May 11, 2015 – Page 2 – Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter's Blog

Make It Easy On Them

September 26, 2015May 11, 2015 by Jeff

I was trying to think of a topic to write about this week when I noticed my son sitting at the breakfast bar in our kitchen.

He’s almost 13 and knows I help companies find people to hire but has no idea of what I go through to do that other than read resumes.

“I’m trying to think about something to write about. What do you think I should write about?”

“I dunno.”

He’s interviewed people for projects in school so I decided to ask him about that.

“When you interviewed people for your PIPS (personal interest project), did you ever wish that the people you were interviewing just gave you the information you needed without having to ask them lots of follow up questions to draw it out of them?”

“Well, yeah (he turned, “yeah” into several syllables thhat made the question and me, by extension, seem stupid).

And that is my topic.

Make it easy for the interviewer to know what your experience is that relates to what matters to them.

Once you have defined your responsibilities, make sure you use the 4 magic words of interviewing.

Earned

Saved

Increased

Decreased

How much money you helped your employer earn

How much money you helped your employer save by what you did.

How you helped them increase productivity or decrease waste.

If you work for a small company, make sure that as you answer, “Tell me about yourself,” you take a sentance to decribe your current employer and what it does, its size and approximate revenue in order to contextualize your experience.

Make it easy on the interviewer to get interested and excited about you.

Learn a Lesson from Other’s Mistakes

May 11, 2015 by Jeff

“Radio Shack CEO Steps Down Amidst Resume Questions”

RadioShack Corp.’s embattled president and CEO, David Edmondson, resigned Monday following questions about his resume’s accuracy.

Leonard Roberts, RadioShack’s chairman and Edmondson’s predecessor as CEO, said the move was necessary to restore the company’s credibility.

“One of the most important things we have as a corporation is integrity and trust and we know we have to restore that back to the public,” he said.

Edmondson said he took responsibility for the errors. Separately, RadioShack said it would hire outside lawyers to investigate errors in Edmondson’s resume, including claims that he earned two college degrees for which the school he attended has no records.

My father owned a business in The Bronx Terminal Market. Six days a week, he went to work, first as an employee, then as an owner after he bought the business from his boss at a time when it might have gone under. He eventually retired, selling the business to two of his managers.

Abe Altman taught me a lot through his words and through his actions. The first lesson of life, he told me, is tell the truth. A man has nothing more than his reputation. When he loses that, who can believe him.

Dave Edmundsen held that position for more than eleven years yet when a Fort Worth paper exposed the fact that he did not have the two degrees he claimed on his resume, his job disintegrated almost overnight.

I remember many years ago, a person I placed at a bank, a person I warned to complete the application accurately because his new employer would do a thorough background check, was escorted out by security on the first Friday after he joined. his offense? Lying about a degree. At another company, it took 45 days, but they caught the lie about a conviction. The sad thing was that it was for a civil rights protest; they would have hired him regardless but were compelled to fire him for lying on their application.

Why is this so important? Simple. Applications are legal documents. If you commit a crime, like embezzle grandma’s life savings, while in the employ of a company and they know it, what do you think that will look like in court (Your honor, the company knew Mr. So-and-So was a liar and they still kept him on board. They should be punished for hiring someone like this and putting them in a position where they could steal).

Oh, yeah, don’t you think the employer’s insurance company would be thrilled about a decision to keep a known liar on board.

And sometimes, we don’t remember the exact date we started a job ten years ago . . . or the salary we earned 15 years ago. If that occurs, put the expression “approx” (for approximately) next to the item. This way, they will know that you had no intention to deceive anyone.

So listen to your parents . . . or to my father, Abe Altman, and don’t lie. Do you really want to be escorted out and explain to your kids, family and friends why you were?

Perseverance and Job Hunting: Getting Through the Dark Days

May 11, 2015 by Jeff

I have been a sports fan since I was young. Not a college sports fan; native New Yorkers don’t follow college sports unless they are gamblers (I know that’s a generalization but it is one that is trueof me), but professional sports.

I grew up in The Bronx not far from Yankee Stadium. I played little league baseball where the new Yankee Stadium stands. I was a pitcher and a catcher and did pretty well at both.

There are lessons you learn from playing sports and they are repeated over and over throughout life.

The strongest lesson that I remember being given by a coach was the one on perseverance. Never quit. In sports being labeled a quitter is the ultimate insult. Recently, we watched the St. Louis Cardinals defeat the Washington Senators in the post season down to their final out down by a run.

All season long, the Yankees have lost critical players– Andy Pettite, C.C. Sabathia, Mariano Rivera, Mark Teixeira, Derek Jeter, Alex Rodriguez– and managed to fight to baseball’s best record while playing with “the B team.” In sports, you learn to play hard, develop stamina, get better, practice as hard as you play every day and learn how to win. The same holds true in job hunting.

If you are not someone who is trying to get better at their job every day, someone will eventually be better than you and get the promotion and salary you want.

If you are not trying to develop your job search skills, learning how to network better (that’s a job skill but that’s a topic for a different day), interview better, negotiate better, use social networks better, have a better resume . . . all the big and little skills better, someone will get that job you should have gotten.

It’s easy to make excuses for both failure and mediocrity. That’s another lesson of sports. After all, winners find the way to win and losers find a way to lose and have great excuses for why they didn’t win. It was too hard. They wanted someone who . . . He was 27 and I was 51 and they are biased against older workers. Yep! Lots of good explanations.

A few years ago, the football Giants played the undefeated New England Patriots in the Super Bowl. No one gave them a chance to win except themselves. New England was favored by 13 and 1/2 points by the odds makers. The betting line for the number of points scored in the game was 54 (the combined score of the two teams was expected to be 54 points).

Yet the Giants walked off the field winning 17-14 in what was though to be a huge upset. They fought for every yard that day and won in spectacular fashion crafting a miraculous final drive with very little time left on the clock, first escaping heavy pressure to throw a drive continuing pass that was caught against a receiver’s helmet then a final touchdown to win the game with very little time left on the clock.

So, take a moment and notice how you have sold yourself short and settled for mediocrity in your job search performance and set out to improve and persevere.

Text Messaging: The New Tool in Job Hunting

May 11, 2015 by Jeff

Many of us have been brought up to believe that texting is for kids. That email and cell phones are far better ways to communicate.

But if you work in an environment where you can’t take calls (others are close by, you work on a trading floor, to name two reasons) and people need to convey info to you quickly, what can you do other than demand they call you off hours (I’m not the only person with a family in the search profession; plus how many corporate people are going to call you at 8PM)?

Get a text messaging plan for your cell phone and let people know on your resume that they can text you (next to your cell number, xxx-xxx-xxxx cell/text).

In this way, you can get critical information that can’t wait for you to get to your personal email account outside the office or to a private place to make a call. You can handle everything via text easily.

Now is the Time to Leverage Your Rolodex

May 11, 2015 by Jeff

Yesterday, I was speaking with a senior manager who was referred to me by someone for a position. Although he did not fit the role, as often happens, we got to talking about a broad spectrum of things and then evolved our conversation to his job search.

“Right now,” I said, is the key time for you in your search for this year.

“Why is that?”

“Because your old friends are creating their budgets for next year and they can carve out a place for you. More than anything for a senior professional, the end of the third quarter and the beginning of the fourth are the key times in their search when they can leverage some of their contacts and really make something happen.”

If you wait until December, budgets are already in place for the next year and it’s too late for them to be creative.

Instead, get on the phone and/or get together with as many former colleagues as you can who are in leadership roles with their firms or joining new organizations in leadership roles. See if there is space for you or can be space for you in their new budget. If not, see if they can point you to someone who they hear may need someone like you.

Use your time wisely now. If you do and are fortunate you can bank your severance and land in a new role with a halo around your head.

Be Passionate on Your Job Interviews

May 11, 2015 by Jeff

Whether you are doing a phone interview or being interviewed in person, one of the most engaging qualities a job applicant can display is passion.

In the context I am using the word, passion can be described as:

a strong or extravagant fondness, enthusiasm, or desire for anything: a passion for music. *

Passion displayed for your work usually expresses itself as excitement or eagerness which when contrasted with “coolness” which can be interpreted as antipathy or indifference makes passion a more desireable behavioral characteristic to express.

Now to be clear, I am not asking you to say, “Oh! I am passionate about what I do!” I am inviting you to be passionate as you speak about what you do and have done.

Being excited, being passionate is fun. It;s certainly more fun than being bored.

As Richard Nelson Bolles, author of “What Color is Your Parachute?”, maintains, landing a job once you get to the dreaded interview table is all about being enthusiastic and showing that to a prospective employer.

As he wrote:

“Why is enthusiasm so important during the job interview?

“You better be darn well interested in the interviewer and company. It’s deadly when you go to interview at a place, (and) you really don’t care if you get the job there or not.

“The key is enthusiasm. Let’s say you’re somebody who is over 50, a baby boomer. What employers are looking for is they want to see energy. That comes from being fascinated by what you’re doing. You can hardly wait to get to work and have at it.

“Lean forward in your chair, ask intelligent questions about the place and interview in places where you think you would love the work.

* Source http://dictionary.reference.com

Posting Your Resume on Job Boards

May 11, 2015 by Jeff

A few weeks ago, I got a call from a client telling me that they wanted me to keep an eye out for three senior technology managers with particular skills.

“Expansion,” I asked.

“Nah, ” we spotted their resumes on Monster. Look up these three people and you’ll have the job description.”

True story.

If you are currently working, why are you revealing your identity when you post your resume on the major job boards? If you work for a large company that is trying to hire staff and is advertising for staff, they may have also purchased a license to search the resume data base to search for new staff.

How do you think your employer will respond when HR calls them and says, “Sharon is looking for a job.”

Too often, I see people put their jobs at risk by posting their resume with full contact information on the large job boards. Blind your name and make your dissatisfaction harder to identify.

OMG! My Resume Was Submitted for the Same Job By Two Different Recruiters!

May 11, 2015 by Jeff

A friend of mine sent an email recently and said he wanted to speak with me. He has been looking for a job for a few weeks. I called him and asked what was wrong.

“My resume was submitted by two different recruiters for the same job!”

“And what do you think the problem is with that?”

“They will think that, uh, they don’t know what I am doing. They don’t like receiving multiple resume.” The he said my favorite.

“It makes me look bad!”

I have asked this question for many years as a recruiter because, frankly, I’m curious to know if there is a new reason someone will give me to explain the problem. Let me give you some historical context.

I started as a recruiter in March of 1972. At that time when you wanted to present the credentials of a candidate to a client, there were only three ways to do it:

You mailed the resume

If the client was local, you had a mesenger pick it up and deliver it or

You pleaded for permission to have what was called in the business “a phone send out.” That is the ability to reserve the rights to a candidate pending the receipt of the resume that confirmed what you told the client about the candidate’s background. Once the resume arrived, it was manually date and time stamped in HR and that stamp confirmed the receipt of the resume and was the determining factor as to who “owned the rights to that candidate” if there was a disagreement between agencies.

Pretty primitive, huh? As a result, many large firms decided that they would not accept a referral of a candidate that they received from more than one source in order to avoid being sued for the fee.

Let’s fast forward past the age of fax machines to now.

Companies spend a lot of time evaluating and assessing their recruiting vendors to insure that they are competent anbd ethical. They really want to partner with us. Every emailed resume is automatically date and time stamped by the firm’s systems. Those systems are networked so, unless someone is willing to go to the trouble of changing the time on the server (which they aren’t), they can always send a screen shot to the complaining recruiter to show when they received each resume. Law suits about candidate submissions have almost been completely eliminated!

Those two vendors have been interviewed and contracts signed. The company likes them and now you are going to disqualify someone who two of your prime vendors thinks is qualified and appropriate?

No.

These days, it is seen as a testimonial, not a problem. So, I told him not to worry, to make the company fall in love with him and not to worry.

Oh! I also told him that if he is asked questions by them, tell the truth.

Laughable Advice

May 11, 2015 by Jeff

Let me start off by saying that having been in recruiting for more than 40 years, most job hunters still do the same things in their job search that did not work for them when they graduated from college. Writing one resume and sending it out over and over again is like the holy grail for most job hunters. To me, it is like the story of the broken watch–it is right twice a day but does not work the rest of the time.

Knowing this, I have developed some compassion for job hunters who still send out “their resume” to every job. Often when I receive a resume that does not seem to fit a job, I send off a response to them:

“I’m sure I don’t have to tell you how competitive the market can be. When firms are looking at people and their experience, resumes need to spell out the ‘fit’ for the role and frankly, yours doesn’t do a good enough job in doing so.”

“This isn’t to say that you don’t have the experience; it is saying that your resume needs to be improved to make it obvious that you fit what the institution is looking for. Once you send me a revised resume that demonstrates the fit, I would be happy to speak with you and represent you for this role.”

I think this is a polite way of explaining that they have sent a resume that is nothing more to me than spam (a waste of time) and asking them to do their homework and re-send a resume that tells me how they fit the requirements of the job.

Imagine my surprise, to receive a response like this

” Firms that look for an exact skill fit are exactly the kinds of places that need a leader like myself to bring in the changes they need to gear up for the 21st century.

“I request you to forward my detailed resume to the top executives in the Firm who are tasked with turning the Firm’s processes, organizations around and with reducing expenditure on software maintenance and upkeep of legacy system.

“My resume is perfectly suited and consistent with my stated objective and it matches some of the expected responsibilities associated with this job. I have been in similar situations enough number of times to be fairly sure of when a position fits and requires my skills and unique expertise and this is one of them.

A firm like this is a bunch of idiots (and you, too, by the way) that knows nothing about how the world works in this century. I, on the other hand, do even though I don’t know who it is or almost anything about them. My resume is perfect just the way it is. Send it.

Ridiculous.

Outplacement firms and newspapers teach tactics like this. When you de-construct them, the response is insulting and laughable. After, you know very little of what is being sought, nothing about the employer or its corporate culture but you are DEFINITELY the right person even though you are told you aren’t.

Sure.

Job Search Radio – Help is NOT a Four Letter Word

December 10, 2015May 11, 2015 by Jeff

Let’s face it. People find it hard to ask for help and we all know we need to do so. In job search, not asking for help can be damaging because statistics show that 70% of jobs are found through networking and 70% of those 70% came about through someone you didn’t know at the beginning of your search.

My guest, Peggy Collins, is the author of “Help Is Not a Four Letter Word: When Doing It All Is Doing You In” and she ties this message home very effectively about networking and offers easy to follow ways to improve your networking skills

Listen to the Show

Do you have questions for me? You can call, email or IM your questions through PrestoExperts

Is your job search going nowhere? Are you unsure about what to do? You may be doing critical things wrong or a lot of small things wrong that are costing you opportunities. Schedule a job search makeover with me. It’s an intense detailed coaching session where we go through EVERYTHING.

You can listen to, watch or read more of Jeff’s job search, hiring and recruiting content at TheBigGameHunter.us

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