Mighty Forces

Recently I had a conversation with a good friend, someone with many years of experience in his field. He’s a hard worker, innovative and knows how to solve problems. Despite all that, he’s one of the so-called “99ers,” people who have been out of work for more than 99 weeks.

This site is for him – and for all the people struggling to make their voices heard above the din of thousands of other job-seekers.

The good news is, you can do it. The bad news is, job hunting is a game where most of the people you encounter don’t want you to learn the rules. I’ll do my best to show you how to play the game; the rest is up to you.

I’m going to concentrate mostly on resumes and cover letters, since those are the crucial tools you’ll need to get your foot in the door. But I have other ideas about jobs and job hunting, and I’m sure you’ll hear those too along the way.

I’m not a professional job counselor, and I don’t play one on TV, either. But I think we can have a conversation that will take you a little further down the road you want to be on. Let’s go.

As research for this blog, I read a lot of job hunting and resume advice, most of it on the web. A lot of it, to be blunt, is trash. But I read something this week that really “angered up my blood,” as Grandpa Simpson would say.

It was from a blog on the Harvard Business Review site, of all places, innocently titled “Job Seekers: Get HR on Your Side.” If you’ve read this site before, you probably know that there’s no love lost between me and the vast majority of the Human Resources profession. But this article went above and beyond.

Purporting to show the value of HR, and why job hunters should “challenge their assumptions” about HR, it actually went on to emphasize how all those negative things we think about HR are basically true.

Yes, the author says, HR is basically out to eliminate you from the stack. No, they probably don’t know much about the job. Yes, they often value superficial niceties over real qualifications. Yes, they spend as little time as possible on your resume. Yes, they will likely act bored and dismissive towards you.

But suck it up, job hunter, because that’s the way it is.

The “case study” involving Zappos was even worse, depicting a hapless candidate who was rejected until he could show that he would obey every whim of HR without complaint – and with a smile.

“Any time I asked him to do something like tweak his resume, he didn’t give me an attitude, he just did what I asked,” said the HR manager. “He was very friendly and grateful for my help.”

My translation? “You’ll take my crap, and you’ll like it. Or I’ll make your resume into kindling so fast it will make your head spin, buddy.”

I’m not saying that this isn’t in fact the way the hiring world works, by and large. But asking a job hunter to celebrate it? That’s like a lower-middle-class guy cheering when Herman Cain shouts, “If you’re not rich, blame yourself!” That’s like the guy behind the counter at 7-11 smiling when he hears Gov. Scott Walker blame unions for his upside-down mortgage.

Got a bit political there. Sorry. Ahem.

But my point is – yes, as job hunters we have to work within a terribly flawed and frustrating system. But please, don’t ask us to like it. There are millions of people out of work in this country today, fighting mightily to stay in their homes and put food on the table. Thanking HR for their obstructionist ways is an insult to all those people and their efforts.

Just a quick little story today.

A while ago I applied for a job in the state system. I filled out the online application, which basically involved restating my resume in prose form by filling out a series of online form boxes. It was a job that I was extremely qualified for, and my background exactly matched what they said they were looking for.

Well, man plans, God laughs, as they say. [...]

Last time, we dealt a little bit with the psychological side of job interviews. But I left out what I think is the most important thing to elevate your performance from good to great:
Do the job in the interview.

What does that mean, exactly? It means several things.

Preparation
First, it means that before the interview (really, before you sent in an application for the job) you were convinced that you could kick ass in this job. Not “yeah I could probably do that,” or “I guess I could manage to work there for a while.” It means after looking at the job description, and doing your research on the job and the company, you’ve come to the conclusion that if they don’t hire you personally, they will regret it for the rest of their miserable lives.

You’ve matched up carefully and in detail all their requirements with your experience and talents. You can articulate off the top of your head, clearly and simply, why you are the perfect candidate for this position. If you can’t, sit down and write it out. And not just that your experience fits the job, but also that you have unique qualifications that your competitors don’t.

If you’re coming up empty on this, your time is better spent finding a different job to go for. (See “No carpet bombing.”)

In the interview
Once you’re in the room, here’s the goal: make them envision that you are already hired. A great question to jumpstart this process is something like: “What challenges do you see [this job] facing?” If you’ve done your research, you probably already know some of what their answers will be. Then have followup statements worked out that show how you would do the job if you had already started that morning, and how you’ve dealt with similar situations in the past.

The responses don’t have to be perfect, or even match up exactly with the interviewer’s expectations (you’re not a mindreader). But what this shows is that you are prepared enough to step into the job instantly, armed with solutions to the problems the employer is trying to solve. You’re not some formless blob of clay ready to be molded into something that might be useful in the future – you can do it now. And you can’t wait to get started.

Everything you do in the interview should show that you are already doing the job you’re being considered for. Think of it not as an interview, but as a staff meeting where you are outlining your strategy as a new employee.

Asking a fair amount of questions is good, but don’t ask anything that you should have found out in your research. Ask questions that will help you understand more in detail what they need – which will lead to responses that show them you know how to fill those needs.

This isn’t about being pushy or controlling. It’s about not just sitting passively waiting for questions, but instead engaging the interviewer on the level they would interact with an employee. Do that, and you will be head and shoulders above the other candidates.

Oh, and don’t forget that firm handshake.

Job hunting books and websites are packed with checklists that are supposed to help you succeed at interviews.

Maintain a firm handshake! Be on time! Be positive! Don’t answer your cell phone during the interview! Dress appropriately!

Thanks – how helpful! You left out how I shouldn’t wear nothing but a shaving cream bikini to that interview for the bank manager job.

The fact is that job interviews are largely horrible, tremor-inducing affairs that rank right up there with visits to the dentist on the “stuff I want to be doing right now” meter. They are the gauntlet of the job interview game. And no simplistic checklist is going to really help you get through it. [...]

Recently a friend asked me for advice about her resume.

“In my “Objectives” section, should I say I want to ‘acquire’ a position or ‘obtain’ a position?”

Neither, I thought. (I’m difficult like that sometimes.) [...]

In “The Social Network,” Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is dressed down by his ex-girlfriend for his misogynistic comments about her on his blog.

“The internet isn’t written in pencil, Mark,” she says. “It’s written in ink.”

It’s an important idea – one that sometimes gets lost as we immerse ourselves in Facebook and Twitter and political blogs and all the rest of the digital footprints we leave around the web on a regular basis. [...]

In “Show, don’t tell,” I talked about telling stories in your cover letters and resumes. In addition to lots of empty phrases (“people person”), another enemy of getting your point across is the impulse to list every single task, every single award, every single college club on your materials, in the hopes that all that accumulated stuff will be impressive. [...]

When you’re job hunting, it’s important to realize that Human Resources people are not your friends. (I used to quip that “Human Resources people are neither,” but I guess I’ve mellowed in my old age.)

Human Resources departments are staffed with gatekeepers – people whose job it is to keep you away from the hiring process. They’re not there to help you navigate the system. They don’t want you to know anything about how the job will be chosen, or what the real criteria are for the ideal candidate. Because if job-seekers could just talk to the hiring manager directly, and have a more active role in their candidacy for the job, what would be left for Human Resources people to do? Nothing. [...]

Anyone who has taken a freshman composition course has probably heard of “show, don’t tell.” In fiction writing it means, for example, to let a character’s actions, appearance and speech explain their personality.

THIS: “Larry is lazy.”

OR THIS: “Instead of doing dishes, Larry has his bulldog Albert lick them clean. The ones Albert won’t lick, Larry throws away.”

What does this have to do with job hunting? Too many cover letters and resumes are filled with phrases like “well-organized” and “innovative” and “problem solver.” When you describe yourself like that, how does an employer know whether or not to believe you? Or whether your definition of “innovative” is even in the same ballpark as hers? They can’t – so your materials go immediately to the “no” pile. [...]

How many times have you heard someone (or yourself) say, “I don’t understand it. I must have sent out 200 resumes in the last few weeks, and no one has responded.”

The problem in that sentence is the “200.” Sending out tens or hundreds of resumes or applications means you sent out the same boilerplate information to all those people, maybe fancying it up with a mail merge so the cover letter reads “Dear Mr. Thomas” rather than “To Whom It May Concern.”

That’s a recipe for failure – mainly because a boilerplate resume and cover letter aren’t going to convince your audience to hire you. But also because it gives you a false sense of accomplishment – “I did all this work sending all that stuff out!” – and it takes away time from productive job searching. [...]