by Ian Heller

Created on: June 03, 2008   Last Updated: December 21, 2010

If you have grade A skills and are dealing with the most serious employers in your field, then you need to ask yourself whether you will conduct your entire job search yourself or whether you will turn the entire search over to an employment recruiter. If you are not in the top 1% then do not waste your time with recruiters at all.

HOW TO USE A RECRUITER

If you do choose to use a recruiter, you and your recruiter do not want to accidentally step on each others toes. You may both approach a good employer at nearly the same moment in time. The employer wants to hire you but is unsure whether he would then be on the hook for the recruiter's commission. So he is plays it safe and hires someone else. I have lost jobs because of this. It was only happenstance that a kind, young recruiter explained to me how it was possible that a well-qualified guy like me was so incapable of getting a job at a time when my local economy was in need of labor.

SELF-ASSESSMENT

Of course, this requires excellent powers of self-assessment. And a willingness to listen and learn from the experiences of others. This is where most job hunters strike out.

I cannot tell you how many times I have told people what is going on and they tell me they will be different or that I am the one that does not know what I am talking about. There are only two ways to learn. From the experiences of others or by making mistakes and picking yourself up from the pavement. Most wind up picking themselves up. Unfortunately, under these circumstances, when you screw up you do not get job interviews or the job itself and you never know why. And then there is the self-assessment.

I know someone who worked well with a recruiter. He had an undergraduate degree from Dartmouth and an MBA from Harvard. He needed to relocate from New York City to Boston. Needless to say, he was satisfied with the results he got. Do you have these degrees? If not, your experiences will not be nearly as positive. The best recruiters work with the candidates that generate the largest commissions. You will get farthest in life if you understand your strengths and weaknesses and do not live in glib denial about how the world works. It's not fair, it's not right, but Harvard graduates eat first even if most of the undergraduate teachers at Harvard are lowly 23-year-old graduate students.

Intelligence is a behavior. If you feel you will get something by being smart, you will act smart. If you feel you will get something by being dumb, you will

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