Most women have a friend, relative, or other acquaintance that they know that either sells Mary Kay, Avon, Tupperware, or another direct marketing product that has a decent reputation. Knowing these individuals, we are happy to invite them into our homes for "low pressure" sales appointments.
I’ve been receiving a lot of requests from frustrated Seattleites who know that I am connected and are floundering in the morass of job boards, networking events, social networking and resume workshops, WorkSource appointments, etc.
One of the most frustrating things in this area is that we have a huge number of employment agencies. Microsoft literally changed the way the contingent staffing (hiring agency contractors) and temporary staffing business model looks, and their example has spread throughout not only Seattle, but the tech market in general.
When the "Dot Bomb" (as I lovingly refer to the 1998-2001 employment downturn) hit, many of us fled to the agencies for jobs to keep ourselves afloat. I ended up backat Microsoft (after being positive I would never go back in 1998) after being laid off from Amazon.com. The agencies have always been a refuge in times of employment turmoil for many of us.
But now, agencies are feeling the recession (or depression, depending on your economic outlook) even more than ever. But they cannot afford to show that they are floundering, less their reputation suffer and they lose clients. So they are putting up job openings that may or may not be legitimate while their business development/account managers work incredibly hard to drum up business (I wrote a whole blog on that on my ERE page, the largest portal for recruiters. Just google my name+ERE).
I mentioned the "resume black hole" a couple of posts ago. So here is where we go back to old fashioned basics. If you have applied for a number of positions that an agency has open and you haven’t heard anything or your recruiter seems to have fallen off the face of the earth, I have a suggestion: go through the front door during business hours. Yes, put on a suit or other suitable business attire, take a hard copy of your resume and two-three of the open jobs that you have applied for *and are qualified for based on the job description* and just go to their offices. Ask to speak to a recruiter that handles the types of positions you are applying to.
This doesn’t work for corporate recruiters, because of the sort of process we have, but when I worked at Volt, this happened at least once a week or so. It seems so antithetical to all the information out there ab out emailing and networking, but honestly, sometimes you just need to remember that a face to face meeting is the best way to make an impression.