Resume & Cover Letter Writing Tips, Interview & Career Advice

Business Prevention Programs: Stupid (Non)Hiring Decisions

admin — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 22:50:59 +0000

In today’s marketplace, employers are known to do pretty weird things.

Consider John… John is happily working at company X, but his contract is about to expire. So, John is looking for the next gig, and, in his search, comes across an opening at company Y, where he applied for a completely different role, in a different group, several years ago. Without hesitation, he sends his resume for consideration. As several weeks go by, he learns that company Y decided to pass on his candidacy. Reason? He applied there before…

Now, can we say “stupid”? All together now: S-T-U-P-I-D. Just think about. Suppose you applied to a bank, for one of their telephone customer service jobs. For one reason or another (nothing background-related) you did not get the job. Several years later, you are a successful financial advisor, applying to the same bank, this time to assist their clients in making decisions regarding important financial matters. Yet, because you have applied there before – you will not be considered…

These kinds of decisions are usually made by clowns, who have no direct contact with hiring managers. As a result, “Business Prevention Program” succeeds again, by disallowing qualified people through the door. The unexplainable irrationality of this decision can be characterized by one word. You guessed it – STUPID.

Now, you can have the most professional resume writer create your resume. You can have all the required buzz words. You can have references standing by. You can apply directly, or use a recruiting company. The net result will be the same: your resume will not see the light of day.

This post, just as others on this site, is supposed to provide you with job search advice. The only recommendation that can be made is along the same lines as what’s always been advocated: try to find a direct contact within the company, or, better yet, the actual hiring manager. Being in touch with them directly will, hopefully, prevent situations where decisions are made not by people who should be making hiring decisions, but by some paper-pushers…

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One Interview – One Chance To Get The Job.

admin — Sun, 30 May 2010 21:00:04 +0000

Getting an interview is such a rare occasion for many, that people just do not know what to do. After all, if the market is so dry that you are hoping that the one interview you got after sending 500 applications is your chance for getting a job, you cannot afford to make it into a practice one.

So, how do you make sure that the one interview you really must ace goes as smoothly as possible? Believe it or not, practice. First of all, there is always a mirror. If you are like most people, you also have friends and family. Use them – but be serious. Do not make it into a game of chance. You are either prepared or not. If you are planning on “winging it”, you are bound to fail.

Internet is full of resources that provide potential interview questions and answers. Use them as guidelines, but think outside the box. After all, everybody and their brother are using the same exact resources. If you want to be remembered and selected from the group of 500 qualified candidates, you need to be unique. Uniqueness does not mean answering questions while standing on your head. All it takes is some thinking. You know the questions – a typical HR person, pretty much, follows the “manual” when deciding what to ask. It is the answers that are up to you.

Do not go for stock responses, do not state the obvious or the boring. After all, how many other candidates will respond to the question: “Why do you feel you are qualified for the job?” by saying that they are “dedicated, motivated, excellent team players, with fantastic communication skills”… You got it – every single one. This is why you cannot do the same. Your responses should be unique and personal.

Why are you a good candidate for the customer service position? Not because you answer the phones well, but because in your previous job you consistently held the level of customer satisfaction at 99%. Why are you a good candidate for the project management job? Not because you are motivated, but because in your professional experience the projects you ran were always delivered on time and under budget. Well, most of them

It is not what you are, it is what you can do – and have done. Somebody who is willing to pay money for service – and this is what hiring employees is – needs to see what is inside the shiny wrapping, the quality of potential deliverables, the future value of the new hire. All you have to do is prove that you are what they need.

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Being Desperate In Job Search Is Like Begging For Money

admin — Tue, 25 May 2010 20:16:06 +0000

You know the beggar on the street corner that you pass every now and then? I am sure you have seen many of them in your lifetime. They are all the same, and yet, somehow, different. Some of them you just want to pass and never look back. You just wished they’d stop being there, stop harassing you for money. Others you don’t mind so much. And, finally, there is a kind that you just stop and give the money to.

What does any of this has to do with job search, you say? Well, it just shows that from a group of people in a similar occupation (or, in this case, lifestyle) you somehow pick your, so called, favorites. Now, what do you think a hiring manager is doing? Absolutely the same thing – picking the ones for the next round (the money-giving).

Would you give money to someone who is desperately begging? Don’t call me a hard-liner, but I would like to see something creative done, other than just “here, put your dollars in this coffee cup” approach. Employers are just like that as well – they do not want to deal with candidates who are desperate for a job. This desperation shows through everything during the interview process, from posture to eye contact, to the choice of words, to intonations – everything. Regardless of how hard you try to convince someone to hire you, it is not going to work. “Pleeeeease, pretty pleeeeease, hire meeeeeee….” does not work. On the contrary, it sends the wrong message, the message of weakness. The image you want to project is about confidence and certainty.

So, get out there, not in the cocky and arrogant way, but with confidence. Even if you desperately need the job, show that you are, first of all, about being able to deliver on your promise. That is what employers want. It goes a long way!

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What Resume Is And Is Not, And How Can Employers Benefit?

admin — Sat, 22 May 2010 14:13:51 +0000

In the world of ever-growing competition, one thing becomes more and more apparent: people do not understand the purpose of the resume. Working with people in various lines of work – clerks, dog trainers, certified project managers, CFAs, CPAs, software developers, restaurant managers, graphic designers, freelance consultants, and everyone in between, it is quite clear.

In the world of conventional wisdom, having a resume is needed to secure a job. Therefore, having a good resume is a guarantee of getting one. Right? Not so much. You can have the most brilliantly written resume – and still not get a job. If it sits on your desk, if it reaches the wrong audience, if you fail at interview, if…. And so, let’s examine the question of the day.

What is a resume?

A resume is your marketing document. Even more, it is not just a commercial, it is a grand finale, an advertisement for the Super Bowl, for millions to watch. As a marketing document, it needs to convince consumer (hiring company) of the quality of your product (things you can do for them). The way to do this is by showing how your past professional experience ties into what the company is doing right now – and illustrating that your former employers benefited from your work, and that you potential employer can as well.

It is truly the same as with any consumer product advertisement. Think of a cereal ad. It shows happy people who ate it before (past benefit) and it talks about nutritional value (future gain). In a short flash, you get both – and with some branding (uniqueness) it becomes memorable enough for you to recognize it on supermarket shelves.

When working on your resume, you need to do the same. Show how your past work benefited your former employers. Did you help them save money? Did you help grow the business? Did you increase sales/revenue? Follow up with an implied benefit that your future employer can derive. What can you do for them? What value will you bring to the table? Your resume is your marketing brochure.

With that said, it is also important to understand,

What a resume is NOT?

A resume is not a story of your life. It is not an autobiography. It should not be filled with jobs that do not matter or with boring details that bring no value. It should not state the obvious. If you worked as a store clerk, it is implied that you operated a cash register or bagged groceries. These do not need to be included. If you worked as a waiter, you delivered food to tables. Those things are common knowledge, and by including them you risk boring the hiring manager.

When preparing a resume, focus on setting ourself apart from competition. There is a collection of articles on successful resume writing. Take a look. But above all, it is about perception. If your future employer can perceive that you are better, it does not matter that there are other, more qualified candidates. Perception is reality.

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Resume Myths: Make Your Resume Buzz With Buzzwords

admin — Sun, 16 May 2010 16:07:35 +0000

In the post dedicated to Job Search Myths, I covered some of the common misconceptions related to job search. In this article, we will focus on the myths related specifically to resume writing. While busting most of them is plain common sense, it still pays to revisit them, to ensure they can be avoided when creating resumes, sending cover letters, preparing for interviews, and, in general, looking for work.

Generic Resume Myth: One resume fits all vacancies. It is a common belief that one resume is all a candidate should need. This same resume would cover all possible aspects of candidate’s professional life, and, as such, would be a good fit for any vacancy. Believe it or not, a new resume is needed for every job application. It may seem crazy, but here is the reason: every job is different. As such, your resume needs to be tailored to match the specifics of the job. You are bound to spend a lot of time in making adjustments, and there are no guarantees that the time you spend will result in a job. This is why most candidates do not take this approach – it is too time consuming. Employers, on the other hand, can certainly appreciate the fact that your resume matches the job requirements. While they will not necessarily know that you have multiple versions of the resume, they are more likely to select your resume from the pile of many.

More Content Myth: the more you put in your resume, the better off you are. Actually, the more you put in, the worse off you are. Just because you worked as a librarian, an accountant, and a customer service representative, does not mean that any of these are relevant to the job of a financial advisor, for which you are applying. So, instead of loading up your resume, trim it – to make it match the job requirements. You can still list all places of employment, even if they are not directly relevant to the specific vacancy (otherwise, you might end up with way to many gaps), just play them down. Think about it from employer’s perspective – they only focus on what they are looking for. So make it easier for them to find the hidden gems that truly matter to your job application.

Good Resume Myth: a good resume is a guarantee of a job. Could not be farther from the truth. A resume is a tool, designed for one purpose – and one purpose only: to get you an interview. A phone interview, a face-to-face, a video conferencing interview – the format does not matter. A resume is a tool that should help a hiring manager select you from the array of candidates. So, your resume can only serve one purpose. When it is good, it just serves that purpose better.

Qualified Candidates Myth: only the best candidates get jobs. If this were the case, only the best people would be in the workforce. Instead, it is filled with people who… just should not be there, if I can mildly put it. So, how do these people get jobs short of being related to the boss? It is not about qualifications – it is about marketing. In the How To Compete With Qualified Candidates article, I talked about the power of perception. In writing your resume and in interviewing you need to communicate that you are better than other candidates. It is all about a perceived value. Just imagine that you are in the business of making paper airplanes. Do you think there are other candidates, who can do it faster? Sure. Better? Sure. With more precision? Of course. Will their planes fly in a straight line? You bet. So, how do you show that your planes are better? It does not have to be about the quality of planes. It could be that you make them in different colors. Or that you make it with a smile and enthusiasm. Or that you attract local paper business as a supplier, helping boost local economy. There are many ways of distinguishing yourself from others. It is a candidate with a memorable impression that gets an interview and a job.

Blame The Economy Myth: things are tough and this is why I cannot get a job. Yep, things are a lot tougher than they used to be. As a matter of fact, they are pretty bad, regardless of the rosy news that we see every now and then. This site offers a selection of articles on the State of Economy, where we I to cut through the fluff in the news and present a picture as it feels to an average Joe on the street. But blaming economy is not going to get you far. There are jobs – you hear about people getting them. They are just a lot more scarce. There is a lot more competition. As such, you will need to be smarter about how you approach the job search. Sending Hundreds of Resumes will not do the trick. Working on using your time productively and efficiently, using every way possible, networking, staying active and optimistic are all part of the game.

Resume Is For Reading Myth: hiring managers will read my resume entirely. Nope. You will be lucky if they scan the first page diagonally and glance at the second one, if you have it. Usually, it is not even about diagonal reading, but about looking for a concentration of specific words in the right places. If the buzz words are not there, your resume will end up in a recycle bin. This is why it pays to tailor your resume to the specific job – it should have the right mix in it. However, having buzz words by themselves is still not a guarantee of interest. They need to flow, they need to be visible, and they need to make sense in the context of your resume.

In summary, a resume is a tool to get you face time with the hiring manager. You need to focus on making it concentrated, to the point, appealing, interesting and unique.

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What Employers Want – Mel Gibson’s Career Sequel

admin — Wed, 12 May 2010 15:45:42 +0000

I speak with many job seekers and I get their perspective on market conditions, on job search methods, on resume writing, on career choices they made. I also spend a lot of time discussing the same with folks in HR, head-hunters, recruiters, hiring managers. If you were to put employer wishes and match them with what employees want, you will end up with a complete disconnect. To the point that the two groups just do not use the same words. It is as if they speak two different languages.

Since this section of the site is dedicated to job seekers, let’s try and answer one simple question: What Employers Want? A movie with Mel Gibson is probably the next thing I will focus on, since he did his part in What Women Want so well. But I digress…

In a nutshell, employers are in the business of making money. Some use a fancy cover-up of being environmentally friendly, some focus on specific minority groups, some do it for the sake of our children, while others cater to the generations to come (if these generations are not here yet, who again are they catering to?). So, in the business of making money they focus on two simple things: increasing profits while reducing expenses. This is the most basic law of business, second only to supply-and-demand principle. Most businesses need employees to produce things (goods or services). As such, employees – from the business perspective – are instruments used to achieving the goal of profitability. Nothing more, nothing less.

Now look at it from employee perspective. You, as an employee, want to receive compensation, commensurate with your experience (and then some). You would like to have benefits in the form of health insurance, paid vacation, pension plan contributions, etc. You would like to have a steady (almost guaranteed) increase on your compensation from one year to the next. And you also want to have a career, so that you can grow professionally and monetarily.

All of these things are completely against your employer’s desires. They have somebody (an employee, you), who is willing to do the job for X number of dollars per year. The job does not change from year to year, so why should that somebody be getting more as time goes by? Just because? That’s nice, but it is eating into the profits. They have somebody (an employee, you), who is doing the job, and is doing it fairly well. Why, in their right state of mind, would they want to promote you to do something else – for more money, if they are happy with what you are doing? Add to that the need for an employer to pay for your ever-raising cost of health insurance, and you get the picture.

Employers want to maximize profit while minimizing expenses.

The thing we can take away from this is quite simple: when writing a resume, think from employer’s perspective. What would you want to see in the person working for you? Forget about dedicated, motivated and ambitious. Every resume in the stack has these. Your resume needs to show that you can deliver on the promise.

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How To Compete With Hundreds Of Qualified Job Candidates?

admin — Fri, 07 May 2010 20:54:13 +0000

Not a day goes by when a newly unemployed individual asks the same question: what format should my resume follow? Before answering this and other, equally important questions about resume structure, let us revisit the main purpose of the resume. As a matter of fact, it’s only purpose.

Repeat after me: resume’s sole purpose in life is to get an interview. Period. Do not repeat “period”. Now that we have established that (admit, it was not difficult!), let’s review the questions again.

Q: What format should the resume follow?
A: It does not matter, as long as it will get you an interview.

Q: How many pages should my resume have?
A: It does not matter, as long as it will get you an interview.

Q: ….

You get the general idea. Well, expert resume writers will fringe and say: “a resume should not take more than two pages”, and will, most likely, be correct. This is about as much information as a hiring manager is willing to devour, before making a decision on whether to invite a candidate for an interview. In reality, it is the first page that makes it or breaks it.

Before going any further, please review the Start With A Blank Page. Think about the process from the perspective of a hiring manager. You have a vacancy to fill. You have a stack of resumes to choose from. Which one would you pick? The answer is simple: the one that can do the job. But aren’t all candidates qualified? You bet! So, how do you compete with qualified candidates – and hundreds of them? By offering an employer something over others.

Easier said than done. Keep in mind, a lot of it is about perception. Can you absolutely guarantee that you are better than everyone in doing the job? Unless you have an ego of the size of Texas, the answer is, probably, “no”. But then again, it is about perception, and so, an employer needs to see something in your resume to want to talk to you. Once you get to the interview part, you will worry about your charisma, personal charms, knowing the subject, wooing them with all the right answers, etc. But for now, the focus is on your resume only.

You have about 30 seconds to make an impression that connects your potential employer and you. Boring, redundant, “templatized”, messy, poorly written resumes get thrown out, regardless of how good and qualified candidates are. Yours needs to be captivating, interesting and unique. With this said, let’s review the list of questions your resume needs to address, to make you stand out from the crowd:

- What skills do you bring to the table?
- Why are these skills a fit for the vacancy?
- What can you deliver going forward? (it is not about the past, it is about the future)
- Why and how will you do this?
- What do you offer that other qualified candidates don’t?

Be sure to skip the boring “ambitious”, “motivated”, “aggressive”, “dedicated”, etc. Bring something of your own – something unique to you. This is what you have that others do not. This is what you want your future employer to notice – and remember. It goes a long way – from getting you an interview, to making you recognized when you show up, because it had the unique, personal touch of you.

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Outsourcing College Education (Or Parts Of It). What’s Next?

admin — Wed, 05 May 2010 18:49:14 +0000

The Toronto Star (thestar.com) had an article on April 30th, about Profs now outsourcing marking to India. This would have made it into a comic strip had it not been true. The overall theme of the article is, pretty much, indicative to what has been happening in the US in the last few decades: we have outsourced just about everything. And while the service sector (still) covers about 70-80 percent of the US economy, the article proves that these jobs could be in question too.

Are we, as a society, benefiting from outsourcing? Well, outsourcing does not necessarily mean sending things off-shore. For example, we have outsourced our kids’ education to kindergartens, schools and colleges. We have outsourced our tax filing to accountants. Some of the better-off folks have outsourced their house cleaning. The list goes on. So, in general, we outsource things to people who are either better at it than we are, or, alternatively, who are cheaper (we have a certain price tag associated with our own time).

Should it come as a surprise, then, that even college professors can be outsourced? If they can do the same job cheaper and at least as well (if not better) than their stateside counterparts, why not? After all, we all do bargain hunting. We shop around for better deals on cars, on produce, on electronics, on services – so why not education? Why not everything?

If somebody in this world is willing to do the job for less money – and we need to have this job done – by all means, let them have our business. The issue becomes apparent when we outsource everything. At that point, we will have outsourced ourselves completely, our jobs, our lives, everything.

This is the benefit of the global economy – getting things as cheap as possible. But, of course, at a price. The price to pay, in our case, is unemployment, our inability to produce, our sense of entitlement, and our reluctance to change things. Until we get to the point outside of our comfort zone, things will remain the same.

Our economy is driven by spending. And yet, consumers do not need to spend right now. With so much debt, with eroded pension plans, with nonexistent savings, and with home prices below mortgage levels, we need to stay competitive – and do so by competing with the rest of the world. This can only be done by bringing the jobs back, by willing to work at rates that the rest of the world charges. This will drive down salaries, but also prices. We just need to be more realistic about expectations going forward. Being a superpower means being super-adjustable when times call for it.

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Professional Resume Writers Are Like Car Mechanics: There Are Good Ones And Not So Good Ones…

admin — Mon, 03 May 2010 17:51:01 +0000

There recently was an interesting discussion on one of the job-seeker forums. One of the visitors posted a question to find out whether other people have successfully used professional resume services, and what they thought.

Opinions varied quite a bit, from “I loved my resume writer. The resume generated a lot more leads than the original” to “It was the worst $300 spent. Aside from grammar and spelling errors, it yielded nothing”, and everything in between. It is expected that results of such poll vary across all shades of the spectrum, so no surprises there.

While not immediately obvious, a few themes could be seen in the discussion.

1. People who used professional resume writing services and who were happy, would use them again. It is expected – if you received good service, you are likely to use it – and to recommend it to others.

2. People who used professional resume writing services and who were not happy, would never use them again. This can be explained (somewhat). If you bought a product and it did not work, you would not buy the same product again. It is not, however, as simple as that. The overall need to have a resume written by a professional came about for a reason: the original, home-made resume, was not yielding results. So, simply refusing to use professional services in the future is not necessarily solving a problem. It is like taking your car to a mechanic with a faulty air conditioner, getting it back with the same issue, and claiming to not ever using mechanics (cumulative). The issue with AC still remains. And, perhaps, a better choice of a mechanic is what’s needed instead.

3. People are very protective of their resumes. It is understandable – resumes are such personal creations. As such, it is unfathomable that somebody else would mess with them, critique them, or, worse yet, discard them altogether and replace them with something else. This is where professional writers shine. It is like writing a biography – get all the input from the source, and then go off to create a masterpiece.

4. Often, resumes are written to hype up the individual. This happens in both cases, when candidates create their own resumes and when professional writers do it. Generally, a candy with a pretty wrap, receives more attention. Same with resumes: if it shines through, it has a better chance of securing an interview, which, in essence, is resume’s main purpose. However, hype needs to be substantiated with facts that the candidate can deliver. If it is not the case, the candidate will fail – either the interview, or the job. So, caution needs to be exercised to present information such that it is grounded in reality.

5. People are under the impression that sending resumes is a numbers game. There is a recent article on what sending resumes and Powerball have in common, so we will not repeat what was said already, but we strongly encourage you to review it.

6. People firmly believe that a resume writing service can create something out of nothing. That is, probably, the biggest misconception. If a candidate does not have a worthwhile experience to begin with, no creative writing can fix that. To build something one needs to have solid building blocks.

In conclusion, a few thoughts… Resume’s main task is to generate interview activity. If, after sending hundreds of resumes, the task is not accomplished, resume is not working and needs to be modified. It is an iterative process of trial an error. Whether done by an individual or with a help of a professional. In the end, it all boils down to how good of a mechanic you are. If you can change oil in your own garage without making a mess, can you repair the control arm or rebuild the engine?

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Gaps In Employment: Minimize Damage With These Simple Ideas

admin — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 15:00:46 +0000

In an ideal world, people would have perfect resumes, which would start some time around their high school years, right through college, and lead into fruitful careers, with constant increases in responsibilities (and compensation), with no gaps, until retirement.

That is in an ideal world. In reality, however, things happen. These things include: kids, school, illness, unemployment, time off, etc. So, it is quite common that one’s resume has gaps. And nothing attracts recruiters’ attention more than gaps in employment.

Think about it from the hiring manager’s perspective. Here you have a candidate with about a year+ between jobs. Was there another job in the middle that the candidate decided to omit? Was the candidate out of work due to termination? Is the candidate not qualified enough – to have been out for so long? These and many other questions are valid, but none of them, if you notice, attempt to apply the infamous “presumption of innocence” principle towards the unlucky candidate.

Since you are that candidate, what are you to do? Well, for one, try to not emphasize these gaps. If you have a chronological resume, try formatting it such that the dates are not the first thing that draws attention. If attention is unavoidable, use fillers that make it look like you were doing something useful.

If, indeed, you were in school, indicate that as part your professional training. If you were traveling or taking the time off, think about things that you learned in the process and switch them around to add value to your resume, rather than just having gaps. It is possible that you were in between jobs, but were doing some volunteer work or freelance consulting. These are valid fillers – much more appreciated and welcome than just gaps in employment.

If your resume has months for start and end dates, you may get away with using years instead. For example, instead of showing:

Store Clerk, Some Store, 02/2009 – Present
Store Clerk, Some Other Store, 10/2007 – 04/2008

… with a gap in between, you can use a year-only format to get around the issue:

Store Clerk, Some Store, 2009 – Present
Store Clerk, Some Other Store, 2007 – 2008

If the gap is too wide to cover up with simple formatting tricks or changing resume type from chronological to functional, you can provide a brief explanation in the cover letter. This same short explanation can also be used in an interview if the question comes up again.

Whatever you do, you will have to be creative, but truthful – in filling in the gaps on the resume. You should also acknowledge the fact that you have these gaps in employment, and be ready to explain them, as this question is bound to come up.

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