February 25, 2009 NY Times In Silicon Valley, Recruiters Are Sending Out Their Own Résumés By MIGUEL HELFT <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/h/miguel_helft/index.html?inline=nyt-per> MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. - It is hard to think of any job-hunting skills that Alexis Lovell lacks. As a recruiter for Silicon Valley technology companies, and before that, for retailers, she has advised job candidates on résumé preparation, personal presentation and interview skills for the last eight years. Networking strategies and trolling social networks and online job sites are the tools of her trade. Yet none of those things is helping one candidate in need of a job these days: Ms. Lovell herself. Unemployed since mid-November, when Plantronics <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/business/companies/plantronics-inc/index.html?inline=nyt-org> let go of its five recruiters, Ms. Lovell has reached out by e-mail message to nearly 400 well-connected hiring managers and technology executives she knows, and she has phoned about that many. "No bites," she said during a networking luncheon for recruiters earlier this month in Mountain View, not far from the campuses of Google <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/business/companies/google_inc/index.html?inline=nyt-org> , Yahoo <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/business/companies/yahoo_inc/index.html?inline=nyt-org> , Microsoft <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/business/companies/microsoft_corporation/index.html?inline=nyt-org> and other tech giants. When she is not looking for work, Ms. Lovell spends much of her time with her 2-year-old daughter, whom she took out of day care to save money. "I am trying to make the best of my time at home," Ms. Lovell said. "And not shop," she chuckled. The majority of the approximately 90 recruiters who attended the networking luncheon were in the same situation. The monthly luncheon, now in its 11th year, has long been a source of job leads for countless recruiters, and many showed up last week with the faint hope of hearing about an opening for themselves. What they found were old friends, unemployed colleagues and words of encouragement. They also got a few tips on adapting their skills to other professions and one offer for affordable health care. "It was pretty hard to see so many people in the same situation," Ms. Lovell said. There are no precise counts of recruiters in Silicon Valley, and no one knows how many are unemployed. But interviews with more than two dozen recruiters suggest that the recession has slammed the profession particularly hard, both here and across the country. Scores of recruiters have been let go in recent months and new positions are virtually nonexistent. Those that pop up attract as many as 500 applicants. And rates paid to recruiters, many of whom work as contractors, have fallen by about 50 percent. "Recruiters are kind of the canary in the coal mine," said John Moed, who moderates an online group for San Francisco-area recruiters that has about 3,700 members. "When things are great, the bird is singing away and you can't find enough recruiters. But they are the first to go when things are slow." First indeed. Consider Google, a company that in 10 years had never laid off employees because of economic conditions. In its first round of recession-related job cuts last month, it fired 100 recruiters. Most recruiters in Silicon Valley, however, work as contractors, so they typically lose their jobs with little fanfare: there is no layoff announcement, just a contract that ends and is not renewed. Before it laid off its staff recruiters, Google had quietly cut a small army of contract recruiters around the world, which several people who know the company said had numbered in the hundreds. And as contractors, many recruiters who find themselves jobless cannot collect unemployment. Recruiters have never been the elite denizens of Silicon Valley. That is a distinction reserved for the rock stars of Silicon Valley, the engineers, serial entrepreneurs, product designers or marketers or the venture capitalists who finance start-ups. But recruiters have long played a vital role as foot soldiers in the Valley's famous talent wars for those rock stars. When the emerging Web 2.0 companies like Facebook <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/business/companies/facebook_inc/index.html?inline=nyt-org> , YouTube <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/business/companies/youtube/index.html?inline=nyt-org> and LinkedIn competed with each other and with more established players like Google and Yahoo for top-flight talent, recruiters were in high demand. Wages rose accordingly and many good recruiters could easily command an hourly rate of $100, which for a full-time contract translates to about $200,000 a year. (Many recruiters now say they would be lucky to find work that pays $30 to $50 an hour.) Ms. Lovell spent many of those good years at Google, where, as a contractor, she helped recruit other recruiters and built the company's global talent acquisition team. While Google paid less than some other large companies - $50 to $90 an hour, according to people with knowledge of its compensation plans - the rewards of working for the Valley's hottest company made up for it, Ms. Lovell said. "It felt like the pinnacle of my career," Ms. Lovell said. "As a recruiter in the good times, it is really good." Back then, Google was hiring at a furious rate. In the middle of 2007, it added more than 2,100 workers in a single quarter. In the most recent quarter, Google grew by a mere 99 positions, and the slowdown in hiring goes a long way toward explaining the layoffs in recruiting. The memories of a painful downturn still haunt many in Silicon Valley. It was only eight years ago in the dot-com collapse that one in five of the region's jobs vanished. Yet many recruiters say that for them, things are worse this time around. "Since October, the business has been dreadful," said Herb Deitz, who, during the dot-com crash, had to let go all 30 recruiters who worked for him at a technology consulting firm. "It's probably the worst that I've seen it." The dot-com meltdown left several pockets of strength in the technology sector and biotechnology. Mr. Deitz went to work for VMware <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/business/companies/vmware-inc/index.html?inline=nyt-org> , a fast-growing company that provides technology to data centers. Others left the recruiting profession and applied their sales skills in more promising sectors of the economy, especially real estate and mortgages. Debra Young was one of them. She got a real estate license and began working as a mortgage broker. But recruiting is her passion, so in 2004, when things began to pick up again in Silicon Valley, she returned to the talent wars and enjoyed a few good years. Two days before Christmas, her contract with Yahoo ended, and she has not found anything since. With no credit card debt, no car payments and no "mortgage mess," Ms. Young said she was not too worried about making it through this downturn. "I have no problem living frugally," she said. She kept a hand in real estate and is still underwriting mortgages. The biggest toll, she said, is emotional. And if things don't pick up, she is confident that she can make another career switch. "Reinventing yourself isn't that much fun, but I can do it," Ms. Young said. Ms. Lovell, whose husband is still working, said she had not given up hope. "I'm trying to remain positive," she said. But going from two incomes to one has not been easy. "We are just being ultra-sensitive and aware how close to the edge we are," Ms. Lovell said. "It has been a tremendous shift for us to lose that income." ===================================
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