Career Essentials_The Interview

by Dale Mayer

  Many people don’t understand. Why wouldn’t a recruiter or new employer hire them with all their skills? Usually the simple answer is because they don’t think you will stay at this lower paying, less desirable looking position. They don’t want to hire you and then have you immediately start looking for another job. Another reason is many employers don’t want to hire someone who could potentially know as much or more than they do. It’s hard on their ego and they don’t want you stepping in and trying to run things.

  Changing jobs is difficult, but changing job levels downward, in title, salary, and responsibility is sometimes necessary. You may have to re-climb the same corporate ladder, even if you sat comfortably at the top before. Remember the higher up you are, the harder the fall – and the harder it can be to get back on your feet.

  Ease up on your view of your situation, work on getting a job, whether it’s in line with your career path or not. Consider this a means to an end, and the end still being out there in your future at another time.

  In order to get any job at this point, you may have to ‘slim’ down your résumé and NOT highlight your qualifications – except those that pertain to the new job ad.

  So the steps to follow include:

  • If you need to, apply for a job that pays the bills now. When redoing your résumé, understand that you are going to need several different résumés. This is unavoidable. You need one to get a job right now and one to get back to the kind of job you just left.

  • Stay abreast of your industry and the companies that may provide forward growth in the future. This will help you find another job at the level you’d like to return to.

  • Look to capitalize on a job that might add to your already impressive skill set and that will send you back to the top. Was there some skill you wished you’d had knowledge or experience in at your former job? Is there something that if added to your portfolio would make another employer light up with excitement?

  • If you don’t have any idea of a skill that could help you return to your field, consider contacting a professional and finding out. Headhunters are another potential gold mine of information – and jobs.

  • If you’re looking for a lower level job for ‘right now’ remember to smile when salary discussions come around. It will be a fraction of what you made before, but that’s what the job is paying, so nod your head and say that’s fine.

  • While working at this new job, pick up courses, tickets or whatever education you need in order to get back into your field. In a way this time is a gift to reassess where you are going.

  There is a tendency to hide your education when you’re looking at a low-end job. If you’re applying for a job at Starbucks and have come from being a top level manager in textiles, it’s easy to decide that the PhD isn’t important.

  In fact, this is often the recommendation. However, it can give the impression that you are hiding something. It may not be noticed, but if it is, you could be in for tough questions. If you take a lower level job in a huge company and other positions come up that are more in line with what you really want, it can be hard to explain the sudden arrival of new education, skills, and experience.

  You don’t need to remove your degrees, just don’t emphasize them. Put your schooling down in years and leave off the degree attained. This way, you don’t look like you’re hiding anything.

  As the best result for any application is to be the best match to the job and the one applicant to offer the most benefit, apply that here. Focus on why you are the best person for the job.

  Underqualified

  With the ease of applying for jobs over the Internet, being under-qualified rarely stops people from applying for jobs.

  Still what if the job description sounds perfect and you know you could do it even if you don’t have everything required for the position? There are several ways to handle this. What you have to do is show the employer that you can do the job without the requirements that they think they need.

  The best way to approach this is to take your experience and apply it to the job. Show them that you are the best person for this position. Highlight the achievements and underline the skills. Many times employers ask for a level of education but it’s acceptable to have comparable experience – only they didn’t put that down. A typical example is an employer who wants a person with a degree in a specific field and although you may not have that piece of paper, you have over ten years of experience in the same field.

  If it’s a different type of issue altogether, draw from your past as to why you think you’re the right person for the job. If you have relevant education or training, then point it out. If you have been a volunteer or have experience in an unrelated field but it’s transferable – then put it down.

  Remember these ads are what the employer ‘would like’ to have in the new employee. That doesn’t mean their wish list isn’t open to some negotiation.

  If you’re willing to train, it often helps you get over that unqualified label.

  If you have done the same kind of work, just without the piece of paper showing you are qualified then consider creating a portfolio of your best work and show it to them – with the résumé. This is something they can see and understand.

  Students often see themselves as under-qualified. You may have just completed a degree but have no practical work experience. In this case, the student should be looking at entry level jobs and highlighting any volunteer or course work completed that is relevant to the job being applied for.

  The answer is always to highlight what you DO have and be sure to avoid accenting what you DON’T have in such a way that the employer can see the benefit of hiring you.

  Only local applications

  With the tough economy and the ever increasing easy access to job postings, employers often find themselves swamped with job applications. Once the employers realized that so many applications were from out of town, and many international, they decided to look at only local candidates. This allowed them to hire someone locally who needed the job, save their cost, and cut out 80% of the applicants.

  Most employers do prefer to hire locally if the skill set they need is available from their city. It’s much easier to do interviews, phone references, and the issue of relocation doesn’t come up.

  If you are planning to move to this area or are interested in relocation regardless, it is helpful to move first. And yes, this can be difficult to do without a job waiting.

  It’s not impossible to find a job long distance. You can state in your cover letter that you are planning to relocate and if you have an idea of when, put that down too. The date gives added validity to your statement. A statement like this goes on the cover letter so the employer knows to not worry about the address on the résumé and cover letter.

  If you are going to be in that area earlier, give the time frame in the cover letter and suggest that would be a good time to discuss the job further. If you’re not, suggest a phone interview initially.

  It may also help if you cover the relocation costs on your own. Many large companies have that built into their offer, but many do not. Be honest about your plans and compromise on issues that might stop you from being hired.

  5.

  Electronic Résumé

  It used to be that we wrote our résumé and cover letter and then either mailed them out or dropped them off. Obviously that was before the last decade where the Internet has taken over our methodology in applying for work.

  In today’s world we don’t even find jobs the same way as before. A decade ago meant legwork and newspapers and unemployment office job boards. Now there’s the Internet and sites like Monster.com, online classifieds, and massive search engines to pull jobs out from every corner of the world.

  Getting résumés out is almost as different. We still have faxes, and the standard mail system, only now we have email, online applications, and online databases.

  Yet, the way you send a résumé is not necessarily the way it
is received. Often when a résumé is received, it’s entered into a database where a paper résumé goes through a scanning process called OCR or Optical Character Recognition. In this process, the résumé is scanned and this machine starts looking for specific words or character sets. If the machine can’t read the font you have used, then the processing system can’t read the résumé. The purpose of this kind of program is to create a database whereby a recruiter can search by keywords applicable to specific jobs they are looking to fill. If your résumé can’t be read by the database program properly, the words won’t translate properly and the database search engine won’t be able to pick your résumé out of many.

  Not all companies are doing this, nor is it specific to an industry. However, if a job or company requests a scannable résumé, that’s what they will be doing to yours.

  There are different electronic résumés. You need to know how to prepare your document correctly for each method.

  Scannable

  As stated, scannable résumés are something you may be required to submit so it can be entered into a searchable database for review. So how can you convert your résumé to one that allows for scanning?

  Follow these tips to make your résumé ready to scan:

  • Stick to plain white printer paper.

  • Avoid all underlining.

  • Don’t italicize any words.

  • Keep the text simple without fancy enlarged lettering.

  • Avoid using all tables and pictures.

  • Avoid adding unusual characters.

  • Don’t use any other fonts than Times New Roman.

  • Stick to standard font size of 11 – 16 only.

  • Don’t use number lists or bullets.

  Electronic – for job banks

  A scannable résumé is often misunderstood to be an electronic résumé. Although both use electronic systems, an electronic résumé is one that can be sent electronically. That means it can be sent in the body of an email and it is appropriate to be posted on Internet job banks.

  In this section we are looking at résumés to post for job banks. In general these are done in ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange). This format is universally recognized between computers. That means the documents are formatted as:

  • Plain text – carries .txt after the file name. For this format, only plain text is used. No bullets, no tabs, no fancy characters, nor anything else other than plain normal fonts in plain normal size. A little bit of fancying up can be done via the use of asterisks in place of bullets.

  • Hypertext – has .htm or .html after the file name. This is a web page format. Therefore the person reading your résumé will have to have a browser open. Avoid fancy formatting and graphics. Prepare in text based format first.

  • Rich text format - has the .rtf file extension at the end of the file name. This is the most generous of the formats. It works for documents written in Word that are being sent as an attachment. Not every computer system will recognize this format but most will.

  Electronic – in an email

  When a résumé is requested to be sent in the body of your email, that usually means the company doesn’t want to deal with attachments. In order to do this and have your email résumé look half decent adhere to the following rules:

  • Avoid using any tabs

  • Have all the text start at the left

  • Keep each line short – shorter than 65 characters

  Save the original résumé as plain text format then copy and paste into the body of the email to keep as much of the original formatting as possible.

  Portable document format (PDF)

  This is more commonly known as a PDF. This format is highly compatible with all computer platforms and retains consistency through emailing. It is sent as an attachment.

  The only problem with this format is that it doesn’t go into databases easily.

  The positive aspect to this type of format is that it is easy for the receiving person to open this type of document.

  Electronic forms

  It is becoming increasingly more common for a company to request that applicants fill out an online form on their website.

  This type of system works well for the company, but it can be time consuming for the applicant. It also limits the amount you can put into each field, and limits the way you can express your message. At the end is usually a place for additional comments. This puts your information out of context and stops the message from being delivered the way you want it to be.

  At the end of some of these forms is a place to copy and paste your résumé and cover letter. For best results, you need to have these two things in an electronic format. Don’t copy and paste your normal résumé in here. It will not translate very well – to the extent it is often unreadable.

  After you are done, an email is usually sent to the email address you’ve put down on the application, confirming that your application has been received. In some larger companies and government websites, your application will be assigned a user ID, allowing you to log in and check up on the application’s status. This lets you know where you stand in the hiring process.

  Alternatively, there is a trend toward setting up an online profile where you upload a résumé, cover letter, and any supporting documents that you might have. Then when you click to apply for a specific job, your application will be submitted for that position. This is usually followed by a few specific questions that need to be answered to that particular job. This helps weed out applicants that aren’t qualified.

  Both of these systems allow you to apply for any other jobs that come up without having to go through the whole process all over again. In the same way, it’s easy to forget updating your résumé for different jobs.

  6.

  Word Choices

  Few people understand the power of language. The right words can create strong visuals, create an emotional response, bring memories to mind, and even bring on fights and arguments.

  You need to look at your résumé on a word by word basis. What you have down is going to be read, judged, and will elicit a response from the reader. That response will vary from ‘wow’ to ‘what a load of crap.’

  It’s up to you to write your résumé to garner the first response.

  How? By using keywords and by finding the very best word in the English language to say what you need to say. For some people the whole concept doesn’t make sense. Purple is purple to them, not mauve or plum or lavender.

  The same thing applies to you skills. Keywords refer to the words that would describe your knowledge, skill set, licensure, and software, for example. These words are what recruiters look for when they search through résumés. Keywords generally are nouns.

  If you say you have computer experience, what does that mean? We live in the computer age. If you have computer skills you need to be specific. Tell them you’re versed in Excel, Word, and PowerPoint. If you can build Flash games, write C+++, or do black box testing, then say so. Whatever you can do, you need to let them know.

  Be specific. Keywords can name software, specific equipment, skills, training, or areas like design/restructure, human resources, translator, or interpreter for example.

  Beyond the keywords look for the right power words to:

  • Give the most specific description of what you can do for the company

  • To represent your skill set

  How do you find the right words? Some of the best words to use are the industry jargon you already know and use on a regular basis. How do you find the words? The place to start is by looking at the job posting. Usually recruiters are clear about the skills they need the potential candidates to have. Use those names and terms that they have requested. Don’t inflate your skills or lie. That is not the answer.

  After the one particular job posting you are applying for, do a search for other jobs, even if they aren’t in your area. What you’re looking for is terminology used in other job posting
s that apply to work that you do. Then use that terminology in your résumé and cover letter.

  Remember that database mentioned earlier, about your résumé being scanned into a database that allows a recruiter to search for keywords? This is why you may have all the qualifications in the world that would make you the best candidate but you never received a call. If your résumé is missing the keyword(s) a recruiter searches for, then your name and résumé don’t come up.

  It’s difficult to realize your excellent qualifications could be left up to the chance of using the right words. Therefore, try to utilize all synonyms for those words that you can. Obviously there won’t be any for some specific skills and software. The most common of these words are actually nouns. How else can you find the ‘right’ words for your résumé? There are useful websites that have wonderful lists you can use.

  This should highlight the importance of a summary where you can sprinkle many of these keywords. The procedure is to first identify the critical keywords for your job and write them into a targeted sentence that demonstrates how you have used the skills represented by words.

  You aren’t going to be able to hit all the words so focus on the ones that you have strong skills in. Do try to get in 20-25 if you can. After you’re done, print off a copy of your résumé and highlight the ones you do have to see how you did. If you don’t have enough, take a break before taking another look and see if you can add a few more. Avoid using shortened words like Mngr, unless you are going to add Manager. You don’t know which form the recruiter is going to search for in the database. For the same reason, if you know more than one way to write a specific skill, try to incorporate them all into your résumé, using at least the most common so that you have a better chance of being picked up by the search engine system.