Life Begins At.......

With the anticipated retirement of a significant tranche of the workforce and a lack of suitably skilled or experienced professionals to fill the void, there is a growing realization among many HR professionals that sending older employees out to pasture despite the expertise cited in their resumes isn’t such a good idea after all!

Not so long ago Statistics Canada stated that the number of persons aged 65 years and over doubled between 1981 and 2009 and is expected to double again by 2036.  They also stated that there will be more seniors than children (under 15 years) in Canada for the first time ever, at some point between 2015 and 2021.  Given the anticipated shortfall of skilled labour, it would seem that there is a clear need to develop strategies aimed at retaining employees approaching retirement age.

So what do you do if you are an older employee who has been released by your employer?  In my experience, the older generation have tended to stick with the same company for many years, sometimes decades.  In situations like this, there often has never been a need to have a resume.  Taking a step back from a 20-30 year long career to contemplate what you have to offer a new employer can be a daunting task.  Of course, the fact that you have worked for one employer for so long, in itself, solicits questions at interview as to how you will adapt to working with new processes, policies, procedures, products and people. 

How do you structure such as resume?  Clearly, you do not want spend 3 pages explaining your day-to-day work activity as it was 20 years ago. You will have to edit your career down to two, high-impact pages of successes.  Not an easy task for most people.  Nonetheless, if you intend for your resume to be read, that is what you must accomplish.

Working with a professional to develop a coherent personal brand, high-impact resume strategy, and perfecting your interview skills can go a long way to helping you understand what you can offer, what you want, and the best way to go about getting it.

Mine Yourself - Tips From The Top

One of the first things you should do when you sit down to write your resume is ask yourself the following question; what can I offer an employer?  Many people I work with draw a blank a step 1.  The reasons for this range from the fact that the job seeker has never before actually had to think about their marketability, to a lack of understanding as to what an employer would find useful or interesting.

Having spent 10 years recruiting for some of the world’s most respected companies, one of the key gripes I used to hear from hiring managers about job seekers was their inability to actually communicate their worth in-person and on a resume.

Essentially, writing a good resume is about mining yourself for information, digging deep to identify skills and being able to draw a parallel between those skills and the needs of the employer.  It certainly is easier said than done.  Here are some tips to get you started;

1)      What is the scope of your current role?  In no more than 4 sentences, write this out.

2)      Identify the core functions of your role such as Sales, Administration, Training..etc

3)      Sketch out a step-by-step guide to one of your busier days.  What do you do?

4)      List your key achievements in this role. Did you make money? Save money? Improve efficiencies?

5)      Repeat for each job.

If you want to inspire the person reviewing your resume then make sure you present your skills and experience in a clear and accessible format.  No-one really wants to read through every line item in your document to build a picture of what you could bring to their company.  Make it easy on them and they’ll spend more time reading your resume.

Get Noticed! Get Hired!

Your resume lands on a desk, it’s 3pm, and the hiring manager about to review your document is experiencing a mid-afternoon energy slump, is counting down the minutes to 5pm, and has another 299 resumes on her desk that look just like yours.  Fancy your chances? 

One of my recent resume writing clients told me that she was about to sift through 300 resumes to find 4 or 5 potential candidates for a customer service role in her department.  How do you stand out in a sea of resumes?  It’s tough!  One way to guarantee you won’t is by submitting a document that looks like everyone else, sounds like everyone else, and to all intents and purposes, may as well be anyone else.

Three major errors people make with their resume:

1)      Reliance on internet template designs / resume writing software

2)      Too much telling and very little selling

3)      Spelling errors / grammatical mistakes / font size

Most documents I have encountered would tick all three boxes. The design of the document is central to making that all important first impression.  To be clear, I’m referring to the actual layout and casing for your content, not the need to adorn your document with shooting stars, furry animals or pretty butterflies!

If a resume is too hard to read, it will meet acquaintance with the corporate shredder in short order.  A smothering of block text, tiny font sizes, and content that does nothing more than list duties, contributes to a hiring manager’s decision on whether or not to trash your document, shred it, or crush it up into a tiny ball and throw it over their head!

A winning resume is focused, concise, elegant, and has the power to articulate the extent of your previous professional contributions in such a way as to make your value added potential plainly obvious to the hiring manager.

What are you waiting for?  Get on it, and make sure your resume is as unique as you are, or at the very least make sure you ‘SELL’ your skills instead of merely ‘tell’ us about your duties.

Revered & Reviled - The Insider Guide To Working With Employment Agencies

Sometimes seen as a necessary evil or a professional marriage of convenience, the recruitment industry is viewed with antipathy and appreciation in equal measure.

In part, the ill-feeling generated in some job seekers toward the industry has been cultivated by a negative personal experience when dealing directly with “agencies”, or in some cases due to a lack of understanding as to how employment agencies actually work.

So how do they work?  The employment agency will charge the employer a fee to recruit the job seeker.  Fees can range from as little as 5% of the annual salary in tight-margin industries, and range up to 30% for senior and executive level placements.

What should you expect?  Needless to say that every job seeker should be treated with the utmost respect, unfortunately that doesn’t always happen.  There are countless instances of recruiters abandoning a job seeker if there isn’t a realistic prospect of making money out of placing them, and although such behaviour is self serving and short-sighted, it is a reality. 

Generally speaking, recruiters have targets to meet that include a number of monthly placements, employers visited, job seekers interviewed, and cold calls made.  Many job seekers who have had dealings with high-volume, target-oriented agencies and come away from a meeting thinking that the recruiter didn’t actually have a job for them, were probably right.  Some firms call this “the numbers game”! Is it any wonder some job seekers feel just like a number?

Employment agencies often work on a “contingency” basis which means that they only get paid if they find the job seeker the employer hires.  Executive recruitment firms usually work on a “retained” basis and are usually paid 1/3 of their fee in advance, and the remaining 2/3 at the end of the assignment or at previously agreed timeframes over the course of the search.

So how should you interact with recruiters? Choose two or three respected firms and make contact with the recruiter in your field to discuss the job market, how they operate, and what they could do for you. If you are satisfied that the recruiter knows what he/she is talking about, submit your resume.  Be clear about what you want, what you will accept, and in which circumstances your information should be shared.  Leverage the expertise of the recruiter to work in your favour, and do not feel compelled to take the first job that is offered to you.  Do your homework, know your worth and act accordingly.

If you’re left feeling like nothing more than a number or another notch on their weekly target sheet, sever ties with that particular firm, withdraw your consent for them to act on your behalf, and move on.

Be assured that there are very good recruiters out there worthy of your time and attention and they can be a tremendous help and resource if you find yourself in a “transitional phase”.  All you have to do is find them! 

Quips'n'Quirks

Quick tip - do NOT make quirky quips in your cover letter!  I was contacted recently by a rather senior executive who had not been receiving any attention from her job applications.  Upon reviewing her cover letter, I uncovered the possible reason for her buzz-free blackberry.  Her cover letter was replete with quirks'n'quips - here's a modified example to give you an idea;

"I am a senior executive (with a sense of humour;) and 30 years experience (yikes!) of operating at the highest level.  I would very much appreciate an opportunity (begging bowl extended) to meet with you to discuss my suitability!  Despite my age (i feel 25!), I am a technocrat and regularly tweet on the twitter.." and so it went on - all 2 pages of it.  Although this letter is guaranteed to get passed around the department, this bears no relevance to the likelihood of being hired!

On the face of it there will be some who will think that this is refreshing - injecting a bit of personality into proceedings (the twitter bit was my favourite) and if i weren't a hiring manager I may see their point.  However, attempting to layer a cover letter with "personality" is like tap dancing on a landmine.  More often than not it will blow up in your face.  Remember - her blackberry wasn't singing.  Her strategy wasn't working.

It may seem obvious but, when you don't know the intended audience keep the "personality" for the interview.  The cover letter should focus on forming a narrative around your skills, abilities and achievements.

What Not To Say...

The "What not to say..." blogs will be dedicated to the random selection of answers to my interview coaching session questions.  Can you follow that?!

Question - What steps do you take to reduce personal stress during the working day?

What Not To Say - "I tend to Squeeze my squishy ball"

Luckily for that respondent he went on to receive a good 2 hours of interview counseling!

The Questionnaire Laid Bare

As part of the information discovery process, I usually ask clients to bring along to our meeting any additional information they feel is useful, relevant or in some other way important.  Last month, one of my clients produced an old "questionnaire" they had been asked to fill our by a resume writing firm about 8 years ago.

The first thing that struck me about the document was how impersonal it all was.  Stock questions, soliciting the inevitable stock answers, strengths, weaknesses, lists - endless lists of attributes to circle.  What i was looking at, was a template to build a template.

The end result, the resume, was as bland and uninspiring as you'd expect from such a process.  I was amazed by the blatant listing of attributes throughout the cover letter and resume without any supporting narrative to put the clients skills in context.

Here's a section from the cover letter;

"I am a great communicator, can multi-task, give and take orders, have listening skills, organizational skills, planning skills, speak french and have good computer skills".

The above extract is absolutely meaningless without context. It looks like every other D.I.Y. cover letter project out there and was clearly lifted verbatim from the questionnaire and deposited unceremoniously into the cover letter.

Is that what you really want from a process and service charged with the responsibility of demonstrating your unique qualities to a prospective hiring manager?  Templates are for the masses - let everyone else use them.

New Year! New Resume! New Job!

We've been rushed off of our feet lately by a deluge of pro-active job seekers desperate to improve their chances of landing their dream job by having a complete resume and cover letter re-work.

New Year! New Resume! New Job! seems to be the mantra, and I can only applaud them for their foresight. I was speaking to a real live-wire sales manager earlier this week and he said that over the holidays, when contemplating the new year ahead, the thought of labouring away in his current position for another 12 months cast a dark shadow over the festive celebrations. He resolved to strike out immediately after the break and commit 100% to the pursuit of a role with a better work/life balance.

Judging by the ever decreasing number of available appointments I have over the next 2 weeks, he certainly isn't the only one. That first day back to the grind on a cold January morning is usually enough to put even the most talented procrastinator into job hunt overdrive!

I've been asked if I'll blog about employee issues such as work/life balance etc this year and yes, it is on my 'to do list', although it is free time dependent. Thanks for your suggestions - keep them coming.

Happy New Year to all! I hope your career dreams come true in 2010.

Cookie Cutter = Job Hunt Stutter

The whole idea behind seeking professional assistance to create a powerful resume and portfolio of career documents is to get ahead of the competition. You do this by crafting a document that truly represents your strengths and achievements while never losing sight of the expectations of those likely to be reading it.

I was talking with a client who had previously sent off her resume to a multi-national corporation that promised to deliver a resume and cover letter for $50 based on answers to a questionnaire she had to fill out online. If you needed it real quick -for an extra $10 you could get it within 4 hours!

When my client received her freshly minted document, she was surprised to find that the resume she put together herself looked better than the resume that had just popped into her inbox!

Companies that claim they can produce a resume document without speaking to you are going to regurgitate the content of your old resume and toss it into a cookie cutter template. What else can they do?

If you've read my previous blog entry "Content is King", you'll already know why this mass produced, cheap, cookie-cutter approach will pretty much guarantee a stuttering continuation of your job search. If you think it saves money in the short term - consider the long term impact a poorly crafted document can have on your ability to secure an interview for a job that you really want!

If you have decided that you need assistance in crafting your documents, consider partnering with a consultant who will take the time to understand your career, aims and professional accomplishments. If a job's worth doing, it's worth doing well!

Not All Resumes Are Created Equal!

I was contacted recently by a client looking to update their resume. The client wanted us to add in his most recent position but did not want us to re-write the resume as it had been "professionally done" by another resume writing firm.

After reviewing his documents, I was dumbfounded.

The format of the "professionally written" cover letter was unlike anything I had seen in a decade of reviewing resumes! The letter itself started more than half way down the page, with the entire top half dedicated to the inappropriate structuring of personal contact information and a sequence of bizarre spacing that made me wonder if a high school student had attempted to format it. The content of the letter repeated the detail found in the "Summary" section of the resume - never a good idea for reasons that will be explained in a future blog.

The resume itself looked like any other resume I've seen where job seekers have attempted to 'give it a go' themselves by using online templates and such like and the client had actually paid money for someone to produce this for him!

The content was bland, uninspiring and merely listed basic duties and alluded to "bringing value" and a "terrific ability to connect with people", without ever expanding upon these statements with facts, results, achievements or any other tangible benefit resulting from his corporate contributions or personal attributes.

The professional experience section gave as much weighting to his post-graduate entry level position 12 years prior as it did to his most recent advanced professional experience. They were afforded 4 bullet points each. WHY?

Tenses fluctuated from past to present within the space of a few words, full stops were missing in action, there was even a section on there where they had used a smaller text size to squeeze it all onto 2 pages. It looked terrible and I felt very sorry for him.

Here was a very nice guy trying to make his way and advance his career and who had invested in a service he thought would serve him well in front of hiring managers. Instead he was given a resume document that looks like he had thrown it together himself and a cover letter a high school student would receive a 'D' for (or a clip round the ear if it was 1960).

As much as I wanted to help him, I couldn't consent to working on the project as I could not associate my business with that resume unless I was tasked with completely re-working it. This was something which the client was unwilling to do as he had already paid for it to be "professionally done". I understood his predicament.

Choose your resume writing partner carefully. If a resume writer does not have an extensive prior professional background in recruiting, then they cannot possibly know how a diverse range of employers across a variety of industries hire, who they hire and why they hire them.

My background affords me the luxury of knowing what works and what most certainly does not work when it comes to grabbing the attention of a hiring manager.

Watch out for a future blog entry detailing 'what you should look for in a resume writer' and how 'telling isn't selling'!

300:1

It wasn't so long ago that the buoyant job market and apparent shortage of qualified candidates spun a tale that brought the phrases "Gen X" and "Gen Y" into the mainstream lexicon.

Employee wages and benefits were on the rise as forward thinking companies embraced the realities of the market and took concrete steps to offer innovative incentives or sweeteners to make sure they snared the best candidates for themselves. Many business and HR publications ran headlines that screamed about "skill shortages" and space fillers such as "top tips for employee retention" flooded the media. Then came the financial collapse..

Now, it's a different story. These days I'm hearing the same thing time and again - "competition is fierce"! Case in point, I was talking with a resume client last week about this issue. She works for one of the larger finance firms in town and her company had been actively recruiting for a low level 'teller' position. More than 300 applications rolled through the door and the posting still had a week to run!

How do you stand out among the crowd? If you're application was one of 300+ - what would separate you from your peers? What would catch the eye of a hiring manager as they spend their 30 seconds skimming your profile and resume?

Having your resume professionally crafted will certainly give you an edge on your competition! The aim is to get you an interview, make the final cut, then let your masterful interview technique and solid interview preparation dazzle the awaiting panel of judges. If your resume isn't as competent as it should be then you will certainly be marginalized by applicants who may be no more qualified than you but who have invested in creating a professional portfolio that is presented in an easy to read, eye catching format.

As I say in my marketing material - "Partnering with us could be the best career decision you ever make!". I wasn't exaggerating!

Content is King!

During a recent association event I got talking to an old acquaintance who happens to be the CFO of a local junior resource company. We discussed career issues, hiring practices and resume writing, specifically, writing your own resume.

Having worked closely with this professional in my previous life as an executive recruiter, I had been responsible for re-writing his resume, providing interview coaching and actually placing him in a position he still holds.

During our discussion he gave me insight into the way some people in his network go about preparing themselves for career advancement and how some of them didn't see the value in working with a professional to help them with this process.

He wasn't complaining, as although his peers shared similar professional and experiential characteristics, he knew that he stood head and shoulders above his executive level competition on account of his superior personal branding strategy and portfolio of professionally crafted documents.

Apparently, some of his peers had scoured the internet for "templates" and inserted choice words and phrases into the slots in a bid to produce a document that at least looked like it had been formatted appropriately!

Further, how often have you been asked to tell someone what you do day to day and can only muster 3 or 4 sentences? Try it now. What do you do on a day to day basis? Do the sentences you have just articulated do you justice? Would you rely upon them to accurately convey the extent of your current level of responsibility? Are you confident they will set you apart from your peers and every other job competitor?

Such folly fails to appreciate that a significant part of the job of a resume writer is to extract minute detail and construct a narrative that incorporates the needs and wants of the hiring manager or executive designated to make a determination as to who gets selected for interview...and who does not. Templates are for the masses. Let everyone else use them!

By working with a consultant who has an extensive background in recruiting, placement, resume writing and interview techniques, we can uncover the detail you need to do you justice in front of the hardest task master of all - the hiring manager!

It's not just the way the resume looks - it's the content that counts. As the saying goes...Content is King!

www.DON'TDOTHIS.com

With the advent of the internet and myriad of related technologies, it is easier than ever to connect with people online and promote your particular skills, experience and personal attributes in the hope of expanding your network or pitching for an open position.

However, things can go awry.

Consider this. A recent graduate engaged us to work solely on his cover letter as he was quite pleased with his resume and "online presence". He was convinced that his inability to construct a professional cover letter was hindering his ability to connect with an employer, specifically, some of Vancouver's larger corporations.

On reviewing his resume, I couldn't help but notice the web address that adorned each page, enticing the reader to view www.HISNAME.com.

Naturally, I followed the link into his "online presence" and was greeted by a picture of what appeared to be a magician with magic dust circling his head and skulls and crossbones in each corner of the screen. The site had several public access areas but the content did not get any better. In among this strange blend of artistry, detailed personal preferences and inappropriate symbology lay his online resume profile!

The candidate had been sending out his resume for lower level roles in large corporations and was not receiving any encouragement whatsoever from the employers he was contacting. I wonder why!

Sometimes I think it goes without saying that this approach should not be aspired to, but perhaps i'm being presumptuous. There are many people out there keen to leverage any perceived advantage in order to steal a march on the competition. Ironically, in such cases, you're guaranteed to have your resume make acquaintance with the corporate shredder in short order.

I don't recommend www.YOURNAME.com type profiles. There's no need for them. Further, there is always the tendency to "expand" upon irrelevancies, upload a mugshot, customize the template to include favourite colours and designs or include information that is entirely inappropriate for review by a CORPORATE hiring manager.

As an experienced Recruiter, I often came across online resume links. It gave me another opportunity to vet the applicant and assess his/her suitability for the role. Read that line again. It's all you need to know!

The Eyes Have It!

When you have finished drafting your resume and cover letter - make sure you get someone else to read it over for you! A pair of fresh eyes could be all it takes to uncover the hidden errors lurking in your documents that quite often survive the spellcheck!

The original resume of a recent client had stated rather impressively that they were a "gifted oral and written communicator". Further down the same page they wanted to convey an example to back up an earlier statement - it read something like this "hosted a series of customer events such as such as wine and cheese evenings".

The double "such as" entry will survive a spell check and because you've just laboured over your document, when you read it over, your brain reads what you wanted to say, not necessarily what you did say!

If you've set yourself up in the eyes of the hiring manager as a "gifted written communicator", such errors will cast a shadow of doubt over any other claim you make about yourself.

Get a friend or family member to look it over for you or send it to an expert resume writer for a review and commentary. Either way, make sure you put your best foot forward!