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If you are, or expect to be, one of the millions of job seekers looking for a chance to work, be advised that the world is far different than you believe.

Remember growing up, when you were told that skills and hard work would get you where you want—and deserve— to go?

Well, forget it. The modern job market has become commoditized to an extreme. It is no longer important what you did or could do for an employer. What is important is how many key-word matches your resume and the job posting mutually contain.

While I am being slightly cynical about skills, I am deadly serious about the methods currently being used in recruiting. The objective of recruiters nowadays appears to have nothing in common with either finding the best candidates for their client companies, or with maintaining a list of skilled and valuable applicants.

Instead, their focus appears to be on avoiding any embarrassment, even at the expense of common sense. To maintain what they think is a competitive edge, the modern day recruiter only looks at resumes where 100% of all the key-words of a company request match those of an applicant's resume. And since the majority of job postings that they receive are themselves written by recruiters, the final results often have little to do with the actual requirements of the position.

Where does that leave the job seeker? Usually, in limbo. If his paperwork happens to be sitting visibly on the desk of a recruiter at the exact moment the recruiter is on the phone with a company client, the applicant has a chance of being submitted. But if the recruiter needs to “search his database” for an applicant – forget it. Resumes are filed and left in the recruiters’ virtual “black holes” until, years later, a novice recruiter is told to go through the stacks and see if he can drum up business.

Recruiters these days forget why they exist – to use their special skills to match people to positions using more than arbitrary guidelines. A good recruiter sees beyond the keywords and into the potential of a candidate. This requires the recruiter to have actually spoken with the applicant and know the candidate well enough to match him to an open position. A good match is not obtainable solely via key-word searches. It takes work and skill and political savvy—and knowing that candidates without the key-word match may have other qualities that would make them the perfect employee.

But that takes risk on the part of the recruiter. And in hard times, headhunters may sacrifice imagination and common sense in order to not make waves and maintain the status quo.

Who suffers when a recruiter lacks vision? All the IT people who have proved their mettle in myriad situations where no one thought to even ask if their job description matched the problem at hand. As a job seeker, all I want is the opportunity to meet with companies to prove that I can help their company prosper. If there are better candidates, I won’t get the job. What I don’t want is to be evaluated anonymously and arbitrarily by a recruiter who has never spoken to me, and knows neither the company nor me well enough to make decisions. That’s not fair to anyone.

I also want recruiters to re-learn how to be civil. Even in an environment where they are overwhelmed with resumes, a simple email response and invitation to call and chat for five minutes can make all the difference. Applicants want feedback. They need to know that they were not considered for a position—and why. Without feedback, the problem can’t be fixed. The candidate is always in limbo, and perhaps missing out on numerous opportunities because of a minor mistake perceived by the recruiter. A simple follow-up call from a recruiter does wonders for a job seeker’s psyche, and only takes a moment. Is that really a lot to ask?

And ultimately, feedback and contact pay off for the recruiter in the long run. The applicant who doesn't fit a position now may be the recruiter's best candidate six months from now.

So this is my appeal to recruiters out there who search on key-words, and forget the person behind them. Start looking at applicants as more than commodities. Buck the status quo, take a risk, and you will truly gain the competitive edge you are seeking. The best applicants are out there right now—but you need to look beyond the resume in front of you to find them.

.© David Hirsch 2003
About the Author: David Hirsch was most recently at Fleet Securities, where among many responsibilities, he managed critical and enterprise-wide projects and, as a strategic planner, developed infrastructure to support OFAC, Patriot Act, and SEC-13-b regulations. Prior to Fleet Mr. Hirsch worked at eFunds as a Senior Consultant where he was responsible for business development at Pershing, including offshore projects. Prior to this he was CIO at Nelson Information, where he developed a successful web business for the firm, and a vice president at ADP where he led the conceptualization, creation and design of what became the ADP Front-Office Brokerage Product. Other positions have included consulting at Merrill Lynch where he developed a FSOD trading system and CTO at Autex Systems where he reengineered the IT department during platform conversion. He has been recognized by the Fleet Architecture Review Board for "Hercules," an enterprise-based client-focused data warehouse. He received his BA in English from Windham College, VT and his PMP from the Project Management Institute. Mr. Hirsch can be reached at wgaclinton@msn.com and by phone at (914) 834-5670 and (702) 809-5209