Day: November 27, 2016

LinkedIn Mistake #1 (VIDEO)

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Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter discusses a major mistake people make when they are on LinkedIn.

linkedin-mistakes

[spp-transcript]

I want to talk with you about 1 of the mistakes I see time and again on LinkedIn. That way too many people are making with their profiles.  It’s what I call, “the skimpy profile.”

Yes, the skimpy profile.  The skimpy LinkedIn profile.  Maybe you’ve written 2 lines underneath each employer and you have this enormous summary.  Maybe. You have this profile I’ve seen all the time – – 2 lines in the region. Employer. 2 lines in the summary.  How do you think people are going to find you?

Seriously, how do you think people will find you unless they already know you?

Part of what you use LinkedIn for is to attract opportunities to you.  People knock on your metaphorical door and reach out to you to say, “hey, I have an opportunity. Let’s talk.”  You say yes or no, after you hear about the opportunity.  Not before; after.  Then, if you think about it, if you have 2 lines there, there are probably no keywords there, there is no SEO (search engine optimization). There is nothing there that would be interesting to them. Potential employer or recruiter that would cause them to reach out to you.

If you stuff the summary area within enormous list of keywords and then have nothing to back it up onto your jobs, employers have no idea when you did this thing.

Employers are all trained by the resume experience and they will believe that job hunters are trying to con them in order to get an interview.  When they see lots of summary stuff at the beginning of a resume, and relatively little later on (like the functional resume that tells you everything about a person in their life, their career and where they worked, but it’s all separated from one another). You will learn that this person did some of this stuff, but did 15 years ago.  No value.

You have to look at your profile like it is an extended resume.  I don’t mean a longer resume.  I mean an extension of the resume.  You have to have a good quality summary that outlines what you have done and how you went about doing and a few metrics.  You want to have your contact information. There email address and phone number.  This is true particularly if you are job hunting.

From there, underneath each employer or consulting assignment, depending upon how you have it listed, you want to have supportive information to what you have in the summary.  That is also going to help you with your search engine optimization with LinkedIn because LinkedIn will see multiple instances of those keywords and help rank you higher.

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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

The Bind of Either Or (VIDEO)

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[svp]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VtMUlG2KLTs[/svp]
So often, people put limitations on themselves or limited choices. Perhaps there is another way to look at things.

either-or

[spp-transcript]

Many people, whether they are job hunters were business owners, when they look at their life, they have it set up with a blind. The bind is that they limit their options to either one thing or another.

With job hunters, they think, “I work for a bank and that’s all I can really do. I would really like to change this but I don’t see how I can get there.” If you’re in business for yourself, you’re in a situation where all you see is how you can take a trivial job with another firm.

You don’t see any other possibilities for yourself. Or, maybe, you’re a virtual assistant and you like theater. You haven’t figured out how to tie the bow and bring these things together for yourself.

The problem is that when you see things as in either-or. With no other possibilities, you have really limited what your choices are. This becomes a problem because life becomes miserable.

There is a way out and I’ll just simply say that whether it is me or someone else, a few coaching sessions goes a long way toward helping people break their self-imposed limitations and do something very different.

It’s like the old “Saturday Night Live” skit with Roseanne Rosannadanna, if it’s not one thing it’s another.  When you’re set up in this small space and can’t see any other options, life becomes very painful and you start to feel stuck.  Worse than that, you don’t get any help for yourself which I know is a cultural taboo in the United States because you have to figure things out for yourself… But that’s a lie and excuse that you use to keep yourself in this position.  

What I want to encourage you to do is work with a coach for a few sessions and (1) get some ideas for how to 2 things differently than the way you have it set up and, more importantly, doing in a way worrying and have some fun… Play, experiment, do things differently.

When you were a kid growing up, not everything that you did work out, did it?  But it was fun!  In college, you try different things and when they didn’t work out, you thought, “Oh, well.  Onto the next one.”  As adults, we forget that, “Oh, well onto the next thing” attitude. .

As a result, we, don’t do as much stuff outside of that self-limiting box that we have put ourselves into.

Working with a coach, someone who could help you have some fun, encourage you to play, experiment and try things like you did when you were young… Things may not work out. That’s the reality to it.  Along the way, you will learn to not beat yourself up or punish yourself for “MAKING A MISTAKE.”

Making a mistake.  How many mistakes did Alexander Graham Bell make before he created a telephone?The phone itself was a mistake but that’s a different conversation.

I hope you reach out to me.  I’m Jeff Altman. The Big Game Hunter from NoBSCoachingAdvice.com.If you are looking for job search advice, join me at JobSearchCoachingHQ.com.

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Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter has been coaching people to play their professional and personal games BIG for what seems like 100 years.

For more No BS Coaching Advice & encouragement, visit my website.

Ready to schedule your first coaching call?

Should You Try to Bypass Recruiters and Apply for a Job Directly? (VIDEO)

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[svp]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T1GlP5amfRg[/svp]
The question isn’t as clear as it seems.

 

[spp-transcript]

I was asked a question by someone:

“Should you trying to bypass recruiters and apply for job directly?”

As clear as the question may seem, I want to show you how ambiguous and confusing the question is before it started answering it.

First, what kind of recruiters?  Corporate or agency? 

Bypass the recruiter? If this is an agency recruiter, did they speak with you about the job? Did they identify who the firm is?  If this is a corporate recruiter, did you find out about the job on your own and want to apply directly?

Then, there is the language of, “apply for job.”  Are you going to be emailing your resume? Applying for job through an applicant tracking system?  What are you doing here?

Let me start breaking things down for you.

The 1st thing is, “bypass recruiters.”  You don’t have to work with agency recruiters.  If you have contacted a number of them, if you are spoken with 1 of them about this job, and particularly if they have spoken with you about who their client is, do not go around them.  What you are doing then is stealing.  I don’t want to steal information for your own advantage.  What you do then is an attempt to work with our recruiter to get the interview.

If no one has spoken with you about the job, feel free to contact that firm.  Don’t apply for a job.  Don’t go through an applicant tracking system.  Don’t go through corporate HR.  Find the hiring manager.

How do you do that?

You call the firm and ask who’s responsible for that function in the organization.  Thus, in this situation, I am encouraging you to bypass the corporate recruiter, not the agency recruiter.  Again, if you spoke with the agency recruiter about this job, you are using their information and it would be stealing from them, costing them tens of thousands of dollars that can affect their family, affect their business. You are being a thief.

What are you getting out of it anyway?

They’re going to do all the legwork for you. They probably have a relationship with this firm where they can, if you have the right skills, actually get you the interview. What’s in it for you anyway?

I do believe you should bypass corporate recruiters, particularly if the 1st point of entry is the applicant tracking system.

I want to repeat something I say all the time.  Never EVER apply for a job or make it a 1st point of contact through an applicant tracking system.

Number repeat that.

Never EVER apply for a job or make it a 1st point of contact through an applicant tracking system.

Instead, find the hiring manager. Get introduced to the hiring manager by someone you know or someone you are connected with.  It is better to do a pre-interview with someone you know who knows this hiring manager and can walk your resume over to them.  They can tell the manager, “This person contacted me. I think they have a terrific background. Go for it.“

On the off chance that you are a lunatic they will walk directly to the firm, drive to the firm, take the subway to the firm to walk in the door and demanded to be interviewed, don’t.Don’t do that, please.

Some will disagree with me and say, “It shows how eager and motivated. You are.“

Look at it from the employer side.  1st of all, particularly if you are in an urban area, most buildings have security and you will get past them.You will not get past security.  The 2nd thing is that what you are expecting someone to do is, without any preparation or forewarning, interrupt what they are doing at that moment and talk to you.

Think about it. Is that how you want to be treated?  Do you want to be interrupted all the time and have to contend with someone who, I must and will honestly tell you, almost all the time when people have tried to do this with me, it has been a waste of my time.  All I would do is a security to send a resume to me.

After all, I have had a Purdue chicken plucker apply for a software engineering position.

Don’t apply for jobs that you are not qualified for.  Seriously, all you doing is wasting your time and theirs.  It is going to be more of your time, but they’re going to take one look at your resume and think you are an idiot.  

Don’t show up at someone’s doorstep, expecting to be interviewed.  It is annoying.

But back to the original question.  Should you bypass recruiters and apply for job directly?  Corporate recruiters? Yes.

Agency recruiters?  If you are working with one who will introduce you to this firm, no.

If you want to network you way to that firm, you have to go to an agency. Screw it!  Just go directly to the firm and go directly to the hiring manager.

You can call up on the phone and ask, “Who’s the manager who is responsible for such and such?” If they tried to direct you to HR, simply say, “No!  No!  No!  I’m not looking for HR.  I’m looking for the manager that is responsible for that function.“

If they sound unsure, go to the head of the function and work your way down.  In technology, it could be the CIO or CTO.  It is an accounting, it might be the CFO or controller… Just work your way down from the top and reach out to them.

[/spp-transcript]

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.”