No B. S. Job Search Advice Radio

The Way Résumé Lies Are Exposed

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Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter tells a story from his own experience about exposing a job hunter in a resume lie and why you should do the same thing.

 

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I want to talk with you today about a new way that employers are finding resume inconsistencies. No, I’m not talking about them going to the LinkedIn profile. I’m not talking about them looking at Facebook. This is a point-blank way that people are getting exposed. Let me tell you story from my own experience.

I received the resume from someone recently and, as is my practice, I went to my database, my applicant tracking system to see if I already have contact with them.. I found their resume in my system, I looked at it and the one that I received from the person. Right before I parsed it, I noticed that there was something a little different about the dates. A few months have been added on here and a few months of been taken off there for a few jobs.

Normally, I would delete this person’s resume but I decide to call the and give them a chance. After all, people sometimes make mistakes. They don’t keep the world resume and they work from memory.

As I was qualifying him, I asked him about. There was a brief denial that he changed dates. I confronted him one more time and asked him, “how do you think these other dates got into my system? Do you think were manually typing things or are we parsing information from your own resume? I can assure you, were not typing resumes”

There was silence for a few moments and then he fessed up.

Employers are not going to give you that chance. If they hire you and find those inconsistent dates, they are just going to fire you. If they look at your resume and then find it in their applicant tracking system with something different, they are just going to delete the new resume.

Just be aware that you can’t lie like you used to. I’m not talking about reference checks. Reference checks can be faked. But if your resume doesn’t match up with what was in their applicant tracking system they are just going to leave the new resume and never tell you why.

If your own efforts or the efforts of other recruiters are going to land the resume in an applicant tracking system and an employer or a recruiters office, the lie can be exposed some years in the future. Don’t change your resume to cover up gaps. They are just going to be found out.

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Do you think employers are trying to help you? You already know you can’t trust recruiters—they tell 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 is there to change 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

A Great Tool for Job Leads

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Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter discusses an underutilized tool for job leads.

 

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I want to talk with you about a source for job leads that is extremely underutilized. Let me preface this by saying that there is intrinsic bias in job hunting that is propagandized by the media and by the government and that’s a bias toward large companies. After all, large companies are much more stable than small companies. Yeah right.

Yes, small companies go out of business. Large companies go out of business. Both lay people off. In the current economic environment there’s been no security beyond the skills and individual brings AND there is no security in that those, too.

So, when all is said and done, you only have yourself to rely on. Don’t be a sucker and fall for the propaganda about big companies. They do a great job mortgaging themselves; the media supports that marketing but they are no guarantee of your security.

In finding work, you want to find organizations that will value you properly, where you can learn what you need to in order to continue to be marketable.

Everyone knows about the Fortune 500 or the Forbes 500 list but one of the list is completely underutilized and overlooked is the Inc. 5000 list. This list is a list of small companies that are going through huge growth.

Does that mean there is a job for you there? No, of course not any more than the other lists that I mentioned are guarantees to have jobs either.

One of my beliefs is that when you swim with other fish, employers can pick the fish they want. If you swim where there aren’t a lot of fish present, you look much more prominent there and that’s one of the things you need to do. Put yourself in the position of being a huge fish to them with great skills and small firms are an underutilized target for job hunters.

So don’t ignore the Inc. 5000 list of the top small businesses. Do find this list; it’s available and a great tool for job hunters. Once you identify a firm in your state or in your locale, you can go to LinkedIn or to Google searches, not just to see if they have a job for you but who you might be connected with that these firms who might be able to provide an introduction or perform an informational interview and talk with you about the organization, the kind of things that they do and where you can help.

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Do you think employers are trying to help you? You already know you can’t trust recruiters—they tell 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 is there to change 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

Opening Your Facebook Privacy Settings

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Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter explains the value of opening your Facebook privacy settings to public view.

 

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Let’s talk about Facebook privacy settings for a moment. No, I’m not going to be scolding you to set your privacy settings so that you can’t be found. In fact, I want you to set your privacy settings so you can be found.

Why? Because LinkedIn is only one tool that recruiters and employers are using to find talent for their clients, to network with people, to do their job.

My philosophy is that the person who gets ahead isn’t always the smartest work the hardest although those are great qualities to have. The person who gets ahead tends to be the one who remains alert to opportunity; sometimes those are internal to organization; most of the time the external.

If there are things that you are doing on Facebook that are drawing positive attention by employers or recruiters or others, why not make it easy for them to find you and talk with you about it?

One of the things that you should do is make it clear from you work. But your job title in. Make it obvious what profession you’re involved with. You don’t need to do it to the same degree you might on LinkedIn.

However, Facebook’s search can be used by recruiters and others for networking and hiring.

You may say to yourself today, “I don’t want to be annoyed by these people.” That’s your prerogative. Yet what I want to remind you of is that what they are trying to do is to reach out to you about an opportunity that they perceive may be superior to what you currently have. It may pay you more, and get you closer to home, improve your quality of life, give you access to training and skills you don’t have etc.. What’s the problem? You’re going to field a question through Messenger? This is such a big problem?

And if you say no to it, what did it cost you? A minute or a minute and a half of your time? What’s the big whoop?

Open up your privacy settings. Let recruiters be able to find you even if you are not actively looking for a job. Make sure your employer is listed because they are brand may help you. Make it easy for people to locate you.

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Do you think employers are trying to help you? You already know you can’t trust recruiters—they tell 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 is there to change 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.JOIN NOW BEFORE THE PRICE INCREASE ON SEPTEMBER 5TH.

Connect with me on LinkedIn

Job Search Branding Lessons from Your Local Supermarket

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supermarketJeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter discusses career branding classes that you can find in your local supermarket.

 

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I want to give you an example of how effective branding can be. It’s one that you are familiar with in your personal life and I want to use it as a metaphor for why you should be doing branding in your career and your professional life.

When you go to the store and buy laundry detergent have you ever in your entire life picked up the container of detergent, turned around and said to yourself, “Hmm. I think the combination of chemicals in this detergent will do a better job of cleaning my laundry then these chemicals will.”

No. You’ve never done that once in your entire life. You put that laundry detergent because you’ve always bought that laundry detergent, or because there was a coupon, or it was cheaper… Anything other than the fact that it would make your wash cleaner.

Job hunting can be much the same thing and you can become the preferred hire for an organization by creating a brand for yourself as powerful as the detergent makers make for theirs.

Coffee. Starbucks coffee or another brand of coffee? How did Starbucks become so powerful? It’s more expensive. Oh! It is a better coffee! They created an experience for you at the store and you want to take that experience home with you.

Item by item things that advertisers are doing to create a brand image in your mind to advantage themselves over competitors. The organic apple versus the nonorganic Apple. It’s healthier. That’s the brand that they have.

Item by item, there are things that are been done to create an impression in your mind that it is better to work for versus another one. You’ve been trained and conditioned to do this.

In job hunting, branding takes a lot of different forms. It’s all the things that you do online they create an image that allows you to be the expert. If you do public speaking, to our hat a seminar, if you work with the firm that is recognizable… Let me give you an example – – Facebook, Google, Amazon, Netflix, Microsoft versus three guys starting up in their basement.

How about Goldman Sachs versus another financial institution? On and on and on there is an image that firms try to create from an employment perspective that you can create for yourself from a job search perspective, from a career perspective that can advantage yourself over your competitors so that when you are found and reached out to, you’re the person that they believe can do the job, you’re the perceived expert walking in the door versus the supplicant hat in hand begging for the job.

Always put yourself in the position of being the expert.

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Do you think employers are trying to help you? You already know you can’t trust recruiters—they tell 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 is there to change 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.JOIN BEFORE SEPTEMBER 5TH AND AVOID THE PRICE INCREASE.

Connect with me on LinkedIn

Job Search Lessons from the Broadway Show “Cats”

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Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter invokes a memory of the Broadway show, “Cats” to remind you of making your answers to interview questions seem fresh.

 

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I want to talk with you about one of the mistakes the job hunters make way too often. It is the me a mistake but very experienced job hunters make. It’s the mistake of letting their interviewing get stale.

What often happens is that the job hunter has been on so many interviews and they were asked the same questions repeatedly.

Why are you looking for a job?
Tell me about yourself?
Do you have any questions for us?

Even if you’re in the area with very specialized skills, the question start to get very predictable. The result is that people start to get bored with the interview and get stale.

Understand that from the employer’s perspective, they are only hearing your answer for the first time even if you answered the same question for others 20 times.

Someone remind you of something that I learned many years ago. I used to live in New York. Do you remember the play, “Cats?” The one with the song, “Memories?”

I thought about it one day that in this long-running show (a, yes, the cast changed many times over the years) and that normally cast members and apart for at least a year or so. This performer is saying the same lines, seeing the same songs, night after night. They are performing six days a week, eight shows a week. Their commitment is to make it seem as fresh as it was on opening night. After all, the audience may only be watching the show for the first time and they are paying full price.

You can’t imagine that the actors and actresses have gotten bored by now is saying the same things and singing the same songs over and over and over again.

Remember, your job is to be like performer in a Broadway show on opening night, delivering your lines like it is on opening night, making each performance seem fresh, just like this performer stating, “Cats” so that the audience can see you in your magnificence and applaud ferociously at the end of the performance.

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Do you think employers are trying to help you? You already know you can’t trust recruiters—they tell 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 is there to change 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. JOIN NOW BEFORE THE PRICE INCREASE ON SEPTEMBER 5TH

Connect with me on LinkedIn

Add All the Numbers Between 1 and 100

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Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter explains how to answer this tricky hedge fund brainteaser, add all the numbers between one and 100.

 

[spp-transcript]

I love and hedge fund brainteaser questions…NOT!

We can spend a lot of time discussing whether they are valid or not but they are used.

Today’s question is one of those fun ones– a math problem.

Add all the numbers between one and 100 and what you get?

You can’t just sit there and have a mental column in your head and start going 1+2 is 3+3 is six… On and on and on until you get to the answer. So how do you figure this out?

If you think about it, every number has a reciprocal opposite number that adds up to 100. For example, one and 99, two and 98… You get the idea.

When you realize that there are 50 gatherings that total 100, you have 5000 there (remember, there is 100+0).

There is one number that doesn’t have a pairing – – 50. So the answer becomes 5050.

There’s always a trip to the question of interest, especially with the math ones. In this particular case, this is the trick to answering this question.

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Do you really think employers are trying to help you? You already know you can’t trust recruiters—they tell 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 is there to change 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 Don’t Need to Spend So Much Time Job Hunting

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Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter points out what seems obvious — job hunters think they spend more time than they actually do in their job search and tells you how to solve this problem.

 

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One thing I know about job hunters is that you think you do more than you actually do. You think you spend all day looking for work when in fact you spend most of the day blowing it off.

I want to help you. I want to help you see how much time you actually spend job hunting on any given day. This is going to be true if you’re working full time and doing this during the evening. It’s a very simple philosophy and one that will help you discover how much effort you are actually expanding versus how much time you spend thinking about job hunting.

What I want to do is keep a log daily in your phone, write it in a notebook on a spreadsheet, I don’t care.! I just want you to record your activity every day to support your job search.

It can be very simple. Looked at Indeed. 8:45 AM to 8:57 AM.

Called so-and-so. Left message about networking.

Did research into organizations the to the kind of work I am interested in.

Whatever it is you write it down and the amount of time you spent doing it.

Give yourself two weeks. Review it. See what you’ve actually done and how much time you’ve really spent job hunting.

This will probably lead you to an aha moment where you realize that perhaps you spend an hour a day doing work related to job search. Maybe it was two hours.

It will beg the question, “what did you do the rest of the time?”

Now if you can get that an hour up to two, if you can get that to up to three, this will be a lot of progress for you folks.

The only way for a lot of you folks to learn how little you did is to keep this kind of a log, tracking the effort that you actually spend, and staring at it and been faced with the data.

Then you will realize, “Gee, I’m not really doing that much. I’m really wasting a lot of time with nonsense.”

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Do you think employers are trying to help you? You already know you can’t trust recruiters—they tell 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 is there to change 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

An Advanced LinkedIn Strategy

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Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter discusses and advanced LinkedIn strategy you should be using.

 

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Here’s a great strategy for your networking on LinkedIn, for you to be able to target organizations that you would work for.

Let’s say a firm that shoes identified that you want to be involved with, and, yes, you know people on LinkedIn who you can network with.

Here’s the funny thing. Go to the company page and, yes, you’re going to find out a lot of information about that firm. Now look in the right-hand column, scroll down, and look at this section called, “people also viewed.”

What you’re going to find are firms that are similar to it who might be able to use skills like yours. When you click that page, going to be able to find individuals who were in your network who already work for that firm. These are people who you can network with in order to find out more about the company, get entrée into that organization and target that firm.

When all is said and done, people only have, you only have, I know I only probably half a finite amount of knowledge about conscious relationships I have with in particular firms. To expand that knowledge, I need to go to people beyond the ones I can to consciously think of all the time. That’s where this particular function works so well.

That’s what this particular function works so well. It takes you to firm similar to the ones you already know, shows you who you already know at those organizations and lets you do networking.

So, again, go to the company page of the firm. In the right-hand column, and look for, “people who looked at this company also looked at,” and go to those firms and see who you’re connected with at those organizations.

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Do you think employers are trying to help you? You already know you can’t trust recruiters—they tell 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 is there to change 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

Forgotten People to Network With

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Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter talks about some of the people many forget to network with When job hunting.

 

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This podcast is about some of the forgotten people to network with. People who know you, want to help you but, so often, people forget to network with and ask for advice.

The first category of people that individuals often forget about our former bosses or managers. You know, those people who watch to day in and day out performing your job. These are folks who are senior to you and connected to different folks than you. Perhaps, there networking expertise is something you should model yourself after.

Many of them have joint professional organizations and gotten involved. Many of them continue to have lunch with, dinner with, talk with former subordinates, former managers of theirs. They don’t do it to change jobs all the time but to stay in touch in case they need them.

This is something to model yourself after and a person you should reach out to.

The second category of people that individuals tend to forget about are clergy people. No matter what your religious group, the clergy have connections with (excuse me if I use the wrong term to describe how they might be referred to in your faith) their congregation, their attendees, their participants. They might know some of the professional needs.

To be clear, you’re not going to go to your religious leader and say, “I need a job. Can you help me? Please. Please. Please.”

But you can say, “in case you don’t know this, I’m in a situation room looking for work. You might hear something that makes sense for me and, if you do, please point that congregant to me.”

Another thing, whether it is your former manager or religious leader, you might simply ask whether they have any advice for you. Now the nature of the devices would be different from person to person and whether this is a religious person or a business person. The advice may be incredibly worthwhile.

You may think the advice you would get from the religious leader will fit but it may be the most important advice you receive in your job search.

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Do you think employers are trying to help you? You already know you can’t trust recruiters—they tell 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 is there to change 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

Why You Should Put Contact Info on Your Resume

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Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter explains the importance of putting contact information on your resume.

 

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There’s been an annoying trend in resume writing that people of been doing. I want to see if I can help put an end to it. It’s the absence of an address, city, state and no ZIP Code. Just a name and sometimes it’s only a first name and first initial of the person’s last name and a phone number.

Just start by providing your location and your phone number, particularly if it’s a mobile number, may not correlate to where you are. As a result, you need to include the city and state and ZIP Code. Even if you don’t want to provide an address that I understand some people have a security issue about giving up her address, but city state and ZIP Code should be essential for every resume.

Why?

Because recruiters search for candidates, we usually start by looking for people in the geographic area around the client. Without providing ZIP Code, we have no way of finding you.

Well, I gave you my city!

ZIP Code is more specific and more effective for searching. After all, where was your area code would serve as a good substitute, now with portable phone numbers, you could be like me–someone with a 516 area code who lives nowhere near that location. How would someone know?

So please make sure to include city state and ZIP Code on all of your resumes.

As for not including your last name, I understand that you have a concern about bias by people who will reject you based upon having a last name that they might judged to be unpronounceable. I will simply say that whenever I receive a resume of someone who only includes an initial, I personally am annoyed because I don’t have an easy way to identify this person. After all, some of them don’t even include a phone number or email address to reach them.

And, if you are concerned about bias, for bigoted people you are signaling to them that they should reject you. If they are going to reject you based upon your name not your qualifications, they will do it whether you offer your name or not.

Frankly, only including the initial of last name is assumed to indicate that you are working in the United States on an H1B visa. It is in your name or national origin that is causing you to be rejected. It is your residency status, unfortunately.

Let me also add that applicant tracking systems are also unhappy with seeing simply a last initial. Often they spit out such applications and reject them.

Help recruiters help you. Make it easy. Always include city state and ZIP Code in your resumes and your full name on it, too.

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Do you think employers are trying to help you? You already know you can’t trust recruiters—they tell 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 is there to change 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