Who wants a job you or your Mom?

There are numerous occasions when I get calls from friends, relatives, or friend’s relatives asking me if I can help them get a job. If one is in the recruitment industry this is not surprising and one more or less begins accept the fact that there will invariably be someone who will approach you for a job or some other assistance with respect to landing that “good job”. And by the way it’s good for a recruiter, one never knows when one of these guys help in closing that long pending job opening or achieve that ever elusive monthly target.

But what surprises me & also irritates me is when someone calls up & says “my daughter is looking for a job, she is working here, doing this currently. Do you have something suitable for her?” There is nothing wrong with a general enquiry like that after all, isn’t it? May be they will pass on the info to the person who is actually in need of a job. You bet that happens. You feel happy you have done your bit in improving someone’s life & if you are handling that position yourself then you await the resume to see if it can have some positive impact on your life, at least temporarily (like telling your team lead that you finally sourced one resume). As expected the resume does come but who sends it –the job seeker or the person who enquired about it? If you said the job seeker, you got it 100% wrong!

Yeah, that is what this is all about. I feel the role of a parent, friend or relative should end once they have shown the job seeker the way. Once it is pointed out to them that you can approach this person, send this person the resume, I think they have done their job. Thereafter it should (& must) be only the job seeker who should follow up on the developments taking place in terms of he/she landing a job. So many times moms call & ask ‘have you got my son’s resume’, ‘when is his next interview’, ‘we haven’t heard from you yet’. It’s understood from their point of view. But from the recruiter point of view it comes across completely differently.

I believe in the power of “follow up”. It is extremely important that there is follow up and that follow up should happen only by the job seeker & no one else on his/her behalf. When the job seeker follows up it comes across right. When they don’t do it and someone else does it, it seems like job seeker is not really keen on working & is being forced with the idea. It seems like they are shy/afraid to ask the status. But most importantly when someone else is following up on their behalf they usually end the conversation with a “please do your best”, “he is just watching TV all day”, “your help will be highly appreciated, because his health has deteriorated ever since he took up the night shift job” & it becomes very difficult to listen & respond to such things. Please remember that the recruiter is a professional at closing the open positions & not necessarily getting people a job. Hope you are able to understand the difference that is there between the two.

So a professional recruiter must get the necessary vibes from the job seeker. When the job seeker is the one following up it comes across like he is serious about it & he means business. It highlights one important plus for the job seeker that he is really keen on the specific position or the job in general. It also shows certain qualities in him like taking initiatives, that of being a finisher & so on. These qualities register positively with the recruiter who in turn sells the same to the client.

Getting a job is a task in itself. If these minute things are kept in mind it would help the job seeker immensely, first in landing a job & second in building a long term relationship with the recruiter…for your second, third, fourth job…