They Laughed When I Said I Could Write Copy. But Then They Started to Buy…

…I’m paraphrasing John Caples classic headline. I’d apologize if I thought this was inappropriate.  I don’t.  So no dice.

If you follow this blog (or, just scroll down to the prior entry), then you know I’m a person in transition.  I’ve built a career in the human capital industry as a leading recruiter for both agencies and corporations.

Then I was let go.

Not a bad thing.

By any means.

I’ve found myself forced to examine exactly what my strengths are, as well as my weaknesses.  What’s been interesting – to me, at least – is how easy it’s been to list the weaknesses as opposed to the strengths.  I suspect this may come from a Catholic upbringing, but that’s more pop psychology than anything.  Along the way, a number of great people (my long suffering wife, Jindrich Liska, William Tincup, etc) have kindly pointed out to me that, well, why the hell aren’t I writing for a living?  I’ve managed to dodge answering this question for years.  It’s time I answered it.

Fear.

Fear of failing at the one thing I was supposed to be “great” at (ie, if I can’t do it, then what can I do, etc).  Fear of succeeding, and then having to succeed some more.

Courage.

I have a speech impediment.  I talk incredibly fast, fight a stutter, and have a low voice.  It’s a tough combo when it comes to verbal communication. It’s a horrific combo when it came to trying to meet women in bars during my single days.   It was supposed to be an impossible combo when it came to a job like recruiting for an agency with a national client base: 100% talking. On the phone.  All about the voice.  Full commission.  For some crazed reason back in my mid-20’s, I decided to confront my dragon of a handicap with the courage of St. George (or a drunk – you choose).  I put aside going into writing, and wrestled with a demon that had haunted me since my youth.

Along the way, I shocked myself by succeeding. I also found myself married, with young children to support.  Now I had an uber-excuse to justify not confronting my fear of failing as a writer: mouths to feed. A career that was working.  Etc all.  No need to look into that dark house anymore, it’s boarded up.

Thing is, it wasn’t.  I kept prying boards off, and playing there.  I took liberties with the traditional job description, and turned ZoomInfo’s into actual ads as opposed to bulleted lists of requirements.  When Marketing needed copy written and asked for my help, I jumped at it.  Hell, I volunteered.  I wrote the summary to their API’s Terms of Use. While on vacation.  Try making dry funny. I dare you.

Why am I telling you all of this, dear reader?  Simple. I’m going for it. Time for a career change.  I’ll likely do some recruiting on the side during the transition (or, go running back full time if that dark house winds up to be beyond repair).  That said: I’ve just gotten my first contract as a freelance writer – creating content, designing and implementing strategies to deliver said content, etc.  Things are afoot, and I’m into it.

Next steps are going to involve me creating a site to showcase my work. Getting some of those sweet free VistaPrint business cards.  Marketing my services.

And writing.  Honest to god, pen to paper (well, bits to screen, but you get the idea) writing.  I’ll update here as I go along – learnings, rants, and general ramblings.  If it works…. then my copy’s coming to getcha.

No, Really – I Need a Job…

So.

Here it is.

My response to the following communications (flying in via Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, IP Datagrams via Avian Carriers, my mom using this weird thing that rings and rings until you hit one of its buttons, etc etc):

1. “Are you still at ZoomInfo?”
2. “What the hell happened?”
3. “What are you doing now?”
4. “Are you looking for a job?”
5. What are your plans?”
6. “Can we hire you?”
7. “Where are my pants??”

Here we go:

1. Nope. Nada. Parted ways as of the 15th of January.  Welcome to the 2nd decade.
2. We’re going in different directions. It’s oddly like dating – actually, all of work, from trying to get the job/ fill the job, to keeping it/ keeping the employee, to the “it’s not you – it’s us” moment is a lot like dating. I still like them. They still like me. We just both felt more like friends than passionate lovers (this is where the whole work-is-like-dating thing gets weird, and where I stop). We agreed it made sense to part as friends – frankly, I needed to move on.  Close to 4 years with the same title and day-to-day responsibilities was starting to make me feel stagnant.  I don’t do well stagnant.
3. I’m spending a ridiculously great time getting to know my wife and kids. Which is nice.  I’ll be back on a frantic pace shortly.  Meantime I’m loving playing monster and chasing the kids around the house.  I’m betting they’ll learn to love it eventually, too.  More on the “making $” thing in Point 5.
4. Yes/ no/ hell yes.  I’m not going to pigeon hole what I’m looking for.  That’s a lesson for all job seekers (I lied, dating analogy’s back): if you blog/ put in writing somewhere “I want to marry a blue-eyed brunette”, and the girl of your dreams is thinking you’re datable, you’d better hope she’s got green eyes and dark hair, or she’ll decide you wouldn’t want to marry a redhead with green eyes.  Don’t draw a box around what type of job you’re looking for.
5. Beyond the adorable-dad-playing-on-the-floor-with-his-kids bit?  I’m going keep my hand in active recruiting, helping a friend fill some jobs for a client.  He’s great, and told me he’ll be as flexible as I need – just supply candidates for his client when I can.  I’m also looking at helping a good friend out as a contract marketing consultant for his start-up – creating a marketing plan, setting up vehicles to deliver message, leveraging Web 2.0 communication tools to spread the word, writing a ton.  (Not to pigeonhole, but “whoopee!!” kinda ridiculously awesome to me).  I’m talking with a few of my colleagues out there in the recruiting product space about doing some writing for their newsletters, etc.  I think this makes me some weird sort of consultant.
6. Well, yes, in fact, you can. I’m always interested in hearing what’s out there.  I’m keen on leveraging my strengths as a recruiter with my strengths as a marketer/ writer,  but that’s not something I’m locked into exclusively.  Give me a call and let’s chat.  If nothing else I’ll probably be able to refer you to a great fit.  On the location piece of things: We’re a pretty relocatable family (rent month-to-month, kids are still young, my wife works full-time as CEO/ CFO of our household, and we’ve both lived all over the globe in our day).
7. I don’t know.  My name is not Franco. I do not know where your pants are.  I wish you’d stop calling.

There’s the skinny.  I’m going to talk more about what I encounter during this transition here in Good to Know (I mean, it’s a blog with advice for job-seekers…. kind of silly to waste the material). Feel free to reach out – I’m available for consulting, permanent gigs, and beer:

THIS GUN FOR HIRE

I Need a Job

Sound familiar?  It should.  One of the most commonly searched words on Google is job, and “need a job” is up there in terms of phrases.   You’ve got company, in other words.  Likely this guy is one of them.

You’ve done what you think is the right thing: created a solid resume, and cover letter.  Used one of the job search engines (Indeed, SimplyHired, etc - blow off Monster, HotJobs, etc, the only jobs there are the ones that companies pay to put up, whereas the engines crawl employer sites, job boards, CraigsList, etc – everything in one spot, way easier).  Applied and applied and… oh wait: that’s where it seems to break down.  Nobody’s calling you back.

Don’t worry – the same people you’re competing with are having the same issues.  Here’s a tip: it’s likely no one even looks at your resume.  The reason comes down to resources on the hiring side.

Think of it this way: you see an interesting job at what seems like a great company.  You e-mail in your resume with cover letter as instructed (btw, copy and paste your resume into your e-mail – below the cover letter/ e-mail – as well as attaching it – trust me here).   Want to know how the sausage gets made from that point on?

• Resume gets e-mailed into an applicant tracking system (ATS)
  • The ATS rips your resume apart (parses is a nicer way of saying that), looks for keywords, then reassembles it into a file in the ATS
  • (hopefully) a copy of your resume gets attached to the file
• The recruiter logs into their ATS
  • They don’t look at every single applicant
    • Here’s why: they don’t have the time
    • Why? Simple math: if they’re working on 10 openings and doing their job right, they’re getting on average (and I’m making this average up, but it sounds right) 10 applicants per day
      • So, no big deal, right? That’s just 100 resumes to look through
        • Hmm – ‘k, so let’s say they give each resume an average of 5 minutes, which is a poor return on your investment of days and days of working on the thing, but so be it
        • 5 minutes X 100 resume = 500 minutes
        • 500 minutes = 8.3 hours
          • Per day
          • It’s not gonna happen
          • Whoever’s doing initial resume screens has meetings, coffee, interviews, lunch – hell, they might even go to the bathroom
• Instead, the recruiter uses a nifty feature that every ATS comes with: a search box
  • Let’s say they’re looking for a Senior Software Engineer, and you have a couple of key requirements before somebody will even be considered
  • They type in things like J2EE, Hadoop, Spring, etc
    • The results get looked at – if you’re not one of ‘em…

There’s a lot more beyond this, of course – the recruiter might find you, say “a-ha!” (I prefer shouting “excelsior!”).  Then, the manager might say “no, I don’t like that typo…” or “they change jobs every two years” or “who uses that font?”  and rule you out.  It’s a crappy world.   All that said: you need to at least get your resume looked at.

How? Keywords, keywords, keywords.  Don’t make things up or drone on and on, but think about how the search will operate: likely by somebody who doesn’t work intimately enough in your field to read between the lines and understand that when you say X, it also includes Y and Z.  It’s perfectly acceptable to add a technical skill-set to the resume, separate from your day-to-day job descriptions – if it’s a long one, you can add it at the end of the resume with a quick summary of your Core Skills at the top.

One caveat here: there’s a trick floating around where people add keywords in white font all over their resumes, in between sections, at the end, top, wherever.  The idea is that they can add every tech term in the book and the ATS will read it, but the naked eye won’t thereby making sure you get “found”.  Don’t do it: savvy recruiters will find the resume, wonder why the keywords they searched for aren’t there, drop a copy of the resume into a Word doc, hit “select all”, and change the font to black – et voila, all your keywords now belong to us.  And you don’t make it in.

Goodbye, Marley. OR: Get Thee Behind Me, 2009

Phew…. I mean, seriously??  2009?  What the hell happened to us?  How many of us are still in the same job they were in when this whole mess started? (Okay, so it started in the middle of  ’08, but shit last year was long).

More to the point: now that things are getting better* in the economy**, how long are you planning on staying in your job?  There are signs that a lot of the folk who avoided getting laid-off*** last year, and handed the workload(s) of their laid-off colleagues, are starting to look around for new opportunities.

So, a couple of thoughts on that:

• The grass is in no way greener. It’s just farther away, and the sun’s playing funny tricks on your eyes. The companies you’re drooling over almost invariably did the same thing to their employees as your’s did to you.  The cut costs, survived, made the people who survived their rounds of lay-offs work like a demon, didn’t give out raises or bonuses, etc.
• If people do start jumping ship – yay! musical jobs time!!  Here’s the difference: unlike in the actual game, where you aren’t allowed back in to get a chance at a chair once you’re out, in the musical jobs game, you can jump right back in.  In other words – start dancing.  Get your info out there, remind your networks you exist (they got drunk over the holidays and forgot you.  Seriously.  Get back in their faces).

I’m going to start publishing my tips/ anger/ general frothiness about the predicated churn as the quarter progresses.  I’ll have more tips, etc along the way.  Here’s one:

If your cover letter starts off like this, you’re in trouble:

“I read the requirements for the Position on-line. Here are some highlights of how my qualifications might match the requirements necessary”

This is the equivalent of me writing to the lottery, and saying “I read someone won some Money. Here are some numbers that might match the balls that rolled out of the hopper”. 

*”They” say things are getting better- and I don’t know exactly who They are, but you know who I mean. Or don’t.  It’s the same thing.

**Which is driven by human emotion, so it’s about as predictable as your 98-year-old, senile Great-Aunt Mildred behind the wheel for one last freedom ride.

***What – exactly – does that mean?  It sounds dirty.  I prefer the UK phrasing: “made redundant”.  It implies that scary robots have come in and taken over my job,  and I’m redundant.  Which is at least interesting in a sci-fi, time to fight for humanity’s survival sort of way.  As opposed to us over-sexed Americans.  We should be prude.  Like the Europeans.

Resume Tips From an Expert (and it’s not me, so you’re good)

Karen Russo is an experienced, talented recruiter, and she blogs it – which is good for you, because she gives good advice.  Her post on the fundamentals of a resume is worth a read.