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Executive CV: Service?

As a specialist and focused Executive CV Service, before we started our Executive CV Writing Service, we undertook some market research. This left us with the question of what should an Executive CV Service include?

CV Writing

Most CV Writing Services are based around the speed of turn around, in creating a more marketable and better presented version of you. This is driven by the candidate side of the market, which presently wants to use job boards, although these only account for 12% of fulfilled jobs annually.

Hence, the CV Writing services offer 24 hour turn around for draft CV’s, and paper copies as optional extras. Within the service, you should have a 30min phone call to go through your work history and assess your strengths, understand what you want to do, and output a draft document which focus the two together.

Executive CV Marketing

But while these basic CV service are clear to understand, what does the use of the term Executive CV Service actually mean when they start charging more? Is it a quicker turn around, a larger selection of CV Layouts, or the inclusion of better quality paper?

Or does it reflect that you get a better quality CV Writer for paying more, and that their standard service – once you take out profit margin and overheads – can only realistically be provided by someone on the UK National Minimum Wage? Is their Executive CV Service just therefore a piece of confession marketing?

Executive Service

A CV is pretty simple to understand: a two page factually based pitch against a specific job. But a service should step further than two better quality pieces of paper.

In an experiment last year, a national employment organisation took 20 job seekers. For 10 of them, they rewrote their CV’s, while the other 10 were schooled in the art of applying for jobs. The result was that both groups gained worked at about the same rate, an improvement on the average job seeker. But when a third test group of 10 job seekers were given both pieces of the experiment, they gained employment at three times the rate of the two earlier test groups, and five times quicker than the average job seeker, who presently takes around 10.5months to find a job.

In Executive Employment, where small mistakes in how you are found and how you apply, particularly the “three recruiters and out” rule, could backlist you form various employment companies, is not the service side of an Executive CV as if not more important than the CV itself?

Executive Employment

If all that Executive Employment was about was an Executive CV, then the number of applicants for FTSE positions would require an army of HR professionals to process.

One thing that is often forgotten about in the employment market, particularly the Executive Employment sector, is that people employ people. If your historic results were all that Executive Employment decisions were made on, then all you would need would be an Executive CV.

But as any Executive headhunter knows, the brief they take from their client at the start of the Executive employment process, is not what the eventual successful candidate will be required to do on day1 of starting their new job. The Executive job applicant defines their own strategy within the organisations business requirement, and hence negotiates their own final brief.

A service, or just a CV?

We think an Executive CV Service should go beyond just a quicker CV from a wider portfolio of CV Layouts, printed on better quality paper.

While the core service is greatly improved by more experienced CV Writers, the resultant speed of employment and gaining the Executive position is defined by the ability of the service provider to give an additional combination of inside expertise, guidance, pre-prepared materials and coaching for you to obtain the desired outcome: a Senior Executive Job.

If the Executive CV Service you are buying does not give you more than just better paper in a quicker time scale, then don’t be surprised if the results you expected are not gained quickly, if at all.

Good Luck!

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If you require an Executive employment solution, our MBA coached Executive CV service is personalised around you

If you want to check the suitability of your existing CV, then get a Professional CV review at our sister site CV4.biz

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Headhunter or Recruiter?

One of the errors made in Executive Employment is handing out your CV to everyone who claims to be a Head Hunter. When in actual fact they are a Recruiter or even less on the scale of employment sharks.

If you make this mistake, you will at best blight your employment opportunities, and at worst extend your period of job seeking indefinitely.

So, how do you tell a Head Hunter from a Recruiter?

Employment background

There are three types of basic paid-for animal that roam the employment market place:

• Employment agencies: the familiar High Street chains that place mostly temporary workers, in both blue and white collar jobs. The job seekers is contracted and paid by the agency, with the percentage varying between 5% and 15%, but always with a minimum. Hence in some minimum wage blue collar jobs, the blue collar worker doing the actual work will be paid less than the agency, thanks to minimum contract clauses
• Recruitment agencies: focus on management and junior executive positions, these are now mostly niche sector focused. Some recruiters run contract teams who will have contracts similar to job agencies, but most will operate on permanent position briefs. Job briefs may or may not be exclusive to that recruiter, who could be working in competition. Percentages will vary from 12% to 35%+, with most working on a “paid on success” basis over a “paid on process progression.”
• Head Hunters: will have a long term relationship with their clients, and although they may not be exclusive to that client, will be on that job brief. Often paid a retainer up front of between a third and half of their agreed fee, the final fee is between 30% and 200% of first year salary plus bonus

Now, much as that’s the basic brief, there are some variations which as a job seeker you need to be aware of.

For instance, many will have heard of CV fishing, why does it exist? One High Street agency still runs a “paid on process” recruitment contract which charges employers: 1/3 on engagement, 1/3 on vetted CV pile delivery (minimum of 12); 1/3 post interview. Hence, as 2/3rds of their fee is paid just for placing 12 CV’s on the desk of their client employer, their staff have a huge incentive to CV fish.

Head hunter

Though paid by their employer client, it is in the interests of the head hunter to serve both the employer client as well as the job seeker. Reputation is key to the head hunter, and they don’t like damaging their reputation in their core market place with anyone.

As this reputation in market is hard won, and the fees paid know to be high, often many internal recruiters will claim to be head hunters. They are not, as head hunters are independent of the employer client and only work on a retained payment brief: this person calling you is trying to fill an internal position. Further, as head hunters only work from employer client briefs, so anyone who offers to find you a job is not a head hunter: that is a job coach you are talking to!

Head Hunter v Recruiter!

Now you know the basic difference between Head Hunters and Recruiters, you are part armed to test the difference of anyone’s claim.
For instance, try these questions:

• How long has this organisation been a client
• How many briefs have they had from this client before/how many people placed – a head hunters number may be low, but percentage placed will be high; the recruiters will be opposite
• What is their brief for this job – a head hunter could now complete a 30minute speech, where as a recruiter will only have a job specification
• How many job applicants/CV’s will they put forward – a head hunter will pace 2 or 3 people per brief maximum in front of a client; a recruiter will place 3 or more
• When does the client want a person in place – head hunters will focus on the right candidate; recruiters will say “now” or “soon”

Recruiter meeting

Competitive brief recruiters and internal pay systems mean that however they found you, they can’t spend time meeting job seekers to properly vet candidates as a head hunter would. So use time and process to tell the difference.

When their contractual process payments asks for a pile of so many CV’s, getting your CV adds fresh meat to the pile for their client, and hence prompt payment. So, when they ask for your CV, offer them your LinkedIn profile. If they press, offer to meet them for a coffee. Head hunters will at this point probably ask more questions and be happy to meet serious job seeking professionals; competitive brief recruiters do not have the time to meet, and hence at this point close the conversation.

Head Hunter pay

But the most telling difference between a head hunter and a recruiter is asking them the question of how/when will they get paid.

Some job seekers feel that this question is too arrogant and up front. I understand that, but both want to engage with people they can place who have realistic expectations of what that job in their market will pay. Secondly, much as though money may not be a daily conversation for you, pay and package is in the world of employment. But thirdly and most tellingly, if they are asking your pay or package requirements, then knowing what and when they get paid equates to motivation.

The amount is not necessarily the answer you want, it’s the when which is the telling truth: exclusive brief head hunters get paid a percentage of fee up front; competitive brief recruiters get paid after the successful job seekers start date. The more they get paid the sooner in the process – and before they call you – the more likely they are to be a head hunter.

The sooner you can tell the difference between a head hunter and a recruiter, the sooner you know your job search will be more successful. There is no harm in engaging with a recruiter, and many job seekers successfully do. There are many good and great recruiters working on many different client briefs, and hence payment plans. But knowing who you are talking to and how they are briefed/paid will enable you to assess how successful your job search is likely to be fulfilled by pursuing that path – and that is the real gain here to a successful job search.

Good Luck!

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If you need an interview winning solution, sign-up for our Professional CV service

If you want to check the suitability of your existing CV, then get a FREE CV review at our sister site CV4.biz

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St David’s Day Sale!

As we are a Welsh based organisation, it seems only appropriate that we have our first day around and celebrating St Davids Day!

St David’s Day

Saint David’s Day (Welsh: Dydd Gŵyl Dewi Sant) is the feast day of Saint David, the patron saint of Wales, and falls on 1 March each year. The date of March 1st was chosen in remembrance of the death of Saint David on that day in 589, and has been celebrated by followers since then. The date was declared a national day of celebration within Wales in the 18th century.

A poll conducted for Saint David’s Day in 2006 found that 87% of the Welsh wanted it to be a bank holiday, with 65% prepared to sacrifice a different bank holiday to ensure this. A petition in 2007 to make St. David’s Day a bank holiday was rejected by the then British Prime Minister, Tony Blair.

Our first sale?

Yes, our first sale, for three reasons:

• It is Wales national day (and our motorcycle riding boss has a secret love of daffodils)
• As Tony Blair wouldn’t give us Welsh a Bank Holiday
• As the UK economy is picking up even quicker, but the chances of employment will probably fall after the 2010 UK General Election and the effects of the already announced emergency budget

The sale is on our Professional CV, with a discount voucher issued for each new joiner to our newsletter. The voucher gives a 12% reduction, and using the service means you could be enjoying your new job offer within the next four weeks.

The discount vouchers will be issued to all new Newsletter registrants from now until 12:00 on Monday, 8^th March.

So don’t delay, sign up today:

Executive Recruitment

As you probably understand, Executive Recruitment is not like the recruitment for other grades of white collar or management staff.

While in a standard recruitment process you are applying for a defined position, selling your skills against a defined job specification; in Executive Recruitment you are selling your ability to achieve a required business result.

Your success therefore in Executive Recruitment is strategically defined by two criteria:

• Your ability to either be found by or be introduced to the board
• Your mental ability to accept the difference in recruitment approach, and hence research, define and sell (yourself) as the solution to the defined business problem

Executive Search firms

Executive Search firms – also called head hunters – take a clear and defined brief they have worked for with their client. This does not lead on defining the historic person specification, but the business results that the placed candidate will need to deliver. Secondly they want someone who will fit in with team, in the defined cultural way of that company, by adding a combination of: approach, attitude, knowledge, contacts and application.

Hence, successful Executive Search means that you need to be known and found by both your network – both personal and online; and with the right message or brand for that brief. The most successful way of achieving consistency in this message – a key issue in Executive Search – is to have a defined Elevator Pitch.

Executive Search

There are three ways that you will find suitable executive jobs:

• Approached by a Head hunter
• Approached through or via your own networking
• Direct application

The first two methods are about having the right reputation and results. The third is about knowing the business solution you can bring to that researched organisation, in which you have developed a network insider.

There is a fourth is indirect application, covering:

• Responses to job boards
• Through the employers website

If you were a junior manager or worker, these last two would be appropriate. I would just be saying to you that you should make employers your first priority, recruiters your last, and ideally avoid job boards – and we could move on.

However, for Senior Executive Jobs particularly, the Human Resources team and Recruiters are devils in the same boat: they will both delay your application and make you compete against others. In others words, you become a commodity over a valuable asset.

Do you want to be a commodity? If so, please apply for jobs via job boards and direct on the companies website. There are tactics to overcome this, but you have to use them only on head hunters – and you can only ever engage with three of them during your Executive Job Search

xecutive Jobs:

The problem in Executive Recruitment is: if a company is hiring an executive, you don’t have time to learn the recruitment process, before you make enough mistakes, or one huge one, and are rejected from the Executive Recruitment process for that position.

For instance, one of the mistakes that many job seekers make in Executive Recruitment is assuming that the Executive Job Interview is like every other interview they have ever attended, but a bit longer. If you go in with that approach, you will be rejected.

Its not that you have to sell yourself, it is that you have to become an equal in the room quickly. To do this you must show you can do the job by showing that you: understand the business problem or challenges; and how they could be solved to deliver the required business solution.

Do that, and you become the owner of the Executive Chair: fail to do that, and you are just another want to be job applicant, who will be rejected.

Good Luck!

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If you need an interview winning solution, sign-up for our Professional CV service

If you want to check the suitability of your existing CV, then get a FREE CV review at our sister site CV4.biz

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Social Media Checklist

Are an Executive, wondering why head hunters don’t call?

Its probably because of your (or lack of…)

Social Media footprint!

Solve the problem TODAY with Social Media Checklist

If you are a job seeker, a skilled worker, or an executive thinking that one day a head hunter might ring your phone to offer you dream job, did you know that today your Social Media Profile counts more toward you getting that call in the first place, or even rejected from a job application?

Social Media – websites like Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn – are a modern phenomenon that is taking the online world in a new interactive and more human direction. It is enjoyable and fun to meet people from the opposite side of your street, the world or in another business community; and then play games or share and discuss matters of mutual interest.

But each Social Media interaction and registration on a new website leaves a distinct digital footprint. These build up to what HR managers and recruiters call your Google CV: simply, tap your name into Google, and see what is returned.

Now, why should this matter to the job seeker, the skilled and employed worker, or the executive?

Because according to a survey for the Wall Street Journal in 2009, 2/3rds of employers now use Social Media to either find or research new job applicants or potential new hires. Instead of paying a third party £100 to undertake pre-employment or employee background checks, it is both simpler and easier after the CV/resume sift and before the telephone interview to click and check you on Google

Further, there are now well established training courses for all recruiters to use Boolean search techniques to find what are termed passive candidates, those who have the right skills for high paying jobs hiring right now. That might be you, but if you don’t have your written professional profile in the right locations, then how can you be asked if you would like the job?

So the question is, what does your Social Media Footprint look like?

Before you go Googling your own name, there are probably a few mistakes in it at minimum, and at worst what in August 2007 the United Kingdom’s central union body the Trades Union Congress in the paper Briefing on Social Networking and Human Resources, which described Facebook as “3.5 million HR accidents waiting to happen.”

Do you want to be rejected from a job application, or miss out on a better paid job because your Facebook profile was open and had too many party pictures on it?

If you don’t, then get a copy of Social Media Checklist!

My name is Ian R McAllister, and I wear three hats:

• Employer
• Recruiter
• CV Writer

I own my own recruitment business, hence the first two hats. I have been writing CV’s since 1989, when I left University and had to reapply back into my corporate IT employer for a graduate job. I must have done a pretty good job, as of the 16 jobs I applied for, I got 15 interviews. I then ran a team of IT engineers, building it from scratch to delivering £127Million of business per annum. That meant I had to recruit people into the team. I was trained in interview technique; and had a few of my people “poached” who needed CV’s, which I wrote for them After leaving corporate life I worked in corporate finance, before being asked five years ago to come back into the world of IT via recruitment. My first year was an insight, into how brusque the whole recruitment industry was, and how many people got rejected. To find out why, I started measuring the results, and the formalisation of my in-office ability to write CV’s. Wanting to improve the whole recruitment experience for both employers and job applicants was why I started my own company.

But what concerns me most at the present through results form our own recruitment placements, and those from our Free CV Review service, is the number of great professional people who are leaving their online footprints and hence social media profiles open, allowing employers enough reason to reject them:

• The graduate who claimed that her hobbies and CV Interests included fitness and gym membership, when her Bebo profile happily admitted she hated the gym and was in fact the local pub food eating champion
• The job applicant to one of our own IT jobs who offset his experience by a year, when the company had closed own and the building demolished; or the job applicant for a heavy-trucking job who’s online handle was spliffboy, when the licensing authority insist on compulsory drug testing
• The 2008 dismissal of dismissal or 13 Virgin Atlantic employees for having brought the company into disrepute, following claims they had used Facebook to criticise safety standards and call passengers “chavs.”
• The marketing executive who had left her Social Media profile so open, after we had found her personal profile on a dating website, we had enough information to replicate her identity as a member of a police board

If you don’t want to commit these mistakes, then get a copy of Social Media Checklist now!

What I have done in Social Media Checklist is given you a step-by-step easy to follow procedure to:

1. Become aware of how recruiters and employers are now using Social Media
2. Avoid the mistakes of open Social Media profiles, and manage your online footprint
3. Exploit the maximum Social Media opportunity to be found by a potential employer via social media

This checklist should ideally be used as a point of reference before applying for jobs, and follows the ROSIE rules, centred around you:

Research -> Objectives -> Strategy -> Implementation -> Evaluation

There are then some specific briefs on the key social network profiles you should create before undertaking a job search.

I am so concerned at the number of open Social Media profiles and the mistakes within, I agreed after review with some friends to price Social Media Checklist at what is a very reasonable price of one hour of the average British workers annual salary. The highlights of the book will show you step by step:

• What your current online footprint and Social Media says about you
• How your online footprint/image can be managed positively
• How to create consistency of results, which is more important than message
• Employers do not expect nun-like perfection, with evidence of social engagement positive…… But over indulgence will always be seen as negative
• How to be found by employers and recruiters who use new methods of searching to both source and vet new employees
• What to think about first when creating an online profile
• You have the right to a private life: how to create one, which is wholly legal and approved
• Guidance on what material you need to create a positive online profile, and how to create it
• Which sites to prioritize, in a 1 thru 15 step-by-step system, detailed on the checklist. This will take you less than an hour to complete
• A set of 10 further steps which will take an additional hour and cost £20/$30 to further supplement your online profile
• How keeping on top of your online image via Social Media Monitoring is essential, and easy to maintain – automatically

If you buy Social Media Checklist, then I personally offer two guarantees to get your money back:

• A full 30day money back refund if you are not 100% satisfied with Social Media Checklist, and the information it contains. Just email or call the office, and I will happily refund your money in full

• A full 100% discount on any future service you buy from CV4.biz, to the full price of your cost of purchase of Social Media Checklist

If you have any questions, feel free to email me on info@CV4.biz, and I will happily answer any questions or provide any guidance required.

I don’t want my friends or business colleagues falling over this modern but simple door step, and it not allowing them to progress as far as they could in their careers. I hence took their advice, and priced Social Media Checklist at a point which was accessible to all, and offered a two-way optional refund.

I know you value your career, so don’t let what you do online stop it progressing, or not being found from the job you desire. Buy a copy of Social Media Checklist today!

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If you need an interview winning solution, sign-up for our Professional CV service

If you want to check the suitability of your existing CV, then get a FREE CV review from our sister site, CV4.biz

===================================================================

Executive Recruitment: Push pull marketing

Charles asks: How would you effectively apply “pull marketing techniques” to a job search?

In answer:
Personally pull marketing in Executive Recruitment gets into the realms of personal branding, to which Dan Schawbel is one of the leading writers. But, for most Executive Jobs seekers, I think personal branding is probably a step too far – you are not exactly a Hersey bar or a Clairol product!

Secondly, if you were that good at pull marketing, then you probably wouldn’t be unemployed? Or perhaps you are unemployed, as employers perceive you are too expensive to hire, and that’s why you are unemployed.

Personally I think therefore, for all modern job seekers, you must fully engage that:

1. The modern jobs market is both a push and a pull jobs market, and to achieve that successfully….
2. You need to understand how employers and recruiters find skill sets

Executive Recruitment: Push marketing

Putting aside the “how to” debate for a moment, accept that from job search statistics:

• 1/3 of all jobs are never advertised, but filled by internal promotion
• 1/3 are filled by known candidates – either other internal candidates, external suppliers or customers, previously rejected applicants, or most significantly employees making recommendations (ie – networking)
• Only the final 1/3 of jobs are externally advertised in some form, either directly or via recruiters.

Hence, if you could leverage pull marketing, the number of jobs available could rise by 100% above the “having seen an advert in” job application scenario. Actually, it could rise further than that if you can spot and create a need at a company that doesn’t know it needs to hire someone, but that’s another subject and best left to senior executives, directors and creative marketers

Coming back to the “how to,” I don’t think the greatest change in the internet based jobs market is the jobs board. In fact, pre this recession, jobs board usage was going down not upwards. The greatest change is in how search engines like Google and networking sites like LinkedIn allow recruiters and employers to find great candidates. Simply, by using simple networking like going to the industry conventions for the industry we are recruiting for, or going to the places on the internet where industry discussions take place (LinkedIn yes, but Facebook is pretty good for that, if you can cut through the teenage applications – five times more people means more opportunity).

Executive Recruitment: executive search
However, one of the new internet techniques that recruiters and employers are using is based on creating a boolean search string to find candidates profiles at various online social networking points. You simply create a search string that takes the top five criteria the ideal candidate would have (eg: aircraft designer; Minneapolis; qualifications; ex or current employer), and Google coughs up a short list of candidates. As all of the people thanks to the power and cash of a social networks marketing have filled out school and employer histories in their networking profiles, employers now have their contact details. Yes, not everyone is online at present, but if you are job seeking I can see no excuse these days not to be.

Executive Recruitment: Pull marketing

How does the job seeker exploit these new ways that recruiters and employers are finding candidates? Simply, reverse the process; and secondly, keep the message consistent across all mediums: doubt = unemployment.

For internet strategies, get social networking profiles up and complete on all the major social networks in both general business (ie – including LinkedIn and Facebook), as well as bespoke and specific industry related networks. If you understand how recruiters find candidates on social networks, you can hence see why keywords become a higher priority employment issue. I think if you have been unemployed for longer than 3months, then one of the points of evidence that you tried and learnt a few things is to develop a blog, which comments both on how you have applied your experience in your industry area, as well as comments about developments in the industry. You can add as well a download of your CV/resume, and copies of relevant speeches and talks. There are many platforms where a free and professional blog can be developed, so no excuse on costs. I wouldn’t put a blog up there as the be all and end of of job searching, but I would say that it is a developing net by which to entice potential employers by, and by which they can find out more about you once they engage.

Executive Recruitment: Networking

However, in closing the one issue of pull marketing that still amazes me that most job seekers don’t employ is the oldest in the book: networking. Let your network know that you are job seeking, and what ideally it is you are looking for. Networking also allows you to avoid the unseen and untalked about depression risk which many job seekers face, by keeping you involved in the community and outside your front door.

Pull marketing: because modern internet job seeking is not just about creating a CV, and apply for jobs in newspapers any more! If you are not using it – or are and have an inconsistent message or profile – you are losing out on at least half the jobs that could be available to you.

Good Luck!

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If you need an interview winning solution, sign-up for our Professional CV service

If you want to check the suitability of your existing CV, then get a FREE CV review on our sister website, CV4.biz

===================================================================

Executive Jobs: where do you look?

Alison, a performance consultant, asks: Where do you look for your next position? I have been brainstorming a Mind Map of all the places I look when I’m looking for my next position. It made me wonder: Am I looking in all the right places? I know what I know, but I am curious about what you do to look for your next position. What do you do? Where do you look? What has given you the best results?

In answer:
In order of preference and ease:

1. They find you
2. Your network finds you for them
3. Your network finds them for you
4. You tell them directly you like them, and what value you will bring
5. You respond to an advert

Most people don’t plan their careers or know how to make themselves found/brand themselves, and hence still rely heavily on option 5. Is it hence any wonder then when the a turn occurs, that they apply for 100 jobs and get one or two interviews?

The simple answer is, top line executives plan and position on options towards the top of the tree, employees more towards the bottom. Better career management means better pay, because you are seen as more of a desired – and hence valuable – person/asset; towards the bottom you are resource, and can be paid as such.

Hope this helps – and if you do publish the results, please let me have a copy: Thank You!

Good Luck!

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If you need an interview winning solution, sign-up for our Professional CV service

If you want to check the suitability of your existing CV, then get a FREE CV review on our sister website, CV4.biz

===================================================================

Managing Director Job

At some point in every Executive Career, many wish to place on their Executive CV a Managing Director Job. Above all other Senior Executive Jobs, the Job of the Managing Director is to form and lead a team of Senior Executives in defining a delivering the required business strategy.

Therefore, when undertaking an Executive Job Search to find a Managing Director Job, what are the key skills that Executive Headhunters seek, and how can you ensure a successful result?

The Managing Director Job

The Managing Director Job is about consistent delivery of a business result through the realisation of a vision, through creating and managing a team of senior executives. While in a PLC company the Managing Director is mainly internally focused and only required to comment publicly when quarterly results are due, the role extends to cover shareholder liaison and communication in most limited companies.

The basic skills therefore of any person that an Executive Headhunter putting forward, or company board would consider approaching, must include director basics of knowledge of finance and people, plus some knowledge or interest in the industry. But the key differential issues in finding a good Managing Director is about two key issues:

• People selection, development and relationships
• Management style and consistency of delivery

Managing Director Style

When an Executive Headhunter takes a brief from a company board to find a new Managing Director, the brief will cover the basics outlined above. However, the successful headhunter knows that the key in gaining his fee is in the people match. Therefore they will seek to make a people match between the existing board, the desired business results, and the change management style of a suitable Managing Director Job candidate.

Hence, when seeking a Managing Director Job, focus your Executive CV as much on your style as a director in how you saw a situation, built a team and delivered a result, as confirming the basics. Most people can achieve the basics, but in placing someone into a Managing Director Job, the key decision point will be in terms of people fit and your style of delivery/engagement.

Executive Recruitment

There are three ways that you will be engaged in Executive Recruitment:

• Approached by a Headhunter
• Approached through or via your own networking
• Direct application

The first two methods are about having the right reputation and results. The third is about knowing the business solution you can bring to that researched organisation, in which you have developed a network insider.

There is a fourth method of indirect application, covering:

• Responses to job boards
• Through the employers website

Only in public service and charity commission positions, where advertising widely to confirm with European Union legislation, will you find credible Managing Director Jobs advertised. Anything else which appears on a job board claiming to be a Managing Director Job won’t be!

Personal Profile

Many directors ask where the ideal Managing Director Job is listed, to which the simple answer is: it is not! Still often good Managing Directors are found within one’s own personal network, so hence both company boards and Executive Headhunters will follow trails of recommendation to good candidates. This means that your personal profile extends on a human scale into either:

• Their network
• Your advocates or friends
• The headhunters existing network

Most and more appointments these days are made through finding ideal Managing Director Candidates online, through technics such as social networking or Boolean searching. This may seem more complex or technical, but from the Executive headhunters view point trying to bill he fee quicker, these are easily learnt and allow more time to focus n getting the right person and people match.

In all searches for a Managing Director Job, whether via networking or engaged online, the right personal profile is essential, best distilled and consistently communicated via a developed Elevator Pitch.

Executive Jobs

The problem in Managing Director Job recruitment is: if a company is hiring a Managing Director, you don’t have time to learn the recruitment process, before you make enough mistakes, or one huge one, and are rejected from the Executive Sales Recruitment process for that position.

For instance, one of the mistakes that many directors make is assuming that the Executive Job Interview is like every other interview they have ever attended, but a bit longer. If you go in with that approach, you will be rejected.

Its not that you have to sell yourself, it is that you have to become an equal in the room quickly. To do this you must show you can do the job by showing that you: understand the business problem or challenges; and how they could be solved to deliver the required business solution.

Do that, and you become the owner of the Executive Chair: fail to do that, and you are just another want to be job applicant, who will be rejected

Good Luck!

===================================================================

If you require an Executive employment solution, our MBA coached Executive CV service is personalised around you

If you want to check the suitability of your existing CV, then get a Professional CV review at our sister site CV4.biz

===================================================================

Executive Selection

Modern Executive Selection is about two key strategic issues:

• Having a consistent personal profile
• Being found through both personal and online social networking

As a result, a successful Executive Search results in a new executive position. But breaking either of these rules could result in both no new positions, or elongated periods between senior executive jobs

Executive Headhunters

When a company requires a new senior executive, they most often undertake the resultant Executive Job Search by briefing an Executive Search firm, also known as Executive Headhunters.

Does this executive briefing start with a person specification? No, its starts with a business briefing, the required business outcome that the company board seeks, and hence the broad-brush strategy and personal approach or cultural change that the board believe is key to delivering the business outcome.

This is a key difference in the Executive Job Search and resultant Executive Selection  over many other job searches: it’s the business result that the client brief leads on, over your “fit” to an existing job specification.

Secondly, headhunters and Executive search firms are engaged, because most often the best person most qualified to deliver the required business result is presently engaged in another firm (possibly rival) achieving that exact outcome

Personal brand?

There is much talk presently about personal brand in the world of employment, but I still come back personally to the thought that not many of us want to be compared to a bar of chocolate or a bottle of shampoo.

The use of the term personal brand is used because it conveys quickly one key issue: communication of assured delivery. A brand according to the dictionary is an identifying mark, and hence your personal brand communicates what you do/deliver. The second issue here is communication, and in personal branding it is in this area that more focus should be applied over defining the what of who you are.

The reason more focus should be applied on communication over the what of who you are and do/deliver is simply that consistency of reputation in personal branding is more important than the message itself. Secondly, the more defined the message, the more niche headhunters will see you as, the fewer opportunities they will select you for.

Business Solution

For most job seekers, you are required to fit a defined job specification: there is a hole in the companies capacity, there is a defined requirement for that person to fulfil, this is defined by an appropriate job specification. Hence the job advert is a 200 word regurgitation of the four page plus job specification. The job seeker hence simply has to tick the boxes to get a past the rejection pile and receive a telephone interview.

In Executive Selection, the initial requirements are often more broad brush, and as key if not more so are your personal approach and how you see the required business problem solution.

Hence, any personal profile needs to address these key issues. Your career history will define you are a sector specialist in a specific sector, or a business leader in a type of situation: expansion, turn around, merger, etc. The question then to answer is how did you achieve these results: through building teams, through driving through on a customer focus, through disposing of non-core assets?

Executive Selection Profile

Having defined your personal profile, the next step is its communication.

In previous times, the scope of finding a suitable executive to fulfil and executive position was defined by:

• The boards network
• Your personal and professional network advocates
• The headhunters network

Now techniques involving online search and executive selection, including Boolean search, allow the number and scope of executive candidates to be increased by three to five fold, although still the headhunter will look to place three candidates at maximum in front of their client. Hence, when your competition has increased in executive selection, it is even more essential to have a consistent personal profile, which is found in the right places.

This means it is essential to:

• Have profiles at core professional sites: LinkedIn, Doostang
• Have a profile at core market professional sites: eg, accounting, pharmaceuticals
• To at most have a controlled profile at social site Facebook

In previous non-executive job searches, you may have actively communicated your need for employment through your personal network. If you do this incorrectly, and start actively push marketing yourself, then your chances of employment recede: companies want good executives, and pushing makes you look like a desperate job seeker. So in any executive job search, stick to communication your results, approach and potential availability, and not in advertising your employment desperation.

Executive Job

The primary reason a headhunter will contact you in an Executive Selection is simply summarised by one statement: how you achieved your business results.

Coming back to how companies seek and brief executive headhunters, they start with the required business results. The second stage of the headhunter brief goes into define cultural change and method of achievement, be that associated with market development, systems implementation or through people.

Hence, the  easiest executive job search is when a head hunter finds your reputation, results and approach matches their client brief. This means your reputation, results and approach have high commonality with their client brief.

Good Luck!

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