Month: September 2008

Where is the Job Market Going?

With the current financial crisis, there is tremendous uncertainty in our economy. This is most obvious in the financial markets after Monday’s decline.  The markets are worried and investors react to increasing risk by selling.

Now the decline in stocks doesn’t directly affect the job market. In some respects, it’s more of a symptom than a driving force. Unfortunately, because it is a symptom of the risk in our economy, we have to recognize the risk to the job market.

The Credit Crisis

For most people, the credit crisis has had no direct impact on them. The people are feeling this are the people that need to borrow money, and in reality, these people are not individuals, but corporations. The auto industry just received $25 billion in loan guarantees from the government. In a normal economic climate, it’s unlikely this would have been necessary. They could have borrowed from private entities, but today, that money isn’t available.  Banks are very reluctant to loan money.

The biggest problem with the credit crisis is how it is stopping the expansion that should be occurring. With the decline in the dollar, manufacturing firms are finding it much easier to export, and much easier to replace imports. We continue to see the job market in manufacturing hold steady (outside of areas with heavy auto industry concentrations). What we’re not seeing is a boom in expansion. Manufacturing has been at capacity for a while, but new plants are not being built on a wide scale.

The cause of this is two-fold. First, companies can’t borrow because of the credit crisis. Second, there’s a fear that the economy will get worse and an expansion won’t be needed. The effect of these factors is to limit the growth in the parts of our economy that are doing well.

The Job Market

The New York Times had an article Monday about how the job market could be affected in a significantly different way as compared to past downturns. The article, “Does the Financial Crisis Threaten Your Job,” discusses how in past recessions, companies cut back unskilled positions most. Skilled positions tended to be retained as highly skilled workers were too valuable in the long term and too difficult to replace.

The article predicts that this downturn will be exactly the opposite. Individuals with Bachelor’s degrees and more advanced degrees will be hurt much more than the lower levels of our economy. This poses a significant challenge for college seniors, as the job market in December and May could be bleak.

How to Adapt

Dealing with a tight job market requires a lot more work. Start by networking very aggressively. Try to find a contact in the companies you are targeting that will refer you for a position. This can greatly improve your chances.

One of the most important aspects of your search is to have a strong positioning statement. This is the core statement of value that you bring to the table. Many job seekers state that they are good at a particular job or skill. In a tight job market, being qualified and capable aren’t enough. Companies focus on hiring the best talent. This requires standing out from your competition.

With our interview coaching, we focus on uncovering the accomplishments and experiences that demonstrate how an individual has been successful and has added unique value to their employers. If you’re having trouble doing this, get help.

In interviews, you need to expand upon your positioning statement. You can do this in the answer to the Tell Me About Yourself Question. You should also reinforce the value you offer throughout the interview. Job seekers that can’t do this well often interview once and have the process stall. They don’t get another interview and they don’t get an outright rejection. The process just grinds to a halt.

The reason for this is that the hiring manager doesn’t have a great reason to hire or reject the candidate. They can see the individual could do the job, but they can’t get excited about hiring them. Instead, they say they will think about the person more but nothing changes. Eventually, the company finds someone that gives a compelling reason to be hired – and they get the job.

Bottom Line: Work on developing your positioning statement with a compelling reason why you should be hired, focused on the value you will provide the company.

When to Follow Up After an Interview

One question I’ve been asked a lot is when should a job seeker follow up with an employer. The answer depends on how far into the process you are.

If you sent a resume to a hiring manager that doesn’t know you, it’s likely you will hear back within a week or two if they have an interest. If you haven’t heard anything after a couple weeks, you can try a follow up email or a phone call. (Emailing a resume is ok, but if you can get referred into the company by someone, or if you cold call the hiring manager, your more likely to get a close look.)

If you have interviewed with the company, either a phone screen or face-to-face, the hiring manager may have provided you with an estimate of when you will hear back from them. This isn’t always the case. If you don’t know their process, it can be very tough to guess. Some companies move fast and will get in touch after a day or two. Others will let weeks pass after an interview before they move to the next step.

If they have given you a time frame, wait until a couple days after they said they would be in touch. At that point, a phone call won’t be out of line. If they haven’t given a time frame, I would generally recommend waiting a couple weeks.

What you don’t want to do is call before they consider it reasonable. For example, I worked on a search where the division president was out the country for an extended time. The company specifically instructed the candidate that they would not be in touch for more than 3 weeks, and they were very interested in moving forward to a final interview after that. At the two week mark, the candidate was very worried about why he hadn’t heard anything. Calling at that point would just demonstrate impatience, an inability to follow instructions and a level of desperation that would hurt the candidate’s chances.

So, what do you do if the company said they are going to make an offer? Depending on the company, putting together an offer could take some time. With a slow economy, many businesses have put procedures in place to slow the amount of hiring they are doing. They are still hiring, but are trying to make sure they only fill the most critical positions. This often means that a position needs to be approved by a much higher level executive than usual, and this can take time.

If an offer is forthcoming, I wouldn’t follow up for at least a week. Ten days is good rule of thumb. Of course, if they say it will take two weeks to put an offer together, wait at least 2 ½ weeks to call.

One final thing to remember… if the hiring process is going well and the company is staying in touch every week or so, don’t push the issue. When they tell you they are going to make an offer, there is very little you can do to improve the situation. What can happen is the additional contacts can give the company a reason to not make the offer.

Resume of a Failed Business Owner

I read a resume today from an individual that had been running a company they started more than five years ago.  The company was in the movie industry.

The job seeker had successfully started their company and kept it alive for over five years.  They also have produced several multi-million dollar films in that time, raising the required capital along the way. 

This is good experience and shows the scope of this individual’s responsibility.  The problem was that the performance of the company was never discussed. 

Having a large budget doesn’t make someone a success.  Controlling costs and producing a profit are critical to a business’s success.  This information was left out of the resume.

It’s likely that the job seeker is looking for a job because their business has failed or is in the process of failing.  This isn’t a career stopper, in fact, keeping a business running for as long as this individual did and going through the decline and failure was probably one of the best learning experiences in this person’s career. 

So what should they do?  The first thing is to not hide what happened.  By not saying what happened to the company, a hiring manager is going to assume it failed – so confirming that isn’t going to make a worse impression.  It’s likely that the reality of the situation isn’t as bad as the image a hiring manager will imagine.

The next thing to do is discuss some of the successes along the way.  When a person has a business fail, it’s easy to dwell on the failure. Getting hired requires recognizing and promoting the successes. A business doesn’t survive as long as this one did if it never turned a profit.  Talking about the specific projects that were successful will help demonstrate the capabilities of the job seeker.

On this resume, there were lots of numbers stating how big the projects where and how much was spent.  There was nothing about revenues or profits – just expenses.  Anyone can have expenses – generating sales and profits are the key.

The job seeker should emphasize their strengths.  It is likely the individual was very good at one or more aspects of the business – promotions, production, administration, etc. – unfortunately, their resume isn’t clear on this.  Identifying these strengths and highlighting them in the resume will help make the case that this individual could be a valued employee.

The job seeker didn’t highlight any successes and they didn’t explain the failure.  All we know is that they worked on building this business and it didn’t last.  That’s not a selling point. 

If you are in this situation, highlighting your strengths and accomplishments will help you get interviews. In an interview, it will be important to show what roles are good for you and what roles are similar to the failed venture. You and the employer will want to match your skills to the right role. If you can clearly explain this, the failure will not be career killer.

Wall Street Job Search

In New York this year, there have been over 49,000 layoffs in the financial sector. Lehman contributed a lot of those and other firms had their share. The job market on Wall Street is going to be tough for the foreseeable future. So what do you do if you’re a finance professional in NY?

Although the economic situation on Wall Street has many unique aspects, the challenges facing the job seekers there are common in other sectors and regions. Many job seekers are in markets with more competition than available jobs.

To get hired in a highly competitive job market, it is essential to demonstrate how you will provide more value to a company than other job seekers. It’s not good enough to be capable of doing a job. There are a lot of capable people available. When an industry has some big companies downsize, a lot of good people end up on the market. The firms that are hiring have the ability to pick and choose the best available.

Talent and Potential

The key to getting hired in this type of environment is to demonstrate a higher talent level and greater potential than everyone else. This doesn’t require having the most experience or the best education. It requires the ability to show a track record of accomplishment, growth and success, demonstrating the value you will provide.

In every job, there are qualities that differentiate success from failure. The first step is identifying those qualities. I’m always surprised when I speak with someone they can’t explain what success looks like in the jobs they have held. This is much more common than it should be. Review the positions you have had and the position you are seeking to identify the three to five most important results that the position should deliver. These should be tangible results directly related to the success of the company.

The second step is to review your performance against each measure. Identify where you were successful and where you weren’t. Ideally, you will be able to describe how your successes contributed to the overall goals and success of the company.  To be most effective, develop specific examples of how you contributed value to the company. 

Finally, determine how your past successes would benefit a current employer. Will you generate sales and increase revenues? Will you cut costs and boost net income? Will you improve quality or customer service?

The key is to show three things on your resume and in your interviews:

  • Will you do the job successfully

  • Will you add value beyond the core responsibilities of the position

  • Will you develop and grow to contribute in new ways in the future

If you demonstrate you can do these three things, you will have a leg up on the vast majority of your competition. Most people focus on demonstrating just the ability to do the job successfully.  In a tight labor market, when companies are desperate to hire, that’s fine.  In a weak labor market, there’s to much competition and the job seekers that show they will add the most value beyond just doing their job will get hired. 

Companies are still hiring. The challenge for many job seekers is showing their true potential. Work on demonstrating your record of achievement and potential for success and you will achieve better results in your search.

The Pontificating Cover Letter

Occasionally, I receive a resume or cover letter that tries to convey the capability of the job seeker by giving their opinions on management issues.  This is what I ran into today. The first line of the cover letter is:

The art of motivation and the need for qualified managers will always be essential to the population at large.

I really don’t know what the motivation is to pontificate on the “art of motivation” but statements like this don’t help a job seeker.  A cover letter should be designed to create interest in your resume and answer any key questions your resume doesn’t cover.  A cover letter is first and foremost a sales letter. A statement of the value managers provide to our society doesn’t help sell the job seeker. 

I’ve run into instructional statements like this a number of times.  Usually, they seem to come from one of two places – managers talking about leadership or technical people talking about the importance to quality.  There are exceptions – one resume I read a few years ago had an entire page about the importance of the music of Christina Aguilera. The worst part was that the job seeker was not pursuing a career in music or anything even close to the music industry. I wish I was making this up.

The example from the resume I read today really isn’t all that bad. It’s only one sentence and it’s far from being controversial.

Giving an opinion risks several things.  First, if the hiring manager disagrees with the conclusion, it will cause them to question the qualifications and judgment of the job seeker. I have run into examples that take a firm stance above a single leadership technique or style and alienate anyone with a different leadership style. Second, even if the reader agrees with the statement, they may consider it just a bunch of B.S. This can lead to doubt about everything the resume.

My feeling on opinion statements is that they waste my time.  I don’t read resumes to learn about management, leadership or quality – I read them to assess job seekers.

Remember that your cover letter and resume are sales pitches for why you should be hired. Extraneous information that doesn’t support that end should discarded.

Editing an Objective Statement

I reviewed the resume of a job seeker yesterday that had a fairly typical objective statement. Here’s how the statement read:

To advance toward a <Job Title> role in a large <business type and industry> while developing valuable experience that will be benefit my career advancement.

This is ok. It’s clear and concise. Most importantly, it gives a specific objective. The worst objectives are the very general statements that really don’t say anything. For example:

To obtain a position that will utilize my skills and abilities and provide profession growth while benefiting the company.

Writing a general statement like this is a wait of space. The example from the job seeker is a vast improvement over the general one, but it’s still not great.

Let’s look at how we rewrote the objective. The first thing we did was change the “Objective” section to the “Executive Summary.” The job seeker had a number of very impressive accomplishments buried on the second page of their resume. We moved them to the top and grouped them with the objective statement.

We then rewrote the objective to be a sales pitch instead of a wish list. Your resume is designed to sell you’re background and potential to an employer to get you an interview. Focusing the most prominent sentence on your resume on what you want isn’t a good sales pitch. You need to include what you are pursuing, but wrapping in a statement of your qualifications is a good way to go.

Here’s the new executive summary we developed:

Exceptionally detailed and organized <Current Job Title> with a seven year track record of accomplishment in increasingly challenging roles with a large scale <business type and industry> interested in advancing towards a <Job Title> role.

  • Bullet with an accomplishment
  • Bullet with an accomplishment
  • Bullet with an accomplishment
  • Bullet with an accomplishment

This statement is much better than the original. It focuses on the strengths of the job seeker, while still mentioning their career goal. It reinforces the pattern of success the job seeker has had with a statement of their “track record of accomplishment” and “increasingly challenging roles.”

Most importantly, the exec summary doesn’t just say that the job seeker is good – it shows how successful the individual has been with the accomplishment bullets. Each was two to three sentences and described a significant project or challenge that showed the job seeker’s success.

The 8 Biggest Resume Mistakes

Make sure you don’t make these mistakes on your resume.

1. No Accomplishments

The biggest mistake job seekers make is to omit their accomplishments. If you don’t show how you have been successful, hiring managers may assume you haven’t been successful. When you are considered for a position, you will be competing against others with similar experience. If you only list your responsibilities and another candidate with the same experience as you lists their accomplishments, they are more likely to get an interview.

2. No Customization

Resumes should be customized to the position and company. This is a small step that can pay big dividends. Often, changing just a few small details is all that is needed. Research the requirements and priorities of a position, then emphasize your strengths in meeting those requirements.

3. Large Blocks of Text

A resume should be easy to read quickly. Large blocks of text can make a resume difficult to read. The worst offenders contain just one of two paragraphs that are each a page or more long. Break up text into smaller blocks that are easy to scan and read.

4. Poor Formatting

The formatting on a resume gives signposts to what is the most important and draws the reader’s attention to these elements. Poor formatting can draw the reader to less important information.  To make the best impression, you want to lead with your strengths and have the hiring manager drawn to the most marketable skills and accomplishments in your background.

5. Too Long

The vast majority of resumes should be one to two pages. Resumes that are five, ten or more pages will make a poor impression and won’t get read. The worst examples are written by copying and pasting the job descriptions for every job the individual held.  Focus on your skills and accomplishments, highlighting the most significant elements from your background.  The most impressive information should be on the first page, with additional important details on the 2nd.

6. Unclear Objective

Many resumes fail to make it clear what type of job the job seeker is pursuing. This is especially problematic with job seekers that have changed careers several times. If you are making a general application to a company, a clear, specific objective on your resume or in a cover letter will help.  If you are responding to a specific job posting, an objective statement is less important.

7. Grammar/Spelling Errors

In our research, we have found that approximately 5% of resumes have spelling and grammatical errors. These can make a very poor impression. Make sure you have someone proofread your resume.

8. Extraneous Information

Adding information unrelated to your career won’t help your resume and may hurt your chances. Avoid personal information like hobbies.  There should be more important details in your background that demonstrate your skills and abilities.  Do not sacrifice this information for personal details that are unrelated to the job.

All of these mistakes can hurt your chances of getting an interview and ultimately hired.  If you are in a competitive field with a lot of job seekers going after the same positions, it is important to maximize your chances.  None of these mistakes, individually, will keep you from getting interviews every time.  What they can do is reduce your odds of landing interviews and lengthen your job search.  A little work to avoid these mistakes can give you an edge and help you get hired faster.

Explain Your Responsibilities

I usually write about resumes that focus on responsibilities, and recommend refocusing on accomplishments.  Today, I ran into a resume that lists responsibilities in such a brief and simplistic way that I have no clue what the person did.  Here are few bullets:

  • Managing Multi-units
  • Created and designed all projects
  • Operations & training
  • Housing Investors
  • Purchasing

Looking at these, it’s really tough to understand the scope of responsibilities.  The “Purchasing” bullet could mean anything.  Did the guy have a company credit card and buy a few office supplies at Staples?  Did he negotiated multi-million dollar contracts.  There is nothing on his resume that sheds any light on this. 

I’m sure that when the job seeker wrote this, he thought it was clear.  In his position, the responsibilities were clearly defined – so Operations & Training encompasses a specific set of responsibilities in his mind. 

The problem is that responsibilities aren’t the same from company to company.  Additionally, one of his positions didn’t even have a job title, making it impossible to guess what the scope of the position was. 

The important thing to remember is the hiring manager reading your resume has no knowledge of your background to clarify vague statements.  This makes writing and editing your own resume extremely difficult.  What seems like a clear and specific statement to you may be extremely vague to a hiring manager.  At the least, you should have someone that doesn’t know anything about your professional background review your resume.  If they understand the scope of your experience, you’ll be much less likely to confuse a hiring manager.

Answer the Obvious Question

I read a resume today from an individual that was well written and showed a significant pattern of achievement.  It’s an impressive resume.  Here’s how it breaks down:

  • Executive Summary:  A clear statement of his objective and overall experience

  • Skills:  List of about a dozen major skills related to his field

  • Accomplishments:  Eight bullets, each with a specific accomplishment – several are very impressive

  • Professional Experience:  Two jobs listed.  The most recent was with a civilian firm, lasted 3 months and just ended.  The other lasted 20+ with a government agency.

  • Education:  Bachelor’s and MBA along with continuing eduction certifications – overall impressive education credentials.

Everything about the resume says that this person has been successful and is very capable.  I would move some things around (shorten the exec summary and accomplishments, and move the skills section further down) but it’s a pretty good resume.

The thing that’s missing is an explanation of why this individual is on the job market.  He spent more than 20 years with one organization.  His next job only lasted 3 months.  This is an obvious question every hiring manager is going to want answered.

There are a number of possible reasons why this happened.  A few I consider likely are:

  • It was a short term contract

  • The company downsized and laid him off 3 months later

  • He misjudged the opportunity and quit

  • The company misjudged his abilities and fired him

  • The person had relocated for the civilian position (more than 1500 miles) and for family reasons, he had to move back to their original location

All of these are possible and none of them are deal breakers.  The important thing is to address the question.  The best place to address it is in the cover letter.  This job seeker had a lengthly cover letter, but it was limited to a recap of his accomplishments. 

By leaving out the reason why he’s on the job market, the tendency is to assume the worst.  If I had a position I was trying to fill where he would be a fit, I would still call him.  I would focus my interview on why he left the position after three months.    His omission of a reason why he’s on the market would effectively shift the focus away from his 20+ years of achievement to a single event that hurts his chances. 

Usually, when someone leaves an important detail like this out, I find they are uncomfortable talking about it.  Instead, they guarantee they will end up talking about it a lot, with a very skeptical interviewer – someone that’s probably assuming the worst and will be reluctant to believe a simple reasonable explanation.

Bottom line: If there is something in your background that is giant red flag – address it upfront.

Where Is The Hidden Job Market?

There is currently a discussion on LinkedIn Answers about whether a hidden job market exists and the common belief that the majority of jobs are never posted.  I posted an answer, but a much better answer was posted a little while later by Gerry Crispin of CareerXroads.  CareerXroads does some great research of the job market and Gerry’s answer provides some excellent insight. 

The original question on LinkedIn was:

Does anyone have a statistic to back up the old 80/20 rule on networking? i.e. 80% of jobs are never posted

Here’s Gerry’s answer: 

The statement is not true. It never was but it arose as a legacy of the print classified culture pre-internet. In those days the Sunday classifieds section of newspapers defined "a published lead" and clearly they represented no more than 20% of the actual positions open. Today, more than 95% of all positions are published – primarily on the websites of the various firms that have approved them. The "hidden job market" has nothing to do with the opening being hidden – it is now all about the transparency of what the job really requires, the firm, the hiring manager, etc.

Networking is absolutely not about uncovering the "hidden market" as leads – that’s just a sadly misleading image that still sends job seekers down blind alleys.

For a job seeker:

  • Networking can be about sharing leads with others in a disciplined way so as to leverage the research of many.
  • Networking can be about obtaining unpublished information about the published leads to gain a competitive edge when interviewed.
  • Networking can be about identifying and reaching out to individuals in target firms where you have seen published leads or have reason to anticipate that a new opening will be approved…for one reason…to obtain permission for that person to be your "employee referral."

The real story about referrals is not that nearly 1/3 of positions are reported as being filled from employee referrals. Instead it’s that fact that so many positions are filled from so few referrals that is important. Nearly 1 of every 4 referrals results in a hire!

By my calculation [and I do have data] job seekers applying for a position with an employee referral are 70 times more likely to be hired than w/o one. (Even a third party recruiter putting forth several candidates is more likely to get his/her candidate past finalist to new hire if the candidate has an internal referral.)

It is better to say: The 20% of jobseekers who managed to find a job without networking probably took 80% longer than their colleagues who did. I would also suggest that they also 80% more likely to perform below average than their colleagues who network….and 80% less likely to know it.

The conclusion is pretty clear.  Make sure you’re networking to improve the information you have and utilize relationships to get referred into a company.  According to Jerry’s stats… getting a referral into a company improves your chances by 70 times!