Mischa Kroon

A couple of weeks ago, I suddenly found myself out of a job.
I was working at a small company, which merged with a bit of a larger company.

It all sounded quite well, I was happy with it for the most part... nice co workers.
Things went along nicely but not super, and the merger seemed to be a financial mistake.

Hence the merger was cancelled and my contract was not extended.
I heard my contract wasn't going to be extended on the day that would have been my last workday from that point on I only had days off left.

I stayed too tie up some loose ends and then it was time to look for a new job.

I was contacted by headhunters when I was with my previous employer so I thought, I would give it a go at having them look at a good new place for me to look.
That because frankly I didn't really want to spend a whole lot of time at jobhunting, and wouldn't have minded to have a little vacation time.

So I asked around a bit and I sent in my resume to the headhunters.

Now from this point it might get interresting for the people who are still reading this.

Headhunters what will happen when you work with them.

1 They will ask you for exclusive rights.

For them the best thing is if you haven't sent your resume to anyone else.
They get a commission when they sign you to a company so if they have your resume exclusively, they will probably work harder to find you a new job.

Which means they really want to be the one to sign you to a company.
So if your approaching the best company's for you directly then there is no point in it for them to look for you.

2 They might give you some pointers on your resume.

Personally I just reworked my resume, in a manner which I liked and wasn't really looking forward to redoing it again.
So I left it as it was, I did get some compliments about it when solliciting for jobs btw. Which gave me a good feeling about it.

3 They will query you on what they are supposed to find for you

You might want to get an idea about what you want :)
The better you can formulate this the better they can do their job, try to be as clear as possible though these people probably aren't experts in your field.

4 They will ask you for a window of exclusivity

Depending on how attractive your resume is this window of exclusivity might mean a lot of calls from them to you about possible matches from them.
For me this meant a day with a lot of calls :)

I don't know if they give up on making a lot of calls when this window expires because I really didn't make it to this point.
For me this window of exclusivity was 48 hours.

5 Setting up interviews

One of the things which is a bit of a downswirl in the whole proces is setting up interviews
If your a busy person then it's a bit hard to sync your agenda with someone with whom you can't communicate directly.

6 Communicating

They want to stay on top of things.
They will try to limit all the communications with the company.

Personally this wasn't really one of my favorite aspects of the whole process.
They altered my resume in a way that the company's couldn't find me directly.

They also want that if your late for your appointments that you contact them so they contact the company etc etc.

7 Reflecting

There will be a lot of reflecting they want to stay on top of things, so they want to know what your doing and what your feeling about the company's.
Which company's do you feel good about others which you aren't feeling good about.

They will also be doing the same thing with the company's themselves.
When needed they will also use this feedback to know when to be looking for new company's

8 Job Offers

They will negotiate for the contract for you.

Now this was a part where I was happy about, going face to face with your future employer and trying to get the best deal out of it can be a pain.
This was taken care off, what is also taken care off is the reminding you to think about what you really want.

What are deal makers / deal breakers for you.

Personally I was actually in the ideal position that I had one job offer at the same time as the headhunters company.
If you have this your ensured the best deal they can get for you :)