Career Advice Nobody Gave Me Never Ignore a Recruiter - Alex Chesser

This resource first appeared in issue #108 on 05 Feb 2022 and has tags Managing Your Career: Other

Career Advice Nobody Gave Me: Never Ignore a Recruiter - Alex Chesser

If you’re interested in working in the private sector at all, this is a worthwhile read. No, you shouldn’t hop on a call with everyone who sends you span on LinkedIn. But as Chesser says, there are real jobs out there with good recruiters sourcing for them. And you can’t always tell who is who from the messages.

Chesser provides some scripts for interacting with recruiters. The scripts aim to weed out low-value “just reaching out” messages while building a conversation with the recruiters that have career-changing possibilities. The scripts are well worth stealing.

In research and especially academia we really limit ourselves by not actively recruiting for new team members. Yes, recruiters are expensive - two months salary for a successful hire isn’t uncommon. But not being willing to pay that is more evidence that we aren’t willing to invest in excellent staff. (See also: not wanting to pay for good tooling). Almost everywhere in research you’ll see flowery paragraphs saying “people are our most important resource.” But too many teams are willing to spend months of people’s time creating and evaluating RFPs for equipment, while treating hiring as an afterthought worthy of little effort and less money.`