RIGHT RECRUITING

There is always a point in the economic cycle that I call Bunny Rabbit Season. I think we entered it this year. Bunny Rabbit Season starts about 3 years after an economic recovery begins. During an economic downturn, businesses layoff a lot of people. At that time, of course, jobs are limited and those laid-off don’t have many options. Often, they are forced to settle for jobs that are not as good as those that they have left. Maybe the salaries are less. Maybe the new employer is not as good. Maybe the job they have to take is a level below their old one. Usually, the person is just thankful to have a job and pay the mortgage so the warts are not important at that time.

Of course, people being people, after a few years those warts become larger. Some of that can be the fault of the new employer. Enough companies take advantage of those who have been laid off to create resentment in the new employee. That resentment can fester and grow over time. After all, an employer you treats you poorly when they hire you will often continue to treat you poorly as long as you work there.

However, sometimes those warts are self-inflicted. Maybe you were laid off from a once-in-a-lifetime job and anything after that is guaranteed to disappoint. Maybe it’s a function of distance making the heart grow fonder. The good old days are always better the farther away they get. Over time, that old job looks good because, frankly, you tend to forget the bad and remember the good.

There are three things that need to occur simultaneously to start Bunny Rabbit Season. The first thing is, justified or not, eventually the job warts get annoying and create the desire to look for a new job. It usually takes a few years for that to occur. The second criteria is when that itch coincides with a demonstrably better labor market, which we have now. The third is that the memory of a frustrating experience in the employment process must have faded, which often takes 2-3 years. Don’t underestimate the third reason. Being laid off in the middle of a recession is no picnic. It causes self-doubt. If you have never experienced that, be thankful.

All three things have aligned this year and it’s officially the beginning of Bunny Rabbit Season. Bunny Rabbit Season is seasonal because it seems like all the Bunny Rabbits start hopping at the same time. There is nothing wrong with being a Bunny Rabbit. Everyone wants to better themselves and their family’s situation. However, Bunny Rabbits have some special issues that need attention to in order the maximize their experience in the market in 2007.

Are you a Bunny Rabbit? Look at your resume. Were you laid off between 2001 and 2004? Did you have a tough time finding a good job? Did you hate sending out 100’s of resumes and getting no response? Unhappy in your current job? You may very well be a Bunny Rabbit (BR).

What to do now? What makes you different from other candidates? Is there any uniqueness to being a Bunny Rabbit candidate? Here are some things to keep in mind as you explore the market today.

First, check your attitude. BR’s sometimes approach the market in one of two extremes. The first approach is the "get even" approach. The "get even" BR had a lousy experience the last time they looked for a job and now it’s their turn to get even. They are still angry that no one called them back in 2003 and are angry that companies devalued them by not responding to their resume. To them, it’s personal. In a better market they can turn the table. They are going to send out resumes but not call back a lot of the recipients, just like happened to them but in reverse. They are going to demand special interview times to make companies squirm. Frankly, they are going to waste a lot of people’s time.

This is a bad attitude for lots of reasons, but is good for one reason. I will explain. First off, the people you are messing with now are probably not the people who were rude to you 4 years ago. As bad as the process was in 2003, not everyone was Satan to you. Many of the firms looking for people now were not even hiring in 2003, so they were not a part of your equation. Not every company hiring in 2003 was hiring people like you. For the most part, this type of behavior is basically punishing the innocent and reflects badly on you. If you have a long memory, and "get even" BRs always have long memories by definition, so do other people. Don’t assume that you will never go through another downturn again. Make friends now so that you can use them later when you need them. Courtesy is a great career enhancing skill.

However, I mentioned that there may be one good reason to have a "get even" attitude. I know what happens within the few companies that are hiring in a recession and how they think. Arrogance creeps into their posture to the outside world. I know that there are probably companies that actively jerked you around. There are probably companies that treated you like a piece of meat. I can imagine very few things more insulting than trying to find out a legitimate piece of information from a company that interviewed you, only to be treated like an annoyance by someone’s 20 year old secretary. I know that happened to hundreds, if not thousand, of people in the region. I can name at least 20 companies that I know acted with phenomenal rudeness to very nice people who were only trying to find a job.

Personally, I find nothing wrong with remembering those who treated you like an annoying child rather than like a person. As much as I think it’s wrong to be a "get even" BR, it is also wrong to be a sap. Why would you want to apply to, work for or recommend a company who would not tell you how you did on an interview 4 years ago? Why would you want to consider a company that couldn’t give you feedback on a resume that they asked you to send by advertising? There are enough other places to work now to give you options. Remember, someone who saw you as an annoyance in a 7% unemployment rate shows a lot about their culture. Earlier I said that courtesy is a great business tool for a candidate. It’s also a tool for a company. Reward it when you can.

There is a second type of BR approach to the market that bears caution. It is based on fear. Many people in the bad years had a prolonged and painful exposure to the employment process. There are a few things that made the last recession unique. It affected tech greatly. It was looooong and it was the first recession that allowed companies to automate the resume process. The impersonal nature of the process coupled with the length of the downturn caused a lot of people to just give up. That experience was so bad that they are frankly afraid to approach the market again now that things have improved.

Don’t let fear rule you. The market is good and if you are going to get a better job, now is the time to do so. That doesn’t mean that every company you see will want to hire you. It means that you should have a better outcome in a shorter time in a more pleasant manner. If you don’t look now and you are in a marginal job, odds are that you will have to look again in the next downturn, magnifying your error.

Now that you have done your attitude check and are approaching the market enthusiastically and energetically, you should get some interest and hopefully, some offers. The biggest mistake that Bunny Rabbits make during Bunny Rabbit Season in when they decide whether to take or turn down an offer. Here is where things often go awry. I saw this happen earlier this year. I’ll change the details to protect both the innocent and guilty but the principle will hold true.

John Jones has 10 years of experience. For the first 5 years he worked for a large local company (Enormous Inc.) in a corporate role. He was laid off in 2002. Since then, he took a 10% pay cut to get a new job and in the 5 years since has had 3 employers. Last year he finally got his salary up to the $71,000 he was making in 2002 when he got laid off from Enormous Inc.

We spoke to John early this year. He did not like the type of work he was doing and wanted to get back to role similar to the one he had in 2001 when he was laid off. Size of employer did not matter to him. He wanted a certain type of job in a professional company.

A month or so later we had John interviewed at a very stable company that had a job that was exactly the type of work he wanted. All seemed well and they wanted to make him an offer. Here is where John went bonkers.

John was making $71,000 in a job he did not like in a company with lousy benefits that treated him poorly. All parties assumed he would be happy at $75,000 with excellent benefits, strong bonus/401k and the type of work he wanted. The package was at least $10,000/year more than his current one, with more vacation even. Also, it was very close to his home.

John demanded an $80,000 salary. What was most surprising were his justifications. They all revolved around his compensation in 2002, not his salary now. John did not compare the offer to his current package. He compared it to what he would be making had he stayed at Enormous Inc. John did not compare the benefit package to the one he has now. He compared it to the one he had in 2002. It was like the last 5 years on his resume did not exist and he was still working at Enormous Inc. Basically, his posture was that the offer was a step down from his fictional current package at Enormous Inc.

Had his justifications been logical, my client might have moved north of $75,000. However, once they fully understood John’s thought process they said good-bye. This is one of the best, most graphic examples of fatal mistakes that Bunny Rabbits make. Apples and oranges.

If you had to take a step back in 2003 or so, there could be many reasons, not all of them good for you. No offense, but maybe your exalted status when you were laid off was a reflection of a sustained, red-hot labor market and not a direct reflection of your skills. Please consider that there is a chance you were overcompensated and over employed. The dot-com world, for example, had a great deal of VPs who were selling cars a year before. I am not saying everyone was over their head back then, but some were. Please consider whether the job from which you were laid off was a once in a lifetime shot. It’s possible and, if so, should affect you choices now.

But, let’s assume you were at the right level and want to get back to it. How do you get there? Well, you do it the same way you got there in the first place, one step at a time. The biggest mistake candidates make in general is to try and do too much in one move - too big a salary jump coupled with too specific a job description coupled with specific location needs and then a certain type of benefit program. I always try and advise managers and hiring companies about the dangers of making their candidate criteria too narrow and eliminating 99.99% of the human race. The same thing holds true on your side of the table. If your wish list turns into a long list of mandatory criteria, you are more than likely will be turning down a series of jobs, each one of which is better than the one you currently have. For every month, quarter, year it takes you to improve your situation, the more opportunity you lose. Remember John Jones? It may take him another 6 months to a year to get a similar offer, or if he is lucky a slightly better offer, than the one he turned down. In that period, had he been working at my client, he would have been that much closer to the review that actually would get him to the level he wants, or maybe a promotion that gets him more than that.

I remember 10 years ago a candidate turning down a job that was a $5,000 raise but was $3,000/year less than he wanted. I told him at the time that I thought the offer was fair and it was unlikely that he would get more. A year letter he called to let me know smugly that he had just received an offer for the figure he wanted, $3,000 more than the offer he turned down a year earlier. He did not understand that he had already lost money. He was out the $5,000 raise that he had turned down. Of course, now he was making $3,000 more than that but what he forgot was that now he would be up for review, which would have put him above where he is now. He lost money no matter how he looked at it. The sooner you accept a better job than you have now, the sooner you reap the benefits of that job, employer and career track. It is important to remember that life is a gamble. If you turn down a job offer that has 80% of your criteria, you may have to settle in 6 month for a job that is 70% of your criteria to move yourself forward. An accurate assessment of the market is the best tool for making smart decisions.

How to make that accurate assessment is a difficult question. Fortunately it is one that we will be exploring in our next Newsletter. Please remember Right Recruiting for all you employment questions. Thanks for your time. Jeff