Job Seeker or Cannon Fodder?

The things that we do that involve the justifiable and systematic destruction of life and property, the wholesale creation of widows and orphans, and which showcase the ghastly aspects of human ingenuity, make great metaphors for recruiting.

The so called “War for Talent” has pitched employer against employer for the better part of the 21st century. As each one struggles to attract the best qualified people an assortment of vendors, service providers, consultants and know-it-alls have fueled an arms race of sorts.

Multi-million dollar investments in recruiting technology, performance management and HR information systems are no more a luxury for organizations whose greatest asset is in its people than missile defense systems are a luxury for any self-respecting western democracy.

“Employer of Choice” rankings, “Best Places to Live and Work” surveys and “Top Ten Jobs to Die For” lists are typical of the propaganda pumped out in the battle to win the hearts and minds of candidates.  The bombardment of employer branding has been relentless.

At the same time, employers have been deploying sophisticated weapons to target with pinpoint accuracy the most desirable “passive candidates.” Complicated screening, assessment and selection tools ensure collateral damage is kept to a minimum.  Succession planning ensures continuity in the chain of command.

As always, the true horrors of war are reserved for those who do their business in the trenches.

Resumes for Dummies stacked five editions deep provide no defense for job seekers who, like refugees dashing for cover, must first run the gauntlet of a front line recruiter. Once removed from the best practices of their “talent acquisition” handlers, recruiters are mixed lot when it comes to processes, people and technologies.

Whether the mercenary top-guns who have a silver bullet for every tough assignment or the enlisted rank-and-file who are best when shooting at point-blank range, the job seeker is likely to encounter a recruiter who has left many more dead and wounded in their wake than decorated heroes to their credit.

Bottle of vodka or Molotov cocktail?

Somewhere beyond the routinely unanswered phone calls, bounced emails, and postcard replies to handwritten vellum, candidates who want to take control of their job search really do have a battle on their hands.

Asymmetrical warfare favors you, the job seeker. Finding the readily available tools and resources that give you a disproportionate advantage is critically important when engaging a bigger and stronger adversary.  Because most recruiters cannot use, or will not use, the kinds of improvised approach embodied in Guerrilla Googling, you can expect they will be defenseless against it.  You should at least hope so.

Guerrilla Googling: What is it?

Google’s search engine has become an indispensable tool for everyone who spends any amount of time online. In the hands of a highly motivated operative Google can be a job seekers most powerful weapon.

When Google’s various products and services are integrated for the single purpose of landing a job, that’s “Googling.” Using Gmail for sending off resumes; Google Docs for writing cover letters; Google Calendar for rescheduling the latest “sorry-something-just-came-up-can-we-reschedule-the-interview-for-next-week-speaking-too-fast-to-catch-my-number-click” is at best, ho-hum.

But when those same tools are applied for the sole purpose of gaining a competitive advantage to ensure your job search goals are attained, that’s Guerrilla Googling. What’s more, while potentially quite dangerous, it’s also a lot of fun.

Your Job Hunter’s Dashboard

Guerrilla Googling is about replicating the enemies’ process and systems to gathering and monitor actionable intelligence so they can be engaged on the battleground of your choosing.  All that is needed is a computer with internet access and resolute determination.

A carefully chosen alias and password will give you access to your Job Hunter’s Dashboard, a command and control center if you will. And because Google is providing the platform, conceivably you could conduct your job search in places as far-flung as the Smokin’ Sadhu Cyber Café, Katmandu or closer to home in the Kansas City Library.

Here are the first steps for getting your dashboard up and running:

1.  Create a Google account. As we will be using this account for “covert operations” choose an innocuous user name that cannot be traced back to you.
2. Register for the following services: iGoogle, Gmail, Google Reader, Google Docs, Notebook, Talk, and Google Sites. Other products and services will be added later.
3. If you’ll be using a personal computer you should also download the Google Toolbar and Google Desktop.
4.  While you’re at it, if you are not already using the Firefox browser you should be. Firefox has a number of very useful extensions that will enhance your experience. Gmail Space, GMarks, Integrated Gmail, Google Date Keeper and other add-ons will give you significantly improved results.

Next, sign into iGoogle where you’ll see that everything you’ll need to create a customizable homepage has been provided.

By configuring the various “gadgets” that are publicly available with some of our own creation, an innocuous iGoogle page can be transformed from something that’s “cool” to something that is a mission-critical technology — your Job Hunters Dashboard!

Jump online and visit Guerrilla Googling for Job Hunters when you have a few minutes to spare. There you’ll find a number of easy to follow tutorials that will guide you through the set-up and configuration of your dashboard. You’ll also find shortcuts and off-the-shelf gadgets that will save you time and effort as you get started.

Soon you’ll be capable of this type of asymmetrical warfare:

Replicating the Enemies’ Process and Systems

“So it is said that if you know your enemies and know yourself, you will fight without danger in battles.

If you only know yourself, but not your opponent, you may win or may lose.

If you know neither yourself nor your enemy, you will always endanger yourself.”

So says Sun Tzu, the ancient military strategist who happened to write a best selling book on modern business: The Art of War.  For job seekers exploring this approach this is a particularly poignant passage.

Without giving too much credit where it may not be deserved, let’s pretend that the recruiters you encounter are one of the rugged veterans of the “War for Talent.” In the sourcing step of the recruitment process they will have used a number of methods to identify potential candidates. Among those will be searching online for people who are not to be found on job boards.

These people’s resumes, bios and homepages are buried among the billions of indexed pages that the Google’s search engine crawls. They go undiscovered until an expert researcher comes along. They are found using advanced search syntax which gives Google very specific instructions about which types of document to return.

A well-practiced hacker can find a handful of good resumes for Utah-based, bi-lingual, left-handed brain surgeons who specialize in anesthesia-free pediatric trepanation as easily as a ho-hum sourcer can  find an endless supply of photocopier salesmen with profiles on LinkedIn, and who have long since been forgotten about.

Configured properly the Job Hunters Dashboard is indispensable for helping you find, manage and repurpose the hacks that recruiters use. There are ample examples given at Guerilla Googling for Job Hunters.

Armed with the same expertise as a top-notch recruiter you can now wreak havoc by doing things like inserting yourself in the recruiting process before the recruiter even knows there is an opening coming down the pike.

But if for you “whatever it takes” means, “whatever it takes up to a point” you might consider something less extreme than helping your predecessor be recruited away ahead of your “I know you’re not hiring, but keep me in mind if something opens up” call to the hiring manager.

Instead you might apply the techniques that recruiters use to find talent in the exact same way they do, using the resulting resumes you find as a means for showcasing your own.

For example, if the position is based in New York where you happen to live, you might contact the recruiter with some referrals – yes, believe or not, most recruiters will thank you for doing their work for them – except the otherwise qualified candidates are in Chicago, Los Angeles and Timbuktu.

If you can’t figure out what to do next, do not try this approach either! Remember, the corridors of power are littered with the bodies of well-intentioned job seekers who blew themselves up even before greeting the gatekeeper.  Asymmetrical warfare is not for the fainthearted or weak-willed. And it’s certainly not for the ill-prepared either.

Your Job Hunters Dashboard can be set up to feed you with an endless supply of referrals and opportunities along with information that would otherwise be considered too dangerous to share with a job seeker.  This might include employment histories of department heads, organizational charts, which past employees have sued the employer and for what, and even reveal secrets about the nice lady who interviewed you that he would rather you didn’t know.

Yes, replicating the enemies’ process and systems includes everything from sourcing to background checks. Having advanced searches, up-dated automatically in real time on your Job Hunters Dashboard is something Sun Tzu would surely approve of.

Gathering and Monitoring Actionable Intelligence

One of the disadvantages of doing a Google search is that your results cannot be saved as an RSS feed. In other words, you cannot set the search up to be viewed at a later date to reflect any updates that may have happened since your last visit.

A quick search on YouTube for “RSS” will produce plenty of short tutorials that explain how RSS subscription works and the different types of “reader” that are available to keep your feeds [or subscriptions] organized and accessible.

Do the same YouTube search on “Google Reader” and you’ll soon realize why this functionality is an important part of the Job Hunters Dashboard. With some strategic thinking of your own you will find ways to apply this tool to your campaign in ways the augment the simple applications that follow this explanation of how to get your search results converted to an RSS feed.

Sites like IceRocket.com and others will convert your Google search strings so that you can subscribe to the latest updates in Google Reader. Google Alerts work too. The process is not widely used outside of geeky circles and yet it is incredibly simple to do. It is also very helpful in your monitoring the actionable intelligence which is vital for your success.

Actionable intelligence is one of the primary outputs from your Job Hunters Dashboard. Data that is feed constantly to your command and control center is of little use unless it has some application in the development of your competitive advantage. So, read on…

The types of data that you might convert to feeds could include specific searches on employers and/or recruiters. This may have limited use until such time as a window of opportunity appears. News of a large contract being won, a sourpuss recruiter moving on, or the appointment of a new hiring manager are the kinds of intelligence that you will want to anticipate when defining your search criteria.

On the other hand, information as pedestrian as weather reports can become actionable intelligence in a heartbeat.  News of an impending snow storm is actionable when it makes a recruiter housebound while the hiring manager makes the extra effort to get it in, if for nothing else, then to take your call.

Engaging Recruiters on the Battleground of your Choosing

Recruiters are careful to choose battlegrounds that put job seekers at a distinct disadvantage. I don’t know of many recruiters that concede to meet on neutral ground, at Starbucks for coffee perhaps, let alone have the job seeker pick a time and place of their choosing. Ironically, when given the choice most job seekers default to convention, leaving themselves exposed to ambush and rejection.

Using some of the advanced search techniques discussed earlier, and programmed to the Job Hunters Dashboard for real-time updates, it is possible to choose the exact time and place of engagement. In so doing the goal is to catch your opponent off guard.

Of course, off guard does not mean entirely defenseless. In the same way as you carry the image in your head of fallen comrades littering the corridors of power, so too must you remember the unfortunate job seekers left to die of thirst and hunger at the end of a disconnected phone call.

While you might think it’s reasonable to telephone a recruiter at home in the same way the “Big-Billers Playbook” describes as a best practice, without the proper preparation you may not get very far. As easy at it is to get the personal email and home address of most recruiters, as before, replicating the enemies’ process and systems, it is just as easy to forget your target is not a recruiter 24/7.

Imagine a mother of three trying to separate one of the twins from a choke hold while extricating the third from the jaws of an over playful Chihuahua and it is easy to understand why your unsolicited call may result in your permanent excommunication.

There are a number of techniques that can be used to avoid this happening to you. One of the easiest is to disarm your opponent before engaging them. You might do this by applying one of the searches described on Guerilla Googling for Job Hunters to discover for example, your target’s Amazon wish list.

Sending The War for Talent by Ed Michaels directly from Amazon [$0.51 for a used copy!] with a note that reads:  “Hey, I was doing some research online and saw we shared an interest in recruiting. I thought you might like this book” will certainly be remembered for both its thoughtful kindness and unexpected arrival.

As stressed earlier, if you are not sure what happens next, or are given to hyperventilating in a socially engineered situation,  you may want think of some other way to leverage this approach to your advantage.  You may find it easier to do use this tactic with a hiring manager and go for a friendly referral instead.

Whatever, you don’t want to have come this far to find out the game is over.

All of the things described here can be achieved using Google products and services combined with a determination to get the job you really want.

Of course, we haven’t discussed how to use Google Sites or Google Base to make your resume online easier for recruiters to find, or how to text a recruiter who rarely, if ever, gets a resume delivered to their mobile.

We haven’t discussed how to use Google for a soup-to-nuts direct marketing campaign or how to back up your most important files using your Gmail account. And we haven’t mentioned yet that, with the exception of $0.51 paperback, all of this can be done without spending a dime.

That all this and more can be achieved using a single Google account, and a well managed command and control center, I hope you’ll find some reason to explore these possibilities further.

To those who answer the call of Guerrilla Googling, I salute you! But be careful now, there’s a war going on, don’t you know.

Happy googling!

About the Author…
Amitai Givertz

Ami has over 25 years experience in business. The majority of that time has been spent in the talent management space where Ami has held a number of leadership positions.

For close to ten years Ami was a driving force behind the sales and marketing efforts for RCI Recruitment Solutions. In his role as Senior VP for Business Development Ami’s responsibilities included leading the recruitment communications and media sales efforts as well as championing a number of product innovations for print and digital media, and recruitment technology and practice.

During that time Ami was involved in a number of strategic initiatives. Those ranged from alliance-building to running the RCI Center of Excellence, developing recruiter training programs, and delivering RPO projects.

Since 2007 Ami has returned to his roots in sales force development, training and recruiting. His boutique firm AMG Management Advisors supports a handful of clients who rely on his unique of brand “disruption” to help them develop their businesses. Ami continues to pursue his integrated interests in product development, recruiter training and things 2.0.

Ami writes daily for a number of online publications that examine recruiting, business and innovation. He is the Editor of RecruitingBlogs.com and the publisher of several blogs.

As an advisor, Ami was a founding member of the Advisory Board for Kennedy Information’s Recruiting Trends, a member of the Human Capital Institute’s Expert Advisor Panel [Internet Recruiting 2.0] and co-founder of the Cloud Recruiting Think Tank.

A native of the UK, Ami now lives in Jupiter, Florida with his wife and two youngest daughters.

To contact Ami, click here and to connect on LinkedIn click here.