gcapone, Author at Palladian Career Resources

New Job Interview Prep Webinar

On Wednesday, I’m going to conduct a webinar teaching job interview techniques. The “Job Interview Basics” class will be held on Wednesday July 8th at 11AM EDT. The session is free and I invite any job seeker interested in improving their interview skills to attend.

The “Job Interview Basics” webinar will teach job seekers the how to sell their experience, accomplishments and potential in a job interview. This one-hour session will cover the following topics:

The interviewer’s perspective
The types of interviews and the styles of interviewers
The structure of an interview
How to prepare an answer for the most common interview question, “Tell Me About Yourself”
A technique to prepare for almost any question (STARL)
How to research a company
What questions to ask

The webinar incorporates many of the techniques taught in my book, Power Up Your Job Search: A Modern Approach to Interview Preparation.

Update: I now do webinars for APICS. Check out the APICS career portal for more information.

Resume Layout – Use Tabs Not Spaces

Many people put a lot of time into spacing out their resume so it looks perfect. Then, they send it to a hiring manager and the formatting changes completely. Often, the problem is caused by the font the person used to write the resume. You can’t guarantee the reader is going to see your resume with the same font you used.

Below are eight examples of one line of textthe same resume text. The first four examples are formatted using spaces and the second four are spaced with tabs.

Even though the different fonts are significantly different sizes (even though the text size is 11pt for all of the choices), the text formatted with Tabs still lines up.

One of the challenges I find job seekers run into is knowing how their text is spaced. There is a tool in most word processors that makes this easy. The button with a backwards “P” will display all of the formatting markers. This will show you have text is spaced on your resume. Below is the same text from above with the markers displayed. A dot is a space and an arrow is a tab.

In case you have trouble finding the button that shows the markers, it looks like this:

Just click it once to turn this feature on, and click it again to see your resume without these formatting markers.

Our book on Resume Writing provides numerous formatting recommendations. The examples use resumes from manufacturing careers, but the techniques are applicable to any career field. Get our book and learn resume formatting techniques.

Resume Writing Webinar

Next week, I’m going to conduct a webinar on resume writing. The “Resume Writing Basics” class will be held on Monday July 6th at 11AM EDT. The session is free and I invite any job seeker interested in writing or improving their resume to attend.

My goal is to start offering a regular series of webinars. I currently have plans for a Job Interview Basics class and a Job Search Basics Class, and am hoping to schedule these for the week of July 6th.

All three of the planned classes are based on seminars I have taught in the past. They focus on giving specific advice job seekers can use right now. I explain why the advice I give works – focusing on the perspective of a hiring manager. There is a lot of advice out there that sounds good but just doesn’t work in practice. In these webinars, I’ll show you why some techniques work so you can build an effective job search plan for yourself.

Resume Writing Basics

The “Resume Writing Basics” webinar will focus on teaching how construct an effective resume in this one-hour session. The class will cover the following topics:

The Purpose of a Resume
How Hiring Managers Assess Resumes
Content: What to Include in a Resume
Choosing the Right Resume Length
Choosing the Right Resume Structure
How to Stand Out By Including Accomplishments
How to Customize a Resume
How to Review a Resume

Each topic will include specific and straight forward instructions along with an explanation for why the techniques are effective. The webinar starts with the basics and will benefit individuals who have never written a resume, as well as others who need to update an old resume. Register for Resume Writing Basics

Check back tomorrow for the schedule of the other planned webinars. I also have several classes planned at address advanced job search topics and will roll those out over the next month.

A Resume to Guarantee a Failed Job Search

A resume I received recently virtually guaranteed the job seeker will not land a job. I see a lot of bad resumes. Most have significant opportunities for improvement. Despite this, the resume I read stood out as a disaster.

The resume failed to include anything to demonstrate the ability of the job seeker to succeed in the field he is pursuing. Even more troubling, there was almost nothing on the resume to indicate what the job seeker was seeking.

The job seeker had held several entry level jobs in a variety of industries. Each field involved vastly different skills. The job seeker packed the first page of his resume with all of these skills. There were dozens.

This is common. Many job seekers try to include every skill, just in case one of the skills is important to a hiring manager. The problem with this strategy is how a hiring manager assesses a resume. A hiring manager will look for the skills the job seeker is strongest with first. If there is no differentiation between the skills, the hiring manager won’t be able to determine, which are especially strong and, which are weak. All of the skills get discounted to a low average proficiency level.

The skills listed on the resume had little to nothing to do with the field the job seeker was pursuing. The job seeker was interested in changing career fields. There is no way I could have known this from just the resume. If I had a position that fit this person’s goals, I would never have thought to consider him for it. It’s almost impossible to land a job if your resume won’t get an employer to even consider you for the right position. Unfortunately, this mistake is common.

What You Should Do

Prioritize Your Skills – What are your three most marketable skills? These are skills that relate directly to the position you are pursuing. They are also skills where your skill level is high.
Review the Top of Your Resume – Read the top half of the first page of your resume. Are you three most marketable skills mentioned prominently in this area? How many other skills are mentioned? Do you have any accomplishments showing your ability to contribute using your skills?
Emphasize Your Marketable Skills – List your top three skills in the first couple lines of your resume. You want these skills to be so obvious a hiring manager will never miss them. Move your other skills down. Your less marketable skills may still be beneficial on your resume but should be placed throughout the body of your resume or listed at the bottom.
Add Accomplishments – Make sure you include at least one accomplishment where you used a skill to make a specific contribution to a company.

If you follow these four steps, you will give yourself a chance. The steps are just guidelines, though. You may decide to emphasize only two key skills or may settle on four or five closely related skills. The important thing is to focus your resume on the marketable details from your background that will get attention.

Ten Cover Letter Introductions

Read the greeting and first sentence of 10 cover letters from active job seekers.

You should have a cover letter when you are sending your resume to an employer. The cover letter demonstrates professionalism (most of the time) and introduces you to the employer. Cover letters are typically skimmed very quickly by hiring managers, so they need to be short and concise. They also need to grab the reader’s attention quickly.

I collected the greeting and first sentence from ten cover letters to show what some job seekers write:

Hi,

As you can see in the enclosed resume…

Assessment: “Hi” is too informal and the intro makes me want to skip the cover the go directly to the resume. Don’t start a cover letter with something saying you are going to repeat information in the resume.

Dear —. Whomever: (if you do not have a name, eliminate this line completely)

Throughout my management career , I have delivered strong and measurable results, meeting the many challenges presented.

Assessment: If you use a template, make sure you change it. A cover letter like this may be the fastest way to get rejected.

I am currently looking for a management or staff position in environmental and/or safety.

Assessment: A cover letter should have a greeting – “Dear Hiring Manager,” “To whom it may concern,” or “Dear Sir/Madam” all work and take very little effort to add. Ideally, you will address a specific person, but often this isn’t possible. The first line is all about the candidate and not about the company. A better way to start is to describe your strongest attribute.

Dear Sir, Madam

I am a results-oriented, high-energy, hands-on professional, with more than 15 years of business development experience, working in multinational firms.

Assessment: This isn’t bad. It’s professional and focuses on the skills of the job seeker. It’s vague – business development is very broad. This could be better by being a little more specific.

I am a highly motivated self starting project manager that is capable of handeling multiple projects.

Assessment: The cover letter should have a greeting. The sentence is very vague – “project manager” can be used to describe numerous different jobs and fields. Finally, a simple spell check would catch the misspelling of “handeling.”

Dear Personnel Director:

I would like to express my enthusiastic interest in a Supply Chain/Logistics Manager/Materials Manager position with your organization.

Assessment: This is a simple statement of objective. It isn’t a bad way to start, but could be stronger will some statement of the skills and abilities of the job seeker.

Dear Sir/Madam:

Having successfully advanced corporate performance and productivity through skillful development of technical training programs that align employee needs and requirements with the organizational mission,

Assessment: This is only the first half of the first sentence. It is extremely wordy and ineffective. A cover letter needs to be concise and clear. This fails at both.

Dear Human Resources Department,

I am looking for a dynamic and challenging position where I can utilize my leadership, operations, and human resources expertise.

Assessment: The sentence is an objective, but incredibly vague. It essentially says “I’m looking for a job.” The cover letter would be much better is this sentence was deleted.

To whom it may concern;

Below is a summary of my Program Management experience:

Assessment: This cover letter was essentially a bulleted list of experiences and accomplishments. Of all the cover letters in this group, it was the most focused on information valuable to the hiring manager. Despite this, the cover letter is abrupt. There needs to be more than just “Below is a list of stuff…” to start.

Dear Recruiting Officer.

Starting at <company name> in <city, ST> back in 1983, I’ve had a number of exciting, fulfilling, and challenging positions and opportunities.

Assessment: For confidentiality, I deleted the company name and location of the job seeker from the sentence above. This sentence is a terrible way to start a cover letter. This reads like a children’s story… “Once upon a time, at a company far, far away, I had an exciting career.”

A cover letter is a sales pitch with the goal of trying to get the reader excited about reading the resume. It should be short, concise and focused on the value the job seeker would provide the company. The best way to demonstrate value is to give examples of accomplishments and achievements.

Failure and Your Job Search

Failure is a part of learning and growth. It is important to fail and learn from the experience. Despite this, few people are comfortable talking about their failures – especially in a job interview.

If you have failed in your career, you may have the tendency to avoid talking about the situation. This gets tough in interviews with a lot of questions about times you have failed or your weaknesses. The truth is a failure is not as bad for your career as you may think. If you accept responsibility for the failure, can clearly explain why the failure occurred, can describe what you learned from the experience and know what you would do differently in the same situation, you can make a very positive impression.

An example of a failure comes from Jeffrey Immelt, Chairman and CEO of GE. Below is Immelt’s discussion of a major failure:

In 1992, I was running all the commercial operations for the plastics business at GE. We had a product called Nuvel, which was a sheet product that would go over wood to try to create the poor man’s Corian countertops. Turns out the thing just didn’t work. Any time you dropped a coin on it, it would leave a mark that you couldn’t get out unless you buffed it with sandpaper. It was a classic case of just not asking the right questions up front.

This one was my mistake. I let the need for speed overwhelm doing enough upfront market research and testing. It was a $20 million mistake. We caught it after about three months. Customers would complain. At first, you go through this denial phase: “You don’t understand” the product, and stuff like that.

It made me learn about listening better. I’m more disciplined on the upfront stuff now than I was then. I wanted to do something big and exciting, and I wanted to do it now rather than wait a year. I ‘fessed up: stepped up, made up for the financial hit we had to take on it by exceeding sales targets on other products, and made good to the customers. I think that I got better at understanding the need for research and more thought up front, so you don’t have to redo things.

You’re never allowed in GE to make the same mistake twice. You’re allowed to make the mistake once. If you try something and it fails, but you went about it the right way and you learned from it, that’s not a bad thing. (From Businessweek: http://images.businessweek.com/ss/06/06/six_tales/index_01.htm)

Most people have never lost a company $20 million. Even worse, Immelt explains the failure occurred because he tried to move a project forward too fast and didn’t respond to customer complaints. The failure was not caused by outside influences – Immelt made a mistake. Despite this, the failure did not end his career. He continued to progress through GE and replaced Jack Welch as Chairman and CEO.

Immelt dealt with the failure very well. He was honest about the cause and took responsibility. He did not blame others for the mistake. He showed the impact of his mistake – $20 million. Although this emphasizes the magnitude of the mistake, it also shows how Immelt was aware of how his actions affected the company.

Immelt explained clearly what he learned from the experience. The lessons learned did not include a way to make this project successful. There are projects that cannot succeed and the product being developed in this case could not be fixed. The lesson learned was Immelt’s new ability to assess a project and address issues much earlier (before they cost $20 million).

In your career, consider the failures you have had. Prepare to discuss them in an interview. You should try to talk about your accomplishments, but don’t shy away from a significant story about failure.

Interview Question – Why You Left Each Job

In almost every interview, you will be asked why you left your previous employers. This is a question designed to uncover reasons for the hiring manager to reject you. It will not help you get the job and is a question you need to survive.

The reasons you left a company can provide a lot of insight into your performance, potential and motivation. With this question, a hiring manager is trying to see if there is something in the candidate’s background that will lead them to eventually fire the candidate. If another company fired someone for poor performance, a hiring manager will typically assume the candidate will perform similarly. You can change this perception if you prepare and speak honestly about the experience.

It would be nice if every candidate was always successful and never had a bad career experience. This would render a question about leaving a former employer unimportant. The truth is most people have failed at some point in their careers. The failure might be minor, involving an unsuccessful project, or it could be major, involving a significant performance problem resulting in termination.

To be successful answering this question, you need to do three things. First, you need to be honest. Never make up something that isn’t true. Second, take responsibility for your performance. I have interviewed candidates who blame everyone but themselves. This makes a terrible impression and will sink your chances. Third, show what you have learned from the experience and would do differently.

Confidence is important when talking about your failures. The more you avoid a question about a time when you failed, the more the hiring manager will ask about it. With a goal of trying to uncover reasons to not hire you, the hiring manager will look for signs of a problem. Once something is identified, the hiring manager will ask follow up questions until it is clear whether the situation warrants rejecting the candidate.

If you were fired, you need to be able to explain what you would do differently. This doesn’t necessary mean you would be able to change a failure into a success. A lot of people have tried one career and found they weren’t suited to it. That’s fine. You just need to be able to explain what it was about that career that was not a match for your skills and abilities. If you aren’t changing fields, then you need to show what you learned from the experience. Failure is a great teach – if you are open to learning. Showing how you learned from failures can be as impressive as a success.

How Do Hiring Managers Decide Who to Hire?

You applied for a job, landed an interview and got invited back for a final interview. At every step, you felt great about the job, company and people. The interviewers were extremely complimentary of you throughout the process. Everything looked great. Then, you get the call that the company selected another candidate. The only feedback they provide is that the other candidate is “a better fit.”

Then, you get the call that the company selected another candidate. The only feedback they provide is that the other candidate is “a better fit.”

I’ve been a recruiter a long time and have watched this happen more times than I can count. It is extremely frustrating for the candidate. Without any specific feedback, the candidate doesn’t know why they weren’t hired.

There are a few reasons why a candidate might not get hired. Understanding how hiring managers make a decision can help you maximize your chances. No matter what you do, you will not get an offer every time. At the end of the hiring process, it is likely there will be two or three candidates being considered. This means half to two thirds of the candidates that complete a final interview will be turned down.

The candidate that gets hired will have several attributes. They will have experience and skills that will allow them to either do the job or learn the job quickly. They will have an attitude and work ethic that meets the hiring manager’s expectations. They will be able to communicate their skills, abilities and background in a positive way.

Of these attributes, you can improve all of them. Your skills and experience take time to improve, but over your career, you should continue to develop. Your attitude and work ethic are determined by your choices. If you continually choose to do more and maintain a positive attitude, these will become habits. You can also influence your communications skills and your interview skills in particular (check out our interview prep book).

You’ve done everything you can to improve your marketability and still get turned down for the job you want. Why does this happen?

When a hiring manager decides to fill a position, they will develop criteria for selecting the candidate. Some of the criteria will be objective but most will be subjective. There are few objective measures for most skills. How do you quantify a person’s leadership skills or their multi-tasking ability? You can’t.

Hiring managers will often use a successful employee as a model for the person they want to hire. For example, many manufacturing and distribution firms like to hire former military officers for supervisory positions. A military background teaches great leadership skills. It doesn’t guarantee a person is a great leader, but it does show a common set of training and experiences.

Using a common set of experiences to assess candidates is used frequently. If you don’t have the common background, it will not eliminate you from the process. It can be the cause of a rejection at the end of the process. Picture two candidates – we’ll use the supervisor position in a manufacturing plant. One candidate is a former military officer and has four years of experience in supervisory positions in manufacturing. The other candidate started out as an engineer in manufacturing and has four years of supervisory experience.

Both candidates have the same experience in the role – four years supervising manufacturing teams. In this case, both candidates have similar educational backgrounds and present a good track record of accomplishment. There is little to differentiate them except for the experience prior to their supervisory experience.

One hiring manager may favor the technical skills brought gained from an engineering background, while another may favor the leadership background of a former military officer. Both candidates could be successful in the role. Rejecting an unqualified candidate is easy. Rejecting a qualified candidate is more difficult. This is the source of the feedback “the other candidate was a better fit” comes in.

What do you do? If you’re up against a candidate that has the preferred background, you can still give yourself a chance.

Prepare for your interviews thoroughly by developing good examples of your accomplishments, and how they benefited your employers.
Ask questions to learn as much as you can about the goals of the hiring manager.
Show specific situations from your background where you met similar goals to the goals of the hiring manager.

The key is showing your ability to succeed. You need to demonstrate clearly how you will perform better than your competition. It isn’t enough to show you can succeed. Your competition can succeed too. If you’re competing against someone with a background exactly matching the profile the hiring manager wants, you have to show how you are better. The way you do this is by showing what you have done. If you do not do this, then you leave the question of who has the strongest potential up to the hiring manager.

Cover Letter Templates

Using a template to write your cover letter can make it a lot easier. We provide a three templates in our Cover Letter Best Practices Report and there are a ton of templates available on the web. If you use a template to get started, make sure you customize it.

Using a template to write your cover letter can make it a lot easier. If you use a template to get started, make sure you customize it. Even the best designed template will not match your situation exactly. There will be changes you need to make.

Failing to customize a template to your situation can make a very bad impression. This is especially true with the resume I received recently. The cover letter started with the candidate’s name and contact information. I have copied below the cover letter, without any changes, from that point to the greeting.

Actual start of a job seeker’s cover letter:

(6 blank lines)

Date

(4 blank lines)

Name
Company
Address
City, ST ZIP

RE: Position Title

Dear —. Whomever:

This cover letter is a disaster, and it’s tough to imagine the job seeker making a worse impression. The job seeker left the two instructional lines, calling for leaving 6 and 4 lines of space. The candidate failed to replace any of customizing tags, such as the date and position title with the actual date and position title.

This isn’t rocket science. If you use a template and it has a placeholder like “Dear — Whomever:,” you need to change this. The cover letter shows so little effort and attention to detail, I have trouble seeing why I would want to read the candidate’s resume, and I can’t imagine ever wanting to interview the candidate.

What is really sad is the number of resumes I receive with cover letters like this. Don’t make this mistake. Spend the extra twenty of thirty seconds to type in the date, position title and some greeting other than “if you do not have a name, eliminate this line completely.”

What Does Your Resume Say in the First 10 Seconds?

Your resume’s first impression – the first ten seconds it is read – is critical to your job search. No other point in a job search will have a greater impact in such a short time.

The first ten seconds are critical because the first impression will drive the assessment of your resume. Before the hiring manager begins to assess your potential, he needs to choose the assessment criteria. This requires categorizing the resume very quickly. The hiring manager will identify the job type, experience level and professionalism of the candidate and decide where in the company the candidate might fit. The goal at this stage is to categorize the candidate.

To make this determination, the hiring manager will only read a small portion of the resume – the first line or two of the resume, the most recent job title and the first thing listed in the education section. The hiring manager will also look at the overall presentation.

This first assessment allows the hiring manager to decide how to assess the job seeker. Like all first impressions, you can overcome a bad start, but it’s tough.

The best first impression will present a professional image for the job you are seeking. You want the hiring manager to immediately develop a basic understanding of who you are. A lot of resumes create an impression that doesn’t match the candidate’s. Some job seekers prioritize the wrong information on their resume leading to an impression that the job seeker is more or less qualified than they really are. This is especially problematic if your career has followed a non-standard path.

One of the most significant elements of your resume is the job title of your most recent job. If this title is not representative of your background and potential, you risk making the wrong first impression. To remedy this, you need to include information at the top of your resume to make the right impression. Often a one or two sentence summary can make a huge difference.

There are two main problems with creating the wrong first impression. First, you could be rejected before the hiring manager understands who you really are. Many resumes get rejected in the first 15 to 30 seconds. You need to make the right impression immediately. Second, making the wrong first impression will make it more difficult for the hiring manager to assess your true potential. Every second the hiring manager spends trying to figure out where you fit is time they are not spending looking at your potential. The faster the hiring manager can decide how to assess your background the better your chances.

It is extremely difficult to assess the first impression of your resume by yourself. You can’t make a first impression with yourself. To assess the impression you are making, show your resume to someone that hasn’t seen it before. Ask them for their first impression.

You can also review the information the hiring manager will look at first. If gave someone only the first two lines of your resume, your most recent job title and the first line of your education section, what impression would they get? Is this the impression you want to give?