Exectuive-i Blog - Designed for the executive

The Office for National Statistics released it’s monthly jobs figures last week and unemployment is down again with the number of vacancies for the three months to July 2010, up 9,000 over the quarter.

Private sector recruitment has been the main driver with vacancies increasing by the highest rate since 2007.

These figures are allied with our own findings, with vacancies on executive-i.com at the highest level since February 2008. In fact it’s been the busiest Summer for over 3 years and August alone has been one of the busiest months this year, second only to July.

This sharp increase in confidence is isolated to the private sector, backing up the latest quarterly findings by KPMG, with public sector jobs expected to decrease further still.

However this rise is expected to be short lived so you’ll have to take advantage sooner rather than later, the report from KPMG expects this rate to slow with more redundancies expected across public and private sectors.

This accentuates the need to keep active in the market this August – as a jobseeker you need to make sure you take advantage of the lower candidate levels and the pleasantly surprising number of jobs available over the traditionally slow summer period.

Use this quiet period to build your network and spend some time making sure your current network are completely familiar with your skills and experience; add as much personality as possible by making a call or suggesting a coffee – in this market a large percentage of hires are made through networking.

Have a productive week…

As news spreads that public sector redundancies are set to continue apace, there is an even greater need to set yourself aside from the competition and make sure you deliver a clear, concise and hard hitting message to your audience.

Our team consults on 100s of CVs every month and, of those, at least 50% are guilty of overcrowding their key experience with diatribe and touchy-feely jargon that is non-descipt.  Deja vu sets in and my eyes glaze over as I continually read how executives are “results orientated”, “team players”, “man motivators” etc etc etc..

Cut this out. I am passionate about this as you can probably tell, as it’s one of the most common mistakes I come across. Your audience wants to hear about what you have done, how you did it comes later.

Give them salient tangibles relevant to the job you are pitching for.

And in keeping with this week’s topic, I’m going to keep this week’s blog short and sweet.

Next week, I plan to cover CV Writing services… I would appreciate some comments on your experiences, good and bad.

Have a productive week…

I stumbled across a discussion forum this week which posed the question of whether candidates cared who represented them, their working practices, understanding of their market and ethics etc…

I was quite surprised by some of the executives responses. One in particular commented in a matter of fact manner “I don’t care who they are if they can help me land a job.”

Now at first glance I can understand his point, the ultimate aim is to get a job however this approach is most likely counter productive to long term career goals and job satisfaction.

Selecting executive recruitment consultants is an extremely important aspect of your job search. To point out the obvious, representatives represent you and whilst HR executives from the hiring companies understand that you can’t control how recruitment consultants act, it could still prejudice your application. Their quality can reflect your quality.

Your CV is a valuable asset and market perception is extremely important – it’s important to control how your CV goes to market to a certain extent.

In any case, the fundamental point that this executive missed was that the most appropriate representatives in terms of market knowledge, professionalism and contacts will have the most chances of success of landing you that job.

A good place to start would be to take a look at our Executive Search Network which only consists of reputable, pre-screened recruiters relevant to your market.

This summer period presents a great opportunity to build your network with strong quality contacts, whilst candidate traffic is lower recruiters will have more time on their hands to take your call and try (if possible) to meet up with recruiters to add personality and gravitas to your introduction.

I hope you have a productive week…