Day: October 13, 2016

Editing the Résumé That Is Too Long

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Jeff Altman , The Big Game Hunter explains how to edit an overly long résumé.

 

[spp-transcript]

Today, let’s talk about pruning their resume that is ridiculously long. I know in some fields and some academic settings, it seems essential to have a 10 page resume. In industry, that isn’t the case. You want to get your resume to two or 2 1/2 pages in length. Why? Because no one really cares about what you did of the Stone Ages except to see if you had a career progression.

Here’s what you need to do.

  1. Look at the most recent 10 years. That is the area to emphasize. Anything before that you can summarize by saying, “Prior experience was as a (fill in the blank) and (list two or three firms) between “list the dates). So what you’re doing is indicating what you did prior to 10 years ago with a quick summary.
  2. What if your resume is three or four pages and that’s just the past 10 years? Let me ask you a friend question. Will anyone care what you did nine years ago? Yes, you did it but will this relate to the kind of position that you are going for now? Is there any experience for any skill needed from 10 years ago that is pivotal for what you are going for today? Probably not. If there is, you have to include it and risk going to along resume. However, I must in all candor say that, in most fields, it’s completely irrelevant to  the kind of position you’re going for today and your ego is getting in the way.

You have to go in with a critical eye and ask yourself, “This is the kind of job them going for. What’s the background of people that they are looking for? Are the keywords going to pop up for what I did 10 years ago and not call me anyway or is this relevant to what I’m doing now?” If it’s irrelevant, get rid of it or minimize. You can do much shorter descriptions of your work or from anything in your past then what you demonstrate today.

When most firms evaluate someone to determine whether they will interview them are looking at just the past few years. The filler is the old stuff and, if you look at their behavior, they are not reading a resume. They are reading screenshots on a computer screen. It is rare when they print out a resume to read it. How many page downs do you think they do? Not a lot.

The most important work is the past few years. As you get past that it becomes progressively less relevant to them. Take a hatchet to it. Cut it down. You have to do it. Not doing it will only hurt you in the end.

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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.”

Is This a Generic Message or Is the Manager Interested? – Job Search Radio

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When a recruiter says, “the hiring manager sent your resume to me and asked that I reach out,” is that a generic message or was the manager really interested?

That’s the question I answer on this show can the short answer is, “It depends.” That’s a subject for today’s show; I’ll explain.

[spp-transcript]

When a recruiter says, “The hiring manager sent me your profile and asked that I reach out,” is that a generic message or is the manager really interested?

As usual, it’s a “depends message.” It depends on whether this is an agency or a corporate recruiter.

If it’s a corporate recruiter, it is likely that that is true. The hiring manager was doing some reconnaissance because they’re not seeing resumes that that. Where they are not getting referrals that fit the position you’re trying to fill, so they did some digging, and on the resume themselves, forwarded to HR and said, “Call this person.”

If it is an agency recruiter, the likelihood is that it is a load of crap. What’s happening is that the agency recruiter is trying to flatter you, distract you and not say things to you like, “I heard some nice things about your work and want to have a chance to talk with you,” and instead, try this load of crap to try to persuade you to talk with them.

Agency recruiters are doing their own work; they are digging, they are finding people, they are doing what they can to find individuals to fill jobs. Using lines like this are designed to flatter you and cause you to think more of them and their relationship with the hiring manager and the probable reality is.

Corporate recruiter? Believe it. Agency recruiter? No.

/spp-transcript]

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

Job Search Lessons from the Presidential Election of 2016

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[svp]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C3-ASGxxvbg[/svp]
I believe there are lessons that can be learned from the first presidential debate between Donald Trump and Sec. Clinton that you can apply to your job search. Both made mistakes that you can learn from.

[spp-transcript]

Today, I want to point out another one of those lessons that’s coming from this year’s presidential election. The lesson I want to point out comes from the debate that took place this week with Donald Trump and Sec. Clinton and entering “the deathmatch.” One on one. “Manno a Femmo.” I want to offer a less biased opinion of what I saw and what the media seems to be providing.

Universally they seem to say Trump was awful. When I saw was that in the first 30 or 40 minutes of the debate he matched up well. They obviously disagreed on items and you would expect that. I thought he was accurate and some of his statements on the impact of trade policy and matched up well with her there.

There was a point after the 30 or 40 minute mark where the tide clearly turned. At this juncture, Sec. Clinton’s preparation served her very well. For you as a job hunter, I believe there are lessons that you can learn from both candidates. Critiquing both of them I think there are things that you can take away.

He was not as well prepared as he could have been. Yes, we all read these stories about how he wasn’t going to be doing debate prep and a variety of other things. It’s kind of like going to an interview without preparation and deciding to “wing it.” Presidential debates on job interviews and were seeing the two people in making decisions about them.

Trump didn’t do well he did well in the first part of the interview but in the next hour of time, I thought he did poorly and revealed his lack of preparation. The words didn’t come out well. Even his snarky comments where he whispers into the microphone to disagree with her, he hadn’t done them with an audience before and appeared to be snarky.

I think Clinton made mistakes, too, and the biggest one was that she was smug. She appeared to bask in her own magnificence and missed opportunities to connect with the audience. Yes, she had punches to the ribs and kidneys throughout. Here is one example. Talking about how Trump and his businesses didn’t pay bills to small businesses like her father’s. Her father’s business never did business with Trump. she used it to illustrate that a lot of small business owners who were stiffed by Trump.

She would have a smile on her face that was arrogant, smug and not likable.

To me, that was a missed opportunity. Yes, the intelligence is there but part of what you try to do as a job hunter is connect with the audience, the interviewer, the panel. You can’t sit back and be so cocky that you turn people of.

So, I want to point out that there are lessons we can take from their mistakes that you can apply to job hunting. I’ve done shws about dumb interviewing mistakes that candidates make involving lack of preparation and being so full of yourself that  \\you are sitting there with a big smile on your face, enjoying yourself, instead of focusing on the audience.

[/spp-transcript]

 

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 http://bit.ly/thebiggamehunter