Excerpted from the Introduction to Headhunters Revealed!: The purpose of this book is to empower working professionals to reap every bit of potential career support from the executive search profession -- and to protect and enhance your self-esteem in the process. Securing your right livelihood is an intimate activity of paramount importance, and it is easy to take everything personally. However, getting the most out of a headhunter means knowing how to manage that relationship professionally. Most of today's professionals have interfaced with a headhunter: some have contacted a recruiter for assistance, some have been recruited, and some have been "placed" -- more than once! But there's little awareness of how to milk this free service for all it's worth-not just for a quick job, but for lifetime career management. Professionals don't know exactly what headhunters do, why they do it, or how the search industry can best help them. Yet such understanding can impact success with recruiters -- and, therefore, a successful career.
Here's an insider's perspective of the business of placing you in business. I hold nothing back -- no trade secrets, no hidden agendas. My purpose is to give it to you straight in order to foster more open, sound partnerships between career-changing professionals and those in the recruiting business. The idea is this: when you know how headhunters operate, it will not only make sense, but you'll join them at the controls -- for your own best interests.
Happy Hunting!
Darrell W. Gurney, CPC
From the Inside Flap
Here's how to be "placed"-in the driver's seat of your career! It's a job-search jungle out there, but when used wisely, Executive Recruiters (Headhunters) can carve an amazing, lucrative path for rising professionals. This book is your machete and friendly guide!
Written by an industry native, this light, witty trail map deftly steers you through the underbrush with insider tips to help bag the best booster for your career. Cutting away myths and misconceptions of the recruiting world, it reveals everything about the mind and mechanics of search professionals -- things they do and don't want you to know!
Whether in transition for a better position or simply interested in getting top-value return from your life's work, this book is for you.
You will discover how to:
·Reap the enormous benefits of being a hunted head
·Stay cool in the wrong job until the right one shows up
·Assess and interview headhunters to find the best ones for you
·Manage your career like an entrepreneur -- for all it's worth
·Establish "career partnerships" for lifetime payoffs
·Command the most from your "employable assets"
·Position yourself strategically in a recruiter's database
Tips to catapult your career into high gear. Why wait?
About the Author
Darrell W. Gurney, CPC (Certified Personnel Consultant), has been a professional recruiter for over 14 years. He has coached and supported thousands of job-seeking professionals at all levels through profitable career transitions. In addition to running his own firm, he writes articles for trade publications and speaks regularly at national industry events. Affiliated with over 600 executive recruiters worldwide, Darrell has won awards and praise from colleagues, clients, and candidates alike. A Summa Cum Laude graduate of the University of Texas with degrees in Finance and International Business, Darrell spent his early career with Arthur Young (Ernst & Young) and MGM/United Artists Pictures. Through these initial experiences, he developed an understanding of the corporate structure and what it takes to get ahead. Based in Los Angeles, his search firm places professionals nationwide.
Microsoft, America Online, Hunt-Wesson, and American Express have all utilized Darrell's professional services.
A staunch advocate of what he calls "career partnership," Darrell promotes a lifetime of teamwork between job seekers and their recruiters. Through his online advice column, The Career Secrets Newsletter, media interviews, public speaking and other venues, Darrell's purpose is to empower individuals to reap the most from their life's work.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Excerpt from Chapter 11: "Own Your Own Business" No, this section is not in the wrong book. Do you think, because you are "employed" by a company that hands out paychecks, the concept of owning your own business does not apply to you? Think again. Think hard. Think beyond what you've thought before.
"BUSINESS." What does it mean? Well, let's simply break it down: busy-ness the act of being busy. Do you stay busy? Do you engage in activities all day long in your workplace which keep you busy? O.K., then there is your busy-ness. We each have our own busy-ness. The question is, how much do you own your own business?
Ownership is an interesting concept. It puts you in charge. Rather than being dependent upon something or someone greater than you, ownership puts full responsibility for what you produce squarely in your lap. Along with that responsibility, however, comes the opportunity for great reward. Consider all the entrepreneurs out there creating their own companies. It's the old tradeoff of risk and return: the more we take responsibility for our own success and assume the onus of producing results, the greater, more satisfying the potential rewards.
We all won't become another Bill Gates or Warren Buffet, and "owning your own business" does not even mean starting a company. (If everyone started a firm, there would be nobody to work for anyone else then I'd be out of a job!). You bought a book about using headhunters wisely because you work for someone else, right? Nothing wrong with working for someone else. But I am asking you to consider that you already have your own company: [YOUR NAME], Inc. After all, Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary defines "incorporated" as "united in one body." I am asking you to adopt the mindset that you are self-employed. I am suggesting that, to the degree that you, as an employee, own your own busy-ness, you will reap greater rewards, because staying busy doing anything for anyone without always fully knowing your value and options is not good business.
Don't be easy pickings own your own business. What do I mean by that? Just this: you have certain assets, right? As a professional employee, much less as a human being? Those assets could be your award-winning sales ability, your keen and persuasive public-relations skills, your ability to multi-task the elements of a busy desk, your fluency with programming code in the most difficult of computer languages, your knack for hiring the right person for the right job, your unique and motivating management style, your sense of numbers which has all the pieces of the financial puzzle come together, your engineering acumen in the face of the most challenging circumstances I could go on, and I've only touched on professional abilities here not to mention innate, personal strengths which single you out as a unique, special person.
So let's accept that you have certain "assets." Well, what does a business do with its assets? It deploys them in such a way as to maximize their profitability, right? The success of an enterprise depends most on its ability to utilize its assets, to "employ" them, to invest them wisely to reap the highest return. In the world of finance, it's called Return on Investment (ROI). The higher the ROI for a particular group of assets, the more successful the business enhancing the owner's equity and causing happier owners, stockholders, etc.
You, a self-employed business owner, invest your assets in the employment "market." Whether you invest them here or there makes all the difference in the ROI you will receive. You might consider your own business's ROI as Return on Effort (ROE) or Return on Ability (ROA). Your owner's equity, or "career equity," will be impacted by your choice among investment opportunities. The degree to which you own your own business and, therefore, focus on managing your assets most effectively, is the degree to which you will get the most career satisfaction and profit. So, the question becomes:
Where are you going to put your ass(ets)?
When used responsibly, recruiters can be viewed as brokers investment advisors showing you the myriad career investment opportunities available. You put your paycheck, your money, in the bank so it can be managed by someone else, enabling you to deal with other things, right? Maybe you send it to your stockbroker so she can put it in the market to net you the highest return. Whatever you do with it, you place it in someone else's hands so you can focus on what you do best. There is nothing different about using a good headhunter to help you invest your employable assets.
