Career Musings

Job seeker, sometimes it’s just a small blunder or gaffe that stands between your resume being selected for further consideration, or being tossed. Since recruiters and hiring managers play a significant role in your job search success, the onus is on you to know how to avoid these resume faux pas that irk them. Based on a survey conducted in late 2010 about Resume and Job Search Trends, the following were identified as the top resume pet peeves for recruiters and hiring managers:

• “Generic  Objectives” that scream ‘me-me-me’. “It rarely helps, often hurts, and always takes up valuable real estate that could be better used to showcase your accomplishments”, said one respondent.

• Massive email blasts where the resume is not tailored to the position for which they are applying.

• Beginning each point, regardless of experience, with the standard “responsible for” with few, if any, real accomplishments.

• A resume that contains “references available upon request”.

• Lack of professionalism in the layout and composition.

• Lack of detail on duties and accomplishments.

• Dull job descriptive statements.

• Content that is unrelated to the role.

• Chronological history of events dating back to high school (especially when the applicant has been out of high school for 3 or more years).

• Resumes with more than three pages, poor formatting, and spelling and grammar errors.

Some recruiters indicated that they prefer a longer resume as it enables them to see the breadth of the person’s experience and are better able to identify the skills relevant to the position they are trying to fill. However, these same recruiters say that clients/employers prefer a 2- or 3-page resume, and they would modify them to suit the client’s needs.

“As we are placing the candidates to our clients we prefer the longer version for details but we don’t like to send that to the client, unless specifically requested.”

While you might not agree with all of the above, some are glaringly obvious and should be avoided. Have your say.

Are you just getting started on LinkedIn? Are you someone with a LinkedIn account but an incomplete profile? Set aside some time today to work on your LinkedIn profile. “Why?”, you ask. LinkedIn has been described as your “Résumé on Steroids”. This means your profile is available online 24 hours per day, 7 days per week, 365 days per year. In addition, more than 85 percent of hiring managers use it to find candidates. With the potential for so much exposure, you should familiarize yourself with some LinkedIn basics.

• First, replace the blank avatar in your profile with a professional headshot. People are more inclined to accept an invitation when they can see a face. If, for some reason, you don’t want to use a photograph, use an image that is closely aligned with your profession or your personality.

• Second, customize your LinkedIn invitation. Do not use the generic, “I’d like to add you to my professional network” invitation that LinkedIn offers. Create a short personal message such as “I was reviewing my professional network on LinkedIn and realize you are not yet on my list. Please accept my invitation to connect.”

• Third, create a Personal LinkedIn URL. When you first created your profile, LinkedIn automatically assigned you a profile URL that included letters and numbers. Change this URL to include your name. For e.g., my LinkedIn URL is www.linkedin.com/in/daisywright.

According to LinkedIn, members with complete profiles are 40 times more likely to receive career opportunities. Put yourself in a position for new career opportunities. Begin working on your LinkedIn profile, and have a great Monday.

What is the one thing that you could do TODAY that would bring you closer to your career or job search goal?

• Do you want to reach out to someone for help?

• Should you research companies you would really want to work with instead of spending more time on job boards?

• Have you completed your LinkedIn Profile to make it more attractive and easier for hiring managers and recruiters to find you?

• Is your resume ready for your next opportunity, or are you waiting on the next opportunity before getting your resume ready?

Whatever it is, it only takes one small step, and you can start right now. Confucius says, “It does not matter how slowly you go, as long as you do not stop.”

Now get working on it, and have a great Monday!

Several of my clients are professional immigrants, aka Internationally Educated Professionals. While they are trying to navigate and understand the job search maze, they are either not working or they are working in survival jobs. Invariably, these jobs are not related to their professions, and some prefer not to mention such jobs on their resumes. Those who haven’t yet found a job face the same challenge – how to account for their time away from the job market.

In a recent survey, a group of Canadian HR professionals and hiring managers were asked “How should candidates address gaps in their employment history?” Nearly thirty-six percent (35.9%) said they should include a statement in the ‘work experience’ section and twenty-three percent (23.4%) indicated that they should give an explanation in a cover letter. Sixteen percent (15.6%) said that candidates should explain (in a chronological resume) where the gap occurred, or they should fill the gap with professional development. From this statistic, it is safe to conclude that 75% of respondents want you to account for the gap.

While keeping the hiring managers’ preferences in mind, here are some additional ways to compensate for, or explain gaps in your employment:

1. Prepare to tell stories about what you have learned in the survival job without focusing on the title
2. Register with employment agencies to get some short-term assignments, or look for freelance projects
3. Use the functional resume format to emphasize notable skills and accomplishments gained from a number of jobs
4. Arrange practice interview sessions with a family member or friend and make sure you are prepared to answer the ‘gap’ question
5. Reflect on some activities you have been involved in and see if you can link those activities to the company’s business strategy
6. Remind yourself that unpaid work is ‘experience’
7. Attend industry-related seminars, engage in professional development activities or gain an additional certification

Employers understand that there are various reasons why someone may have gaps in his or her employment history. Just be honest about it, and always steer the conversation back to the value benefits they would derive from having you on board.

In a survey conducted by The Wright Career Solution in 2010, 65.6 percent of hiring managers and recruiters use social media (LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook) to look for candidates, yet in another survey by the Canadian Education and Research Institute for Counselling (CERIC), almost half (46%), of Canadians report that they do not use, nor are they interested in using social media to advance their career goals. What a disconnect!

Get a copy of The Wright Career Solution’s report here: Survey Results of Canadian Hiring Managers and CERIC’s at  Public Perception of Career Development and the Workplace.

Feel free to add your thoughts here

Whether we are career coaches, professional resume writers or job seekers, we want to know what’s current and what’s out-of-date when it comes to resumes and interviews. Here is an opportunity for recruiters and hiring managers from across Canada to have their say and let us know what they look for in resumes; whether they bother to read cover letters, and what are their pet peeves.

Please complete this short survey at Canadian Resume & Interview Trends, and pass it along to others in your network.

Thanks. I will be sharing the results in the next few weeks.

I was one of seven coaches invited to participate in roundtable discussions on career related matters at Connect 2009 - The Annual Schulich Alumni Forum.   This Personal Coaching session was quite popular, and sold out prior to the event.

Here I am with a captive MBA audience facilitating a discussion on Building Your Presence in the Social Media Era. Gist of the session included:

Why Social Media?

• The traditional approach to job search has changed
• More competition for available jobs
• More touch points for recruiters and job seekers

For those who are not aware of two of the more popular social networks, here’s a summary:

LinkedIn is one of the fastest-growing recruiting tools used by recruiters. It is a great source for finding candidates because it’s free and top professionals can be found there.

Twitter, a free online micro-blogging application is also popular with recruiters, HR professionals, career coaches, resume writers and hiring managers. Therefore, in order to connect with these people, it is important to incorporate social media into your job search mix to enhance your chances of being found by employers.

As a micromessaging service with its 140-character limit, Twitter allows you to build your personal or business brand, develop relationships with people you wouldn’t normally meet, and gives you a chance to expand your network and sphere of influence.

So jump on the social media bandwagon, use it wisely and prioritize your efforts so that you don’t waste time.

My next post will take a look at Manpower’s latest research on Social Networks and the effectiveness of social media.

In the daily discourse on career matters, a lot of time is spent discussing how to create resumes that are  tight and focused on  the employer’s needs. This attempt to be brief becomes even more relevant in this 140-character Twitter era, when ‘less means more’. If we are going to aim for brevity in our writings, let’s forget the resume for a bit and take a look at the cover letter.

It is widely said that half of hiring managers don’t read cover letters, so it’s safe to assume that  the other half does. For those who do, we wouldn’t want them to throw the cover letter in ‘File 13′ (the garbage bin), because it contains too many clichés or over-used phrases.  Here are some popular phrases to avoid in your cover letter if you want to capture and keep the attention of the hiring manager:

1.     “Please be advised…”. Unless you are in the role of an advisor, eliminate this phrase. Simply state what you have done. “I have sent a copy to Human Resources”.

2.     “Enclosed please find” or “Attached herewith.” If it is enclosed or attached, the reader will find it. Use “Enclosed (or Attached) is…”.

3.     “Yours very truly”, “Very truly yours”, and “Respectfully”. These archaic phrases disappeared many moons ago. Using the word ‘yours’ gives the impression you belong to the reader. Use “Sincerely,” instead.

4.     “Feel free to contact me”, or “Please do not hesitate to contact me”. These clichés have outlived their times. It’s better to say “Please contact me.”

5.      “Above-referenced”. Don’t ask the reader to take his or her eyes back to the reference line. Instead, re-state whatever you are referring to – the subject, title or position.

6.     “I have forwarded…”. Say “I sent” instead. Short and to the point.

Is there a phrase or two you would like to add? Go ahead and comment below.