Resume Distribution and How to Fire
Two great things that caught my eye this morning.
Secrets of the Job Hunt reveals that SimplyHired just launched a free resume distribution service. This will distribute your resume to all of the major job boards so that recruiters can search for you instead of the other way around. There are some cautionary tales to go along with resume distribution services. The top one is:
Don’t post your resume if your current employer doesn’t know you’re looking.
They can (and will) find it and then you’ll have some explaining to do. Be prepared for all of the usual scams to be sent to you via e-mail disguised as legitimate job opportunities.
Guy Kawasaki writes about how to fire someone. Number 11 is the key for most organizations: Look in the mirror. If you hired someone and it didn’t work out, why didn’t it work out and what signs could you have caught during the evaluation? It is a question most HR departments fail to ask really well. I would also add that when you’ve decided to fire someone, you bring them into the meeting and tell them the reason for this meeting in the first sentence (i.e. they’re getting fired). Beating around the bush and talking about reasons before they know the action you’re going to take is pointless.
Your HR Guy isn’t a scientist
Human Resources isn’t a science. Anybody who tells you so is a liar.
I’ll be the first to admit that Human Resources has some scientific principles in place but they aren’t everything and they aren’t the most important. Knowing what questions to ask may be scientific but knowing how to interpret those answers and apply them to a hiring decision is not about science. It may sound silly and very old school, but it has a lot to do with good decision making. It is about looking at your past decisions and what led you to those and what the results have been. You must hire like it is your job (because it…uh…is).
As testing becomes more a part of the hiring process, I have found that testing usually proves what the rest of my analysis tells me. And that’s through statistical analysis, not through some pompous view of what I think I know. Will I keep testing? Of course! And will I keep in place pre-screening and other techniques? You bet. Because nothing beats having additional information even if it simply confirms it (like a background check will do 99% of the time).
In HR school, the first thing they tell you is that in-person interviews are unreliable. The problem is that they are basing it on the fact that most in-person interviews are CRAP. Most interviews are done by people who have no idea what they are really doing. Often times, the concern is over how great of an interviewee are you which is pretty much a complete waste of time.
Anybody…ehem…excuse me…ANYBODY… can be a great interviewee. And often times, doing a great interview means jack to how well you can perform a job.
So why use them? Here’s a universal truth:
Every HR Guy thinks he can interview well
Every HR guy thinks he has a magical gut that let’s him know every last detail about how this person will perform. But it is usually bullshit. In fact, if HR guys were so confident in their statistics as they were with their gut, they would figure out that it usually isn’t that reliable.
So how do you get past this situation? Check back tomorrow for the exciting conclusion.
You’ll find accounting jobs in the UK online at AccountantCareers.co.uk.
Don’t write an objective
Just don’t write one. They are rarely well done (they are typically variations of “To get a job”) which is exactly not helpful at all.
If you feel the need to explain yourself, now is the time to polish your cover letter and stop making it the generic necessity that it always ends up being. Some recruiters don’t read cover letters anymore. I do. I love a well written one so much, I am willing to sacrifice myself to the cover letter idiots who write.
Dear Sir or Maddam,
Please accept my resume for the position of [enter title here] advertised in the [enter newspaper name here]. As you’ll see in my resume, I have a wide variety of skills that fits perfectly with this position.
I look forward to speaking to you further on this matter.
Joe Applicant
If that’s what you want to do with your cover letter, just leave it off. The people that do care won’t like you and for the people that don’t care, it will just get in the way. My suggestion is to stick your objective in your cover letter though and customize it for each job you apply for.
Speaking of resumes, those people that have submitted their resumes to me but haven’t heard back from me, I am working through them. I’ve seen some real promise shown.
Are you a damned liar too?
This post is part of the blogswap. Amitai Givertz (a.k.a. Recruitomatic) writes about lying in the recruiting process
Last Wednesday afternoon, a recruiter I know was suggesting that it is terribly wrong to be deceitful as part of the process of sourcing names and poaching talent. She wagged her finger at me and said, “You scallywag! Suggesting that recruiting and names sourcing is like sales and prospecting is true, but only up to the point that a recruiter would never lie.” Being a salesman before lying my way into the recruiting profession I thought to myself, “You moron”, but in the interests of polite conversation I said, “Well, I guess you’re right, Mavis.”
This recruiter then proceeded to inform me that the whole business of recruiting has become corrupt. Resumes aren’t worth the paper they’re printed on – full of lies, half-truths and misrepresentations. Hiring managers? They are brazen liars too, especially sales managers and particularly those in advertising and media. To illustrate the point about hiring managers, she cited several instances where she was told that a strong candidate didn’t cut the mustard when clearly, if the manager had taken a moment to read the (heavily censored) resume, an interview – a hire even – would most certainly have been the result. No doubt about it.
Now, I cannot say whether it is right or wrong to lie but I can tell you that The Good Book – as far as I know – makes no mention of lying being a damnable offense. I notice toward the end of the Ten Commandments, almost as an afterthought perhaps, it says, “Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor”, but this is a highly specialized form of lying and is only occasionally encountered during reference checking and exit interviews. So, this rarely applies to me anyway. I’m in the clear.
So let’s see if you and I can have an honest conversation about lying and the role it plays at most every level of recruiting. But before we do – and I confess it here – I am an accomplished liar. I lie pretty much every day, sometimes casually, sometimes deliberately and sometimes through my peroxide-whitened plug-in teeth. I have developed a pretty good knack for looking someone in the eye and telling them real whoppers, even to the point of making the story so outrageous they’re bound to think, “Wow! That’s kind of hard to believe,” but they go ahead and believe it anyway. Ask anyone who’s met me, I’m so plausible in person. I am an accomplished liar, that’s true. And I suspect you are one too, so good perhaps that you fall into the category of the “unconscious competent” maybe? I guess I should explain myself before you start getting all unbalanced and permanently boycott this otherwise honest and modestly monetized blog.
If you will, listen in on this sales interview:
MPOJ is Right
Magic Pot of Jobs posts some good examples of ways to NOT get hired. Tiffany is right (again!). The three she addresses are:
1.) Keyword spam for applicant tracking systems. If you have a marketing background and you start inserting keywords about administration, operations, finance and human resources, you lose. Keywords should be applicable to your experience.
2.) Ignoring the rules regarding application submission. If you send a fax when I say to e-mail, if you come in when I say to call or if you mail when I say to submit it online, it does make you stick out. Not in a good way though. If you can’t follow instructions, you lose. Note that this does not apply to networking because that has been done well in advance of a position opening up.
3.) Using cheesy attempts to stand out. We’ve seen them all. Yes, all of them. And if you have a new way of surprising me, I doubt it is going to be a good one. Standing out is about putting together a solid resume and networking the hell out of your preferred industry.
And CareerHub emphasizes a point I made in number two: network, network, network. Before you need the job. Before they have the job available. If you don’t do this, you are selling yourself short. It used to be hype or a trend that would die. It isn’t. And it is the key to continuing to move your career in the upward direction.
Search for jobs in London at Canary Wharf Jobs.com.
It is getting tougher
In spite of an obvious selling proposition, hiring revolution is absolutely correct. It is getting harder, not easier, to fill job orders. And this isn’t going to become easier before it becomes more difficult.
There are some industries that aren’t in that position. There are some industries that are in South America, Asia, Europe and Africa looking for talent. Are recruiters prepared to step up to the next level? Are companies ready to pony up the resources to get the best people or is being average (or below average) okay? Are companies going to start focusing on retention because soon, very soon, not every live body in your organization is going to be interchangable with someone out there looking for a new position. Only the most adaptive companies will strive through the upcoming storm. Only the best recruiters will make a killing. How prepared are you?
Your HR guy has caller ID
I know it comes to a shock to some of you but the HR guy has technology that has existed for the past 15 years known as caller ID. That means when you hit redial every 30 seconds for 20 minutes straight, I know about it. And guess what, it isn’t going to get me out of my meeting, lunch or interview sooner by calling me every minute. So here is what I suggest: leave me a message and send me an e-mail confirming the fact that you left me a message, a callback number and the best time to reach you. If you do this and do not annoy my co-workers, you will get the equivalent of a gold star next to your name on the board. If you do not follow my advice, I will furrow my brow and think mean things of you. Will it disqualify you from a job? Not entirely (unless of course when I do answer, you simply breathe heavily and then hang up). But remember, your HR guy is going to be working with you and more importantly, he is going to be working very closely with your direct supervisor who will rake the HR guy over the coals, throw him under the bus, etc… if he hires a stalker-lite person (again).
I am all for being forward in your job search but there is a fine line between being a good job candidate and being an obsessive job candidate. Find it, learn it, love it.
SimplyHired and MySpace together at last
SimplyHired has pulled off quite the deal here.
There is going to be a lot of “old money” companies saying this isn’t significant. “Who cares? These kids on MySpace don’t have any skills we need. Plus the whole lot of them are probably child molesters anyway.” The good thing for these “kids” on MySpace is that they will have one of the most effective job searching tools out there easily accessible to them. Even the old money will be benefiting tremendously through this marriage of sorts (since SimplyHired aggregates millions of job listings including many of old money’s newspaper ads). MySpace has consistently ranked in the top 10 websites since the beginning of the year.
It is all a matter of people eventually figuring out that MySpace has a job search. It will be used and it is really only a matter of time.
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Checkout Oaseo for SEO jobs and internship opportunities.
Corporate Recruiting Broken
There is no good reason for this to be happening. The problem is that I see it all the time in HR, in my fellow profesionals, in education…it is a disease. Corporate Recruiters should be the most competent people to bring on the best employees. They are supposed to understand the culture and the little things that makes a person successful at their company. They don’t for the most part. Instead, it is lots of paperwork shuffling and draggin the feet.
I ask a lot of HR people why they don’t have a seat at their corporate decision making table (because they don’t, an assumption I am almost always correct on). They blame their companies. I blame them. Granted the problem is somewhere in the middle, you can’t do much about what your company does, you can only do what you can. Therefore, 100% of the problem is yours to change.
My current job wanted to hire me when I told them I was terrible at paperwork. I still think it is a good thing. I focus myself on bringing on the right people, not on verifying I-9 forms. I focus on setting people on the path of success, not on correcting performance reviews. I focus on retaining key players in our business, not creating and running reports. All those other things are important too (and there are people that do them) but it is not our focus. HR’s ROI are people. You don’t get ROI through reports, you get ROI through working with them hands on, getting buy in, and working towards long-term results.
Gen Y — The most demanding workforce
Magic Pot of Jobs - gen y will change the way we work
The best part about this post isn’t the actual content of the post or the commentary, it is the comment section where one commenter has already thrown around the “entitlement” attack on Gen Y. As I have always said to Gen Y haters, I hope you enjoy recruiting a smaller and smaller portion of the job sector as people of your target demographic start retiring and buying RV’s. And what is so radical about asking for jobs that are fulfilling or meaningful? Working a boring 8-5, pushing a pencil around at your desk while you wait for the generation of old timers who are more likely to be punching the clock than making any meaningful gains on your business isn’t an option.
Until HR monkeys figure this out, my job is going to stay pretty easy. Knowing the parts of the job that attracts Gen X and Y and making it accessible for them is much easier than being stubborn and letting the next generation of the workforce pass you by.
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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...
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