Day: November 20, 2016

The Easiest Stupid Résumé Mistake to Fix (VIDEO)

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Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter discusses the stupidest resume mistake people make and how easy it is to fix it.

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I want to talk with you about 1 of those stupid resume mistakes that people make time and time again.  It is incredibly frustrating. It is so avoidable.  It’s ridiculous that people don’t avoid doing it more often.

Here’s how to fix it. Ready?  Spell check your resume.

This should go without saying, but it is not done.  You think your resume is perfectly typed. Sometimes you have “fat fingers.”  Sometimes, you just don’t know how to spell the word.  Just spellcheck your resume.

I saw a statistic recently. One spelling error can cause a resume to to be rejected.  Personally, I wouldn’t do that; I would investigate the person more thoroughly but I’m wondering where else this person got sloppy.

I know clients to think the same way that I do. They’re not necessarily going to reject someone, but they will put that person through a bigger meatgrinder of an interview because they want to make sure that sloppiness is not part of the pattern.

After all, this is where you are trying to create a great impression. If you’re consciously trying to do that and you are not spell checking your resume, what’s going to happen when you are not consciously trying to create a great impression?

Again, take a minute.  It isn’t hard.  All word processing software has.

Spellcheck your resume. It’s a stupid resume mistake. If you don’t.

Last week, there was not a day they went by where I didn’t have 5 to 10 resumes that had spelling errors in them.

By the way, if there is unique language in your field (for example, in information technology or engineering) and our products and services that are unique to your field, visually check the spelling just to make sure.  Sometimes in misspelling the term, the misspelling is a correct word but not the word that you want to use.

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Do you really think employers are trying to help you?

You already know you can’t trust recruiters—they tell you as much as they think you need to know to take the job they after representing so they collect their payday.

The skills needed to find a job are different yet complement the skills needed to do a job.

Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter has been a career coach and recruiter for what seems like one hundred years.

JobSearchCoachingHQ.com changes that with great advice for job hunters—videos, my books and guides to job hunting, podcasts, articles, PLUS a community for you to ask questions of PLUS the ability to ask me questions where I function as your ally with no conflict of interest answering your questions.

Connect with me on LinkedIn

You can order a copy of “Diagnosing Your Job Search Problems” for Kindle for $.99 and receive free Kindle versions of “No BS Resume Advice” and “Interview Preparation.”

Don’t forget to give the show 5 stars and a good review in iTunes

How to Change Careers Part 1

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[svp]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-U0T3jqQO6w[/svp]
This video begins a series I’m going to do about changing careers and how to go about doing it.

changing-career-at-50-plus

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Changing careers is often will most difficult things a person has to decide to do. You have spent time working in one profession. You’ve been a business owner and, perhaps, decided to go back to corporate, you worked in corporate and now you decide to go into business for yourself or you decide to get a job in a completely unrelated field but you don’t know quite what to do.

These are pretty common scenarios for career changers. I’m beginning a series for those of you who are interested in changing careers with steps that you can take to start the exploration process.

Now, if you think you are suddenly going to have an epiphany, that isn’t the way I’m going to leave this process.  The way you will need to go through. This is with care, with time, and with concern.  So I want you to understand this going into the process, because if you aren’t prepared to take time

you will wind up barking up the wrong tree and not get the results that you want. If that is what you want to do, you don’t need these videos. Where we are going to go with these videos is through a number of steps that you can take that, hopefully, you can stare at and used to evaluate a number of potential opportunities and possibilities, to eliminate ones that don’t fit and stick with ones that do.

Let’s start by looking at this process from the viewpoint of being a child. My son has been looking at a career in the medical profession for the longest time. Recently, he’s come to realize the amount of effort that is going to go into becoming the kind of doctor he said he wanted to become. As a result, his aspirations have rolled back pretty profoundly.

For a lot of job hunters, for a lot of career changers, it is much the same thing. For example, many job changers will say (to use an example that I know), “Oh! I really want to be a quantitative analyst on Wall Street,” without really knowing anything about the profession. Then, when they start to look at it closely, decide that is pretty boring and not a lot of fun for them.

The Starting Line

Here’s where we start today. I want you to sit down and create an enormous list of what your strengths are. You may think of yourself as one way, but I want you to ask those around you about some of the things they see you as being particularly good at.

Are you empathetic with people?
Are you a great listener?
Are you a terrific speaker?
Are you great in front of a camera?

They can be things that you think are dumb… No filtering!

If you like sports on TV, that goes on the list. If you like playing tennis, that goes on the list.

Anything goes on that list for now. Make it long. Make a comprehensive. Take time with it. This is not spending 5 minutes with it and then you are done.

I want you really thinking about.

I like making dinner for my family can go on the list.
I like going to church/the synagogue/no mosque/the meditation center… Whatever it is, it goes on the list. Every last item.

That’s where we are going to start.

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Do you really think employers are trying to help you?

You already know you can’t trust recruiters—they tell you as much as they think you need to know to take the job they after representing so they collect their payday.

The skills needed to find a job are different yet complement the skills needed to do a job.

Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter has been a career coach and recruiter for what seems like one hundred years.

JobSearchCoachingHQ.com changes that with great advice for job hunters—videos, my books and guides to job hunting, podcasts, articles, PLUS a community for you to ask questions of PLUS the ability to ask me questions where I function as your ally with no conflict of interest answering your questions.

Connect with me on LinkedIn

You can order a copy of “Diagnosing Your Job Search Problems” for Kindle for $.99 and receive free Kindle versions of “No BS Resume Advice” and “Interview Preparation.”

Does Using a Single Recruiter Limit Your Job Possibilities?

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[svp]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVFjNG1u8u8[/svp]

If there is a recruiter that you are comfortable with, is it limiting to go only through them? Do recruiters only give you the connections to their direct clients, or do they reach out to all the same companies that are posting jobs on the web?”

“Oh!  You don’t have any positions open right now!

 

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Does using a single recruiter limit your job possibilities?

The person goes on to say, “If there is a recruiter that you are comfortable with, is it limiting to go only through them? Do recruiters only give you the connections to their direct clients, or do they reach out to all the same companies that are posting jobs on the web?”

Let’s deal with the reality of recruiting.  Do you think that every employer is talking with every recruiter on the planet?  Of course not. You know that for yourself.  I want you to put yourself in the position of employer and receiving a call from someone that you’ve never heard of before, who is saying, “I have this great guy. You really need to talk to her.  He’s terrific. He’s colossal. He’s fabulous!  You really need to talk to her. Oh!  You don’t have any positions open right now!”  Then they call the next employer that they have never heard of before and the employer has never heard of them before, saying much the same thing and begin getting turned down.

Why? Because there is no relationship with between the 2 parties.  There was no contract in place. There is no access to the jobs that are open at this firm.

Recruiters do not get on the phone and call individual companies on behalf of a particular job hunter with any regularity.  Yes, some do and some say that they will (and don’t) let’s also assume that the person that you’re speaking with is remarkably honest and they are recruiting firm works with every employer in your market area.  If that’s New York City, Los Angeles, or the bay area, what do you think the likelihood of that is?

What do you think the likelihood is that every hiring manager at every firm in your market area will take a phone call from every recruiter and and accept them presenting you to them? I think you are smart person can figure out that that is unlikely to occur.

It is great that you have a good working relationship with the particular recruiter but what do you really know about them?  Yes, you are comfortable with them but sometimes being comfortable is the worst thing that could happen to you.  Sometimes, you need to work with someone who’s going to make you uncomfortable and push you to your limits in order to get through and help you extend yourself.

So, what will recruiter do?  His or her firm is working on filling a certain number of positions that they already have available.  They may reach out to all the firms that are advertising on the web in your area.  How likely you think that is given all the firms that are advertising on the web these days?  There are millions of positions open in the United States. How likely is it do you think they are getting on the phone and reaching out?

Do you think they are spamming your resume to the Western Hemisphere?  Do even want them to spam your resume to the Western Hemisphere?  Of course not.  What you want is a hiring manager and a recruiter who have a relationship with one another, where the hiring manager trusts this individual and the recruiter understands the needs of the hiring manager.

In a given agency, even the largest ones, there are only a finite number of situations that each recruiter has with their clients that allows them to deliver that result.  If you are in a 60 person agency, 3, maybe 4 clients you have that degree of intimacy with?  So, 180, maybe 200 tops, firms in the entire agency that they have access to in that office.

You do the math for your market area.  Are you limiting yourself?  Yes!  It is a mistake to do that.

Yes, you want to work with people who you trust but do they deserve that trust?

Go to their profile on LinkedIn and see how much experience they really have.  I have heard from a lot of people. The recruiter will claim to have 15 years of experience and you go to the LinkedIn profile. You can see that they have been working as recruiter for 2 years.  Worse than that, sometimes you see that they been working 2 years here and 3 years they are in one year here in 6 months there.  It tells you that they are not placing a lot of people that they need to change jobs regularly.

Sometimes, that’s because they have been like to buy the employer but most of the time is because the recruiter is not performing to a high level.  As a result, they have to change jobs way too often.

There are messages behind everything.  Be smart about this.  Don’t rely upon recruiters to do everything for you.  Get out there and start networking because the statistics say that recruiters fill at most 20% to 25% of all positions.  Most jobs are filled as a result of networking and, in particular, by networking to people that you did not know at the beginning of your job search.

So get out there and get to work and stop procrastinating.  Stop outsourcing your job search to people who you barely know.

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Do you think employers are trying to help you?

You already know you can’t trust recruiters—they tell you as much as they think you need to know to take the job they after representing so they collect their payday.

The skills needed to find a job are different yet complement the skills needed to do a job.

Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter has been a career coach and recruiter for what seems like one hundred years.

JobSearchCoachingHQ.com changes that with great advice for job hunters—videos, my books and guides to job hunting, podcasts, articles, PLUS a community for you to ask questions of PLUS the ability to ask me questions where I function as your ally with no conflict of interest answering your questions.

Connect with me on LinkedIn

You can order a copy of “Diagnosing Your Job Search Problems” for Kindle for $.99 and receive free Kindle versions of “No BS Resume Advice” and “Interview Preparation.”