Use recruiters to find the best job

When you are looking for a new job, you basically want to find the best job.
I am guessing the two determining factors are:

1. How much you like the job in general
   
   • Did you like the manager
   • Was the office looking nice
   • etc.
     
   
   
2. Payment
   
   • Salary
   • Secondary (ie. car, phone, laptop, gym)

A simple calculation tells us that the more positions we will be able to evaluate, the bigger the chance for a good outcome.


Now lets assume I am still working at a company and I want to spend only some hours in the evening evaluating other positions.
I do not have time reviewing all the applications I can find, so I am forced to review and take interviews for only a small set of applications.
In this example I will be spending 2 hours an evening having going to job interviews for five days plus some time making appointments, which is spread over the day.

That means I can have exactly 5 interviews in one week.
From my past experience I can say that having five job interviews a week a period of longer then one week can be very exhausting. You don't want this to happen.
Therefore, we must choose those five interviews wisely.


If we choose them all by ourselves, we will have a lot of work to do, and will only be able to evaluate a small number of positions.

Now if we let others do this work for us, we will have some advantages:

• We might get more information right away (ie. the recruiter already had an interview with the company)
• We will be able to evaluate a lot more positions in a much shorter time (the recruiter already has a list of positions)
• We might look a lot more professional (if the recruiter has done his or her job right, a lot of thing might already have been taken care of, like a good structured CV, secondary terms etc.)
• They can negotiate for us, and get the best possible offer.
  
• If we are also looking for positions ourselves, we will extend our "reviewing range" even more.

But, using recruiters also has some disadvantages:

They are taking a part of your money
They need payment, and you and the company will pay for them. As a result, your income will be lower for that position. If you are also looking for jobs yourself you can always choose the best paying one in the end

They want exclusivity (is that a word in English?)
They permit you to look for other positions or use other recruiters. My advice is: don't do it. It expires many of the advantages mentioned earlier. You can even lie about it, because it is pretty much impossible for them to find out.


Conclusion

Actions:

• Use recruiters for finding new office jobs.
• Also look for positions yourself.
• Choose a small number of positions for an interview.

Result:

• Your reviewing range will be much larger, which heightens the chance of finding a good position.
• The amount of preparation you will have to do will be minimal.

Some Sources
http://www.vault.com/nr/newsmain.jsp?nr_page=3&ch_id=242&article_id=3154998&cat_id=1184
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/26088/should-i-use-a-recruiter