The Wall Street Journal recently published an interesting advice piece: How to Scare Away A Job Recruiter – At Work – WSJ.

One of the advice items the WSJ story covered was on following up with recruiters.

From my perspective (Bill Golden, USAJobZoo.com):

As a general rule, please do not contact a recruiter more than once about every 10 business days. And after 30 days then that job probably just won’t ever happen for you so please move on. … HOWEVER, if you are truly qualified then please DO NOT take it personal that a company did not follow up with you. It is all about money!

This is especially true when it comes to defense contractors. Quite often a defense contractor advertises jobs because they have a government contract to provide a specialist for some purpose. Yet the government is not always so good at sending money when it should. This can sometimes cause jobs to exist without money being there to pay you if you were to be hired.

Experienced companies only hire once they know the funding is secure and/or has arrived. So you may have been told there was a job opening. And yes you may have been told that you were a good fit. But if the recruiter doesn’t get back to you (happens all too often) then it is probably because Uncle Sam hasn’t fully funded the contract … and what’s a recruiter to say? I would love to hire you but tight Uncle hasn’t delivered? Nah! Won’t happen. You’ll just get silence instead.