An oldie but goodie: Are you on a headhunter’s blacklist, graylist? You might now be sitting thinking, “Nobody – especially experienced managers – in their right mind would do that.” Allow us to ensure you: Yes, they would. Don’t be one of them and read this post that was initially published on March 10, 2014:
Are you on a headhunter’s blacklist?
If you’ve done one or more of the things below, you might have placed yourself on the blacklist (or “graylist”, if it wasn’t that bad) of one or more headhunters and therefore burnt a bridge that you might not have even had yet to start with:
- You or your wife, husband, bff, girlfriend, partner sent your application from their email account.
- You were (really) late to your interview.
- You sent your application from an unprofessional email account that should have remained private. E.g. flower_girl69@… or bear71@… michael.007@…
- You did not cancel your interview and did not bother to show up. And to make matters worse: now you pretend to not hear your phone anymore.
- You start an argument trying to convince the recruiter that you DO fit the job requirements – when you clearly don’t.
- You keep calling your recruiter every two days or weeks to inquire about the status of the recruitment process.
- Your application documents are unprofessional beyond recognition. AND YOU REALLY LIKE WRITING EVERYTHING WITH CAPS LOCK.
- You immediately start talking about your divorce proceedings (and financial problems).
- You try to use emotional blackmail that immediately backfires (obviously), “My family of six desperately needs me to find a job.”
- You are IT illiterate. And although you already know that you don’t test your PC and Skype for the video conference.
- You ask your friends to be your reference.
- You are overly self-confident. Arrogant.
- You comment every post of candidate-seeking headhunters, “Yes, I’m interested. This is my number: XXXX”.
- You – an experienced, elegant, professional, competent manager – openly share on your wall on LinkedIN with hundreds of people that “I’d like to officially let you know that I’m looking for a job. I’m looking for a company where I can develop my skills. The company should be honest and stable.”
And although you might now be sitting thinking, “Nobody – especially experienced managers – in their right mind would do that.” Allow us to ensure you: Yes, they would. Don’t be one of them.
Have you been contacting headhunters? Would you like to know if you’ve been doing it right? Maybe you could be more effective? Ask for a free career consultation and find out what else you can improve. Non-obligatory & complimentary.
