Ideas To Prepare the Family for Relocation

Relocation is huge. It's inevitable for many in a career search. It can be the best change in your life, or it can be the worst. Many of the candidates I talk to are facing a new challenge with relocation -- a family with children who are old enough to be directly impacted. It's not just the candidate and spouse and maybe a little one or two that haven't started school yet. The picture has changed.

You, my candidates, have had great ideas about how to handle this. I jot down great ideas or interesting tidbits as I talk with you, and here are a few of the best ideas I've heard in involving a family in a relocation process, and laying the groundwork down at the beginning of your search.

1. If you have school age children, involve them in the relocation process as soon as possible. Assign fun research projects to each child, having them learn more about the cities or regions you are targeting. Challenge them to find out specific details, like how many people live in the city, how many schools there are, what professional sports the city hosts, etc. For younger children, keep it simple, like finding pictures on Web sites (parents will have to steer them to chamber of commerce sites, etc.), learning what state's flower, bird and other facts are.


2. Build a poster chart to compare cities/regions. Include categories that are important to the kids, like the sports, music, gymnastic programs offered. Search out items/places your kids are interested in that the relocation cities have to offer that you may not currently have. Be sure to acknowledge what you might be giving up too. The poster should show all the pros and the cons. Let your kids give the ratings, or post stickers on the chart.


3. For pre-teens or older, I've heard parents that have requested their children sit down and compile a list of all the "things" they would like to have in their new location. This list has ranged from requests for separate bedrooms through a city with a ice skating rink and hockey programs! Take these lists and do your own research in private, "checking off" as many of the knowns as you can. When you fly in for an interview, hand the list back to your child, and tell them you are interviewing in this city, and this is what you see the area has to offer them. This can even help them feel empowered in your interview process.

From what I hear reported, involving your children is much more positive than not involving them. For younger children, it helps them feel like they have a role and a say in this change process, and for older children, it helps them communicate to you what is important to them, and what is frustrating to them about the thought of uprooting.

From my viewpoint as an executive recruiter, here is what I want to know. Is your son training to be an Olympic swimmer? If yes, you'd better tell me, because I don't want to be wasting my time looking at clients who are not located in a city that doesn't have an Olympic size pool for training. (Yes, this is a true situation! And, yes, that candidate and family successfully relocated and transferred training programs for their son.)

Is your spouse an elementary teacher, or a commercial designer? Tell your recruiter those things too -- a teacher is marketable in any size city, while a commercial designer requires a larger city to support the work.

Involve your family, and once you have a plan, involve your recruiter too.

Any more ideas? I'd love to hear them. Comment here on this post, or email me direct.

Questions Answered About Recruiters

There was an article this week on CFO.com about executive recruiters, and it answers many of the questions and comments I receive and hear frequently. So many candidates inquire (or get down-right irate with us) why we do not call back, or we do not return all their calls. I've often wanted to address many of the concerns you've expressed, but instead, I'm including the whole article - better said by this author than me!

And, while you read this article, keep in mind that there are many differences between recruitment firms. PRI, for example, does both contingency and retained searches, and unlike some firms, we have a committment to respond via email to each and every resume submitted - so at least you receive acknowledgment that your resume was received.

Yet, the reality is that we too, must work on multiple searches at the same time to stay in business, and as the article describes, we're joining that "rat race" and cannot physically manage to call all our candidates - limiting our direct communication with those qualified for the job orders we're working on at that time.

The full article is below, or click here to go to CFO.com to read the article there.

What You Don't Know about Headhunters: 10 Tips
Understanding what makes recruiters tick is a vital but often overlooked component of the job hunt. With a recession looming, it may be more crucial than ever.
David McCann
January 21, 2008

At long last, you have made the tough decision: it's time for a new job. Or maybe someone else decided that for you. Whatever the motivation — new owner, new boss, company going bankrupt, getting fired after a restatement — the first thing to do is find some executive recruiters. Right?

At this point, you might as well. But it would have been smarter to forge relationships with recruiters when you weren't in such a hurry to move — that way, a recruiter could have contacted you as positions became available. Not only is that how they prefer to work, it's a far surer path to making a change than pushing the panic button and expecting something to happen overnight.

Understanding what makes recruiters tick is a vital but often overlooked component of the job hunt. Here's what you need to know:

• The right recruiter. There are two kinds of recruiting firms: contingency and retained. The contingency firms get paid only when a candidate they found gets hired by a client. "There are some good ones, but many of them just throw a lot of spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks," says Lorraine Hack, a partner in the financial-officer practice at Heidrick & Struggles, a retained firm. "If you don't want your résumé to be all over the place like the daily news, you might not want to go that route." Companies hire firms like Hack's on retainer to identify candidates, thoroughly learn about them, and present a short list to be interviewed. But the lower the salary allocated for a slot, the less likely retained recruiters are to take on that search, so recruiters paid via contingency fees are frequently used to fill lower-level positions.

• E-greetings. To make initial contact with a recruiter, send an E-mail. "Some candidates think paper résumés stand out, but E-mail is interactive — I can just hit 'reply' to get back to you," says Hack. And her opinion about cold calls: "Very poor." Some recruiters, like Chuck Eldridge, managing director of the financial-officers practice at Korn/Ferry International, don't mind a phone call or even a brief visit to get acquainted — to a point. "I can't do that with every finance person in the country," he says. Which brings us to the next point.

• It's a rat race. Working on about 10 searches at a time, a recruiter might make five calls to prospective candidates per week on each search, according to Hack. That's 50 calls. Each client wants weekly telephone updates on the search progress, which eats up several hours. Candidates who pass initial muster must be interviewed, followed by a written report to the client; this process takes a couple of hours a pop, and sometimes a whole day, if the recruiter must travel to do the interview. That's not to mention their own intracompany meetings or the small matter of finding new business.

Why should you care? "If you call a recruiter and they don't call back, it isn't necessarily because they have a bad feeling about you — it's that they're overwhelmed," says I.H. "Chip" Clothier, managing partner of HFC Executive Search. "There's an assumption that if you call someone they're going to call you back, but it physically can't work that way." Also note that while you may be out of a job, calling recruiters every week for an update is not productive and likely will just annoy them.

• Poor returns. On the other hand, recruiters take a dim view of you not returning their calls. Aside from providing all information about your accomplishments and employment history, the single most important thing to do when making a career change is to return phone calls, according to Eldridge. "It's simple, but the number of people who don't return calls is unfortunately very high," he says.

• It's a cold world. Cold-calling not only can be an annoyance to recruiters, as indicated previously, it's also not likely to land you a job in the short term because headhunters generally do very specific searches. The vast majority of positions they fill are the result of their own proactive searches. Even if you get through to the recruiter and ask what searches are in progress, finding a match is a longshot. "Our clients usually have precise requirements for what they want," says Eldridge. "A lot of times people will try to 'bend' their résumé to fit the situation, but I have to tell them I can't — the client was very clear."

• Heavy hitters. Don't make the mistake of assuming that a recruiter is a lightweight go-between that you cursorily pass by on your way to the real interview. Retained recruiting firms play an enormous role in helping determine who gets hired. If you don't ace your interview with the recruiter, you will never get to see the actual employer. And do not assume you can b.s. the recruiter because he or she knows little about finance. Hack, for instance, is a former CFO, and Eldridge had a long career at a Big Four accounting firm.

• Back-scratching. Among the best ways to build a relationship with recruiters is to help them succeed. If one calls you about a job that is not right for you, make every effort to refer him or her to someone else who might be more appropriate. "I don't forget that, and I try to pay those little dividends back," says Clothier.

• A wide net. Don't limit your efforts to network with recruiters to E-mails and phone calls. "Getting to know recruiters through other means is smart," says Clothier. There are professional conferences, finance-industry events, and networking organizations such as the Financial Executives Networking Group, where you can rub elbows with recruiters. "Those are great opportunities for getting to know somebody face-to-face in a 10-minute conversation that can be followed up on later," he adds.

• On the record. Most major recruiting firms offer Websites where you can enter your profile and a résumé into a database that all of the firm's search professionals can tap. The information can be updated at any time; if you are moving to Denver, say, make a note of it in your online profile, which typically will trigger E-mail alerts to the firm's finance recruiters.

• The ship is already sinking. And, yes, do not wait until you are in trouble or transition to start calling recruiters. "It is extremely unfortunate that so many people don't network or do it too late," says Eldridge.

Resume Workshop - Don't Miss The Obvious

Recently, our firm was working with two candidates - one in Quality Assurance Management, and one in Plant Operations / Management. We asked both candidates to make some changes specific for the job and client we were considering presenting them for. Both candidates made changes. The Plant Operations candidate did a full re-work of the resume, and the client made arrangements to interview him upon the first review of the resume.

The Quality Assurance candidate added a couple things, and moved things around, but failed to add some of the core items that we had requested. In the interest of time, this candidate was presented, and received a no interest from our client.

In a review later, it became obvious why our client responded to the written resumes in that way.

One candidate took the time to read the job description and research the client company. He then took everything in his experience that matched the description and the objective, goals and mission of the company, and wrote his resume for that company and job. He dropped much of the other accomplishments, tasks and details in his resume that didn't look like they would be a focus, or of as much importance for the role he was interviewing for.

The other candidate left core, essential items out of his resume. For a professional in Quality, keywords like "ISO" and "audits" and "inspection" were missing. He had all this experience, but chose to focus on recent highlights and accomplishments. This was good, but not relevant to the client company he was trying to interview with. They looked at that, but didn't see any of the "basics" they wanted in an employee for this role, and without further consideration, passed.

The lesson here is not to be so concerned with impressing the unknown reader of your resume that you forget the obvious essentials of your role / discipline. This is especially important since resumes often go through software screening, and a lack of those keywords would result in your resume never getting to human eyes.

Identify the core essentials in your job, write a list, and then check to be sure your resume contains all of them. To help you create a master list, read all the job ads or postings you can for jobs you are interested in securing -- even if those jobs are located in a different geographic location. What are the common terms, or keywords, employers are using? Add those to your list, and every so often in your job search, recheck postings to make sure you're not missing anything.