As a potential candidate in an executive search, you may find yourself in a confidential hiring process. That might be with a job posting that does not reveal the hiring company. You might also receive a call from a recruiter, or search firm one day to talk about an opportunity, but they will hold back on the company name. If this makes you nervous, I can understand how you feel. However, there are several good reasons why a company might want to conduct a confidential search.

What is a Confident…

If you are preparing to make a career move or contemplating a move and you have an annual bonus payment coming up, how to time your resignation with the payout is an important question. The obvious goal is to line up your resignation such that you receive your annual bonus payout. Learn how to do that in this article.

If you leave early (prior to payout), can you expect to get all or some of your bonus earned?

If you have a discretionary bonus, the short answer to the question is no, probably not.…

Get Your Resume Past the ATS Robots

Ever had the experience of submitting your resume to jobs you thought were a good fit and getting zero response? Don’t assume that the hiring decision maker read your resume and rejected you (the good news). There’s a good chance your resume may not have even made it past the resume screening robots (the bad news).

Rise of the Bots

About 80% of the resume submissions I see today are submitted through software. The exceptions tend to be

(1) really senior opportunit…

Evaluating Your Potential Boss During Career Changes

I came across great career advice the other day, backed up by research. I have unfortunately misplaced the source. The advice was as follows:

When you are choosing whether to align yourself with a job opportunity or not (new job, promotion, project), and in particular when you have some choice, pay careful attention to your prospective boss. And when trying to choose between two similar roles, you are far better off going with the person who you…

Calculating The Best Position For Job Opportunities

Let’s do the math.

• Fewer jobs.

• More applicants.

• Should = some changes in how you go about marketing yourself

Because I have been through a few downturns of hiring cycles, I can tell you from experience how hiring executives think when it comes to either filling an existing role with a new person or opening up a new role. They want either:

• The perfect candidate. One that exactly meets the requirements. No risk in the resume.

• Or, someone who can wear se…

Why would a company go the expense and time commitment of sponsoring a visa for someone, and in particular, someone who hasn’t landed in their target country yet and is trying to do a job search from overseas?

What are the possible reasons or motivations?

1. The hiring company has multi-country operations (and in particular your home country + target country), and they have had success transplanting professionals from one to the other.

2. You have domain experience that a company wants. Badly enough that…

Interviewed by the Province newspaper’s Working section for their Sunday edition feature story on the benefits of keeping your antenna up in order to be visible and aware of potential new opportunities out there. AKA the Passive Job Search.

And while I am at it, thought I would mention another recent media appearance, although it is woefully late.

The April 2007 issue of Maxim magazine ran a few quotes from me on salary negotiations. If you happen to have that issue hangingin around, it is on page 126.