Do you know why recruiters usually don’t stare out of their office window in the morning? Of course the answer most people will give is that if they did that in the morning they would have nothing to do after lunch! I learned quite by accident that ordinary people who are not in recruiting don’t have a clue about what we really do. It is interesting how casual conversation among people complaining about their jobs can also share things only the wizard behind the curtain usually knows for sure. I inadvertently parted that curtain on a Sunday morning at church with a group of other men over coffee. One of the little known sacraments of the church is Holy Coffee Hour… well maybe it is not universally accepted by any denomination, but it is a clear choice for many as a place to confess their daily failings to their friends.
On that Sunday morning several years ago while engaged in a harmless soliloquy of complaints about my job the topic of just how frustrating some job seekers could be unintentionally escaped from my mouth. “Sometimes they are totally clueless!†This one-on-one conversation opened the door to answer questions from a guy that genuinely wanted to know how the process worked so that he could get past the insurmountable barriers he was facing in unemployment. He was clueless… and I soon learned from him just how clueless I was about his side of the issue. As we talked I noticed that others were quietly listening to us and soon I was conducting a mini-seminar on how to get a job. I think that lightbulb moment for me was the beginning of a parallel career track of being a candidate advocate.
Well, I was converted to this new track and many of my professional colleagues were already there or were soon to join me. If you have seen us argue back and forth about resumes, networking, interviews, and cover letters you may think that you have heard the whole story. Think again! Even though we truly care and genuinely want to help, it would probably be uncomfortable if we were overheard in some of our everyday talk. We make fun of your names, we laugh at how naïve some people can be when they think they are telling us a lie we haven’t heard before, and we instinctively raise our defensive shields against criticism because often we are powerless to change anything. The job we have to touch others’ lives in a positive way is an awesome responsibility and often a little humor is the only tool we have to keep us sane. So we talk about you… but you already knew that.
If your last name is Dogdu, we know that is a respected ethnic name in Turkey, but in this country it will make English speaking recruiters smile. If you retired as a Director of Marketing from IBM and are applying to an entry level position… spare us the excuses because we have heard about men trying to keep out of their wife’s kitchen. If you shotgun your resume to every job posted in a company regardless of degree or experience requirements, you are not flattering us that we are an employer of choice… we will probably complain among ourselves that you are wasting our time. I got an email from one woman with a law degree looking to change careers (because she couldn’t pass the bar) and in her words, “…the job does not have to be legal.†We had fun with that one… “Hey, this one wants to be paid under the table!†Ah yes, the unique ones are the best because we have heard most of them before.
Every profession has an inside track where jokes would not mean very much to an outsider. I wonder sometimes if cable installers talk about the cleanliness of a person’s house… my wife thinks they do. Heaven help us if we need a plumber to fix something among the junk in our basement! Do women really go to the door in a negligee to greet the UPS guy? There are dozens of HR behind the scenes scenarios too, but these are the games we play quietly among ourselves. The job of finding that match between job seeker and a job is really taken quite seriously, so allow us a little freedom to do it in a way that is low stress for everybody concerned. Our contract with the job seeker is that we will be honest, give you our best shot at the expectations you should have, and deliver on our promises. Work with us on that, but if you have a funny name don’t hold it against us if we smile a little.
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