Author: gcapone

When to Work With a Recruiter

The recruiters at Palladian are seeing a consistent pattern with job seekers.  Individuals are worried about the economy and are unwilling to consider changing jobs.  They don't want to talk about new positions and are not interested in speaking with a recruiter.  Then, a few weeks or months later, the job seekers call back and explain that they have just been laid off.

In a strong economy, this pattern is rare.  Today, it's becoming common.  As the economy continues to slow, this will become more prevalent.

Managing your career is not a part-time activity, and yet, most people treat it this way.  They job hunt when they need a job and avoid all job search activities when they don't.  This is a mistake.  You never know when your career situation is going to change.  We're seeing companies go from stable to bankrupt in weeks.  There is little warning and no one knows who is going to be next. 

The only solution to this is to develop a “plan B.”  You should update your resume, work on your interview skills and network in your industry.  Be ready to start a job search if needed.  Hopefully, you won't get surprised with a layoff.  If you do, you will be ready when your peers will be scrambling.

When you talk with a recruiter, don't just hang up.  A recruiter is a person that works full time to identify opportunities and match them to job seekers.  A recruiter can be a great resource for you.  The key is to build a relationship.  You might talk with a recruiter for years before they find the right job for you.  The key is that they are always looking.

If you wait to speak with recruiters until you're out of work, you will have much less success. This is due to several factors.  The first is that the recruiter doesn't know you and it will take time for them to learn what you want and what your potential is.  Building a relationship in advance can eliminate this learning curve when you decide to make a change. 

Second, if you wait until you need a job, the recruiter is going to know that you are very active.  The recruiter will assume that you are talking with a lot of other recruiters and that you have posted your resume on the job boards.  This makes the job seeker much less attractive.  A good recruiter finds candidates that a hiring manager can't find.  If the job seeker is broadcasting their resume everywhere, there is no need for the hiring manager to rely on the recruiter to find the job seeker. 

Third, by waiting until you need help, you do not build trust with the recruiter.  Picture a recruiter getting a call from their best client.  They need to hire someone with a background similar to yours right now.  The recruiter probably has a number of candidates that could fit the position and will want to submit the top three.  Although your skills, experience and education will be important, the recruiter is more likely to present a candidate they know well than one they don't, if the two candidates have a similar background.  This isn't a result of favoritism – it's a result of the trust that has been built. 

A recruiter wants to make a good impression on their client each time they submit candidates.  Knowing a candidate – how they communicate and what their values are – can help a job seeker get exposure to a recruiter's clients.

To capitalize on this, you need to start working with recruiters (and network with other professionals) long before you decide to make a change.  Update your resume periodically and keep your interview skills fresh.  If you do these things, you will be in much better shape if you career takes an unexpected turn.

Should My Education or Work Experience Go First on My Resume

Deciding the order of information on your resume is an important step in your search.  The order indicates the relative importance of information.  The content at the top of the first page is most likely to be read.  As you progress to the end, it becomes less likely the hiring manager will read everything.

This is similar to the way a newspaper is organized.  The most significant and important stories are put on the first page at the top.  On TV, you see this with lead story in a news program.  In fact, almost every media, including books, magazines, movies and music, is structured with the most appealing content at the top.

Your resume should be organized in a similar manner.  What is the most important aspect of your background?  This goes at the top.  Let’s look at a few examples:

New College Graduate:  Individuals that recently (in the last year or two) graduated with a bachelors, masters or PhD should put this at the top of their resume.  This is the most significant element of their background and demonstrates their potential for a new career.

Technical Experts:  Engineering, IT and other technical specialties prioritize technical skill very high.  Often, the skill level with specific technologies or disciplines is more important to a hiring manager than anything else.  In this case, the technical skills should be featured.  This can be done by starting the resume with an executive summary or a skills section that demonstrates these skills.

Experienced Professionals:  Individuals that have worked in a field for a number of years usually will want to lead with their experience.  Starting the resume with an executive summary and then the work experience section makes the most sense.  It highlights the experience doing the job that the job seeker is pursuing.  Often, prior experience in the same role is the most important attribute a hiring manager wants.

Career Changers:  If you are attempting to change career fields, your decision of what to prioritize may change.  Your experience won’t be as significant in the new field.  In this case, you may want to highlight your transferrable skills or your education first.

Unusual Specialties:  There are some experiences, skills and abilities that are unusual and in high demand.  Being able to speak a foreign language, possessing a government security clearance or experience managing hospital construction projects are examples of specialties that are rare.  They are often non-negotiable requirements for some positions.  There are a lot of specialties that are rare and in demand.  If you possess have experience in one of these areas, it should be highlighted on your resume.

Bottom line: Approach your resume as a sales pitch for your background.  Lead with your strengths and make the best impression.

Highlight Your Skills

I was asked to help a job seeker under a really tight deadline.  The job seeker wanted to apply for a job that appeared to be an ideal match to their goals and needed to get their resume submitted that same day.

Because of the deadline, we focused on the quick and easy changes that would make a huge difference.  I wanted to share some of the changes we made. 

Background

The job seeker is a freelance graphic designer with a specialty in digital photo editing.  The job seeker is pursuing a full time digital photo editing position.  The position is a close match to the individual's background and skills.  The key is getting the resume to reflect this match.

Original Resume

Below is the original text of the job seeker's most recent position.

FREELANCE PHOTO EDITING  2003 – present
•   Create logos, business cards, brochures and a wide range of literature pieces for various businesses.
•   Photo editing for websites, books, special occasions, sales; each for both public and private clients.
•   Specializes in combing photos, replacing backgrounds, and improving overall appearance of photos.

This employment listing has a lot of problems, starting with being too brief and not specific enough. The first bullet is ok.  It's descriptive and gives a list of commercial work the individual has done, but none of it relates to photo editing and seems a little out of place. 

The second bullet has a different sentence structure – there isn't a verb in this bullet.  The bullet relates to photo editing but doesn't say anything about what the job seeker did.  It only lists the applications where the edited photos have been used.

The third bullet is the meat of the description.  It lists specific photo editing skills – combing, replacing backgrounds and improving appearance.  This is very general and will not impress a hiring manager.  Every job seeker that applies for this position will say something about their ability to "improve the overall appearance of photos."  If everyone says the same thing, it will not differentiate you to say it also.  It is essential to be specific and show how you are different.

Revised Resume

We revised the job description to be much more specific.  Below is the new description:

    FREELANCE PHOTO EDITOR/GRAPHIC DESIGNER 2003 – present

  • Creates logos, business cards, brochures and a wide range of marketing materials for various businesses.
  • Provides photo editing for websites, books, special occasions and sales materials.  Clients include both individuals and commercial businesses.
  • Photo editing specialties include:
    • Replacing backgrounds  
    • Cropping photos 
    • Removing wrinkles, background objects/people and reflections 
    • Compilation photos: merging people from different photos for holiday cards, switching people from group photos so everyone is smiling and with their eyes open 
    • Adjusting tint, color and lighting 
    • Creating video slideshows from still photos including text, menus, transitions, and music 
    • Stylizing photos with a wide variety of techniques 

We changed the job title to show the greater scope of experience, making the first bullet fit better with the job.  We added a verb to the second bullet and reworded the description of the clients.  The big change was made to the third bullet.  We scrap the text and replaced it with a skills list.  This is still a general listing of skills but we added extra detail in a few places.  In particular, we added a clear description of the compilation photos. 

If we had listed just “compilation photos,” this would not have been as effective.  By describing clearing a couple of the project types in this category, we demonstrated the job seeker's skill with photo editing.  These are more advanced skills.  By just listing that the job seeker has completed projects requiring these skills, they establish credibility with these skills and with all of the photo editing skills.

Another advantage of listing all of these skills related to the hiring manager's goals.  It is likely that a few of these skills are a higher priority than the others.  If they have one significant priority, they will screen resumes by looking for this skill.  Listing all of the job seekers' photo editing skills increases the likelihood that the job seeker has mentioned the exact skill the hiring manager wants.

Other Changes

To make room on the resume for the added information, we deleted information from past positions.  There were some bullets that demonstrated skills and experiences that do nothing to support the graphic design and photo editing skills.  Since these didn't add value, we deleted them.  If the job seeker decided to apply for a position focused in these areas, they would need to add them back and deleted some of the detail from the photo editing. 

We made a lot of other changes to the resume.  One of the most important additions was to add a link to the job seeker's online portfolio.  It is important to show your past performance.  Most people can do this by describing accomplishments.  In design fields, it is often much easier to show what the job seeker has designed.  An online portfolio does this very well.

Competition for Jobs

The Ladders issued their 3rd Quarter Job Market Trends report this week.  The report has some very interesting data.  In particular, they provide a measure of the number of job seekers for each position.

The Ladders focuses on positions with salaries over $100k, so this isn’t a measure of the full job market, but the situation is probably very similar at other income levels.

Here’s what the Ladders reported:

REGIONAL JOB MARKET COMPETITION
Compares the number of active job seekers to number of $100k+ positions available in this location.

San Francisco
San Diego
Washington DC
Boston
Seattle
Houston
New York
Austin
Philadelphia
Baltimore
Chicago
Denver
Los Angeles
Phoenix
Miami
Minneapolis
Atlanta
Dallas
Tampa
Detroit		 2:1
3:1
3:1
4:1
4:1
4:1
4:1
5:1
5:1
5:1
6:1
6:1
6:1
7:1
7:1
7:1
8:1
8:1
8:1
20:1

In some parts of the country, the news isn’t bad.  2:1 and 3:1 are fair odds.  For a position, you need to be in the top half or top third of candidates and you should have a good shot.

Other areas, Atlanta, Dallas, Tampa and Detroit are a different story.  With so many more job seekers than jobs, you can expect that every job posting is going to be inundated with resumes.  In Detroit, with 20 job seekers for every job, you need to be absolutely outstanding, exceptional in almost every way, to beat out your competition.

The primary question is this:  If you were sitting in a room with 19 other people that have the same education and experience as you, why should you be hired over them?

There will be a few people that will have a great answer to this question.  They are the ones that will make the final cut and one of them will get hired.  The rest will never get this to this point.

You can see the rest of the report from the Ladders at:   Update 9/17/11 – the link to the report is no working it the old link was  www.theladders.com/static/boom/08_q3_index.html

Worst Cover Letter Ever

Below is the cover letter from an resume I received by email this week:

**************Plan your next getaway with AOL Travel. Check out Today's Hot
5 Travel Deals!
(  — Link to AOL Travel —  )

This email wasn't spam.   There was a resume attached and it was from a job seeker interested in an opportunity.  Other than deleting the link, the text of the cover letter is complete, exactly as I received it.

This isn't really a cover letter.  It's the signature that AOL automatically puts in every email sent out.  It would not have taken much time to put in a message.  At the least, the job seeker could have written something like this:

To whom it may concern,

Please accept my resume for consideration.

<Job Seeker's Name>

My version would be a bad cover letter, but significantly better than just an AOL Travel advertisement.  What the job seeker sent was just terrible.

My Reaction

When I opened the email and saw an ad, my first reaction was to delete it.  The one word subject, "Resume," caught my eye right before I hit delete. I realized this was actually a submission from a candidate and not spam.  I very surprised that this didn't end up in my spam folder – it is just an ad.  Somehow, it slipped through. 

As I write this, I haven't decided if I'm going to open the resume.  The "cover letter" has given me enough information to know whether I want to represent this candidate.  Even if the resume looks good, I have to question the professionalism of a candidate that sends each resume with just a travel ad.  If they aren't willing to spend a few seconds typing a short message, how committed are they to their job search and their career? 

Bottom line: Make your resume submission a persuasive sales pitch for you – not for AOL.

More About Fake Degrees

I’ve written before about lying on a resume in the past, but today was reminded how some companies aggressively try to tempt job seekers to the dark side. 

There are companies that sell “degrees” to anyone that will write a check. Most of these organizations try to stay under the radar.  What they do is fraudulent.  A number of states have prosecuted diploma mills and some are prosecuting job seekers that use fake degrees to get a job.

Today, I received a spam message that offered me a degree without classes, tests, exams, or books.  Additionally, no qualifications are required.  Below is the spam.  I left misspelled words and typos as they appeared in the original message, but I removed the phone numbers.

No Exams/Books/Tests/Interview/classes
100% No Pre-School qualification required!

——————————
Inside USA:
0utsidee USA:
——————————

Bacheelor, Degree, M???steerMB/-\, Ph[)D (non accredited) availablee in the Field of yourr choice so you can
even become a doctoor and receive All the benefits That comes with it!

Ple???se leave be|???w 3 Info in Voic???mail:

1) Your name
2) Your co???ntry
3) Your phone no. [please include Country code]

Call Now!! 24-hours a day, 7-Days a Weekk waiting For your call

——————————
Inside USA:
0utside USA:
——————————

Our Staff wilI get back to You in 1-3 working days

As the economy slows and more people are unemployed for longer time periods, it may become tempting to buy a degree.  This is fraud.  Companies continue to get better at identifying job seekers that are deceptive.  It’s very easy to check this stuff out.  Go to the Council for Higher Education Accreditation and search their database.  This is the organization in the US that accredits the accrediting bodies in the US. 

If a school isn’t in this database, you should research it much closer.  There are states that have criminalized the use of degrees from schools that are not properly accredited. Remember to check the accrediting body.  Many of the fake schools say that they are accredited by fake accrediting bodies. 

Fortunately, identifying fake degrees is getting easier.  None of us want to go put our lives in the hands of a doctor that received a mail order degree without ever taking a class.

How Will Your Resume Be Remembered

After a hiring manager reads your resume, how will it be remembered?  It is likely your resume will be read along with dozens or hundreds of others.  The person screening the resumes will only remember a few, perhaps only five or ten.  If your resume doesn't stand out, it's unlikely to be remembered.

Some people worked for a highly respected company or went to a top tier school.  These can make a good impression and are often remembered by a hiring manager.  If you didn't go to a top school or work at one of the most respected companies, your background may still standout to some employers.  Direct competitors of an employer may consider your experience exceptional.

Another way to standout is to present impressive accomplishments.  This is possibly the best way to be remembered.  Accomplishments show what you have done and demonstrate what you can do for a potential employer.  Giving good examples of your successes will help you stand out.  The key to being remembered is creating a picture that is absolutely clear in the hiring manager's mind.  This requires giving specific details of what you did and what results you achieved.

You can also stand out and get remembered by showing you have a skill that is in demand.  Most fields have skills that are rare and difficult.  If you can show a high skill level in these areas, you can make a very strong impression and get remembered.  The key to making an impression with a skill is to demonstrate your skill level by showing what you have done using that skill. 

There are others ways to get remembered.  Your resume could have a highly unusual style or structure.  You could add information that is rare on a resume.  You can also have glaring mistakes and typos.  All of these will get attention and help the hiring manager remember you.  Unfortunately, being remembered for these reasons isn't going to help you.  In fact, it will hurt your chances since you will be remembered for a negative reason.

The main reason you want to be remembered by the hiring manager early in the process is to become one of the front runners.  If you are qualified and competing against other qualified candidates, you need to find a way for the hiring manager to think of your background in a simple manner.  In essence, you are providing the hiring manager a way of giving you a title or nickname – the Harvard grad, the SAS expert or the operations executive that turned around a plant in under a year.  These are simple tags that can help a person remember your background – much more than just what the tag conveys. 

You don't want to be a nondescript person that is qualified but doesn't bring anything unique to the table.  This will make it tough to beat out your competition.  Additionally, if you do beat out everyone else, you still need to convince the company to hire you.  They have the option of leaving the position open to continue looking.  This makes it essential to show why you should be hired and give the hiring manager a simple way to remember this.

Neurolinguistic Programming

There are some interesting articles about how Barack Obama is using Neurolinguistic Programming in his speeches to "hypnotize" the audience.  This may be a bit of an exaggeration, but the techniques he employs are very persuasive.

NLP has been discussed as a technique to help people interview better. It is a way of building a connection with the person listing that is much stronger and more persuasive.  One of the core techniques that is taught it mirroring.  With this technique the job seeker attempts to copy the tone, pace and rhythm of the interviewer. 

By mirroring, the goal is to cause the interviewer to feel more comfortable and identify with the job seeker better.  This is achieved by making the interviewer hear something that sounds very much like their own speech. 

You can also mirror someone's eye contact.  Some people find it uncomfortable to have someone stare at them.  Despite this, we all try to make good eye contact in an interview.  Often this means staring at the interviewer.  If the interviewer is uncomfortable with this, you're going to have a tough time winning them over.  Watch their eye movements and the amount of time they spend making eye contact with you.  If they only look at you 20% of the time, you may make them feel more comfortable if you look at the office surroundings during the interview to avoid staring continuously.

There are much more sophisticated NLP techniques.  Some involve using hand gestures to tie concepts and emotions together.  Others involve using specific language and story telling techniques to change the way the listener analyzes what is said. 

Most of these techniques take work to master.  A few can be used without much effort.  Pay attention to how an interviewer sits, the pace and tone of their speech, the amount of motion and hand gestures they use, and their eye contact.  If you notice something inconsistent with your style, adapt your style to the interviewer's. 

The key is to keep it natural.  Don't change your style so much that you look like you are acting.  Also, don't try to copy something that doesn't make sense.  For example, if the interviewer has an accent that you do not have, copying the accent is going to far.  Mirroring the pace and rhythm, though, can be very effective. 

If you want to learn more about NLP, check out http://www.nlp-now.co.uk/nlp-what.htm

If you want to see NLP in action, read this article on how Obama is using NLP:  http://www.pennypresslv.com/Obama%27s_Use_of_Hidden_Hypnosis_techniques_in_His_Speeches.pdf

Job Searches Put on Hold

CareerBuilder recently released their fourth quarter Job Forecast report.  One of the measures they track is the how soon employees expect to change jobs.

In the report, it shows individuals are putting their job search on hold.  People that have a job are choosing to stay in that job as they ride out the financial downturn.  In fact, only 2% of workers expect to leave their current job in then month, 6% expect to leave in the next 3 months, and only 11% expect to leave in the next six months.

Contrast this with the same measure from three years ago.  In 2005, 13% of workers expected to leave their job in under 3 months.  There are two ways of looking at this. The first is that half of the people that ordinarily would be looking for a job are deciding to stay.  The other way is that people are still considering leaving but are delaying their goals by three months to see where the economy is in January before the commit to leaving.

The effect of both of these is the same.  The companies that are hiring are still having trouble finding people.  In fact, one third of hiring managers said that they currently have positions that they can't find qualified people to fill.

It may seem odd that some companies are experiencing a talent shortage at a time of rising unemployment.  This is an effect of the complexity of our economy.  There are good jobs available, but they often are not where the job seekers are.  The areas hit worst by the downturn in the housing market are also the areas where the construction industry is slowing the most.  This makes construction jobs tough to find in the areas with the most available workers.  The same is happening in Michigan with the Auto industry.  There are opportunities, but they're not around Detroit. 

The challenge for a job seeker is knowing when to relocate.  For many families, the idea of moving a thousand miles is a non-negotiable – they aren't going to do it.  This means that the industries hardest hit will have to grow to create new jobs for the people currently unemployed before many of these individuals will find work.  This can take a long time – years in some cases.

There isn't an answer for this.  The issues of relocating a family, selling a house in a depressed market (or walking away and allowing a foreclosure), and finding a company that you can believe in and trust will provide stable growth are not issues with a clear answers.  They are issues that need to looked at very closely. 

The full report from Career Builder is available at http://img.icbdr.com/images/aboutus/pressroom/Q42008ForecastReport.pdf

The Designated Backup

I reviewed a resume this week that had a statement in the middle of the resume that was almost hidden. The statement appeared in a job description at the end of a long paragraph. When I read a resume, like most hiring managers, I scan the resume quickly to get a feel for the person and to decide how much time I want to spend on the resume. Sometimes, I make my decision in the first 15 seconds.

Placing important information at the end of a long paragraph almost guarantees that I won't read it. This is exactly what the job seeker did. It was only by chance that I read the line. There was something in the resume that interested me and I decided to look a little further for more information and found this:

"Designated back up for <department manager> when this individual is unavailable.”

This statement, by itself doesn't mean much. In the field that this job seeker is in, it is significant. The job seeker is in a role with a large number of peers, all managed by the department manager. This individual is in a role that does require someone to fill in for them on a regular basis. Finally, the manager's role is significantly more challenging than the job seekers regular duties.

This statement implies very strongly that the job seeker is the best leader out of all of his peers. This isn't something that should be buried or hidden on a resume. It is a type of recommendation from the individual's boss that they are the best in the department and designated as such publicly by placing them in the role of fill in.

As a job seeker, it is extremely important to recognize the elements of your background that set you apart and highlight you potential. This job seeker failed to do this. The information that they highlighted and was most prominent on their resume was much less important. It was essentially data about their job responsibilities and did little to sell the candidate.