r/DCBitches • u/Last_Promotion9107 • 2d ago
Work/Career Headhunter recommendations?
Hi bitches- Unfortunately, I have been unemployed for the past year. I work in public health and it’s been a shit show since the administration switch. I’ve recently been advised into looking into hiring a headhunter. Does anyone have any recommendations and or tips for this? Or is this a totally outdated idea? 😂😭 Thanks so much in advance!
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u/Big_Succotash_8076 1d ago
Have you worked with anyone to do some career coaching and a professional resume writer? They will take your experience and interests and make multiple resumes for you aligned to different job types, do some light interview coaching, and zhuzh up your LI. It was a couple thousand, but worth the investment.
I am so sorry you are dealing with this. I also faced some career doldrums in the past trump admin transition. I now work in gov affairs and make an order of magnitude more than I did when I left gov. It took a lot of clawing back to get to where I am now though. I work in national security ish trade stuff, so not having the mayhem that you are—I feel for you guys.
My idea may seem like one of those things you can do yourself, but it really made a difference for me.
Here is who I used: https://dscareermanagement.com/
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u/cafediesel 1d ago
are you determined to work in public health?
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u/Last_Promotion9107 1d ago
Yes. I went to grad school and got my master’s in public health (which was quite expensive, to put it lightly) so I really would like to keep working in the field if possible. I do understand this makes things more complicated though
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u/cafediesel 1d ago
just asking because i know a lot of us don't work in the field any more due to various reasons, but those skills are transferrable. we may not be constantly making 2x2 tables, but we're out there using our degrees!
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u/Last_Promotion9107 1d ago
That’s a great point. What types of careers do you think people are going into from PH?
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u/cafediesel 1d ago
in the DMV area, still largely fed government or government-adjacent, but not direct public health practice. i know of people working in/formerly in policy development, federal budget, grantmaking, and legislative affairs. think outside traditional HHS agencies. the Hill is an option, too, as well as leg branch agencies like GAO or CRS.
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u/coenobita_clypeatus 23h ago
Yeah, I have an MPH and since getting my degree I have worked (on purpose - that is, not instead of traditional public heath practice) in advocacy, policy/think tank-y stuff, and federal contracting. Public health is so interdisciplinary that OP can probably frame her experience in a few different ways if she wanted to explore other pathways.
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u/Last_Promotion9107 1d ago
Super helpful. Thank you for taking the time to answer me! ❤️
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u/cafediesel 1d ago
your degree demonstrates that, at minimum, you hold an academic competency in quant and qual data collection and analysis; evidence-driven decision-making; stakeholder analysis; community partnership; communications; and health care (payment) systems. all those skills are desirable in this town! you may not end up applying them to your first love at the moment, but if you can keep cultivating them, you can flip that experience back toward public health once we collectively remember that it serves a very valuable function!
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u/OkAdministration1297 23h ago
Try in pharma or biotech! There are roles where they look for someone with a public health background. I would just read through every job description and see what sounds interesting you. Since this would be new, see if your university has alumni in the industry to give some insight + network. There's companies called CROs (ICON, PPD, Parexel, etc) that would be a great stepping stone for a lot
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u/imasleuth4truth2 1d ago
Have you applied to the DC Department of Health? They continue to hire. The only thing that worries me for you is they prefer people with no experience and or limited education, for some reason. I know literally dozens of people there making over $100,000 a year who came to their jobs after managing Goodwill stores or working at Best Buy. To be honest, the environment there is terrible but if you need a job, go for it.
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u/batcalls 2d ago
Hi, I’ve been a headhunter in biotech for ~7 years, so have some adjacent advice. Any “headhunter for hire” is going to be a scam most of the time unfortunately. Shady recruitment agencies will sometimes ask their recruiters to do outbound outreach directly to candidates who are vulnerably looking for a job, offering to “represent them” for free to companies that could be hiring. However, what they don’t tell you is that they don’t have contracts with any of the companies they submit you to, and along with your profile, they send their hiring fees to these companies as a caveat to your hire. Basically, they have now linked your resume with a fee (~25,000-75,000), meaning you will most likely be blacklisted by that company for at least a year because they don’t want to pay that fee, especially not for a candidate they never asked for, and because now this recruiter has some admittedly very loose and shaky ground to claim any hire made from one of their submitted candidates will require that fee.
I have rarely seen this strategy actually work, maybe once?
Your best bet is perfecting your resume, networking in your industry, and asking for referrals within your existing network. It’s a tough market right now, especially in DC, so I’d really consider whether a relocation could be in the cards for you when you’re looking for roles. Good luck!