One of the best resources in your quest for a new job is a professional recruiter, also known in the industry as a headhunter. And despite a commonly held misconception, headhunters aren't only for executives; they recruit everyone from truck drivers to doctors. Companies with open positions often turn to recruiters to save themselves a lot of time and effort, so headhunters may be looking for someone exactly like you right now. If you stick with the tips below, you'll place yourself head and shoulders above many other candidates, because most people simply don't know how to work with a headhunter.

• Act the part.  Perhaps, the biggest mistake people make when working with recruiters is not going all out to impress them. A headhunter isn't finding you a job out of the goodness of her heart--she's getting paid to supply quality candidates to a client company. And she's not going to put you in front of top-dollar clients if she's unsure about your ability to present yourself professionally. So act like you're on a job interview when you meet with a headhunter, because you are. Be professional. Don't meet with her in your sweats, with two-day stubble, and wearing a ball cap.

• Sell your accomplishments. To help recruiters do the best job for you, you need to demonstrate how qualified you are so that they can pinpoint a job that's a good match for you. Sell yourself and what you've accomplished. To be blunt, your headhunter wants to know the answers to two questions: 1) What have you made? and 2) What have you saved?  As in, how much money have you made or saved for your company?  Many job seekers have this tendency to report on their job duties rather than speaking on their job accomplishments. 

Accomplishments are what your recruiter is more interested in, as this is a major indicator of your ability and potential to contribute to the client’s bottom line.  It also serves to size up job seekers against each other in environments where a multitude of equally qualified candidates from varying backgrounds are all vying for the same position.

• Don't get too comfortable. Job hunters often make the mistake of thinking that a recruiter is their friend. He's not. Act the same way you would in a traditional interview: don't bash your current employer, don't blame other people for your mistakes, don't make excuses, and don't come across as angry about your current job situation. A headhunter isn't your therapist or your mother. Good recruiters represent the best interests of the clients who've hired them to fill a position. So, to get them to work hard for you, you need to be the best candidate for the job. Period.

• Be prepared. You'll waste both your time and the recruiter's time if you show up unprepared to discuss your work history and provide documentation of previous employment (the latter is not always necessary, so make sure to check with your respective headhunter). Are you vague about how many years you spent at the company you left to join your current firm? Have you written down the contact information for at least three professional references? If not, it's a good idea to have them ready even though they may not be required. 

In any job search scenario, your qualifications and professional achievements will speak for itself, but it’s still probably not a bad idea to get on your recruiter’s good side, and since recruiters only get paid after they’ve successfully placed a candidate, it would be unwise to potentially nullify all the hard work he’s poured into you by not having all the details on your end prepared and ready to go.

• Ask questions. You probably have a million questions about how this whole process works, and that's actually a good thing. As any other interviewer would, a recruiter welcomes questions, because it demonstrates that you're interested. Ask the headhunter if he has experience in recruiting for positions like yours, how long he's been in the recruiting business, what some of his successes have been, how long he anticipates the search taking, what you can do to speed the process, etc. The most successful headhunter-job hunter relationships are two-way streets: you need to be a good candidate, and he needs to be a good recruiter.

• Hunt the headhunter. If you have a very niched job, it's probably best to work with a headhunter who only recruits for positions such as yours—someone who’ll be an expert in your niche industry and likely to care more about your, say, interest in court reporting.  But most headhunters recruit for a wide variety of positions and for many companies, which makes it difficult for them to stay on top of every single job opening in your field of interest.

By the way, it's totally acceptable to work with more than one headhunter at a time.  Why wouldn't you want to maximize your chances of finding that perfect job?

• Pump your headhunter for information. Once she's secured an interview for you, make sure you receive as much information as possible from your recruiter before you go in front of a potential employer. Your recruiter is likely to not only know pertinent details about the company but also something about the person or team who will be interviewing you. Ask, too, if other people have interviewed for this job and what mistakes they may have made.