Careers

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Call Me Madame?

Posted by Steve on October 26, 2014
Posted in: #internpro, #OMCchat, Careers, Cover Letters, Interview, Job Search, Recruiting. Tagged: , , , . 4 Comments

There’s simply no science that a career and job search expert can refer to that can be used to guarantee that a recruiter will call you once your cover letter (if you’ve actually sent one) and résumé hits their Inbox. Even a spot-on performance match can’t get past the dumbass biases – or just plain dumbassability – that many recruiters and hiring managers carry with them to the office each day.

Where do people get their job search advice from? Do they even ask these experts if they actually know any recruiters? Or do they confuse “marketing gurus” with “talent scouts”? (Another reason for recruiting to never report to marketing)

Seriously:

To Whom It May Concern? Nothing says “lazy jobseeker” more than this salutation. Yeah, yeah, I know you’re going to ask me how does one identify the recruiter or hiring manager – and I’ll show you how freakin’ easy it is.

Dear Sir or Madame? Oh, this one is so much better – if you’re applying for a job at the Alien Area 51 Cathouse in Nevada (cut out the comments – I Googled “legal brothels in nevada”).

Dear Recruiting Professional? This one always makes be cringe. My – that last word is an awfully big assumption; might as well just use Dear Recruiting Rockstar.

Hi,? I seem to get this one quite a bit from overseas jobseekers. Makes me check to see if they have a first name. Yep – every time.

Dear Bob? My name is Steve. Douchebag.

What does get me to reply?

I know I’m different but as much as the five examples might turn many off and cause these turned off recruiting professionals to pass on a candidate, a very wise mentor long ago informed me of Weinberg’s Second Law of Computing and how it related to recruiting:

If builders built buildings the way programmers write programs, then the first woodpecker that came along would destroy civilization. ~Gerald M. Weinberg

As it applies to recruiting, companies who “assess to exclude” rather than assess to include do more harm to their short and longer-term bottom line than any lying-on-their-résumé-weasel CEO could ever do. The only thing I can say for certain about any jobseeker with a perfect cover letter and résumé is that they have a perfect cover letter and résumé. I can’t determine their expertise or performance-ability from reading their collateral – only speaking with them can get me to this end.

Some of the best performers I know have résumés so bad that even career services consultants would puke a bit in their mouths ;).

This is why I don’t read the cover letters first: The battle against cover letter stupidity is still tough to overcome, even for this recruiting graybeard. So I wait. I’ll read the résume´; if this is promising, it’s off to the LinkedIn profile or some other secondary source. I’m looking for signs of gold rather than the presence of coal. In other words, I’m looking for performance, not just the presence of accomplishing tasks. Stuff that makes me think, “Dang, this person is special.” Tell me – what’s your special?

Finally, the cover letter.

And if it’s really, really bad, I’ll call. I just have to find out what compelled someone to write such a horrible job search tome (on a more philanthropic note, those who know me, know I make these calls to help jobseekers out).

Even if my name isn’t Bob…

On Monday, 10/27 at 10AM PT (1PM ET), I’ll be joining my friend Dawn Rasmussen on her Google+ Hangout, “Everything You Ever Wanted to Know From Recruiters… And Were Afraid to Ask.” No  holds barred, no fluff. Just stuff you should be able to use to convince that recruiter or hiring manager to call you back. Here’s the link to the event.

And Your SnapChats Disappear Too

Posted by Steve on June 3, 2014
Posted in: Baby Boomers, Careers, Character, Learning, Millenials, Recruiting, Women. Tagged: , , , , , , . 9 Comments

wiseNo one really checks the Internet for my past stuff

But that was five years ago – I’m a different person now

It was a private email that wasn’t to be shared

Pigs really can fly…

Evan Spiegel, CEO of the Millennially-loved SnapChat, has found himself in quite a pickle over the past few days both with the emergence of emails he wrote while a student at Stanford and for his predictable response.

His overtly misogynistic words have caused all sorts of opinions to fly at the intersection of Technology Highway and Bad Taste Boulevard. Folks on one corner are singing, “Boyz Will Be Boyz” while the opposite corner is crooning, “The Three or More Billion Dollar Devaluation Blues” – all in four-part cross-Generational harmony. And none of it is music to anyone’s ears.

Has screwing women – literally and figuratively – become a requirement for many tech entrepreneurs and their startups? Is a brogrammer culture truly the organizational structure of preference in new technology companies? When will investors begin to actually devalue companies as a result of the bad non-business behavior of company executives? Consider activities that take place in our nation’s capitol…

In Washington, DC, egregious past behavior derails a political career faster than it takes for an ice cream cone to melt while waiting on a line outside the Phoenix VA at noon on a Summer day. It’s bad enough that investment firms lack the ability and experience to assist their portfolio companies in hiring needed talent – which follows the general trend in recruiting that the barrier to entry is very low, let alone assess the leadership qualities of the young entrepreneurs appearing in their boardrooms looking for funding.

Since when did misogyny and bad taste become valued components of successful entrepreneurism and fundraising? Unless these investors also have serious skeletons in their closets, I cannot for the life of me see why they would touch investors like Mr. Siegel with a 10 million dollar Series B pole.

As far as investment firms reducing the value of a portfolio company – I’m not holding my breath…

Yet the 23-year old Spiegel isn’t alone; a very large portion of this current Generation of startup “leaders” might be the most lack-of-life and business aware group in recent memory. When you’ve been on the CEO Track since pre-school, there’s not a whole lot of time left to teach life lessons when the same responsibility lessons that were taught to the annoying Boomer generation have been replaced by devouring such classic tomes as “Dr. Seuss Goes to Entrepreneur’s School” and “Horton Hears An IPO.”

Morality and civility be damned; if they haven’t experienced it with their own two eyes, ears, and hands and received a Blue Ribbon for their efforts, it just ain’t true.

So while I have been writing somewhat for effect and shock-value – of course, I don’t believe that most Millennials are egotistical snot-rags – there are extremely important bits of life advice here that must start with untangling what has been reinforced in the heads of our early careerists (a kinder, less emotionally-driven form of the label, ”Millennial”).

Mark Babbitt, CEO of YouTern.com, wrote an especially heartfelt post based on his life experiences and abundance of practical wisdom in which he postulates that today’s college grads must unlearn 6 things they learned in college that they have been brainwashed into believing were true and inviolate.

Read it – and just pause long enough to ask yourself if Mark is right. No…wait a decade or two, have a family, catch a few of life’s curveballs and knuckleballs, then break out the list again and see if Mark’s words make sense to you.

One thing he’s not doing is denigrating you and your thoughts; the reason I know this is that we were actually once you, and we also believed the same shuck and jive that you believe to be true about college, work, careers, and life. Many of us still possess and are driven by that wild-eyed, we-can-do-anything-our-minds-can-dream-up joie de vivre but we’re somewhat limited by the cards we’ve been dealt from the deck of life’s responsibilities.

We have no ulterior motives here but to point out life’s land mines and patches of quicksand in the hope that you can actually get to where you want to go by minimizing the personal and professional train wrecks we’ve experienced. My motivation is simple – no one did this for me. While my parents weren’t college educated, they worked hard, offered an immense amount of love and encouragement, taught important lessons about responsibility, honesty, integrity, and perseverance, and always told me that if I wanted to finish first I had to work harder and smarter, and be kind to everyone around me. They never taught me to “wait my turn” but to simply “do my best.”

Yes, there have been times when I’ve strayed from the lessons my parents taught; most everyone does – often without knowing. Yet there’s a Zen saying by Ch’ing-yüan Wei-hsin that alludes to how wisdom can eventually come to those who are aware…

Before I had studied Zen for thirty years, I saw mountains as mountains, and waters as waters. When I arrived at a more intimate knowledge, I came to the point where I saw that mountains are not mountains, and waters are not waters. But now that I have got its very substance I am at rest. For it’s just that I see mountains once again as mountains, and waters once again as waters.

Again, we’re not Baby Boomers – but we are older versions of you with the scars to prove it.

Back to Mr. Siegel the early careerist…

I’ll bet most of you didn’t know that the original name of SnapChat was Picaboo – as in the childhood line, “Peek-A-Boo, I see you.” Or that it really was discussed as a sexting tool.

Isn’t it ironic that Spiegel helped to create a tool that enables others to behave the way he likely did while in college without being caught so they wouldn’t feel horrible and embarrassed? In his “younger days” emails, he encouraged his fellow frat boys to get sorority women drunk enough to have sex with them – this is literally rape. According to RAINN, there’s an average of 237,868 victims of sexual assault and rape annually in the United States – meaning every 2 minutes someone is sexually assaulted.

This is why Spiegel’s original emails, his tepid apology, and the outpouring of disgust – and alas, support, is a very big deal. And he’s giving YOU a really bad name because many young and old are referring to him not as the SnapChat CEO but as another spoiled, clueless Millennial.

Time to get your collective acts together, look in the mirror, and join the part of the human race that has developed its own collective sense of practical wisdom. Be kind to everyone – and if you slip, apologize. Stop living your label; stop giving ammunition to those who want to package you along with others your age – even the ones who are behaving badly and are transferring their stench to you by label proxy. Stop wanting to be like them – because success in life is measured more in kindness than net worth.

One day you will wake up and you will be me. You will be older. You will have more wrinkles. You won’t be able to eat the 15 tacos like you used to on Taco Tuesdays (please believe me – you’ll try). You will have made some exceptionally good career choices; you will of made some exceptionally bad ones. You will have had some exceptionally good bosses and some exceptionally bad bosses.

One day you will say things, then you’ll look over you’re left and right shoulder for your parents – because you have become them. Sounds frightening? Well – it shouldn’t. It’s the real circle of life.

measuretwicecutonceUntil then, remember to keep your words short and sweet because one day you might have to eat them – and no one will be there to clean up your puke. Just as carpenters know to measure twice, cut once, learn to count one-two-three Mississippi before your take that picture or click <Send> before that email enters the Land of No Return.

If you still think that we’re jealous, techno-idiots who have no idea what you’re going through, you might just discover that your sure-thing business idea that you figured would make you a Billionaire has only made you a Pariah because you failed to heed the advice of old bastards who just wanted to help.

And you better hope that those SnapChats really have disappeared…

Screw the Parachute: Unconventional Ways to Amp Up Your Job Search

Posted by Steve on February 24, 2010
Posted in: Careers, Job Search, Resumes. Tagged: , , , , , . 22 Comments

I called in to Paul Paris’ BlogTalkRadio show about 10 days ago; the topic – Extreme Candidate Makeover – was very noble and it entailed career coaches and resume writers working to assist job seekers who were momentarily halted in their job search and “volunteered” to be the subject of magical makeovers.

Since calling from a car is like taking a call while you’re in the bathroom and flushing during a particularly important moment, I pulled over – and listened as cases were presented and volunteers offered tried and true suggestions to the courageous guinea pigs such as “You need to show more energy” or ”You need to target your resume to your audience”. There were also important gems such as, “Sure you’re busy and involved in many groups and associations but these are all with people who are job seekers like you and in many instances in far worse emotional states of mind.” It was “What Color is Your Parachute” over and over – which isn’t a bad thing if it weren’t for the reality that everyone uses this approach – which in effect denudes the impact of the techniques (if every resume you read says the same thing – same words, same structure – then the differentiator closes to zero). So much for a magical makeover; this one was heavy on the smoke and mirrors.

In effect, the when-you-become-so-good-at-using-a-hammer-every-thing-begins-to-look-like-a-nail approach that is used by nearly all outplacement types, career counselors, resume writers, and newspaper columnists who write about this stuff, while in general isn’t such a bad thing to do, in reality it turns everyone into a shade of gray. Don’t you want some color? Not for your parachute but a color that represents your real essence, not something that is pre-packaged to be sold on a 2 AM infomercial?

When I finally had enough of this Mad Libs approach, I spoke of three critical elements of a job seeker’s strategy that are so infrequently used but when they are, position the person to potentially move to the head of the candidate class. So to all the resume writers, career counseling experts (that would be directed to those in outplacement), and job search gurus out there, what do you think of these?

Brick and Mortar research. I have to thank Hal for this one. Back in the early 1990’s, Hal was SVP of International Manufacturing for a global chemical manufacturer when he was pink slipped. He had a traditional outplacement counselor who was driving him insane with a pre-packaged job search approach – that wasn’t exciting any search consultants nor CEOs. Now Hal is 6’ 7” and when he was mad you knew it. One day, I interceded, he vented, and we took a road trip to the Fairfield University library for some old fashioned hands-to-the-paper research.

We pulled the past 6 months of chemical manufacturing related journals and systematically went through them – letters to the editor, special content columns, opinion pieces, analyst opinions, etc. and made five lists:

  1. Most written about skills (tactical)
  2. Most written about industry initiatives (strategic)
  3. People mentioned (movers and shakers, promotions)
  4. Innovative companies (love these lists)
  5. Analyst favored companies (“insider” information)

Armed with the first two, we made a list of the top ten in each area in light of how his hiring manager might view them; in his case, this view was from the eyes of a CEO. From these we reviewed the resume for the presence and “weight” (as in accomplishment order) of these. Ultimately, Hal’s resume was rewritten (included too were his “legacy” results – see below) to reflect the presence and importance of these skills and initiatives based upon the short and longer term needs of his hiring manager.

#3, People mentioned? Contacted to congratulate on their promotion, their article, etc. and to network, to the potential target lists – #4, Innovative and #5, analyst-favored – of companies that were rank ordered according to his personal and professional needs.

When he made the calls, he used a pitch like this – after telling them where and why he had their name: “It would very helpful if you would read and review my resume. Even more, when you receive calls from friends, companies, or recruiters looking for someone like me, it would be an incredible gesture if you would give them my name. Do you have any family or friends who might want to network with me? I’d be pleased as punch if I can help someone you know.”

If you think that this approach is time consuming, you’re darn right it is. This is why I encourage every happily employed person to keep a career journal/scrap book (I could care less whether it’s online or leather bound) where you maintain these lists. Personally, I call people when I read about them – or for instance, when they connect to me on Twitter – I like the instant connection and To wait until you’re worrying about where your next meal will come from is ludicrous. Sad to say but given the bonehead moves made by companies these days, you almost have to plan for a layoff.

Incidentally, why is it that when the business strategy fails and layoffs are “required”, it’s the working stiffs that get the pink slips and not the CEO who signed off on the strategy?

Legacy. I hate reading accomplishments because they are hopelessly static; they represent a point in time that is unaffected by the future. But a true accomplishment is one that stands the test of time. Which is where legacy comes in: Sure you implemented a “system” that reduced DSO by 20% over the first 8 months of the FY…but was it sustainable? Accomplishments are written like baseball statistics – “David Wright is 8 for 13 during this homestand” – but then when you pull back he’s hitting .275 and finished the year batting .285. [In a droll tone] Wow, that’s impressive. Accomplishments rarely pass the “so what?” test which further helps to push a boring resume to the trash can.

But what if you went back to your former companies and asked about the systems you implemented? Did they continue to be as effective after you left? You might have opened up 8 new accounts but did they generate revenue after you left? Hey, I’m impressed that you wrote 10,000 lines of code but were they used? You’re legacy – and the best way to bold face your accomplishments – is how well your work continued to positively impact your former employer after you left. If the accounting system you developed, implemented, and trained people to use continued to reduce DSO after you left, wouldn’t you want to let people know about it?

Once you have done your brick and mortar research and defined your legacy, you’ll have the content needed to demonstrate to a potential hiring manager that you are the solution to the short and longer term problems. Your resume might still require some wordsmithing but at least now it won’t look like everyone else’s propaganda.

Talk to vendors. Talk about low hanging fruit. How many of you interact with vendors at your job? How about creating a personal vendor network from these? Have target companies? Ask your vendor which of their reps has these targets as accounts. Want to relocate? Ask your rep for their counterpart there. Sales folks are often the first to know about possible job opportunities; they’re in tight with the people who sign for the products and services being sold. All the time they spent with the P&L people playing golf, eating steak, smoking cigars, and drinking scotch has led to some pretty strong relationships.

What’s in it for them? For one, you’re going to fill them in on the names of contacts you’ve made at companies that might be on their target list. Two, you will remember them when you’ve landed. Right?

These three are but a few techniques that don’t require a parachute. They aren’t quick fixes to your job search and if you don’t approach them will a good deal of zeal might actually make your head explode. But they do work and are essential for long term career survival.

I’m on a roll now so here are some…

Random resume thoughts. I see too many job seekers – non-creative types – enamored with fancy fonts, liberal use of italics, double lines, and shading of section headings. My philosophy is to eliminate all non-essential ink on the resume. Does anyone believe the ATS cares about your salmon colored paper or the fact that your name is in a 24 pt size while the rest of your resume is 12 pt? Is there any reason to waste ink by offering the reader a translation of the number you just wrote as in “four (4)”? Oh thank you, I didn’t know what “four” meant. Spelling out acronyms? Only to assuage the feelings of ignorant recruiters; if you’re hiring manager knows what they mean, leave them as acronyms. Numbers for numbers sake make you look dumb: Too many “bad” resume writers convince people to over seed their resumes with nonsensical “metrics”. Dumb – and they fail the “so what?” test. Also, when you use numbers such as 25%, 33% or 50% we know you’re making these numbers up (they’re called rectal-linear assumptions) – better to write 24.7%, 32.8% or 50.4% because they look real (hey, I’m not telling you how to lie but if you’re going to “guess” at least make it look good). References will be furnished upon request? Really? Why thank you; I was really concerned about you telling me, “I’m sorry but you can’t have my references.” The section, “Professional Experience” makes me want to look for “Amateur Experience”; keep it simply as “Experience” (remember – eliminate non-essential ink). One more thing…See my last name? Know what that means? No, I don’t read the resume from right to left but I do read it from back to front. If your second page is dull, minimally communicative, and appears as if you gave up after the first two inches, I’m thinking that you haven’t worked hard enough at putting your experience to paper. Go back to the suggestions above and try again…

Random job search thought. When someone accepts your LinkedIn invitation, be sure to download their business card into your contact database…then call them to personally thank them for doing so (getting their phone number shouldn’t be too difficult; if you need a primer, let me know and I’ll write one) – this way you’ll be able to check their contact info for accuracy. Same goes for when you’re accepted into a LinkedIn group or when someone follows you on Twitter – in both of these instances, you will shock people when you ring them because this is rarely done. Talk about being memorable…

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