By Scott Love
(This article was previously published on March 29, 2004 through the Gannett News Service and is reproduced with permission from the author.)

You have just accepted a position with another company and are in the process of turning in your notice. It was a difficult decision, and you thought long and hard about what path you would take. But you have decided to leave. In your resignation meeting, you tell your employer you have decided to leave the company to go to another opportunity.

Your employer interrupts you by saying, “I can’t believe that today is the day you are telling us you are leaving. What a coincidence. Tomorrow we were going to promote you, and the next week we were going to give you a top-secret bonus. Why don’t we just give you those things today and forget about you leaving? What sort of offer did they make you? We’ll match it.” Read more »

Before you attempt to negotiate salary, it is critical that you have reached a personal decision about whether you truly want the job. Proceeding to negotiate an offer when you are not convinced that the new employer or the opportunity is truly right for you only wastes your time and in fact could be creating bad will between you, the recruiter and the hiring managers within the organization extending the offer. Be honest about your intentions before going down this past. You never know at what point in your future you will be crossing paths with parties to this process again… Read more »

Compensation will be a key factor in your decision whether to accept a new position. However, few people take the time to really understand their economic choices, mostly because there are so many hidden factors, such as cost of living, benefits, and so forth. To help you put your choices into perspective, use the following guide to evaluate your prospective compensation package with what you’re currently earning. Read more »

Due to the different compensation structure in Mexico, this article was adapted from our other article prepared for professionals that are compensated in the U.S. or Canada. This article is meant solely for professionals that are compensated via the Mexican payroll.

For the purposes of this article, let’s assume your employment interview went well, and there is sincere and mutual interest from yourself and the prospective employer. You will now need to decide two things: first, whether the new position is right for you; and secondly, what sort of offer you’d be willing to accept if you decide the new position is right for you. To help in the decision-making process, take the following test as a way to compare the two positions. Read more »

Let’s assume your employment interview went well, and there’s sincere and mutual interest on both sides. You now need to decide two things: first, whether the new position is right for you; and if so, what sort of offer you’d be willing to accept. To help in the decision-making process, take the following test as a way to compare the two positions. Read more »

Recruiters will always gravitate to professionals who understand the dynamics of the talent market and who are also empathetic to what the recruiter is tasked to do. Candidates that naively attempt to be arrogant or stand-offish in an attempt to mask their insecurity or lack of knowledge only serve to alienate themselves from the recruiter. The recruiter can be your ally throughout the life of your career if you understand how to interact with him or her. The following guidelines will help you in responding to a call from a recruiter:

a. Get as much information as you can about the nature of the position and the company they are promoting. Such information would include company size, industry, geographic location, why the position is open and what happened to the last two people in that job. Due to confidentiality restrictions placed on them by their client, the recruiter may or may not be able to answer all of your questions. If they can answer your questions, then you will be able to determine if the position is truly of interest to you and/or learn how your profile is aligned with the needs of their client.

b. Under no circumstances should you go around the recruiter or search firm in order to contact the prospective employer directly. This will serve to alienate you from the search firm and will reflect poorly on you by the potential employer. They provided the search assignment to the recruiter for a purpose which is usually related to the recruiter’s industry knowledge, credibility and integrity. By going behind the recruiter’s back and direct to the employer you are implying that you lack professionalism, an understanding of protocol, and basic integrity.

c. Be prepared to present yourself with the same professionalism, interest and enthusiasm as you would present directly to the employer. The recruiter needs to feel confident in his/her representation of you. You are a reflection of the recruiter’s value to their client which will ultimately reflect in whether you get introduced to their client and with what level of enthusiasm that they will represent you.

d. Do not try to modify or retro-fit your skills to meet the requirements of the role you are being solicited for. Don’t attempt to fake it, it will only serve to devalue your profile in the eyes of the recruiter. Instead, offer the recruiter names of colleagues or others that you believe would be a better match for the role. In this way, you become a resource to the recruiter and they will most likely remember you when they get a future search assignment that is better aligned to your profile.

e. Learn from your relationship with the recruiter. If the recruiter is able to get you an interview with his / her client, then request that they provide you with feedback about how their client received you. Any information that you can gain can serve to help you as you continue with the interview process with their client or with other potential employers.

Warren Carter is the founder and Senior Managing Partner of QualiFind Executive Search and can be reached at (619) 921-1795 for comment or questions.

I usually advise professionals to think of themselves as a business or independent company with a service to sell. This seems to be especially beneficial to the inexperienced interviewer or someone who has been in the same company for the bulk of their career.

Consider that you have an opportunity to pitch your services to a potential customer (the potential employer), but put it in the context of thinking that the more you know about their needs, the better you’ll be prepared to properly communicate and “sell” the services of your business (yourself). Read more »

Have you ever heard “Don’t burn that bridge!” or even worse “I shouldn’t have burned that bridge!”? Resigning from a job and an employer is one of those situations in your professional life that can be smooth or tumultuous and you play a large part in which way it goes. Making it a negative experience is akin to “burning a bridge” in which you can never cross again or one that the crossing will be extremely difficult in time to come.

Once you have accepted a new job, you need to consider the timing of your resignation. Since two weeks’ notice is considered the norm, make sure your resignation properly coincides with your start date at your new company. Read more »

Reality Check: Given the choice of two candidates of equal ability, hiring managers will always prefer to interview the one with the most well constructed and attractive resume. This is one of the reasons that candidates with superb qualifications are often overlooked. And companies end up hiring from a more shallow pool of talent; a pool made up of those candidates whose experience is represented by powerfully written, visually appealing resumes.

Of course, many of the best candidates also have the best resumes; and sometimes, highly qualified candidates manage to surface through word-of-mouth referral. In fact, the referral method is one of our greatest channels for presenting talented people to our client companies. Read more »

Many professionals stay within their current employer organizations due to some false sense of security or loyalty. Many of these same professionals may have very justifiable reasons to do so, however many others will never know simply due to their careers being managed by such emotions as fear of change, personal loyalties or an inherent need for security.

The laws of business dictate that your employer run the organization efficiently and profitably. An employer must make decisions that concern the overall health and welfare of the organization, not individual interests. You as a professional should also view your career as an entity or organization that needs to be run efficiently and profitably. You have to view yourself as an enterprise within a vast market of employers that need your services. Read more »