. Headhunters are mercenaries. Headhunters don't represent the candidate, they represent the employer.

Yes, I know, when you ask what headhunters want you mean what do they want in a candidate.

See first answer. A headhunter is looking for his next check so he presents candidates that he thinks can lead to that next check. If the headhunter believes his client will only hire someone with a Ph.D. then he's looking for a Ph. D. If the headhunter knows his client is ageist and homophobic and racist he won't bring that client a gay, black, 60-year-old no matter how well-qualified that person may be. Why? Because the headhunter is looking for his next check.

"How do I get the attention of headhunters?" people sometimes ask me.

First, refer to my previous post about why headhunters prefer "passive" candidates and why you shouldn't send your resume to headhunters unsolicited and unbidden.

Second, be good at your job. Headhunters network til they find what they need. That means that if somebody mentions your name to a headhunter, you just got on his radar and he will call you if he can find contact info. Make sure headhunters can find your contact info in case people are mentioning your name. if you look at my previous post about passive candidates and how I found Bob Maynard and collected a handsome payment for bringing him to my client, then you will understand how headhunters find candidates. Headhunters network until they find what they need. After a half dozen people  told me Bob Maynard was the oxygen king of the Florida panhandle, I knew he was what I needed. That's very typical of how to get on a headhunter's radar. Be good at your job like Bob Maynard then make sure people who are looking for you can find you.

Is there contact info on your Linkedin profile? Are you sure? Only about 3 or 4% of the Linkedin profiles I see have any contact info on them so go look at your profile and ask yourself if you can be reached.

But don't wait for a headhunter to hear your name. Get your friends and colleagues and former co-workers and former bosses and every professional contact you've ever had to say your name to employers. Getting a great new job through a headhunter is good. Bob Maynard has thanked me two or three times for not giving up on him and for persisting until he agreed to meet my client. BUt don't wait for a headhunter. Read my posts about "professional co-signers" and start getting your professional contacts to say your name to people who can hire you. Do it now. Don't waste another day sending resumes to strangers. Yes, there's a chance you may get a job that way but play the high percentage game, not the low percentage game.

Higginbotham At Large no longer accepts or publishes reader comments. You may send questions, comments and hate mail to JosephHigginbotham@gmail.com.

Why Headhunters Prefer "Passive" Candidates

The job search discussion we're having in my Linked Liberals group on Linkedin reveals some misconceptions about headhunters and how to work with them.

Many job seekers think they increase their odds of getting the attention of a headhunter if they send out their resume -unsolicited - to as many headhunters as they can. Wrong. Don't send resumes to headhunters. When you send an unsolicited resume to a headhunter he knows you've also sent it to every other headhunter and employer and that you have wallpapered Corporate America with resumes. The headhunter who receives your unsolicited resume sees you as a lightweight. The headhunter who receives your unsolicited resume would rather work with a "passive" candidate, not an active candidate.

What is a passive candidate? Instead of just giving you a lifeless definition, let me draw you a picture of an actual passive candidate I recruited for a client way back in the early 90s.

My largest client needed a GM for one of their offices in the South. I knew that qualified managers in that market would likely be under non-compete contracts so I focused my attention on markets that were a commute away in hopes of finding someone who would either relocate or commute the adjacent market. Back in those days we didn't have Linkedin and Google so we had to identify good candidates the old-fashioned way. I started with my Rolodex - remember those? - and started calling everybody I knew in the markets surrounding the market in which my client needed the GM. One name kept coming up: Bob Maynard.

"The guy you need for this job is Bob Maynard", they'd say. "I don't know if Bob is looking, but he's great."

Not only was Bob not looking, Bob wouldn't talk to me at first. Bob had a steady job with a company that didn't appreciate him. Bob was underpaid and he probably knew it but, emotionally, he was at a place in his career where he was willing to swap job security for the chance to make more money and get on a track to career advancement. My client offered all that and I knew that if I could just get Bob to talk to me I could get him to meet my client and that when  he met them he'd leave his old employer and come to work for my client. I was right. Bob started as a GM and worked his way up to a VP job. He stayed with my client for 15 years and had what we call "a good run".

Incidentally, while it was a headhunter who got Bob to come in and talk, he was not unknown to my client. People in the organization knew who he was. His reputation had preceded him. All I did was get him to the table but Bob really earned the job by being a great center manager for a competitor.

Bob is the perfect example of a passive candidate. He was a great manager who didn't have a current resume and wasn't looking for a job but deserved a better job than he had. That's a passive candidate. Headhunters love passive candidates.

Had Bob been sending his resume to everybody I could have invested a lot of time in him and lost him to another employer.

I was once an "expert panelist" at a career night event. Someone in the audience asked me how to find headhunters. I said, "You don't find the headhunter, the headhunter finds you - if you're good."

As I've said in previous posts, headhunters network until they find what they need.

But it's still better to be introduced to an employer by your professional co-signer than it is to be introduced by a headhunter. I'll tell you why in tomorrow's post.

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To Get The Job, Get Out Of The "Stranger" Category

A Fortune 400 company advertised a position in their government affairs office. According to the published ad, the successful candidate would be someone who spoke an Asian language fluently, had lived in Asia, and had worked for a government agency.

The person who got the job had never worked in government, never lived in Asia and couldn't speak a foreign language of any kind, Asian or otherwise. The successful but unqualified candidate had something the qualified candidates didn't: she had a relationship, a professional co-signer, whose intervention made all those pesky "minimum qualifications" requirements melt away.

Having a professional co-signer can launch less qualified candidates past better qualified candidates. It happens every day. It happens in large Fortune 400 companies like the one above and it happens in the small mom and pops.

Until my Linked Liberals group on Linkedin started having a big discussion about job search, I had no idea that so few professionals in their 40s and 50s have somehow failed to notice that the hiring process is not "fair" and that the best candidates don't get the jobs unless they have professional co-signers who vouch for them.

The sooner you realize that life isn't fair and that the hiring process isn't meritocratic the sooner you'll spend your time looking for a professional co-signer instead of spending your time playing the low percentage game of sending resumes to strangers.

I've said this in my previous few blog posts but I haven't fully defined what I mean by the word "stranger".

Harry Beckwith has correctly observed that people don't like to do business with strangers if there is a non-stranger available. So what is a stranger? A stranger is someone who is both unknown to you and unknown to anyone you know. In other words, a stranger is 3 degrees from you. To get the job, you don't have to be the hiring manager's best buddy, you just have to get out of the 3 degrees away category and get to the 2 degrees away category. That happens when a mutual friend or colleague - this is your professional co-signer - introduces you to the hiring manager. The hiring manager immediately warms to you when your professional co-signer introduces you to him.

In my next post, I'll address some misconceptions about working with headhunters.

Higginbotham At Large welcomes comments as long as those comments are not anonymous or pseudonymous. Readers and "lurkers" may remain anonymous but there will be no anonymous or pseudonymous comments at Higginbotham At Large. No Ring of Gyges for you.

More On Making Your Linkedin Account Work Harder For You

After reading yesterday's post about why Linkedin users need to put some contact info on their Linkedin profiles, a Big Apple correspondent asked me why I didn't mention Inmail.

Simple. Most Linkedin users have the free account and aren't willing to pay extra to send Inmail via Linkedin.

Personally, I think Linkedin has made a big mistake by not enabling free messaging between all Linkedin account holders as Facebook has done. In Facebook, you have to opt out or use your account settings to place restrictions on who can send you a message via Facebook. On Linkedin you have to opt in - and it costs you.

See my September 1 2010 post about how Linkedin's stubborn refusal to become more like Facebook in this one regard has, in my opinion, retarded Linkedin's growth and allowed Facebook to siphon off professional and business users who should be using Linkedin more and Facebook less. With Linkedin's superior search capabilities and business conscious demographic, business and professional users would undoubtedly use Linkedin much more than they already do if they could send messages to other Linkedin users who are outside their networks.

To summarize, unless you pay for Linkedin's branded "Inmail" messaging, you cannot send a message to Linkedin  users who are outside your network. In other words, you can message 1st-level connections and you can message members of the groups you belong to so in addition to putting actual contact info on your profile you should also join groups and start sending connection requests to other Linkedin users.

But Did You Put Actual Contact Information On Your Linkedin Profile?

Do you have actual contact information on your Linkedin profile?

Don't be like the consultant who appeared on a Charleston, WV radio show and invited listeners to get in touch with her through Linkedin. There was no contact info on her Linkedin page so the only listeners who could actually contact her were the people who were already 1st-level connections in Linkedin or members the same LInkedin groups of which she was a member.

I looked her up in the phone book and sent her a note telling her she should put actual contact info in her profile. I suggested she put it in the "SUMMARY" section of her profile where it will show up in Google searches.

Still, she insisted that "all her info was public". No, it wasn't. Linkedin has your email address but it only shows up on your profile to people with whom you are already connected in some way - either through direct, first-level connection or through a group, primarily.

If you want your phone number and/or email to show up on your profile you have to put it there.

Yesterday I noticed that a member of one of my Linkedin groups was looking for a job. On his Linkedin profile he said recruiters and headhunters should contact him by email but his email address appeared nowhere on his profile. When I brought the omission to his attention he thanked me and expressed embarrassment.

Have you looked at your profile? Does it contain actual contact information?

I ask because I spend about an hour or two each day inviting new members to my 3 Linkedin groups and I'd say that only about 3 or 4% of the profiles I see contain any contact info which means I may have tried to invite you to join one of my groups but didn't have a way to contact you.

Have you Googled yourself to see what non-Linkedin users see in your public Linkedin profile (which is different than the profile your direct connections see).

Make your Linkedin account work harder for you. Put actual contact information in your Linkedin profile.

I have actual contact info - phone number and email address - 2 places on my profile: under "contact settings" and, more importantly, in the "Summary" section which shows up in Google searches on my public profile.

Don't make prospective clients or employers work so hard to contact you. Put actual contact information on your Linkedin profile. Make your Linkedin account work harder, don't make potential contacts work harder.

Oh, and if you are logging on to your Linkedin account every day - as you should - and checking your "inbox" and looking at "who's viewed your profile" you may have noticed that a lot of people you know or want to know have viewed your profile but didn't contact you. Is it because you didn't put actual contact information on your profile?

Don't make your prospective contacts work harder, make your Linkedin account work harder. Put contact information on your Linkedin profile.

Higginbotham At Large no longer takes the time to moderate comments which means Higginbotham At Large no longer publishes comments. Send your fan mail, hate mail, stock tips and suggestions to JosephHigginbotham@gmail.com.

Linkedin Tips: How To Make Your Linkedin Profile Work Harder For You

Are you making people work way too hard to get in touch with you? Are you making your Linkedin profile work hard enough for you? If you don't have actual contact information in your Linkedin profile then you're using Linkedin to tease people, not to meet new people and, as my friend, Grover Mollineaux,  says, "Nothing good happens until you meet somebody." If you don't have actual contact information on your LInkedin profile, you're like a pretty girl who won't give out her phone number or email address and then wonders why she doesn't get dates.

Do you have actual contact information on your Linkedin profile or is your profile just a tease?

On her Linkedin profile, a recent graduate of West Virginia Junior College wrote a passionate pitch for a job in her field of study but her Linkedin profile provided no contact information whatsoever. Oh, and she didn’t belong to any Linkedin groups. I’ll say more about Linkedin groups in a moment.

One Kanawha Valley Linkedin use wrote on his Linkedin profile “the best way to get in touch with me is email” but he failed to put his email address on his Linkedin profile.

A friend of a friend of mine recently paid a lot of money to be on the radio. During her radio appearance she mentioned that she needed people to refer math tutors to her for business reasons. Well, I did what I always do: I looked her up in Linkedin and, wouldn’t you know it, there was no phone number and no email address on her Linkedin profile. Well, after I did some Googling I found her email address and her phone number and emailed that info to my friend, Charles Pique, who is a math tutor. Then I emailed the person on the radio to tell her she made me work way too hard to help her and asked why she doesn’t have actual contact info on her Linkedin profile. She wrote back and said she had “made it all public” and she didn’t know why I couldn’t find her contact info.

From that comment it was obvious to me that she hasn’t actually looked at her own profile or she would see what others see: that she is not making her Linkedin profile work hard enough for her and she is making other professionals work too hard to find contact info. I don’t know, maybe she already has all the business she needs but if you’re like most Linkedin users, you need clients so make it easy for clients to find you.

I have my email address in the “summary” field right beneath my name and then it appears again under “contact settings”. Most Linkedin users have no actual contact information under “contact settings”. I’ll never understand why not.

Now, let’s talk about Linkedin groups. Linkedin groups are a powerful way to instantly make yourself easy to reach by other Linkedin users. There are geographic groups, professional groups, hobby groups, all kinds of groups. Let’s say you want to do more business with the people who live in your town. Go to the “groups” field and type the name of your city or state and see if there’s a group by that name then join it. Or, let’s say you want to meet other people who share your interests or hobbies. In the “groups” field simply type “coin collecting” or “gardening” or whatever and look at the available groups and join some.

When you sign up for a group, you’ll be asked if you wish for other group members to be able to contact you via Linkedin. Check the box that enables that function. If your group has 10,000 members you’ve just become accessible to 10,000 people.

Make your Linkedin profile work harder for you. Make people who look at your profile work less. Put some actual contact info in your Linkedin profile and join some groups.

Why Do Businesses Hire So-Called "Salespeople" Who Don't Use Linkedin, Twitter And Blogs To Build Business And Relationships?

I’ll never understand why people who make their livings by “prospecting” and selling – like car salespeople and realtors and financial services people – aren’t using the awesome power of Linkedin to build their networks of prospects and referral sources.

I don’t know why their bosses don’t require it.

I don’t know why their bosses don’t provide them with training on how to use Linkedin.

I don’t know why their bosses aren’t modeling the behavior.

Take car dealers, for instance. If there’s a business that needs to use every tool at their disposal to sell their product in this weak economy, it’s car dealers. I just did a Linkedin search on what may be the largest automobile empire in my market and found only 5 people from that company with Linkedin accounts.

I performed a search on another auto empire in my market and found only one employee from that empire with a Linkedin account.

I know this: if I were the sales manager or GM at any car dealer I wouldn’t hire a so-called sales or marketing person who doesn’t have a Linkedin account or isn’t using it every day to start and strengthen relationships.

As my regular readers know, back in December of ’09 (see blog archive) I wrote a short series of three posts on “business development” that got me a nice plug on the SMPS.org site (Society for Marketing Professional Services). New readers – especially readers who don’t know how to use Linkedin - may want to look in my blog archives and read those December ’09 posts and any other posts that mention Linkedin.

As far as I can tell, most car salespeople, realtors and others who make their livings by knowing people, seem to think it’s the boss’s job to bring prospects to them through expensive advertising.

Picture this: it’s a cold January or February night. There’s snow and ice on the ground and the car lot is full of cars that nobody’s looking at. Car “salesmen” are in the showroom telling jokes and watching TV and flirting with the cute new website sales manager and nobody’s doing anything to bring customers into the showroom.

Does the dealership have Wi-Fi? Do the sales reps carry smart phones? If the answers are yes and yes, why aren’t the sales reps using their laptops and their smart phones to go to Linkedin and see what they can do to scare up a customer? Why does the dealer have to buy expensive ads to attract customers?

And why don’t these car “salespeople” have blogs about cars, trucks, financing, and other things of interest to car buyers?

Why are car dealers hiring people who aren’t using every tool at their disposal to sell cars?

Why do real estate brokers hire realtors who don’t have contact info on their Linkedin page, don’t have a real estate blog, don’t have a Facebook page and don’t know how to Tweet in a way that connects them to people without annoying them?


Why don't people whose business depends on knowing people - and that's most of us - join Linkedin groups? In my area there are several groups business people should join if they want to have instant access to other Linkedin users. For example, I own a group named LinkedSt.Albans. 


What's that? You don't know how to join a Linkedin group? Give me a call. I'll help you out. Free. 


What's that? You have a Linkedin account but you have no idea what to do with it. If you're in the Charleston-St.Albans area just call me and I'll come to your business and give you a tutorial that will show you how to unlock the awesome power of Linkedin.


A friend of mine wants to syndicate her internet radio show to radio stations.  I performed a simple Linkedin search on the words "radio syndication" and found over 2,000 people in my network who can help her syndicate her show. That's the power you're not using if you don't use Linkedin to build your business.

Come to think of it, my new readers may want to go to my archive and look at my instructional posts on Linkedin and Twitter.

Why Your Online Branding Strategy Backfires

“We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.” – Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. re: his 1961 Mother Night character, Howard Campbell, who survived WWII by helping the Nazis and pretending to be a Nazi.

There are two kinds of people I don’t trust: I don’t trust people who, in this “reputation economy”, have no online footprint. As some of you know, I own a Linked group called “Linking Liberally”. About a week ago I received a membership request from someone whose values and beliefs were impossible to discern from her Linkedin profile so I did a Google search. Nothing. I used her email address to search for her Facebook account. There was no Facebook account associated with the email address associated with the applicant’s Linkedin account. So I started sending Linkedin messages to my considerable liberal network in her area – even at her place of employment. Nobody had heard of her. Before I rejected her membership request I gave her a chance to send me some evidence of her liberalism; the name of a person who could vouch for her liberalism, for instance. She couldn’t.  If people who work where she works do not know she’s a liberal, I’m not convinced she’s a liberal - or even that she gave her real name. And it's not just that people she supposedly works with had heard of her, it's that she left no online footprint at all. In this age of Google and Bing and social media, how do you not have some online identity unless you're using a fake name? 

I also don’t trust people who have a carefully-crafted “online brand” – especially the ones who want me to pay them to show me how to have a carefully-crafted online brand. Unlike many of the so-called marketing gurus who are trying to revive or extend their marketing careers by pretending to be “social media experts”, I have actually read dozens of books on branding and I understand what a brand is and that’s why I don’t trust people who want to use a “social” medium or a “relationship-based medium” as if it’s TV. The whole point of social media and relationship-based networking is that people should know who you are and what you stand for and what you believe in and who your associations are and either resonate with your or not based on those values, beliefs and associations.

And while I’m on the subject of trying to create an online persona or brand, let me say this to people who have drunk the Kool Aid that you can be one person on Facebook and another on Linkedin. Headhunters and recruiters and others who have a need to know who you are will look at everything – your blog, your Tweets, your Facebook, your LInkedin. Everything. I never cease to be amazed at the people I encounter online who keep their Linkedin profile “strictly professional”, scrubbed of all evidence of their interests and values but whose Facebook page is a disturbing look into their immaturities, prejudices and shady associations.

People who think they can get headhunters to look only at their Linkedin profiles remind me of the idiots who say “We have to fight ‘em over there or we’ll have to fight ‘em over here”. You have no control over where terrorists or headhunters go. They go everywhere. Just as you can’t keep terrorists from fighting us here by offering them the shiny object of a war in the Middle East, you can’t stop a headhunter from looking at your Facebook page and your Tweets by offering him the shiny object of a Linkedin profile. Headhunters and terrorists go everywhere, they look at everything.

For the record, I have no “online strategy” or “online brand”. This blog is not part of any “online strategy” to mislead you about who I am. I am the same in my blog as I am on Linkedin or Facebook. You don’t need one of those so-called “social media experts” to help you be yourself unless you don’t know who you are.

Play The High Percentage Job Search Game of Getting Mentioned By A Social Co-Signer, Not The Low Percentage Game Of Sending Resumes And Interviewing

Can you spot the obvious, common flaws in these tweets by people who purport to be job search experts?

“Is your Resume getting thrown in the Trash?”

“Can you describe your "personal brand" in less then 3 sentences during a job interview?”

“Do you know how to give great phone during a job interview?”

“Do you have a "two minute pitch" for your next job interview?”

These questions were tweeted by people who use the question to tell you something they hope will give them the chance to sell you something. These questions are examples of a kind of social media push polling.

But have you spotted the common flaw in these push polls yet? If you are a regular reader of Higginbotham At Large you already know the answer: The advice that these so-called job search experts want to sell you starts at a point way too late in the job search process to be of help to you.

If you’re a regular reader of Higginbotham At Large, you already know that sending out resumes and going to interviews is a low percentage game. Your chances of getting a job as a result of sending a resume and walking down the runway in the swimsuit competition of the interview process are just slightly above zero.

Higginbotham At Large wants you to play the high percentage game of getting your existing and future network of friends and colleagues to say your name to headhunters and employers. The goal is to get people to say your name. Getting people to say your name is the holy grail of job search or business development. Getting people to say your name instantly puts you in the running for jobs that haven’t been advertised anywhere, jobs that are casually mentioned over coffee, at church, on the golf course or by a headhunter who calls and asks one of your friends or colleagues “Who do you know who has expertise with X?”

As I’ve said before, yes, it’s possible that you might get a job because you have a better resume or give good phone the real goal of every job seeker should be to trade the low percentage game of resume-sending and interviewing for the high percentage game of getting recommended. I don’t care of you’re a plumber who wants new business or if you’re a job seeker who wants a new job, the shortest distance to what you want is to get recommended by somebody.

And the reason you won’t see push poll tweets about how to get recommended is because the push pollers can’t figure out how to make any money off the truth that sending resumes and waiting for interviews is a low percentage game. While you’re waiting for a window-dressing interview with a guy who’s never heard of you, the successful candidate is across the street at Starbucks getting introduced to his new boss over a latte by their mutual friend. The guy at Starbucks didn’t send a resume and didn’t have to glide down the runway in the swimsuit competition we call the interview process. He moved to the head of the line for that job when his “social co-signer” said his name.

How do you get people to say your name?

Well, it starts with making sure your social co-signers know what you do. As I write this blog post, a headhunter is asking a guy “Who do you know who has expertise at X?” and the guy he’s asking can’t say your name because he doesn’t know you have expertise at X. As I write this post, a boss is confiding to a mutual friend that he is going to fire his X and find a replacement. Your mutual friend doesn’t mention your name because, despite being your friend, he doesn’t really know what you do.

First, let’s get organized: I want you to take out a legal pad and make a list of all your neighbors (if you’re friendly with them). The guy across the cul de sac, the lady next door.

Then I want you to make a list of all the people you know at social orgs or clubs you belong to.

You get the idea. Make a list.

Include the social circle of your significant other.

Now go to your Linkedin account and your Facebook account and your Twitter followers and make a list of contacts who like you and respect you and would be good social co-signers for you.

After you’ve completed your list, I want you to systematically start educating or coaching these social co-signers on just exactly what it is you do. Where possible, do this face-to-face. Yes, you can send tweets and emails and Linkedin messages, but also try to have a phone or face-to-face conversation.

Tell each of your social co-signers what you do and how to recognize opportunities to recommend you.

Some of my readers - like Jeff Foster of Lexington, KY, with whom I worked at Lexmark - have jobs that are hard to describe. For instance, if Jeff told you he is a "business analyst" at Lexmark would you have any idea what he does? probably not. People like Jeff have more work to do than people with simple, easy-to-understand titles. I challenged Jeff to come up with a 15-second or 3-sentence speech with which to describe his work at Lexmark. Here's what he gave me: "I work with people in different countries to develop a standardized process for a set of tasks, document all aspects of the process, develop training materials and then transition the tasks to a low cost country."

Jeff, advise your social co-signers to listen for words like "offshoring" and "outsourcing" because that's also what your work facilitates.

And , Jeff, your elevator speech is timely. Have you seen what Seth Godin and Daniel Pink have written about turning autonomous, creative, heuristic jobs into "algorithmic", repetitive jobs?

And, Jeff, you may not have thought of this but what you do is, in many ways, related to franchising. When a franchisor sells you a turn-key franchise, he is selling you more than a well-known business name, he is selling you his methods of turning operations and jobs into "algorithmic", robotic , repetitive jobs that might be better matched to low-wage, low-intelligence workers than to, say, people with high IQs who are used to making good money. So, Jeff, tell your social co-signers to listen for the word "franchising" when a headhunter calls.

And tell them to look at the Linkedin recommendation I wrote for you.

"Follow up the oral communication with an email that contains some carefully selected verbiage about what you do and what you want to do. The goal is to help your social co-signers recognize a referral opportunity when they hear one. Each time you tell somebody how to recognize an opportunity to recommend you to a headhunter or boss, you’ll get better at it and by the time you send the email follow-up, you’ll have a great 3-sentence or 15-second “elevator speech”.

See why nobody’s tweeting about this? Push polling tweeters can charge you $100 dollars for writing your resume or $500 for giving you classes on how to interview but the truth is free and it’s unmonetized. The truth is, if somebody mentions your name to a headhunter or to a boss, you move to the front of the line – without a resume and without an interview.

When a social co-signer mentions your name, you might become the first and last candidate for that job. It’s happened to me on several occasions.

If I’m right – and in your heart you know this is how it really works in the real world – what good does it do to pay people to write you a better resume or coach you on how to interview if the jobs are being filled through referrals and recommendations?

Sending resumes and waiting for interviews is for suckers. Yes, jobs are occasionally filled that way but the overwhelming majority of jobs are filled through an informal, nearly invisible process.

Even when you see a job advertized online or in the newspaper, it doesn’t mean the job hasn’t already been filled through that informal, invisible means. Employers maintain a façade of transparent, “meritocratic” hiring. Advertising job openings is window dressing to keep the appearance of a meritocratic, transparent hiring process.

Sometimes my readers ask me why they aren’t getting calls from headhunters. I tell them there are two reasons: First, nobody is mentioning their name. At its core, headhunting is just calling and calling and calling until somebody says “Yeah, I know somebody who can do X.”

Second, if you’re not getting calls from headhunters it means your name isn’t turning up in Linkedin searches. Headhunters plug the pertinent search terms into Linkedin and start calling people whose names appear in the resulting list. If you don’t have a Linkedin profile that is replete with buzz words you won’t show up in search results.

If you don’t have a network ( Linkedin group memberships, Linkedin 1^st level connections ) you’re invisible.

To get hired, get mentioned by a social co-signer. It’s the way more than 90% of white collar and high-paying jobs are filled.

Higginbotham At Large is happy to publish comments from people who hate me but Higginbotham At Large will not publish comments from anonymous or pseudonymous posters, posters with childish “CB handle” IDs, or posters who resort to obscenity.

Yes, Consultants, Headhunters Know Self-Employment Is The New Unemployment - And Yes, They'll Still Call You If You're Good

Self-employed entrepreneurs and solopreneurs often ask me if starting their own company signals employers, recruiters and headhunters not to call them about job openings.

Many of these self-employed consultants and solopreneurs had entrepreneurship thrust upon them when they were downsized out of those comfortable $75k to $100k middle class jobs that aren’t coming back. What these downsizing victims are really asking is “Do headhunters know that I’d jump at the chance to get back into a $75k job?”

Yes, accidental entrepreneurs, headhunters know that self-employment is the new unemployment. Go ahead and put on a good show. Print your business cards, write your blog, build a website. Fake it until you make it or until a headhunter calls you with a $60k job that used to be a $90k job. Headhunters know that nobody is unemployed anymore, everybody is a consultant and, yes, they'll still call you about job openings if you're good.

Yes, reluctant solopreneurs, headhunters will still call you about job opportunities even if you’re trying real hard to look like you’d never go back to working a “real job” because headhunters know that, while there are exceptions, most of the self-employed consultants aren’t doing as well on their own as they did when they worked for The Man.

And, no, don’t send unsolicited resumes to headhunters to assure them you’re still interested in a real job even though you’re trying real hard to keep up appearances as a self-employed consultant. Here’s what goes through a headhunter’s mind when you reach out to him: “I’ll be this guy’s sending resumes to everybody.”

Headhunters don’t want to present their clients with candidates who are actively sending resumes to everybody. Why? Simple. Clients don’t pay headhunters to bring them the candidates they can get on their own just by running an ad on Dice or CareerBuilder. Clients pay headhunters to bring them passive candidates, candidates who aren’t actively looking for a job. It’s that simple.

At a University of Kentucky “Career Night” a recent grad asked me how to find a headhunter.

“You don’t find the headhunter”, I said, “the headhunter finds you.” Then I added “but not for a few years, because, the truth is, clients also don’t pay headhunters to bring them new grads. Clients pay headhunters to bring them experienced, proven talent.”

Learn to think like a headhunter. If you were a headhunter and you were looking for someone with your skills and experience, how would you start your search? You’d go to Linkedin and specify some geographic parameters and then you’d put in some search terms that would likely appear in the Linkedin profiles of the kinds of candidates you seek. Right? So pack your Linkedin profile with the kinds of search terms a headhunter would use if he wanted to find you.

Don’t worry that your recent self-employment will scare headhunters away. It won’t. Headhunters know that self-employment is the new unemployment so they know you’ll take the call.