What Color Is Your Parachute? Part 3
Some Friendly Reminders About Your "Pre-Google Resume"
1. If you're blanketing the Internet with that resume, be cautious about including any stuff on the resume that would help someone find out where you live or work, particularly if you're a female. No, I'm not being s.e.xist. It's just that there are some sick people out there. Sick in the head, that is. If I were you, I'd be sure to leave out my address and home phone number. Just an e-mail address should more than suffice.
2. If you are targeting particular employers, rather than or in addition to broad job-sites, keep in mind that a resume is best not sent solely by e-mail, particularly if it's an attachment, and not embedded in the body of the e-mail. Many employers, leery of viruses, will not even open e-mail attachments (and that includes your resume). Send it by e-mail if you must, but always send a nicer version of it by the postal service, or UPS, or FedEx, etc.
3. If you're going to snail-mail a resume to a target employer, pay attention to the paper you write or print it on. Picture this scenario: an employer is going through a whole stack of resumes, and on average he or she is giving each resume about eight seconds of their time (true: we checked!). Then that resume goes either into a pile we might call "Forgeddit," or a pile we might call "Bears further investigation." And what determines which pile? The feel of the paper. Yes, that employer's first contact with your resume is with their fingers. By the pleasure or displeasure of their fingers, they are prejudiced in your favor before they even start reading, or prejudiced against you. Usually they are not even aware of this. Anyway, this is why you want the paper to feel good. That usually means using paper weighing at least 28 pounds (a paper's weight is on the outside of every package). And you want it to be easy to read-so be sure it's nicely laid out or formatted, using a decent-sized font, size 12 or even 14, etc.
4. A resume should have a purpose, at least in your mind. It might be that you're posting it online, just to collect and organize all pertinent information about yourself in one place, so that when an employer Googles you they find this, nice and concise, in contrast to all the other stuff about you that Google will find, scattered all over the Internet.
5. Your purpose, for your resume, if you're targeting individual employers, is to get yourself invited in for an interview. Period. This truth, unfortunately, is not widely known. Most job-hunters (and more than a few resume writers) a.s.sume a resume's purpose is to "sell you," or secure you a job. It does happen. But mostly the purpose of a resume is just to get invited in for an interview, where it will then be time for you to sell yourself. In person. Face to face. Not on paper. So, read over every single sentence in your resume and evaluate it by this one standard: "Will this item help to get me invited in? Or will this item seem too puzzling, or off-putting, or a red flag?" If you doubt a particular sentence will help get you invited in for an interview, then omit that sentence. If it's important to you, give yourself a note to be sure to cover it in the interview. And if there is something you feel you will ultimately need to explain, or expand upon, save that explanation also for the interview. Your resume is, above all, no place for "true confessions." ("I kind of botched up, at the end, in that job; that's why they let me go, as I'm sure they'll tell you when you check my references.") If you want the interviewer to know that, in the interest of full disclosure, don't put it in your resume. Save true confessions for the end of the interview, and only if you're confident at that point that they really want you, and you really want them.
6. The same advice applies to discussing any non-visible or non-obvious handicap you may have. Generally speaking-there are exceptions-don't mention it as early as the resume. And even when you're in the interview, don't discuss right off the bat what you can't do. Focus all their attention, initially, on what you can do-that you can perform all the tasks required in this job. Save what you can't do for the moment when they say they really want you.
7. If you're coming out of some subculture that has its own language (military, clergy, etc.) get some help in translating your experience into the language of employers. For example, "preached" should be replaced by "taught." "Commanded" should be replaced by "supervised," etc.
8. "Keywords" are important if you're posting your resume without specific employers in mind. A good article about keywords-what they are, how to insert them in your resume-can be found in SqualkFox's article, "8 Keywords That Set Your Resume on Fire," at http://tinyurl.com/d9k4ns.
9. Finally, don't include references on your resume. Some career counselors and resume writers will disagree with me on this, but I think references are better offered after prospective employers have had a chance to see and talk with you. And please, please, please, never list somebody as a reference, at any time in your job-hunt, without first getting their written permission to do so. Be aware that your references, if they are checked out, will often be checked out over the phone, rather than in writing. But in case you may need something in writing, if your references permit you to use their name, ask them to give the letter of recommendation to you. You want to screen your references, believe me you do! Don't a.s.sume they'll give you a raving recommendation. Some of your preferred reference writers may turn out to be people who are by nature brutally honest. If they've never actually seen you at work, for example, they may say so, and decline to say whether you'd be an a.s.set or not. That kind of "recommendation" is honest, but it won't do you any good. You want to find this out before any prospective employer sees it. Then you can decide whether you want to use it or deep-six it, before you go into the interview.
10. Hard fact to learn, but you must learn it: some employers hate resumes. Why should that be any surprise? Currently, according to experts, 82% of all resumes have to be checked out, concerning the facts stated or the experience claimed. Lies are spreading like a plague, on resumes. Another hard fact: some employers love resumes. Unfortunately, it's not for the reasons you think. They love them because they offer an easy way to cut down the time they have to spend interviewing candidates for a vacancy. Don't forget this: for an employer, hiring is essentially an elimination game. Particularly where a lot of people are applying, they're reading over your resume looking for one thing: a reason-any reason-to eliminate you, so they can cut that stack of resumes down to a manageable number for face-to-face interviewing (say, three to eight). Surveys show it only takes a skilled human resources person about eight seconds to scan a resume (thirty seconds, if they're really dawdling), so getting rid of fifty job-hunters-I mean getting rid of fifty resumes-takes only half an hour or less. Whereas, interviewing those fifty job-hunters in person would have required a minimum of twenty-five hours. Great time savings-for them! No wonder employers invented resumes!
Where You Post Your Resume Makes a Difference.
This should guide you in your resume strategy, if you're going to post a resume to supplement what else they'll find online about you, with Google.
The number of interviews employers need to conduct to find a hire, stays pretty constant-around 5.4-once they've sifted through all the resumes or applications. So, to conserve their energy, they ask themselves, "Where would I have to read or sift through the least number of resumes, before I decide who to do those 5.4 interviews with?" Fortunately, we know the answer. Somebody did a study.6 If employers post their vacancy on a job-board such as CareerBuilder.com or Monster.com, they have to look through 219 resumes from job-hunters who respond, before they find someone to interview and hire.
If employers consider resumes from job-hunters who come through social media sites, such as LinkedIn or Facebook, they have to look through 116 resumes, before they find someone to interview and hire.
If employers post their vacancy on their own website, they have to look through 33 resumes from job-hunters who respond, before they find someone to interview and hire.
If the job-hunter takes the initiative to find a very specific job, rather than waiting to find a vacancy, and does this, say, by typing the name of that kind of job into a search engine, then sending resumes to any companies whose name turns up, employers only have to look through 32 applications, before they find someone to interview and hire.
And if the job-hunter takes even more initiative, chooses a company where they'd like to work, and gets a referral (i.e., gets some employee within that company to recommend them), employers have to look through only 10 such candidates, before they find someone to interview and hire.
Summary.
Okay, one more time: ever since 2008, do you need a resume?
Well, no you don't, and yes you do.
You already have a kind of resume without lifting a finger, if you've been posting anything on the Internet. Google is your new resume. What an employer finds out about you simply by Googling your name, helps determine whether you get hired or not.
You've got to clean up what they'll find, before they find it. Edit, fill in, expand, and add to it, before they see it.
But that, alone, is not enough. You need to summarize and organize the information about yourself in one place, online or off. And that means, you need to write the old kind of resume, that you did pre-2008.
Once written, you can go two ways with it. The first way is just to post it everywhere on the Internet, which is akin to nailing it to a tree in the town square, where everyone can see it. You just post it as is.
The second way is to send it to particular employers whom you have targeted, hoping that resume will get you an interview. Here you will need to edit it, before sending it to any employer. You will need to weigh every sentence in it by one criterion and one only: will this help get me invited in, for an interview? If the answer is No, you must edit or remove that sentence.
Because, these are the most fundamental truths about approaching individual employers: The primary purpose of a resume is to get yourself invited in for an interview.
The primary purpose of that interview is to get yourself invited back for a second interview.
The primary purpose of the second and subsequent interviews there, is to help them decide that they like you and want you, once you've decided that you like them, and could do some of your best work there.
Wild Life, by John Kovalic, 1989 Shetland Productions. Reprinted with permission.
1. Of U.S. households, 71% have Internet access at home plus 9% elsewhere, for a total of 80%. But this is only the average. According to the latest U.S. census (2010), 99% of households making $150,000 or more have Internet access, but only 57% of households making $15,000 or less do.
2. Most statistics (up-to-date at the time of writing) in this chapter are from Craig Smith's wonderful monthly updates called "Digital Marketing Ramblings," found at http://tinyurl.com/d3ytpff.
3. For more on hashtags, see both http://tinyurl.com/c2862re and http://tinyurl.com/d5nt87.
4. This is adapted, with the written permission of my friend Tom O'Neil, from an original doc.u.ment of his, which was and is copyright protected under the New Zealand Copyright Act (1994) cv.co.nz 2001. You may contact Tom at www.cv.co.nz.
5. Books that I like: Resume 101 by Quentin J. Schultze, PhD; Resume Magic: Trade Secrets of a Professional Resume Writer by Susan Britton Whitcomb; Federal Resume Guidebook: Strategies for Writing a Winning Federal Resume by Kathryn Kraemer Troutman; and Knock 'em Dead Resumes by Martin Yate. Returning vets from Iraq and Afghanistan will find help on such sites as job-hunt.org (http://tinyurl.com/86a8rkn), Real Warriors (http://tinyurl.com/6u3vawm), and MyNextMove.org, maintained by the government's O*Net Online site.
6. From an a.n.a.lysis, released in April 2011, by Jobs2web Inc., of 1,300,000 job applications and 26,000 hires in 2010.
G.o.d grant me the serenity.
To accept the things I cannot change, The courage to change the things I can, And the wisdom to know the difference.
-Reinhold Niebuhr (18921971).
Chapter 3.
There Are Seven Million Vacancies This Month.
The Good News: The Job-Hunt Hasn't Really Changed At All Since 2008.
Yes, I know this contradicts what I said in the first chapter. But there you have it. Both things are true: the job-hunt has changed dramatically since 2008, yet the job-hunt hasn't really changed at all since 2008.
How can they both be true? The answer lies in the distinction between inner essence and surface behavior.
The surface behavior of the job-hunt is always changing, often dramatically, as we saw in the first and second chapters. This, because job-hunt behavior at any given time is determined by technology. And when a new technology arises-think computers, think Internet, think smartphone, think digital resumes-job-hunting alters. On the surface.
But beneath all surface change, the essence of the job-hunt never really changes. Job-hunting is all about human nature, and in its essence is most like another human activity that we call dating. Both shake down to: "Do you like me?" and "Do I like you?" If the answer to both is "Yes," then it's "Do you want to try goin' steady?" In dating. In job-hunting. So, if you focus on essence rather than form, the job-hunt remains constant year after year.
First question: "Do you like me?" In the job-interview that means "Hey employer, you are looking for someone who can do this thing that you want done, and can get along with you and the other people here. So, given that, do you like me?"
Second question: "Do I like you?" In the job-interview that means "Are you going to give me a work environment that will enable me to be at my most productive and most effective level, where I feel useful and appreciated, and can make a difference?"
Both questions are equally important, and permissible to ask. But that second question needs to be emphasized, underlined, and written in large letters because when we are job-hunting we are so p.r.o.ne to think all power belongs to employers. They have every right to ask their question. We have no right to ask ours-or so street-wisdom claims.
But wait a minute. Meditate on why we have the word quit in our vocabulary, as in "I quit," and you will realize that the job-hunt and job are always a matter of the job-hunter or worker asking themselves "Do I like you?" And if you conclude, "No I don't really like you," or "I really hate it here," then eventually you quit.
Your big decision is, do I wait three years to find out the answer to my question, or do I try to find it out now, during the job-hunt in general, during the job-interview in particular?
The job-hunt is a conversation-a two-way conversation-wherein your opinion matters as much as the employer's. That always has been true. Always will be.
You Are Not As Powerless as You Think
If you're currently out of work, and looking for a job, you have every reason in the world to think you are up against overwhelming forces and the situation you face is rather hopeless. You may have struck out, again and again. The media is always filled with bad news, about the unemployed, since 2008. But the situation you face is not hopeless. In the world today, you have more power than you think, even with all the bad news and these great forces that you are up against since 2008. It may not be a lot of power, but ... well, let me tell you a story.
Some years ago, when I was doing a lot of counseling, not just about careers, a friend of mine asked me if I would be willing to see someone he knew. Her name was Mary. She had been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, or MS. She had been to a wide range of medical specialists: neurologist, psychologist, internist, you name it. They all had declared there was nothing they could do to help her with the disease. My friend said, "Would you see her?" "Sure," I said, "but I'm not sure there's anything I can do."
The next day my friend brought her over. She walked very stiffly up the front sidewalk, came in, sat down, and after exchanging a few pleasantries, I got down to business. "Mary," I said, "what is multiple sclerosis?"
Mary's and my discussion was a philosophical one. We both knew how the disease is generally described: a disease that attacks the central nervous system. My question to her was deeper, and I knew she understood what I was getting at: What causes MS? How much control do we have over its progression? What hastens or slows its rise and fall in the individual? Etc.
"I don't know," she said, in a dull, emotionless voice. "Well then," I said, "that makes us even; because I don't know, either. But here's what I propose. I'm sure that a huge proportion of whatever MS is, is out of your control. There's nothing you can do about it. But that proportion can't be 100%. There's got to be some proportion-let's say it's even just 2%, or 5%-that is within your control. We could work on that. Do you want to begin that journey?" She said yes. Over the next few weeks she improved, and finally was free of all symptoms (typical of the disease for a spell, but this lasted for a very long time), and now-free of all stiffness-she became a model on 57th Street in New York City.
So it is, that in any situation you find yourself, no matter how overwhelmed you may feel, no matter how much you may feel you're at the mercy of huge forces that are beyond your control, some part of it is within your control: maybe 2%, 5%, who knows? There is always something you can work on. Something that is within your power. And often, changing that little bit results in changing a whole lot. Maybe not as dramatic a change as with Mary; but change nonetheless.
You are not powerless during the job-hunt. Maybe the employer has an overwhelming amount of power in the whole job-hunt. But the employer does not hold all the cards.
That is what never changes.
Of course, you will object, "Well, that may be true during normal times, but these ain't normal times. I cannot afford to be picky. There are very few vacancies out there."
Where did we get that idea? From the media, that's where. Two reports come out each month in the U.S., about the state of the job-market. One of those reports is usually hopeful. One of them is usually depressing. Both of them are put out by the federal government. The media choose to emphasize one of those reports, but not the other.
The first report comes out on the first Friday of each month, with rare exception. It is typically called "news about the unemployment rate," though it is more accurate to think of it as "the monthly measure of the net change in the size of the working workforce in the U.S." Its technical name is the Current Population Survey.1 It said that in the month of February, 2013, only 236,000 jobs were added to the economy. With twelve million looking for work that month, that was not good news.
But, there was that other report. It comes out about two months later. It's called JOLT, which stands for Job Openings and Labor Turnover.2 It said that during that month of February 2013, 4,418,000 people found work, and even so, 3,925,000 vacancies remained unfilled by the end of that month. You do the math. That's a total of 8,343,000 jobs available in the U.S. during the month of February. And this is typical, in the U.S., month in and month out.
What's going on, here? Well, let me give you a parallel situation.
Suppose I own a dress shop. You come in to visit me, and for fun you count the number of dresses I have in the shop. It turns out I have 100. You leave that day, and you don't return for a month. You count, again for fun, how many dresses I have in the shop one month later. I have 95. So you say to me, "Oh, I see you only sold 5 dresses this month. Poor you."
"No," I reply, "I added to the inventory during the month." "How many," you ask. "50," I say.
You stop, and calculate: "Oh, so you actually sold 55 dresses this past month." I say, "Right."
5 vs. 55. You get the one figure, as the net change in the size of the inventory in my shop, with visits a month apart; you get the other figure as the actual change in the number of dresses sold, during the month.
It's the same with the two government reports. Not 5 vs. 55, but 236,000 vs. 8,343,000.
Of course, the question for us when we're out of work is, "If there are typically seven or eight million jobs available each month, why didn't I get one of them?"
More importantly, this wipes out the impression that things are so bad, it doesn't matter what you want. Nonsense!
The job-hunt is always a two-way conversation. That never changes. What the employer wants, matters. But also what you want, matters.
Certain other facts about the job-hunt in this country never change. Here are ten of them, that have remained the same since the first edition of this book was published, and throughout the forty-two yearly editions since.
1. You must take charge of your own job-hunt, and determine not to conduct a traditional job-hunt ("this is the way it has always been done and must be done"), but rather, a creative one.
2. To do a creative job-hunt, there are three questions you must find out the answer to: they are What, Where and How. WHAT are your skills that you most love to use? WHERE would you most love to use these skills? (In terms of field, purpose of the company or organization, location, style of working, kinds of people you work with, etc.) And finally, HOW do you go about finding such places?
3. You must devote as much time to your job-hunt as you possibly can. If you want to devote as little time to your job-hunt as possible, then fine; try it. But if that doesn't lead to a job, then you are going to have to devote more time to it.
4. If your job-hunt isn't working, then you must take the time to find out as much up-to-date information as you possibly can about the job-hunt itself, and not just about the job-market. Effective job-hunting techniques keep evolving.
5. If your job-hunt isn't working, then you must take the time to do a thorough survey of yourself before you do a survey of the job-market (like, finding out what are "the hot jobs").
6. You must approach organizations, companies, or inst.i.tutions that interest you, whether or not they have a known vacancy. Go after smaller, newer companies in particular. Sometimes vacancies develop in a day and a night, and do not immediately get advertised or published.