With the Internet changing the way we search for jobs – and the way recruiters and hiring manager search for potential employees – comes the ability to search for a new job using some of the existing technologies you’re already using.

Twitter is a great example of a technology that can be used to find a new job and at a minimum to network and meet people (virtually meet them anyways) who might be able to positively influence your job search and ultimately your career.

I recently read a newspaper article that gave examples of people who had found new jobs using Twitter. In one case, the person had followed a Twitter feed that advertised local jobs and saw a tweet that referenced a job that interested him. He applied for it and got the job.

In another instance, it was a case of someone who had been followed by another person on Twitter who ended up interviewing them for a job after following them for awhile, learning about them, and being impressed enough by what they saw to ask if they’d be interested to interview for a new job.

It goes to show you that technology like this can be used for your advantage in a career setting. It also goes to show you the importance of keeping your profile – in this case your tweets – professional.

As an aside, I also know of recruiters who in some cases either use LinkedIn exclusively or almost exclusively to search for job candidates to fill their jobs which is another great way to get noticed online by people you don’t currently know. The same might be said for actual hiring managers who use LinkedIn to find staff for their company.

In staffing terms, recruitment refers to the process of looking for new staff.

A recruitment agency is a company that specializes in recruitment. They employ recruiters to find client companies who are willing to pay the recruitment firm to find their staff for them.

A recruiter is someone who recruits people to join their company or someone else’s company.

Typically a recruiter gets paid by the hiring company to help them find new staff and recruits people like yourself using various means.

One of the benefits of working with a recruiter – specifically a good recruiter – is that they often have access to information that can benefit you if you are being considered for a job that they are trying to fill.

A good recruiter has an intimate knowledge of their clients and what they want. They can shed light on specific aspects of a particular job that can help you get the job.

This is information that you wouldn’t otherwise know about if you had have applied for the job on your own or through other means.

As a recruiter I can tell you that this additional flow of information can be worth its weight in gold to you.

Taking a step backwards, being recruitable refers to your ability to catch the interest of recruiters and more importantly and by extension, hiring managers.

Being desirable in the eyes of recruiters and hiring managers can affect your ability to get the job you want whether you choose to use recruiters or not.

With the rise of the Internet, it’s become easier in many regards to “find” people. These days you can Google your own name to see what pops up. Last month I was trying to find a friend of my dad’s who we’d lost track of. I couldn’t find him so I searched for his kids and found his daughter’s contact information on her employer’s website!

Clearly, the increasing popularity of Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and the like have also made it easier to find people. Posting your resume on multiple job boards, posting articles or comments on Internet websites can further increase your online profile.

Increasing your online profile can make it easier for people (ie. recruiters, hiring managers) to find you…mind you depending on what you’re saying and how you are presenting yourself online, that can both help or hurt you.

Ethics in the field of hiring, staffing and recruitment is based on a combination of things and depends on who is actually involved in the hiring process.

Certainly the job searcher, hiring manager and recruiter are just three possible people involved in a hiring decision.

As a recruiter, I try my best to gauge the truthfulness of comments by both job searchers and hiring managers and they presumably are gauging my truthfulness as well.

Commonly, job searchers often lie about various aspects of their resume ie. their salary, why they left their last job, their job responsibilities, their educational achievements, etc.

Hiring managers might lie about why they are looking to hire a new person ie. they might lie about why the previous person left the job they are trying to fill (if the last person who held the job was fired for something embarrassing like having an office affair or something like that, do you think the hiring manager will tell you the truth about why the person was fired? Me neither). Similarly a hiring manager probably won’t tell you that the previous person quit the job because they were bored or because they thought their manager was a jerk either.

A recruiter needs to find the truth and often needs to read between the lines of comments that are made to them by either the job searcher or the hiring manger.

Similarly some recruiters aren’t always capable of telling the truth 100% of the time either. Recruiters often have a reputation not much better than a used car salesman – no offense to used car salesmen – and sometimes it’s not difficult to see why.

Whether you’re a job searcher looking for a job, a hiring manager looking to fill a job, or a recruiter looking for a job searcher to fill a job, the truth tends to come out one way or the other.

As a recruiter, I have a hard time working with people I can’t trust and I’m usually a pretty good judge of character. I tell the truth when working with job searchers and hiring managers alike and I expect them to do the same.

There are plenty of honest job searchers, hiring managers and recruiters out there and life is just too short to waste time with people who aren’t trustworthy.

As a recruiter, I can tell you that what I’m about to mention can not only help you get more and better job opportunities to consider, but can also of course lead to more job offers to consider.

Here are some traits that I love seeing in job searchers that I’m dealing with:

They have a great personality: Granted, not everyone is chatty and not everyone has the same personality but I love dealing with people who are happy to speak with me and show enthusiasm. I’m always worried when I speak with people who are monotone and sound uninterested when speaking with me because chances are they’ll act the same way in an interview and that’s not good.

They value my time: And as a result I value theirs, too. I hate when I’ve helped someone find a suitable job opportunity with a client, they apply for it, I help them prepare for interviews and then they go into the interview and do something stupid like show up late or arrive unprepared. Then when I tell them they aren’t getting invited back for a second interview or aren’t getting a job offer, their reaction isn’t one of disappointment and they don’t apologize for being late or not being prepared but instead basically say “well, go find me another job to apply for” as if I’m going to drop what I’m doing and go through this time-wasting process with them again.

They answer the questions without me having to ask: I love when I get an email from a person looking for a job and in the email they tell me why they want to leave their current position, the money they’re looking for, the locations they’ll consider working in and the type(s) of position they want. I like dealing with organized people who know what they want and tell me up front what they want.

They know what companies they’ve already applied to: I hate running a job past someone and being told by the person that they’ve never applied to the company before but within minutes of emailing the person’s resume over to the hiring manager, having the hiring manager tell me that they got this person’s resume the previous week from another recruiter or that the person applied directly themselves. Some job searchers are very unorganized and some are just bad liars. Upon being told that a company already has their resume, the bad liars usually (unconvincingly) tell me that they can’t remember applying to the company or they admit that they did apply but because they didn’t hear back from the company, they figured it would be ok if I sent their resume over, too.

They only enquire about jobs they are qualified for: Too many people apply for jobs that they aren’t qualified for. You can quickly eliminate yourself from a recruiter’s good books by constantly calling and/or emailing them regarding jobs that you aren’t qualified for. The good job candidates are ones who recognize that they aren’t qualified for a job – sometimes I need them to tell me if they have enough of certain skills to apply for a particular job – and the best job candidates are ones who recognize that they aren’t qualified for a job…and then they refer me to someone who is. Which leads us to the last point…

If I help them, they help me: The recruitment business is about relationships and meeting new people and there is nothing better you can do for a good recruiter than help them when they’ve helped you. Referring a good recruiter to friends and other people you know – whether they’re currently searching for a new job or not, whether they’re currently hiring staff or not – is the best thing you can do for a recruiter. Anytime you can give a recruiter a few names of people you know is a good thing. When I help someone find a job and ask them for a few referrals, when they tell me they’ll give me a few and never do, that leaves a bad taste in my mouth. When I help someone, I like when they at least try to return the favor.

The first placement I made as a recruiter – the first time I successfully helped a person find a job with one of our clients – was for a Director-level position with a major bank that was in the process of setting up their IT security division.

The best part was that the job didn’t even officially exist.

When I started speaking with the candidate about the job… well, I couldn’t really talk about the job because “the job” didn’t exist. It hadn’t actually been created. All we knew was that the person I was speaking with would be someone who the bank would be interested to meet.

Basically what happened was that one of my colleagues had just started working with a hiring manager who was responsible for building a new security division for the bank he was employed by. Back in 2000 when this story took place, IT security professionals who held a certification called the Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP) were in high demand and limited supply.

I had been referred to a guy who not only held his CISSP and was an experienced IT security professional but was starting to think about looking for a new job but wanted a senior level position that would be a good move for him and for his family.

While it took a bit of convincing that he should go over to the bank and meet with the hiring manager for a job that didn’t actually exist, he agreed to do so and the initial meeting went well.

For the second and subsequent interviews, it was agreed between the hiring manager and my candidate that the two would put a job together that met the company’s requirements and that also met my candidate’s requirements and thus, a position was created that he accepted. He started with the company about 5 weeks after the first time I’d spoken with him regarding the opportunity with the bank.

Another example I can think of – this can happen quite frequently actually – was when I sent a candidate out to interview for a job with one of my clients but where both the client and candidate ended up agreeing that the job was not a good match. Instead, the company created a new position for this person that would make use of some of the skills he had that other candidates they’d interviewed did not have.

In the first case, my candidate was hesitant to go interview for a job that didn’t exist and where no job description existed. In the second case, my candidate understood ahead of time that he didn’t have all the skills the client was looking for but was still willing on my suggestion to interview for the job and ended up getting a job more suited to his abilities.

What does this mean to you?

While you want to apply for jobs that fit your profile and interests, don’t be so quick to turn down the opportunity to interview for a job that on the surface may not be exactly what you are looking for. It might not lead to something else but in the two cases I mentioned above, it certainly did.

If you have been working with a recruiter(s) and suddenly find yourself not getting your calls or emails returned, you might be wondering if you’ve been blacklisted by them.

The truth is that some recruiters – like other people in your life I’m sure – are good at returning calls and emails and others aren’t. Many recruiters will only contact you when they have a job to discuss with you. Remember that recruiters get paid by the hiring company not by the candidate so if they have no job to discuss with you, they have no financial reason to speak with you. That’s the cold reality of the recruitment business.

Certainly it makes sense to keep in touch with recruiters and as a recruiter I feel that it’s good to keep in touch with good candidates – with emphasis on the word good. I’m referring to job searchers that the recruiter can place in a job with one of their clients – to see what they’re up to from time to time whether or not I have to job to discuss with them.

Not all recruiters feel this way though. Many will just call you or give you some time when they have a job for you and that’s it.

There are however some reasons why you may have essentially been blacklisted by one or more recruiters and here are some of the popular ones:

1. You’ve interviewed for one or more jobs with their clients and haven’t gotten a job offer from them. In other words, you probably did something during the interview that you aren’t aware of or you simply did poorly in the interview(s) and the recruiter doesn’t see value with working with you anymore. Remember, the recruiter gets paid if they help you get a job with one of their clients. No job for you, no money for the recruiter.

2. You don’t stop harrassing them. If you frequently call and/or email a recruiter and they keep trying to blow you off, you might not have gotten the message and so the recruiter simply stops working with you because you’re too high maintenance. I’ve had a few people who just won’t stop calling me and I end up not working with them as a result.

3. You’re not honest. A few times, I’ve caught a job searcher in a lie (ie. they lied about their skills, current salary, work status, why they left their last job, etc) and once the truth comes out, sometimes the lie is too big to ignore and the recruiter simply decides not to work with you anymore.

4. You’re not as good as your resume would suggest. As per point #3, sometimes people aren’t honest but in other instances they’re simply not that good. Sometimes you read someone’s resume, interview them and think that they are a good candidate but it isn’t until they hit the interview process that they get exposed by the hiring manager as a weak candidate. Often their resume makes them look better than what they actually are and when the person gets exposed as a weak candidate (or a dishonest one who embellishes their experience), it looks bad on the recruiter who most likely won’t want to make a mistake with that same person twice.

The issue of whether of not to disclose your salary to a recruiter is one of those topics that is often up for debate. You’ve probably been told to defer talking about salary in an interview with a hiring company as long as possible and this certainly makes sense.

A few months back I spoke about my experience when I attended an interview that was arranged by a recruiter without knowing the salary of the job going into the interview and what a waste of time that was.

In other words, a lack of information cost me and contributed to me wasting time and effort applying for a job I never should have.

The point of letting your recruiter know what sort of money you’re currently making and what you’re looking for is to avoid applying for jobs that don’t meet your requirements or conversely are way outside your abilities.

I can only think of perhaps a handful of times I’ve asked someone what sort of money they are making and not received an answer back. Most times people understand why I’m asking the question and give me the answer. In the few occasions where the answer isn’t given, a red light immediately goes on in my head and I wonder why the person won’t tell me what they’re earning?

Typically, the person says I should run jobs past them and they’ll let me know if it suits them or not based on what the job pays. There’s no way I’m playing that game. I’m not guessing what jobs to put past someone based on what I think they’re earning. I’m not wasting my time doing that.

Again though, this happens very rarely. Remember, when you’re dealing with a recruiter you’re not working against them. You’re supposed to be working together and telling them what you earn isn’t going to prejudice you in the eyes of the recruiter since the recruiter isn’t the one going to hire you.

In fact that opposite is true. It should help you avoid applying for jobs that don’t suit you (ie. it doesn’t pay enough, is beyond your level of experience).

Working in recruitment has enabled me to meet many, many different people and many, many, many different kinds of personalities along the way.

How people choose to keep in touch is quite an interesting aspect of a person’s personality. Here a few different kinds of people in terms of how they keep in touch after they’ve made contact with me.

Which one are you?

1. The Missing In Action Job Searcher: This is the person who speaks with me once, maybe even meets with me in person and then disappears, never to be heard from again. They never call, never email, never tell me whatever happened to them. If I have a job to discuss with them, I’d certainly give them a call but I generally don’t call people just to say hi and to see how they’re doing. That’s their job. Follow up is something they’re supposed to do with the recruiter if they’re serious about getting help with their job search otherwise they become quickly forgotten.

2. The Whiner: This is the person who calls me and complains that they haven’t heard from me in a week and wonder what’s going on. Uh, I don’t have a job to discuss with you, that’s what’s going on.

3. The Harrasser: This is the person who calls me every day (for a few days anyways, until I stop returning their calls and they get the message). They call every day – often they’ll call several times a day and when I don’t answer the phone, they hang up without leaving a message and then try again a few minutes later. Thank God for caller ID…

4. The Emailer: This is the job searcher who never calls me, but simply sends an email to touch base every so often. I actually like this type of person because sending a quick email to touch base isn’t a bad thing and the truth is I often do the same thing. Sending an email of course means that I don’t have to respond right away – although I normally do anyways – and isn’t as intrusive as a phone call.

5. The Harrassing Emailer: This person has tendencies of both #3 and #4. Typically, they will email me and the moment the email hits my In Box and I hear the sound that MS Outlook makes when a new email arrives, I hear a second sound and it’s typically my phone ringing because in addition to emailing me, this person has called as well to ensure I got the email that they only sent 5 seconds earlier. Typically, they’ll say “did you get my email?” This would be the email that they’d sent 5 seconds earlier.

6. The Updater: This is the person who updates their resume three times a week and sends me an updated copy of their resume three times per week.

7. The Spammer: This rare breed will send a generic “I’m still looking for a job” email and will CC the email to 10 or more different recruiters. We already talked about netiquette and email rules a few months ago.

8. The Drop In Artist: This is another rare breed who will pop into my office unannounced just to say hi – they usually say they “were in the neighborhood” – and to see if I have a job for them. Typically, I’m just about to pop into a scheduled interview with someone else and I actually feel guilty when I have to cut the chat short with The Drop In Artist to attend the other interview even though it’s not my fault.

9. The Social Butterfly: This person starts working with me and starts getting my help to find a new job. Then I find out that they have interviewed with one or more of my colleagues previously without telling me, meaning I get into a dispute with my colleague(s) and then we have to sort out who is going to continue working with The Social Butterfly which just gives everyone a lot of grief. Typically, The Social Butterfly isn’t that great a candidate either. No offense.

Yesterday we talked about why you might consider using a professional resume writer.

Most recruiters are not professional resume writers so that right there is a good reason to not allow most recruiters to rewrite your resume.

From time to time, there will be occasions where a recruiter finds out that you have experience that is either not mentioned in your resume or is mentioned in a way that undersells what you achieved. I can think of numerous cases where I knew a particular job required specific experience and upon speaking with a job candidate, find out that they have the experience but either don’t even mention it in their resume or don’t really make it clear to the reader that they have this experience. In this instance, I’ll suggest how they add it into their resume to draw attention to it.

This only makes sense and is a benefit of working with a good recruiter since they can tell you what parts of a job description are “must have skills” that you should highlight in your resume and which skills are “nice to haves” that are perhaps not as important. When you simply read a job description and apply for the job yourself, you often can’t tell exactly which skills and experience is paramount and what isn’t as important.

One area that you need to be aware of though is the issue of when a recruiter tries to get you to overstate your experience or flat out lie in order to make you qualify for a job that you really don’t qualify for. Just like it’s not right to make stuff up yourself and lie on your resume or in an interview, it isn’t any better when a recruiter convinces you to do it.

I once worked with a recruiter who was renowned for this especially with clients he was working with. He’d often add stuff into a person’s resume without even letting them know. Other times he would convince them to change their job title or accomplishments to make it seem closer to what the job required even if it was a lie. He ended up getting fired for another reason so things caught up to him in the end.

But what’s the point in lying like this? If you’re applying for a job and lie about experience you don’t have, if this experience is really that important, it’s most likely going to come out in the interview that you don’t have this experience and if not, it will probably come out once you’ve been hired so either way you’ll probably get caught. If the experience isn’t really that critical then I wonder why you’d lie about it in the first place and risk getting caught! So in either instance, it really doesn’t make sense to lie since getting caught or exposed can end up causing even bigger troubles for you down the line.

Allowing a recruiter to help you tweak your resume to better match your legitimate skills and experience to the job makes sense. Allowing a recruiter to convince you to lie or choosing to do on your accord does not.

If you are working with a recruiter, there are a number of things you can do to help your cause and work more effectively with them. Some recruiters are good and some are bad but then again, job searchers fall into the same categories, too.

In my experience, here are the issues that typically arise the most that waste the time of a recruiter and make them less likely to want to help you:

1. You’ve already applied to the company: The recruiter asks the job searcher if they’ve ever applied to Company A, the job searcher says no, the recruiter submits the job searcher’s resume, and the company says the job searcher applied directly to the company two weeks earlier meaning that the recruiter can’t help them with this job or any job that this company has available. This happens so often, I’ve lost count. Companies don’t allow a recruiter to represent a job searcher if the job searcher already applied to the company one way or another within a certain time period, often within 6 or 12 months. Keep track of companies you apply to and if you’ve applied to the company already, don’t tell a recruiter you haven’t.

2. You don’t follow instructions or advice: Here’s a specific example. I had a job searcher who was going for an interview and I told him specifically not to mention the salary he was looking for but if the interviewer pressed him for an answer, to not mention a figure higher than $60,000 because that was as high as the employer was going to go. The job searcher was looking for around $60K so he was within the range. So what did he do during the interview? He told the interviewer he was looking for $65,000. He told me that he thought he’d just see if he could get that much money. Instead, he was told he wasn’t getting the job because they weren’t paying $65,000.

3. You waffle: When you take the time to work with a recruiter, apply for a jobs, interview for the jobs, express interest in the job, receive a good job offer and then suddenly decide you don’t want to change jobs afterall, this is a big waste of time for everyone involved. Mostly the time of the recruiter and their client. We all change our minds from time to time but in this case, this tends to show that you simply don’t care because you have nothing to lose by walking away. If you had paid a non-refundable deposit of say $1,000 for something, would you also be so flippant and simply walk away and lose the deposit? Probably not. Just because it isn’t costing you anything to use a recruiter, doesn’t mean they are at your disposal.

4. You lie: About how much money you’re currently earning, why you left your last job, your job responsibilities, your job title, your accomplishments, the dates you worked at a company, and/or your educational achievements. Granted some recruiters lie, too. Don’t work with them. When job searchers lie and I catch the lie, I don’t work with them either.

5. You don’t understand how to send email: When you email your resume to 10 different recruiters and put all of their email addresses in the “To:” field or send the email to yourself and CC the 10 recruiters, it means that we can all see that you’ve emailed your resume to 10 recruiters. This means that your email is going straight to my Deleted folder without reading it because I won’t waste time trying to get your attention over 9 other recruiters who chances are, want to speak with you regarding the same job I do. If you’re going to email multiple recruiters, send the email to one recruiter at a time and address the email personally whenever possible ie. Dear Jane. It takes a bit longer but it’s more professional and is likely to yield better results. Afterall, you wouldn’t mass email 10 actual hiring managers in the same way and think they’ll be fighting over you…would you?