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 your 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.

David Perry – of Guerilla Marketing for Job Hunters – on Using ZoomInfo to Find a Job

Hulu Crafts a World Class Job Description

So, this is one of those “dammit, I wish I’d written that” moments: Hulu just unleashed the mother of all job descriptions for a Minister of People.  Now, I know, I know – crafting funky titles to try and describe what the head of recruiting does back in the dot.com b(oom/ust) was an art in and of itself (and, honestly, made for some rather strange titles).  Hulu does make a point of saying this one’s a placeholder.

But the job description can be – to my mind – a work of art. Hulu clearly gets this: they’ve decided to craft a call to action, a campaign piece that will tug at the best of us in the industry.  Hell, if it wasn’t clear across the country, I’d be thinking “wow.  Dare I?”

Huge kudos to them for this one. It’s clear they get the fact that a company is absolutely nothing without the best people, all pointed in the right direction, and working at their highest level.  I think they’re gonna make it…