Please ask me questions that I’ve already answered

January 31, 2007 · Filed Under Finding Your Job · 1 Comment 

There is a reason an e-mail address is included in job advertisements that is actually answered.  Connecting with job seekers is incredibly important to me and answering legitimate questions is a side benefit. The great thing about the world wide web is that there is a ton of information about our company, our location and benefits on our website.  If you have a specific request for information but asking me for “more information about your company” is really unnecessary.  We aren’t incredibly old but telling you about our company could be a 30 second commercial or a couple hour conversation.  What do you want to know?

When you e-mail questions like that and you don’t get a response, now you’ll likely know why.  I will respond but I will ask you to clarify exactly what you want to know about us that isn’t available. Whenever you are talking to people that get hundreds of e-mails a day on a wide variety of subjects, a question with a very big answer isn’t going to be prudent.

And no, I don’t consider answering questions like this to be connecting with job seekers.  If someone wants to have a conversation about the future of the company, our company culture and what positions may be open in the next year, I will happily comply.  These are conversations that mean something. As far as I know, someone who e-mails me broad questions like this isn’t interested enough to look at all of the information we have there. And that is a shame.

Tags:

Video Resumes are Awful

January 16, 2007 · Filed Under Finding Your Job · 10 Comments 

I am going to go with slightly stronger language than Secrets of the Job Hunt and Magic Pot of Jobs and say that video resumes are probably one of the worst things ever devised as part of a job hunt in the history of mankind*.

I was trying to think of worse things in this world then going to this site and having to shuffle through hundreds of video resumes. I had a very hard time but I think I came up with a couple things:

  1. Dropping a hammer on my toes
  2. Having to wear one of those big chicken suits on a really hot day
  3. Shaking the hands of hundreds of thousands people without any hand cleanser

JORDANI am just awfully disgusted with the idea that people would actually work on a video resume before they have come close to perfecting their paper resume. Not to mention the point that Tiffany made regarding introducing bias or the point that C.M. about actually charging for a service that is already free.

I guess the issue I have with it all is the absolute faddish things that come out because of people’s desperation during the job search. Using a video resume when you can’t find a job using your regular resume is like trying to master the double reverse jam before you can make a free throw in basketball.

But ultimately, what will prevent people from using video resumes will be the fact that they will not work. And if something doesn’t help them get a job, it likely won’t stick around that long.

Tags:

Math can help you get the job…at Google

January 8, 2007 · Filed Under Finding Your Job, Recruiting in the 21st Century · Comment 

And I don’t mean the 2+2’s and all those good, elementary type of equations. I am talking about a long, complicated mathematical computation called an algorithm that can help you get a job. Now what company is most associated with algorithms? Google of course!

Now ranked the best place to work in America, Google is using a formula to determine if you are worthy of being talked to by one of their continuously busy recruiters. Slashdot has a bunch of comments on the issue but I figured I would add my own perspective.

If you are hiring as many people as Google is planning on (they plan on doubling their current workforce), and you don’t want a large expenditure in something that isn’t a core competency (namely: recruiting), do something that is in your core competency (create a formula that matches people with job openings and is intelligent about it) to fix it.

There is a lot of “cool” potential from this if anybody outside of Google gets to see a piece of it but I think this definitely could have some implications for corporate recruiters that isn’t positive for anyone.

No company is like Google so running an algorithm-based formula will probably not work for 99.999% of companies out there. Most places do not have that expertise. None the less, this development will spark interest in “smart” systems that are actually dumb at ranking resumes. Which of course leads to…

Panic! From job seekers specifically. If corporate recruiters get this bug, only those resumes who cooperate with all kinds of “smart” systems will work. It also increases barriers to application that are not needed. Most companies aren’t pulling a couple hundred thousand resumes a month with little out of network advertising.

With everything that could possibly go wrong, there is some opportunity for three groups of people:

  1. Employment lawyers: Who will get to represent job seeker and employer when an algorithm shows a questionable bias against a certain group. And the will be paid well.
  2. HR vendors: Those who continue to be on the cutting edge and make smart technological decisions and advancements win. And they will be paid well.
  3. Third-party recruiters: When the system breaks or sends away too many or too few people, third-party recruiters will be called in to clean up the mess. And they will be paid well.

I think the idea is interesting but probably not going to be useful outside of Mountain View.

Tip of that hat to Fritz for sending this my way!

Tags:

Best Blog and Keyword Stuffing

December 12, 2006 · Filed Under Current Events, Finding Your Job · 2 Comments 

For those who may be interested, this blog has been nominated for “Recruiting.com Best Blog” award. If you like this blog, take a minute and please vote for it. Also, please feel free to vote for some of the other fantastic blogs on there. While I don’t expect to win (after all, those pesky recruiters would hate to see a generalist win), I think it is good to recognize the top blogs in our industry.

Jim Stroud posts on CollegeRecruiter about how to be slick about adding keywords to your resume.

I don’t know about other recruiters but I think keywords are awful. Whenever I see them, they seem… oh how to put it… tacky? And while Jimmy’s idea is pretty slick, if your recruiter doesn’t have an application tracking system (ATS) that parses the resume with the included summary, you are out of luck. I would guess that would be a good guess if the company has less than a 1,000 people and would almost be a sure thing with less than 500 people. So that can help you get a job at the big companies but there are better ways to do keywords that will help you get a job period.

I know it is a radical idea but how about including some of those keywords in the actual content of your resume. If it isn’t important enough to be even be mentioned, it is unlikely adding the keyword is going to help that. If you have sales experience but you don’t mention sales in your resume, what makes you think that adding “sales” to your keywords is going to help you land the job.

Sure, adding keywords is easy and too few people do it… now. But if something is easy and effective, guess how long that will help you? It seems much more worth the effort to spend it on making your resume produce results, no matter what computer (or what human) is looking at it.

Tags:

Networking for Introverts

December 11, 2006 · Filed Under Finding Your Job, Recruiting in the 21st Century · Comment 

Businesspundit has a great article about how (and why) to network if you’re an introvert.

Networking is essential to all jobs but the job of being a job seeker and the job of seeking the job seekers are one of the incredibly important places where networking works. Everybody says that, in landing a job, it is all in who you know. Yet, we do so little to make that come true for ourselves when we are in that situation.

The first point sums it up nicely: networking is an investment. It is an investment in the most important thing in your life: yourself. And while introverts may scoff at this, well…don’t. I think it is a good primer on how to get started and get past the uncomfortableness. I can only mildly understand what being an introvert is like but I meet a lot of successful people that are introverts. When they see value in something though (like networking), they will latch on to it.

Tags:

Career Dilemas SOLVED and Networking in December!

December 5, 2006 · Filed Under Finding Your Job · Comment 

Of course, the answer is on CNN and it is online.

I don’t know how much I agree with some of these. Making your college degree choice based on what the job market is doing today and ignoring your personal traits and skills (not even considering whether you would enjoy it or not) is asking for failure.  And that’s only helping the massive failure rates of institutions of higher learning in general (at the undergraduate level of course). Churning out college grads with no real world experience, no hard skill sets and essentially worthless degrees is asking for failure too but on a much more depressing and wide scale.

Advice on keeping your desk clean is well taken but not always applicable.  My bosses desk is about the same level of cleanliness as mine.  The whole advice section on starting a new job isn’t that great either.

Besides that though, I think it is a pretty good article.  Job seekers should check it out.

Also, I forgot the source of the second part of this post so my apologies.  If I find it, I’ll credit it.

December is a GREAT time to network with hiring managers and recruiters.  They are typically less busy during this time of year and are more receptive to networking opportunities.  I have found this to be true in my professional experience.  Granted I am trying to tie up loose ends this time of year, I also don’t mind networking. It gets me out of the office and being stuck in the office from dark to dark can get really old.

Tags:

What do you ask your interviewer?

November 2, 2006 · Filed Under Finding Your Job · Comment 

So you’re at your job interview and it is winding down. It has been a great interview so far and the interviewer has answered all of your questions. Here is the problem: the interviewer has answered all of your questions! Now what? Careerbuilder has some great things to ask right here and I want to highlight a few I really like:

  • “How do you rate your competition?”
  • “What were the major strengths and weaknesses of the last person who held this job?”
  • “What are the most immediate challenges of the position that need to be addressed in the first three months?”

The reason I like these questions in particular is because my response to you will open the door for you to present what you could do to help our company. 

Good interviewees make the interview questions, even the one’s they ask, complimentary of their skills and their offerings to the company.

Tags:

Keep your resume short

October 27, 2006 · Filed Under Finding Your Job · Comment 

You’ve got to cut it down.

I’ve looked at quite a few resumes. And while there are some exceptions to this rule, if you are the exception, you generally don’t need to be reading this blog for resume advice. Here are the three out of the six you MUST do right now to cut down your resume:

  1. Don’t overdo the underlining, bolding and italics. Wow, this is one that flubs me every time. If you use bold and italics on every other word, not only is it hard to read, it doesn’t actually highlight anything.
  2. Include old information sparingly. I say this with a caution: make sure you are disclosing that you are giving incomplete information. I made a very targeted resume for someone and I gave it the term “Relevant Work Experience” and include a phrase that her full job history was available upon request. I also made her have a separate sheet that include her full work history available with her at all times.
  3. Leave out personal information. One fellow that has dropped off his resume before has included his full vital stats. That is completely unnecessary. You can talk about your love of big game hunting once you’re hired. It is really unnecessary for you to include it on your resume, especially considering the amount of precious space available.

Everything else in the article is good too but you have to follow those rules.

Tags:

When to Shut Your Mouth

September 14, 2006 · Filed Under Finding Your Job · 4 Comments 

Shut your mouthWhenever I ran cross country, my coach always used to tell me, “If you’re thirsty, it’s too late. You’re already dehydrated and you won’t get rehydrated until you stop running.” The same sort of thing happens when you run your mouth in an interview. If you think you’ve been talking a lot, you’ve been talking way too much. And shutting up after you’ve figured this all out won’t help.

How long should my interview answers be then?

Most people who break this cardinal rule play it off as innocent. “Oh, I was just trying to explain myself fully.” Some even take it offensively. “I thought you wanted me to answer the questions completely.” And maybe they were innocent but imagining a meeting with this person where they are going lecture the group on the finer points of keyboarding for twenty minutes is not necessary. Being able to type is. Most of the time though, these long winded folks are simply searching for the right answer and hoping to stumble upon it within the ten minutes.

Here are four steps which you can pretty much guarantee that you will answer the question with the right timing:

  1. Demonstrate that you know what the interviewer is asking. Ask right at the beginning if you have any clarifying questions before you start to answer. It helps to pause before you answer the question and think about what they asked. If you have prepared yourself, this should be no sweat.
  2. Be detail oriented but leave out the kitchen sink. I like details about the questions I ask. Keep it detailed but focused on the question. As an example, if the interviewer asks “Tell me about a recent disagreement you’ve had with your supervisor,” don’t give a long back story about the history of your relationship with your boss or your relationship with bosses in general. Talk about the disagreement you had giving the interviewer enough details to have the answer they are looking for. Using that example, you definitely want to include that you resolved it to everyone’s satisfaction but you don’t need to go into the great time you had at the pub later.
  3. Confidently end your answer. If you linger out an answer like you might continue answering, I’m not going to interupt you. I am waiting for you to finish your thought and if you make it sound like you are going to continue, I’ll let you. I think this is probaby why many people don’t know when to shut their mouth: I won’t interupt them. In a behavioral interview, it takes some people a little while to put all their thoughts together and so I’ve learned to shut my mouth until you’re done speaking.
  4. If you don’t know the answer, make it snappy. THere are good ways and bad ways to use a non-answer. Good: “I don’t know the answer to that but here are the three steps I would take to figure it out.” Bad: “Hmmm, I…. ohhh… well, that’s a good one. I don’t know the… OH WAIT! If I…. no… hmmm” + 5 minutes. A lot of people fly their plane into the ground instead of knowing when to hit the eject button and say you don’t know.

And I’ll end with a story about a guy who ran his mouth for too long:

I am interviewing this fellow for a retail job and I ask him what a former supervisor would say about him if we called him. He gave this strange look and said “I don’t know what he would say. Probably that I am a cool guy and I am a good skateboarder. Hmmm…” And I just sat there waiting for him. Then he said “Well, it doesn’t matter. I don’t work there anymore and you guys don’t really need to call him?” Again, I just sit there. “Well, I guess he would say I was a pretty decent worker when I wanted to be and that I was late a ton because I was busy skateboarding all the time.”

To be fair though, there wasn’t a really great way he could have answered the question anyway. When you’re constantly late for the entirety of your employment, that is pretty much all your supervisor will talk about.

Tags:

What does “you’re over qualified” mean?

July 26, 2006 · Filed Under Finding Your Job · 11 Comments 

You go through sending your resume, following up and being a good overall job seeker. And then you get to the part where the hiring manager or the recruiter gives you feedback regarding why you weren’t considered for a job. As Dano writes:

“can you tell me what does the phrase “you are over qualified” mean? i have been trying to find employment through a staffing co and after three interviews. this is what the staffing co. told me. i did not get the job. is this a red flag for future interviews??? “

I can tell you what I mean when I say that. Pats got it mostly right: it is an issue of fit. I wouldn’t hire a VP of Sales to mop the floors (however much I would enjoy the sight). You want someone who will like the job, who will do well, and who will stay (i.e. not turnover). People within the range of experience (and not above or below) do the best. That’s why we develop, test and use job descriptions. But there is a dirty side to this comment as well.

Some HR people, in a moment of sympathy for a job seeker they have to reject, will use it as a compliment or a “poo poo” phrase. It’s to make you leave without them feeling guilty or you feeling angry. You can tell this is the case if the jobs you are applying to seem to be well within the range of your experience. If that is the case, try to think of other things that might have happened throughout the process that could have influenced the decision.
To give you a real life example, my father applied for a job after many years of owning his own business. He was staying in the same industry but it was a demotion of sorts from a business owner. He was told the overqualified bit several times before he finally got a job. And guess what? Those people that said he was overqualified (i.e. not a good fit) were right. He didn’t last more than a couple years before he started his own business again.

As a side note, welcome to all the new visitors to this website. I have received a bit of an influx this week and while I am not sure where it is coming from, I am hoping that this site is useful for you. Please contact me if you have any questions.

Tags:

« Previous Page — Next Page »

  • About

    Your HR Guy is a Human Resources Generalist practicing in the field. But don't let that fool you, this isn't a boring blog. I seek relevance and humor in a place we will spend much of our lives. Everything from workplace issues, job seeking and terrible bosses. Read more...

    View Lance Haun [lancehaun@gmail.com]'s profile on LinkedIn



    Featured on:




    Rate this Blog at Blogged

    Alltop, confirmation that I kick ass

  • RSS HRM Today

    • Magic Johnson Reinvents His Brand From Basketball to Business
      Branding Magic Johnson When I think of Magic Johnson, the following words come to mind: Lakers - He took the Lakers NBA team to many championships. Basketball - He played basketball for most of his life. HIV - While playing basketball he was diagnosed with HIV. Philanthropy - He founded the The Magic Johnson Foundation. How would you brand Magic Johnson? Magic [...]
      Dan Schawbel
    • SHRM, Kennedy, & Blowing Up Human Resources
      When you believe in destroying the traditional model of Human Resources — much like I do — you run into major obstacles. The biggest obstacle in my life is also the biggest elephant in the room: it’s The Society for Human Resources Management. SHRM is the most influential Human Resouces association in America. It’s staffed with [...]
      Laurie Ruettimann
    • Stand up for Tolerance: 10th Annual Transgender Day of Remembrance
      Today is the 10th Annual Transgender Day of Remembrance, dedicated to all those transgender folks who died as a result of anti-transgender violence. Thankfully, I have never lost a loved one to such an act of violence; but, I would never forgive myself if I had not spoken up and taken a stand on [...]
      Totally Consumed
    • The Best Piece of Advice
      I’m a bit reflective today because I’m formulating my Zig Ziglar inspired Wall of Gratitude (to be blogged later this weekend…stay tuned).  It has me thinking about all of the pivotal moments and life-changing people I’ve experienced in my short professional career. I presented the topic of MBTI preferences and Team Building to a group of [...]
      speakingofmbti
    • 10 Solutions To Our Ailing Economy
      Yes, I am going to nag about the economy again.  My economist friend in Oregon agreed with my posting yesterday.  He told me that there is only one Fortune 500 company left in Oregon (Nike); the rest put on their Nike’s and ran as fast they could away from this unfriendly-to-business state.  The same happened to Silicon [...]
      rulrici
    • Develop Your Strengths or Fix Your Weaknesses?
      Gary Vaynerchuk, blogger and creator of Wine Library TV, had a fantastic (and short) video on his personal blog yesterday titled “I suck!” Gary spends the first 60 seconds rattling off a list of things he’s horrible at, and then begins to explain how instead of dwelling on what he’s bad at, he’s instead chosen to [...]
      Chris Ferdinandi
    • Tip of the Week – Test Candidate Matching
      It’s Friday afternoon, and you just posted a position with your applicant tracking system (ATS). The position has been placed on your website, job boards and the other usual sources. When you come to work on Monday, you realize that you have had over 200 candidates apply for the position. Sound familiar? Well it doesn’t necessary [...]
      Jake Stupak
    • Fiddling While Rome Burns
      “Rome” is burning.  The “Rome” I am talking about is the private sector of the U.S. economy.  Last month, the only job sector that grew was government jobs.  I get this feeling that we are pulling a “Nero” watching this thing happen and are hopelessly standing by not doing anything about it.  I read HR Blogs, including [...]
      rulrici
    • Building Community in a Face-to-Faceless World
      Note from Lance: I asked my former employer to do a guest post about some of the cool things they are doing with some of the interesting challenges they face. Today’s author is Kristen Leal who manages QualitySmith’s PR and Talent Strategy. Thanks! I was filling up my water bottle one day at work when I [...]
      Lance Haun
    • Can HR REALLY be a Profit Center?
      In recent discussions I have heard two schools of thought regarding how HR can be viewed as a profit center: 1) By reducing costs such as absenteeism, turnover, and bad hires, HR can add more to the bottom line 2) HR can add value to the organization by increasing revenue I believe we are getting pretty good at [...]
      Cathy Martin

  • RSS Background Check News