In 2020, recruiting is far more pro-active than ever before. You may have heard stories of hard-working employees at your company who suddenly receive a call from a recruiter and then disappear a couple of weeks later—off to new, better opportunities.
The fact is if you aren’t getting calls and emails from recruiters in 2020, then something’s wrong.
According to the American Staffing Association, there are around 3 million Americans who work for staffing agencies and each year they hire over 17 million fellow citizens to work new positions. Considering most recruiters will contact ten or more candidates for each position they hire on average, you should be getting some calls, emails, or at very least some LinkedIn messages.
Shutterstock Licensed Photo – By VectorMine
Of course, from a weak online presence to poor references there are a number of reasons why recruiters may be passing over your resume or profile. Here are just a few you should be considering.
Your Resume Isn’t Up To Par
These days you don’t have to submit a resume for recruiters to see it. Your resume should be on LinkedIn. That means it needs to be up to par if you want recruiters to contact you.
The number of resumes that recruiters get that are full of spelling mistakes and typos is far too high. Don’t be one of these people. You should go over your resume with a fine-toothed comb before submitting it to a recruiter or putting it online.
Also Read
Your resume should draw attention to your skills, promotions, and achievements and be as concise and readable as possible. If it isn’t all of these things and more, there are so many qualified candidates out there these days that you surely won’t be contacted by recruiters.
You Are Invisible Online
If you haven’t made a LinkedIn, you are way behind in 2020. Having a quality online presence is invaluable if you want recruiters to reach out to you. Personally, I never liked social media of any kind, so I avoided creating a LinkedIn.
It wasn’t until I started my Master’s program that I finally decided to take the plunge. Wow do I regret not doing it earlier! After uploading my resume and completing my profile I had interview offers within the week, that’s after months of searching with no results.
These days it’s not good enough to just have a LinkedIn profile either, you also need to be active on the application. That means posting more content, and liking or commenting on connections posts. The higher the quality of your online presence, the more recruiters will contact you.
Your Social Media Presence Is Ruining Your Chances
While having a stellar, unique LinkedIn profile can lead to constant calls from recruiters, social media can also be what’s preventing recruiters from reaching out to you.
This is particularly true for executives. No executive recruiter is going to be ok with an unprofessional online presence. This means your Instagram, Facebook, etc. all need to be in order, or kept private.
The last thing a recruiter wants is to recommend a candidate who has pictures of them smoking weed, getting drunk or partying all over their social media profiles.
Keyword Issues
These days recruiters utilize keyword searches to find appropriate candidates for job openings. Instead of just looking at submitted resumes, recruiters are far more pro-active in utilizing keywords to go after candidates they feel are the perfect fit. Poaching qualified candidates from other organizations using this method is now commonplace.
That means your LinkedIn profile can’t be general, it needs to have specific keywords that recruiters are looking for. For example, if you are a programmer you need to include the programming language you use, and any specific skill sets you have that can be valuable to your new employer.
Your References Aren’t Saying What You Think They Are
Finally, many times we take for granted that our references are saying great things about us. Unfortunately, that’s not always the case. Recruiters often call references only to receive subpar recommendations or have their reference shoot down the candidate altogether.
Recruiters rely on references now more than ever because of the ability of candidates to fake resumes and LinkedIn profiles. Every HR manager has heard horror stories of what can go wrong if they don’t check references. That means your references will surely be checked, so you need to be sure they are saying what you think they are.
Take this recruiter horror story from an HR manager of a large east-coast marketing firm (which will remain unnamed) as an example. The manager decided to hire a candidate based solely on his resume and interview when he was coming up as a recruiter, then after three months on the job, the new hire’s co-workers began to complain about his lagging performance. The HR manager decided they better do a reference check post-hire to make sure everything was kosher, only to find out the candidate had lied on their resume about multiple jobs and they were fired from their last position.
Recruiters live in constant fear of an expensive error like this, so don’t take your references for granted, make sure they are giving you a quality review. If they aren’t, get new references!
When all is said and done, if you aren’t being contacted by recruiters in 2020, then you have work to do. From improving your resume and your online presence to making sure your references are in order, there is a lot you can do to get recruiters to make the first move. Don’t wait, your new career could be just a phone call or email away!
