Question
Let me cut you off at the pass. I know you’re not a fan of resumes and you tell us not to rely on a resume to get a job. I get that. But if I’m going to use a resume anyway, what’s your advice about how to make it pay off? What good is a resume really? (Sorry for the affront but I’d really like some commando-style advice out in the job jungle.)
Nick’s Reply
Your question is no affront — not any more than the in-your-face interview questions the best managers ask. And I welcome in-your-face questions. It’s the hard questions that are most important and that force us to countenance the challenges in our job search that no one else wants to deal with.
What good is a resume?
You’re right: I advocate against relying on a resume to introduce yourself, to get in the door, to show your stuff or to provide good reasons why someone should hire you. A resume is a dumb piece of paper (or string of digital “key words”) that cannot defend you. Think about it: The more resumes (or profiles, thank you LinkedIn) there are in the world, the more rejections occur and the harder it is for you to get matched to the right job.
There’s a line from comedian Steven Wright that I’ve bent a little bit to help make my point: Suppose you could have… everything in the world! Where would you put it?
Today employers have access to every resume in the world and job seekers can look up and apply to every job posting on the planet. What does it get anyone? More failures at matching. More rejection. And more is not better.
But you know all this already. You’d just rather ignore it and play along because resumes (and their sad brethren, job descriptions) are the coin of the failed realm of HR. (“Why can’t we find good workers?!”)
6 ways to make your resume pay off
So I’ll consider your “affront” with gusto! If you’re going to use a resume anyway, here are six answers about how to make your resume pay off:
1. Write it yourself
I don’t care how talented a professional resume writer is. You know your skills and history best. If you don’t accept the challenge to write your own resume, you will never recognize the kernel of qualities that will get you hired. You’ll know you did a good job if you can use the best sections of your resume as convincing statements in your job interviews. That’s why writing your resume has to hurt. It’s not a recitation. It’s a well-thought out plan for how you’re going to do a job that makes an employer want to hire you. Unless that resume writer is going to carefully research every job you’re going to apply to and customize each resume you submit, do it on your own.
2. Make your resume the cure
Make it vanilla. Skip the fancy flavoring. Leave lots of white space. Don’t tell all. Nobody wants to know everything about you. Include only what will help a specific employer. Yup, that means one resume per job you apply for. That means you must know what kind of pain an employer suffers from, and your resume must be the specific remedy.
3. The 6 second rule
Tell the manager exactly how you are the remedy on the top half of the first page. Eye-tracking studies suggest employers spend about six seconds scanning a resume. If you don’t show why you’re the best hire in six seconds, you instantly become a NO or a MAYBE.
4. Make contact first
Never, ever send a resume to an employer or hiring manager until after you have had substantive contact with that person. Don’t be someone the manager doesn’t know who clearly doesn’t know the manager. That’s the definition of junk mail. Managers are more likely to read your resume, interview or hire you, if you’re someone they know. The manager doesn’t know you? Do the work required to become known to the manager.
5. What good is a resume? It fills in the blanks
Once that manager already knows who you are, use your resume for one purpose. What good is your resume? It fills in the blanks about your history, experience and skills. Your resume is best used as follow-up information, not to introduce yourself cold. Do you want to be one of the very few applicants with an inside edge, or do you want your resume to be one of thousands?
6. Explain it to the manager
Try this test as you hand your resume to a manager: “Here’s my resume, Manager. When I give it to you, what am I really saying to you?” Are you saying, “Here’s my plan for doing the job you want done,” or are you saying, “Here’s all there is to know about me. Now you go figure out what to do with me.”
Managers stink at figuring out what to do with you. That’s why you (and everyone else) get rejected again and again. Your resume must quickly show the manager what to do with you.
Hope that helps.
How do you use your resume? Is it effective? Or do you use your resume like you buy a lottery ticket — so you can “be in the game”? What do you put in your resume that pays off?
NOTE FROM NICK: There will be no newsletter next week (Dec. 5). I’m going to visit Santa. See you Dec. 12!
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Hiring Manager here – and today I approved the final offer from Talent Acquisition (our in-house recruiters). My interviews take your advice and center on one question: How well can this person do our job for us? Do we get along? Insofar as resumes, I take a look at what they have been doing in recent jobs. How does it apply to us? The brutal truth is I glance over each resume. My advice: Think to yourself what it’s going to take to get the job done. PS: If you make contact with me first and I like you, I let Talent Acquisition know that I want to be sure and see your resume.
Resume writer here: two perspectives. 1) You’re absolutely right about “write it yourself”. Just yesterday I was on a project and I was thinking exactly that. No-one knows what you do and where you do it like you. There are nuances a resume writer will never know.
2) Most of my clients are so bad at this stuff. Bad at writing. Bad at using MS Word. Bad at formatting. Bad at making something stand out. Bad at kwowing how to manipulate a particular skill to the top of the agenda. Bad at telling a crisp, concise story. Bad at looking at a job ad and knowing how to make their resume match. They don’t have time. They don’t have patience.
(And to be frank, I can’t get them to pay me enough to do it all properly either.)
So the situation persists. And it will until they learn to “fire their boss*” and take control of their own career and learn to market themselves as they would a business (per your advice too, Nick.)
(* Reference to the book “Fire Your Boss” by Stephen M Pollan.)
@Gerard: Kinda makes you wonder, if they’re bad at all that stuff and lack patience… what good are they on a job?
Dumb a** blue collar worker here. So, what are WE supposed to do? Resumes are trash, go talk to the hiring manager, customize your resume……..
When I first started working, your resume was a list of skills/ talents and experience in the workplace. It didn’t matter if you bagged groceries for 2 years, you had JOB skills. Now it seems to be, how good can I lie to get someone to hire me. Yes, that is precisely what tailoring a resume is. It is a form of lying. After all, you delete or add or “enhance” skills, and you are writing an opening which is so massaged that a used car salesman blushes.
Most of the jobs do not give you the opportunity to meet with a manager (or discover who they are) unless you want to risk a trespassing/stalking charge.
Most of the jobs do not tell you what they need fixed, they also don’t tell you that if you don’t “feel” right you have no chance. Looking for a job is not hard, there are 21 just down the street from me, it is getting hired that is damn near impossible. If looking for a job is a vicious cycle, then getting hired is swimming in the abyss.
There is a reason that is GEN X folks are the biggest generation of entrepreneurs in history, we came, saw how poorly the whole system worked, and decided we would do it ourselves. Problem is, those of us that did start our own businesses, lost track of why we did and got sucked into the trap.
I will use a real short example of myself for an example.
Started work at 15 bagging groceries,
Worked a fast lube shop
Sold auto parts
Built futons
Cut glass
Did roofing
Did landscaping
Did afterburning jet engines USAF
Became a true master mechanic on my own, no school
Did go to trade school just for the worthless paper.
Managed race teams
Managed car washes
And more
I am not a “people” person, what I am the guy that can fix anything (except stupidity) problem is getting others to divulge exactly what they want. I get the well your skills are impressive, we’ve decided to go another way. Or my favorite when I remove things and tailor to the “job”…”while we appreciate your interest in this position, we have decided to go with candidates that better suit this position.”
Even “headhunters” avoid working with me, they can’t figure out what to do. So, to wrap up my rambling…….why don’t you “headhunters” and managers who read this take an actual active roll and tell us serfs how to actually do all the things you say to do? No, the is no networking for someone that wants to work on cars, there is no meeting of the minds for gunsmiths. This network thing is for white collar jobs, so that one is irrelevant for the “worker”
I would really like to know the exact way to get hired now.
Right on!
Dennis, I’m surprised you even need a resume in the first place. Surely this varies regionally, but in my area, your period of unemployment would be hours. Skilled blue-collar workers tell me employers get in bidding wars, employers chase them. People If the stories they tell me are even just 10% true, the market, in my area at least, is very favorable for skilled tradesmen. Contractors and business owners for construction, drywall, plumbing, auto repair, all tell me they can’t find skilled employees at all.
I’m in real America….Texas to be precise, I get asked to send resumes to every job (except dunning the plandemic) The issue I have found is employers don’t want me, they want what I know for an absurdly low price.
Nearly all “mechanics” jobs are nothing more than computer muppets who have no idea how to diagnose issues, they all get paid Flat Rate. Which means they throw the parts cannon at it so they can make money. I am of the older age, diagnose the issue, the computer is rarely right, then fix it. Which means I make zero money because the powers that be only charge one hour for diagnostic time even if it takes 2 days.
I request a salary or hourly and I want it in writing. No dice.
Currently I am employed, hourly. Working on cars older than I am.
There are massive amounts of trade jobs, that is not in dispute. The problem comes straight from management. No pay, stupid long hours, unrealistic deadlines…….all so they can get the bonus.
Even with my massive skill list I still have to do the old two step which does not happen much anymore since no one wants workers above 40.
I can tell you that one of the big reasons there are so many trade jobs open is the companies have chased out all the truly experienced folks that passed on the knowledge. Now they expect to find a 20 yr old with 30 yrs of experience and fully certified with 4 years of college. A lot of have given up and started doing our own thing.
Even here in Texas, I rarely put my military experience on a resume as it “was so long ago” no one seems to care. I think of it as the mice in the maze looking for the cheese. Once in a while the admin forgets that the cheese is left open.
It is also politics. I don’t mean the government, I mean stuff like how well you are “liked” or how you interact with employees at the “mandatory” Christmas dinner. That kind of crap.
I wish more professionals actually took the time to understand who or what really drives the company.
@Dennis: You make a very important point that’s largely ignored. In the trades jobs go begging because employers “want it all” but refuse to pay for it. They want what older, experienced workers can do but don’t want to pay them appropriately. And as you note, the younger ones that get hired for low pay get fed up and go do their own thing.
Wharton School labor researcher Peter Cappelli has proved all this: The workers and skills are all available. The employers won’t pay market price. Employers own this.
I wish you the best in these weird times.
I feel you Dennis. I was a computer programmer most of my career, which I consider a trade for the most part. All I wanted to do was code and fix problems. I really didn’t want to deal with the corporate “mandatory” BS that was shoved down our throats throughout the years constantly. But, eventually I ran into the same thing you are, they want to hire younger people who can do the job “well enough” and sometimes a genius or two much better, and I can just go to pasture, even though I have a wealth of skills and experience I can still use. I’ve heard every polite excuse and reason why they couldn’t hire me even though I knew darn well what it was, either age and/or salary. The thing is, I wasn’t asking for a huge salary, just “market” value for a seasoned techie, and not someone who worked at Google, either. They have a million ways to screen people out these days. Even an experienced tech can’t code 1,000 lines (exaggeration) of accurate code in 10 minutes on one of their coding tests. Some can, and they have the pick of the job offers. Even though someone like me who’s plenty “fast enough” can’t get their foot in the door because of whatever reason they don’t want older people who want to work a few more years because they enjoy it.
I know this was about resumes, but your post resinated with me. Good luck to you. I think resumes are BS and I’ve dealt with them for almost 45 years.
It’s not no one wants to work anymore it’s no I’ve wants to work at these wages.
@Dennis: My guess is you walk into the auto repair shop, talk to the mechanics and the boss and show them what you can do. You’re right, in a corporate setting just walking in the door and asking for the hiring manager might get you escorted out… but I think the solution anywhere is some version of “showing up, showing interest, and showing what you can do.”
Just because employment has become an industry unto itself doesn’t mean we have to give in to it.
I wish it was like that Nick,
Everyone goes through HR it seems.
It used to be,20 yrs ago you could just walk in and say “I’m looking for a job, I have the experience and skills, what is the vehicle no one can fix? If I fix it will you hire me?”
Now it is all corporate.
It is more like the military (brass and enlisted don’t mix) than civilian.
You would think I could get work anywhere doing anything. Last time I was unemployed I decided to apply at McD’s just for grins.
Even though I could run the entire store without any training I was still told I wasn’t qualified. For us blue collar folks, the employers have us by the bits, they know it. Which is why there is the claim of “we can’t find qualified people.” They have dismissed us.
I do like the majority of what you have posted by the way, it has helped a few of my buddies,
I use this as research into the hell of necessity.
I read that Mickey’s is actually one of the harder jobs to get because everyone who is desperate thinks I’ll just apply there so they actually have a lot of applications.
Having been on both sides of the resume wars, I’ve modified mine many times. Most recently, I’ve been serving on a hiring committee for three positions. (IT related positions). We listed minimum requirements in the posting as well as additional preferred requirements.
I read each resume for each position, some multiple times. The first place I go, after reading a cover letter if there is one, is the work experience. I’m looking for the minimum experience and years as found in the job posting. Failure to clearly indicate both is cause for me to remove the candidate from consideration. (I’ll dig a bit, but won’t spend more than a minute doing so). Once I know who meets the minimums, then I dig further looking for the preferreds, IT technology used, and so forth.
Bottom line – make the resume easy to read and make sure the work experience clearly shows years worked as well as the other requirements found in the resume.
@Tom C: “Bottom line – make the resume easy to read”
That’s the refrain I hear from all managers. The ATSes don’t say much.
Common career advice these days tells you to customize your resume for each listing. As a hiring manager, please stop! We can tell if you do this – it comes out in the interview. Please – highlight your skills and accomplishments. I just hired two people who didn’t meet every requirement, but they demonstrated that they could take their existing skills and adapt them to our requirements. Of course, we are engineers, so we are used to new ideas and technologies. Just be honest. Enthusiasm and a willingness to learn goes a long way with me. If you contact me about a job and I am trying to decide to hire you, the act that you are paying attention to this job might just move you to the hire category.
I’m using Nick’s Resume Blasphemy and mailing/faxing a one page business plan to the people I want to work for in the c-suite (the Library Vacation has helped me do this) on how I can help their department solve their problems (with links to my website, X/Twitter and substack email newsletter -> hint – website = resume (you can do the same for LinkedIn), X and substack email newsletter = demonstrating my knowledge). Instead of applying online to a job opening. And having an algorithm determine my fate. If I get no answer from the C-suite (after my 3 follow ups), then I know to move to the next person and company I want to work for. Instead of waiting for HR to answer me.
Hi Thomas, I can do with some real life successful examples. May I please reach out to you and learn more ? Alternatively, I can contacted via linlingpei alias yahoo dot com. Thanks for your time and hope to connect with you soon.
Nick, I agree with you that the average jobseeker has been taught to write bad resumes. But I think you are badly underselling the benefits of good resumes and using a certified professional resume writer to write them. Here’s why. Your comments are marked (N), mine are marked a. b. c. etc. (Why certified? Such a person has met certain competency tests including all that I mention below.)
N: I advocate against relying on a resume to introduce yourself, to get in the door, to show your stuff or to provide good reasons why someone should hire you.
a. Right off the bat, I agree with you on one point, and I want to emphasize it every bit as much as you do. As I teach every one of my clients, if they have a friend or colleague who can refer the client to the hiring manager, that is far better than relying solely on a resume.
But.
Many people don’t have that connection, or they don’t have the time or ability to draw that manager into their network. For one thing, the job ad may close tomorrow, and the connection may not be immediately reachable. In such situations, a good resume is their only hope, and it works more often than you think.
N: A resume is a dumb piece of paper (or string of digital “key words”) that cannot defend you.
b. To be in your face about it, while this is a true description of the average resume that many job seekers at all levels from janitor to CEO will write, (and I’ve seen examples of both), you don’t seem to realize that a well-written professional resume will i) identify the job the client wants and ii) demonstrate that the client can meet most, if not all, of the target company’s requirements and deliver the kind of results that will make the hiring manager want to interview them – if only to find out how they did it. This kind of resume gets read, (see point .g below). Granted, the resume will not say how the client brought those results about, nor will it outline a plan to deliver similar results for the target company. But those are questions that get asked in interviews and a competent resume writer will make sure the client is ready for it.
N: I don’t care how talented a professional resume writer is. You know your skills and history best.
c. This is dangerously misleading. The reality is that people at all levels often forget key accomplishments, or if they do remember them, they might not think the accomplishments were relevant for the job they wanted. I’ve found one or both of these points to be true for well over 90% of my clients and I’ve always found the solution lies in adroit questioning. For example, one client did not remember, until I asked her, the key items which, when added to her resume, delivered five interviews in sixteen days for a position in a field in which she had no previous experience.
N: If you don’t accept the challenge to write your own resume, you will never recognize the kernel of qualities that will get you hired.
d. This is dangerous advice. Absent feedback from rejecting employers, how can the rejected candidate find out what’s wrong with their resume and how to fix it? Would we tell somebody with a broken down car to figure out what’s wrong with it themselves and would you trust their repair enough to ride in it? Or would you tell them to take it to a mechanic? A good resume writer should be able to explain exactly why a client’s resume is not ready for submission and, FWIW, when I do a resume, I teach my clients not only what they did that was hindering their success, but also what they should look for and add to their resumes in the future so they don’t have to come back to me.
N: You’ll know you did a good job if you can use the best sections of your resume as convincing statements in your job interviews. That’s why writing your resume has to hurt. It’s not a recitation. It’s a well-thought-out plan for how you’re going to do a job that makes an employer want to hire you.
e. While your resume can demonstrate that you did what your target employer wants done, and while creating a resume is a necessary precondition to help a jobseeker craft such a plan, the client’s resume is not andcannot be a plan to do the target job for the targeted employer. Jobseekers must wait until the interview to learn more about the target company’s constraints and strengths before they can formulate those plans.
N: Unless that resume writer is going to carefully research every job you’re going to apply to and customize each resume you submit, do it on your own.
f. This is why I provide resume alignment services for up to 4 job opportunities as part of my basic package and future alignments can be made available at need.
N: . . . you must know what kind of pain an employer suffers from, and your resume must be the specific remedy.
g. Many of these pains can be discerned by a professional resume writer from the job descriptions. Case in point: another client of mine, without networking assets, found herself being the first interviewee of more than a thousand candidates due to the way her resume showed she could handle all the challenges of the job.
N: Tell the manager exactly how you are the remedy on the top half of the first page. Eye-tracking studies suggest employers spend about six seconds scanning a resume. If you don’t show why you’re the best hire in six seconds, you instantly become a NO or a MAYBE.
h. And again, professionals are very well aware of this reality, and we have strategies to leverage it.
N: Never, ever send a resume to an employer or hiring manager until after you have had substantive contact with that person. Don’t be someone the manager doesn’t know who clearly doesn’t know the manager. That’s the definition of junk mail. Managers are more likely to read your resume, interview or hire you, if you’re someone they know. The manager doesn’t know you? Do the work required to become known to the manager.
i. Let me say it again: I agree that it is far better to have had substantive contact with a hiring manager before sending a resume to them. But that is not always possible. And while the average resume will get treated as junk mail, a resume that emphasizes presenting relevant accomplishments early will be treated in quite a different fashion. See point (g) above. That resume was sent in cold.
N: What good is your resume [if the hiring manager already knows who you are? It fills in the blanks about your history, experience and skills. Your resume is best used as follow-up information, not to introduce yourself cold. Do you want to be one of the very few applicants with an inside edge, or do you want your resume to be one of thousands?
j. The resume is also a help to the hiring manager. When the boss cays “Why did you hire Nick C., the HM can hand the boss the resume rather than taking an hour to walk them through the interview.
N: Managers stink at figuring out what to do with you. That’s why you (and everyone else) get rejected again and again. Your resume must quickly show the manager what to do with you.
k. Any competent professional resume writer knows this problem and will meet it by having the desired job title positioned within the first six seconds of reading space.
If you want to warn about the dangers of the way most of us have been taught to write resumes in school or similar places, I’m happy to hold your coat and pile on while you do it. But don’t sell short the benefits of working with a good resume writer. It can make all the difference in the world to someone’s career.
@Tim: You make some strong points, the most important being that a good resume writer becomes your shrink and extracts information you could use to get the job (or interview.) That’s a rare resume writer, if you can find one amidst the marketing of all who offer “free resume reviews.” A few years ago one big resume racket was exposed after customers got their free reviews, paid for re-writes, the submitted those back for review… only to be told those resumes needed to be rewritten!
https://www.asktheheadhunter.com/7084/federal-court-oks-suit-against-theladders-breach-of-contract-deceptive-practices
There are indeed some good writers out there, but like the job board industry, the resume biz has gone too far in brainwashing job seekers into believing “I can pay somebody to do it…”
2 quibbles:
“Jobseekers must wait until the interview to learn more about the target company’s constraints and strengths before they can formulate those plans.”
Not true at all. There are many paths to that information, and obtaining it is what sets the best candidates apart. There are no reliable shortcuts. The key skill job seekers need to develop is getting that information.
“I agree that it is far better to have had substantive contact with a hiring manager before sending a resume to them. But that is not always possible.”
It is almost always possible, and the job seeker that makes contact stands the best chance of being hired. The employment industry, including HR, works hard to convince people they should not and cannot find and speak to the manager. I think it’s the difference between having an inside track and being one of thousands of resumes.
Finally, please remember that most resumes aren’t read by anyone but an algorithm. Even a great resume written by a pro like you may not escape that fate.
Nonetheless, I think you did a nice job discussing the issues with resumes and the challenges of getting in the door, along with what a good resume writer should deliver.
“N: I don’t care how talented a professional resume writer is. You know your skills and history best.
c. This is dangerously misleading. The reality is that people at all levels often forget key accomplishments, or if they do remember them, they might not think the accomplishments were relevant for the job they wanted. I’ve found one or both of these points to be true for well over 90% of my clients and I’ve always found the solution lies in adroit questioning. For example, one client did not remember, until I asked her, the key items which, when added to her resume, delivered five interviews in sixteen days for a position in a field in which she had no previous experience.”
Nick, years ago I wrote many successful resumes as part of my technical/business writer skill set. I have to agree with @Tim that a good resume writer will be able to interview the client in ways that turn the light bulb on. But I also appreciate your 6 ways advice, all the more so because it’s rare that you even concede that resumes might be necessary. As for the writing and formatting, it’s just a doggone shame that ordinary and pre-programmed (complete with errors) have become the norm. Writing and visual formatting used to be artistic skills that were based on talent; now it’s a matter of choosing from a prescribed set of options on a network, regardless of whether you know better.
spot on. I agree with Nick, one knows their skills, & history best…starting out. But you’re on the mark about forgetfulness, & wrong assumptions about merit and relevance are usually there. And then add the frosting…how to best present your bona fides. No matter how good you are, if isn’t presented well it can be pretty invisible.
When I started recruiting I had the good fortune to work with a great recruiter. She had a favorite question “Tell me what’s NOT on your resume?” That always produced good useful info.
I had a favorite question “Have you ever pulled anything off?” meaning have you ever accomplished something that was far above what you …& others thought couldn’t be done or not done before?. I don’t care where and when. Middle school, high school, college etc. I picked up some really interesting info about a person’s potential or current relevance.
I valued reference checks mostly for this. Peers and bosses revealed useful info on projects, accomplishments, talent the candidate either forgot or blew off as unimportant.
Re: your quibbles: 1) Yes, I should have agreed with you that the jobseeker should and can get much information about the company from public sources. But the seeker won’t be able to present a coherent plan without information that only the hiring manager can provide after being asked questions like “What are the internal roadblocks that my action plan will need to deal with?” That’s why I said the plan must wait until the interview.
2) I never forget that most resumes are read by algorithms. But I also remember that today’s algorithms are relatively sophisticated. When a client’s resume demonstrates that they can excel doing all or most of the job ad’s requirements, their resumes get through the algorithm curtain without keyword matching or similar nonsense.
It seems over many years one hears the resume is dead. No it’s not. especially if you broaden the forms it may take. paper, digital, verbal, visual. Resumes are the means of succinctly delivering your bona fides. And you need to have one at the ready.
1. even if you never send it, think of it as a tool you use to wrestle yourself to the ground. Before you even think of submitting one, you need to convince yourself you can meet the needs of the target employer, based on info provided (mostly job descriptions, but ideally augmented with robust research). In this sense you need to write this yourself. I’ve helped people write/rewrite resumes, but I won’t take on the job of dragging key information out of you. Same point for cover letters and I want to see one. Writing your own resume & cover is a good use of your time. If you can’t convince yourself you’re a value add and explain why, what makes you think you can convince a hiring manager.
2. I believe strongly in trying to establish prior contact with the hiring manager. as well as people who potentially know that manager. Ideally, you’d want to flip the process, meet people first, then have them ask for your resume. Directly, not tell you to apply. Does this mean the resume doesn’t matter? No. Think of it as a ticket to play the hiring game inside your target company. Plan worse case. Mostly the hiring manager has the absolute license to hire. But, if that company is fiscally conservative, and/or that manager has a meddling boss, and many other reasons, that manager is going to have to sell others on bringing you aboard. So think of your attempts to land that job as your recruiting project. Recruiting inside advocates for you , the primary one being your potential boss. And a tool your advocates will need, is your resume.
3. Know thyself. Don’t BS yourself, if you suck at writing, yes, roll in
others who do write well to help you turn your resume into something decent you can get behind. Including well regarded resume writers. If you do manage to connect inside, you want those people to be equipped with a great well written honest resume. Ditto on people who know that company’s “culture” regarding resume reader’s biases. This is one reason you network. An insider may be able to take a quick look at your resume and tell you “don’t say that”. “your objective statement is a pile of BS platitudes” If that manager sees this he will hit the delete button. You know who one of the best resume advisors you can get? The hiring manager who wants to bring you aboard, who knows how the game is played & will guide you on giving the manager a better ticket to play. I had one hiring experience where hiring was so frozen, the CEO had to sign off. I, nor a couple levels above me couldn’t pull the trigger. But they had to be convinced to escalate. They did. And the CEO signed off, for a computer operator, not high priced help as compared to the high flying engineers.
4. Know where your paper is. Do not pat yourself on the back because you know and/or find an insider that you think will move you to the head of the line. When your contact asks for a cc of your resume & promises to hand deliver it to the hiring manager. You need to do one more thing. To my point, you need to turn that person into your inside advocate. And to advocate for you properly, you need to embed your value add pitch into their grey matter, so when they move that resume for you, they deliver it with a your good pitch on why that hiring manager needs to take a look. “Here’s someone you really need to know and why. The “why” is you speaking”.
5. Resume tailoring. If the term was “write heedful resumes” and means paying attention to the company’s needs & you make sure your resume captures your fit. Fine. I can also respect & take note of self assessments of short falls linked to adaption of transferable skills. But when tailoring is creative BS it crosses the line into wasting time. You won’t fool anyone with it & it likely will piss the hiring manager off. Write honest resumes. I’ve read thousands over the years. Those are most impressive. And I think all managers hire people who don’t hit 100% of the mark. We understand people want to grow their skills and that is one of the motivations for their search. With that understanding, demonstrated adaptability, flexibility and learning ability do count. Make sure you get that into your resume and covers. Sell those attributes to hiring managers. These are key to turning them into your advocates even if you don’t hit all the marks.
6. About qualifications. Hiring systems and processes mimic an ideal employment world. Happy healthy companies, staffed by happy healthy people perfectly qualified to do their jobs. When a hiring need appears, the need is described, advertised, and new or replacement qualified people hired. And they live happily ever after.
Think about this. In a rapidly growing enterprise, with expanding product or service offerings, most of that qualified staff quickly morphs into unqualified. They have no experience with new technologies, services etc. Ditto on companies that hit hard times. The highly qualified bail.
This is why hiring managers pay a lot of attention to people’s ability to quickly move into the unknown & pull it off. In the fast growth scenario, I did not have the luxury and time to endlessly look for perfect fits. I had competition inside & outside. In financially embarrassed companies, hiring may be frozen and/or my approved hiring cancelled. Needs will be met by the “unqualified” who can quickly move into that unknown.
7. The Hidden Job Market. Simply put. Non existent. A “job” is funded. No $ no job. In the world of a hiring manager if you get an OK to hire, you hire ASAP. In my experience reqs (ak hiring requisitions…authorization to hire) have limited longevity. Use them or lose them, especially if the bean counters are putting the squeeze on spending. No manager in their right mind, hides jobs. And if that manager is worth their salt, my current team, a known resource, has first rights of refusal on new jobs, before I even think of going outside.
What does exist, is hidden potential. Regardless of noble protest, all managers are empire builders. They manage what they are budgeted to do. But like the tip of an iceberg, we have ideas, to expand our scope. Into new territory of new products or services which will need people I don’t have. Timing is everything in opening your kimono and making a pitch. So you keep your mouth shut. A resume may by dumb luck hit into that idea. But most likely it hits home to Nick’s point. Via contact with a hiring manager or someone close. You find mutual interest via talking shop.
When the time is right I’ll make a play for funding. And what strengthens my hand is connecting a real (key) person to the proposal instead of an abstract req. This is how jobs are created, and potential moves to real job.
Sorry for the pontification. But it’s an interesting and important question. In sum, well written resumes are still play an essential role in the recruitment process. What this question and one of Nick’s points addresses, is how to best use a resume. Yes, a well written resume can be processed and hit home via Standard Operation Recruiting procedure. I’ve seen it happen. But direct connect opens up more opportunity, and can be done in parallel to the SOP. It paves the way to talking shop which is a network builder.
All this talk about tailoring the resume to the job reminds me of this. I beg indulgence for the frivolity.
Right on.
Also, as a headhunter I learned that candidate specifications changed almost hourly. We were required to contact the hiring authority three times a week. I learned that such had no idea at all of what they were looking for.
Generally, they would hire someone who “clicked” with with them and / or who had a similar background.
You MUST provide examples of HOW YOU GENERATE CASH IN for your employers. They can’t resist that. You will not fit into the ordinary employee categories but neither will your income.
Thank you Wes. Someone said it. It’s about time.
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Thank you
The smily face comes through as a ? mark.