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1ST STEPS IN THE HUNT
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Wiggle Room
October 15, 1999
Jobhunters commonly forget to put themselves in the shoes of their counterpart within their target company, the Hiring Manager. The Hiring Manger's Job is to hire someone who can competently do the tasks that the particular Job function requires, while also deciphering whether the new recruit can comfortably fit in with coworkers and become part of a happy and productive team.
Therefore they are skimming through resumes (and later on, Interview data) with a fine-tooth comb, discarding all those names that have rough edges somewhere in their resume. Your Job is to eliminate as many of the rough edges and knots that will cause your name to end up in the circular file or the proverbial electronic trash can.
For instance, references should not be listed from best to marginal; Employers expect this and tend to call the last listed references first. List your references alphabetically, or randomly - or put your best reference last. Most former Employers will hesitate to give out much information on past Employees, for fear of lingering lawsuits, so they'll just give out your name, dates of employment, rank, and serial number. And mum's the word on anything else you did there.
Given this piece of the Jobhunting puzzle, you have some wiggle room in claiming credit for accomplishments that you were only marginally involved in bringing to fruition. You can say you led a team project even though you were only a team member. Or you can claim responsibility for results that show impressive gains in revenue, sales, profit margin, return on investment, etc without much fear of being contradicted.
Jobhunting is a meat market, and appearances can be deceiving. Hiring Managers will believe what you tell them (barring contrary evidence and assuming it is plausible), provided that you tell them like you believe it yourself. To be chosen as 'today's freshest cut' requires that you pay attention to appearances, and this is more than the clothes you wear and the style of your hair. Selling yourself requires some panache. If you play by the book you'll usually end up on the outside looking in, or on the bottom side of the glass ceiling looking up at workers willing to stretch their potential.
Interviewing By Parachute
October 14, 1999
The standard bearer for Jobhunters over the past thirty years has been Richard Bolles, author of What Color Is Your Parachute? Revised and updated annually, it is the best selling Jobhunting book in the world, with over six million copies in print. I have used it extensively for years, and often determine the value of other Jobhunting advice by seeing how it stacks up to the advice in Parachute. Bolles summarizes Interviewing strategies into three chronological stages: before the Interview, during the Interview, and after the Interview. Before the Interview you should make a list of your skills, accumulated knowledge, and personality traits. Analyze what makes you different from other Job candidates, and imagine ways that you might stand out as head and shoulders above your competition for the next Job you're Interviewing. Research your target companies thoroughly so you can intelligently discuss the day to day work issues the Manager faces. Use a variety of Jobhunting methods (personal contacts from friends and family, the Yellow Pages, resumes, asking Employers for a Job even though they aren't advertising for help now) to find the person who has the power to hire you, and make yourself known to them. During the Interview you need to keep in mind that you represent a solution to the Hiring Manager's problems. Don't think of yourself as someone begging for a Job, but as a missing cog in the company wheel. Avoid making negative comments about the last place(s) you worked, no one likes a whiner. Keep your answers relatively short, and try to deduce what fears lie behind the questions the Interviewer is asking. Produce evidence of past accomplishments, and remember that the goal in the first Interview is to simply survive the winnowing process and make it to the callback Interview. Bolles' believes that Job Interviews can be summed up by the following five Questions: "Why are you here? What is it about this place that attracted you? What can you do for us? What do you have to contribute to what we do? What distinguishes you from 19 other people who can do the same Job? Will you fit in? Will you get along with, or irritate, all my other Employees? Can I afford you? Never do salary negotiation until the Employer says 'I want you'" After the Interview, Always write a thank you note. Estimates are that over ninety percent of Jobhunters don't send thank you notes after their Interviews. Hiring Managers are the very class of people that you want to think highly of you - whether or not this particular one saw fit to hire you for this particular Job. Leave a favorable impression on this one, and they might be a source for your next Interview. Add your Interviewers to your Network. Remember to send thank you notes to anyone who helped get you in to see the Hiring Manager. Show some initiative by sending Job related information that they discussed with you and they seemed interested in. Everyone loves to feel that others are paying attention to what they've said. Bolles has been training Jobhunters for three decades, and believes that the person who is trained in Jobhunting is more likely to get the Job than someone trained only in the skills that the Job requires. Contrast this with tomorrow's Jobhunting guru, a headhunter who thinks that Career Counselors in general are far too enamored of formulaic Jobhunting approaches and standardized pat answers.
Cheating Yourself 2
October 13, 1999
Yesterday we looked at two workers with similar skills and Jobs who were both looking for new Jobs. Mr. Coyote could best be described as a 'casual' Jobhunter, while Ms. Roadrunner might be an 'earnest' Jobhunter. Mr. Coyote spends two hrs/wk looking at classified ads, skimming for possible Jobs. Ms. Roadrunner allots ten hrs/wk to posting several versions of her resume online, building her network of Industry connections, and practicing her Interviewing techniques.
Ms. Roadrunner lands the Job she wants in two months, while Mr. Coyote accepts the only offer he gets after six months. At the end of another six months Mr. Coyote has earned an additional $1000 from his previous salary. His new supervisor is always on his case about the most trivial BS, and the company is in financial trouble - paychecks have been late several times already.
On the other hand, Ms. Roadrunner has earned more than an extra $8000 in wages and benefits. She has developed a good rapport with her supervisor, and is in line for a promotion. Her work has allowed her to expand her network of Industry contacts, and she now has an in to several more companies and hiring managers in her field. If her current Employer isn't willing to give her a raise and a promotion, she has the contacts in place to find someone else who will.
Total hours spent on their Jobhunt? For Mr. Coyote, fifty hours translated into $1000, which is $20/hr. Not bad, but the position is untenable and may short-circuit his career for some time. Ms. Roadrunner put in 90 hours and ended up with over $8000, which is almost $100/hr. And her career is fueled to take off.
If you treat it seriously, then Jobhunting is a Great Job that could pay you $50 to $200+/hr. It's just that you don't collect the money immediately. And the long-term benefits, though harder to measure, are even more impressive. If you choose to let your next Job eventually trickle down to you through a laissez-faire Jobhunting effort, you are only cheating yourself.
Cheating Yourself
October 12, 1999
Jobhunting is a Job. And how professionally you treat the process affects your pay dramatically.
For example, take two workers at Acme Explosives, Inc. Both earn $30K/yr and have similar abilities, Job titles, experience, and duties. Mr. Coyote is looking for another Job once a week for a couple hours, scanning the classifieds, updating his resume, and checking out Job postings occasionally. He sends out a resume or two a week, generating a form rejection letter (if he gets any response at all). He doesn't follow up his written inquiries with any phone calls, because he feels uncomfortable 'bothering anyone'.
Ms. Roadrunner takes an entirely different approach. She has several resumes online, each targeted toward a specific Job at companies she has done background research on. She spends ten hours/wk maintaining, massaging, and building her network of industry connections. Part of her time is devoted to company research, targeting Jobs and hiring managers, and figuring out how to get the inside track to them. She phones and emails people she doesn't know, but with whom she has a common reference point or person.
Eventually, both find Jobs. Mr. Coyote takes six months and accepts a Job with a company he knows only by name, and gets a marginal raise to $32K/yr. He has no idea whether his new boss throws tantrums at work, or is a chronic blameshifter. Ms. Roadrunner accepts one of a series of offers from Employers she is confident she will be comfortable working for. She negotiates a salary at $36K/yr with a cushy benefits package worth an extra 4K/yr - and it only takes her two months to get the Job she wants.
Obviously, Ms. Roadrunner has worked harder for a better deal than Mr. Coyote. But just how much more has she really earned, and what are the longer-term implications of both of their actions? Read the answer tomorrow in 1st Steps in the Hunt.
CareerBuzz.com
Updated link:
FindHow - Career Exploration
http://www.findhow.com/career/careers-career-exploration.php
Just as Online Job Boards have proliferated over the last two years, so have career advice sites for Jobhunters. There are hundreds of good sites, and a few great ones. And thousands of mediocre ones as well, but who really cares about those?
CareerBuzz falls somewhere below a great site, but is certainly at the head of the pack of the good career information source sites. There is a personal search agent, which is fast becoming the industry standard for these sites. Some Employers are listed alphabetically, so it's easy to do research on them.
I'm a sucker for any of the personality tests that these sites offer (continually hoping to verify that I am, indeed, a character), and CareerBuzz didn't let me down. They have a seventy question instrument to help you better understand what personality types you most closely resemble. On the Meyers-Briggs I always test out as an ENTP (Extrovert, iNtuitive, Thinking, Perceptive).
The usual useful links to tips on resume and cover letter writing are available, and the section on Interviewing is worth a few minutes of your time. And if you get bored there are trivia games and contests with low level prizes to pique your interest.
Probably the best attribute of this site is its simplicity - you don't have much opportunity to get lost in a maze of data clumps. I really hate sites that make it awkward to go from one page of information quickly back to the home page or site map. They force you into fighting your way out of the site, which never leaves a good impression.
October 11, 1999
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