by Mike Whittington

Posting your resume online and using multiple recruiters might seem like a good way to open more doors in your job search, but in reality, doing those things can actually hurt your chances of getting a new job. Ask any hiring manager and they’ll tell you the best candidates are the ones who are performing at the top of their game and not actively looking for a job. However, great candidates are willing to keep their options open, and if the timing is right, they’d be willing to explore an opportunity presented to them. 

By flooding your selected market with resumes, you run the risk of clouding your reputation within it. When your resume is presented to a company, for a great position, it might be that the company has already turned you down for a lesser position that you applied for online, or they may have already heard your name because it has been presented by multiple recruiters who have not effectively marketed your credentials. As a result, you appear to be needy, or, worse yet, someone who has already been passed on.

Working with just one carefully selected recruiter, you have a career search manager who can strategically market you into the right opportunities, while maintaining your position as a carefully screened candidate for particular positions.

Keep in mind that you’re dealing with recruiters who call on the same managers to place candidates within their (your) specialty area. Hiring managers want to hire people who stand out from their peers. If 3 or 4 recruiters are calling into that same manager to talk about you, it has a negative effect because 1) you don’t stand out much when multiple people are telling the same story about you, and 2) it makes it clear to the hiring managers that you’re actively searching and maybe even somewhat desperate in your search.

This leads to questions from the hiring manager about why you’re looking for a new job. Are you about to get fired? Do you change jobs often?

Before posting your resume on job boards, you may want to consider the pros and cons:

• Job boards are great tools to get your resume in front of the masses, but as the example above shows, you don’t want to be in front of too many people.
• Most hiring managers subscribe to job boards to assist in their searches. But keep in mind, some job board positions may only be a means of gathering resumes for potential jobs - jobs not yet approved, not yet budgeted, or on hold indefinitely due to a hiring freeze. 
• Hiring managers want those A+ candidates who are hard at work in their job, not hard at work posting resumes online.
• If, as a recruiter, I connect with one of the few great candidates on the job boards, I recommend they immediately take their resume off.
• Keep in mind that hiring managers also frequently look for employees of their own company who have their resumes posted.