In my 2 year quest to find the “perfect” job it’s very very unusual to find recruiters who really care about people. I don’t mean in the typical “yeah, I care about people and want them to find the right job” type of way. I mean, find recruiters who are willing to go beyond the call of duty, beyond their comfort zone and do something that really typifies what Recruiting was always meant to be about: finding the best people for the best jobs and treating them the best way you can.

I’ve been incredibly privileged to get to know a few to varying degrees. Michael at Canadian Headhunter is one of the best recruiters I’ve met. He doesn’t recruit in my field so there’s no “humping the leg til it bleeds” going on. He’s just a great recruiter and always willing to lend an ear (and vice versa).

Gretchen and Zoe (I tend to email Gretchen more, no idea why) over at JobsBlog are obviously up there as well. I point to their posts fairly regularly because they recruit for the types of roles I’m interested in, but also because they are incredibly down to earth. That and, obviously, I want to work at Microsoft one of these decades (no rush).

A third is Heather. She also works at Microsoft. She recruits for more marketing oriented jobs though, and as such her posts pique my interests slightly less though. But today she went well beyond the call of duty:

I want to make a public commitment to respond via e-mail to every marketing person who send me their resume.

You’ll get a few things as part of this “respond”ing:

1. Confirmation that your resume’s been received (by her, not just the system)
2. She’ll personally get your resume in the database
3. She’ll review your resume and forward it as appropriate
4. She’ll let you know if you don’t fit and why

The key to this is that Heather is, as I like to put it, a Resource Recruiter. It’s her job to find good candidates. Not to match people to openings. As such, you won’t find her emailing you with “the perfect job”. But, you will find an email (or a few) from what could well be the Perfect Recruiter.

I’m not sending my resume in because I don’t have a marketing background. I’d love to be in some of the more marketing roles (Program Manager / Evangelist), but Heather’s already indicated that my experience doesn’t fit that type of profile directly. I know she’d consider me if the right job came up, but I’m not emailing my resume today as I don’t fit what she’s looking for from this call.

So, if you’ve got a marketing background and would like to work at Microsoft, prep that resume and send it in to Heather. You’re not likely to get a better shot at this.

Update: Heather has now included her email address in her post (and the comments here). I still recommend you send it to her in plain text as opposed to as an attachment. This will give you an appreciation for how the resumes look in the Microsoft database.

Good luck to all, and to all a good night :)