Welcome to The Fordyce Letter:
Last month, I “fired” a candidate during the interview/offer process, and I am 100% convinced the only reason I still earned the fee was because… (are you listening?) I emotionally “checked out” of the torment and refocused my efforts on the things in my business I could control, which were sourcing and recruiting candidates for other searches on which my firm was engaged. After nearly fourteen years as a third-party recruiter, I have learned a thing or two about candidate or client control… IT DOES NOT EXIST!
Editor’s note: as recruiting professionals, it is important for us to know as much as possible about the candidate side of the recruitment process so we can do our own jobs effectively. I feel that this article from Susan San Martin provides a few good tips from the written perspective of a recruiter offering resume construction resources to job seekers.
Last week, I had the pleasure of speaking with Greg Savage of 
Anyone who’s been around this business long enough has some really great stories to share about candidates who had…shall we say, interesting…interviews with clients. For example:
Most candidates — even high-level executives — need to be prepped before the interview. The reason for this is obvious: they all think they’re great interviewees. Most aren’t. Making matters worse, the hiring managers they’ll be meeting think they’re endowed with some special instinct that allows them to accurately assess candidate competency. Most aren’t.
In a recent discussion, an unemployed job-seeker shared that she had been on five interviews and was certain that she wasn’t offered a few positions because the salaries they were offering were lower than what she was making at her previous job. She had concluded that the companies were most likely wary of hiring her at a lower wage, for fear that she might leave for a higher paying position once the economy improved. Frustrated, she asked for help on how to approach the delicate topic of compensation for future opportunities.
