blueskyresumesblog

Wise Advice for Job Seekers

George Blomgren is one of my favorite bloggers and so I was thrilled to contribute to his new blog For Job Seekers. Among his many great ideas, George is writing a series of columns on challenging situations faced by job seekers and he's asking career coaches, recruiters and resume writers to give their best advice on problem situations. Here's how he described this week's post:

Our second installment of Tough Situations may be only too familiar to some job seekers. Is a bird in the hand really worth more than one in the bush? I put that question to three career experts.

Read the scenario and responses here.

It's fascinating to see how differently each of us answered this question. If Jim really had asked for our advice, his head would be spinning by now! And of course, each of our answers is colored by our own experiences and attitudes.

Which leads me to my point. Asking for input is good - people may bring up something you hadn't thought of - but when faced with a challenging decision, only you can ultimately decide what's right for you.

And you know what? You always know the answer.

What Does it Mean to be Positive?

During a job search, you'll inevitably hear the advice that you must always be positive about your former employers. Good advice! You should never bad-mouth a company or manager that you worked for. It always makes you look bad.

But it's important to distinguish between being honest about challenges and being negative about former companies. I say that because I am currently working on a resume for a client who is worried that I am being too negative in my portrayal of her former job. I had written:

"Assumed responsibility for delayed project and overcame seemingly insurmountable obstacles to bring the software in on time and within budget."

She felt that the word "delayed" and the word "insurmountable" were negative and wanted me to put a more positive spin on the situation. But I don't agree that those words are negative in the context I've used them. They are just factual and they help to tell her story. If I simply said that she delivered a project on time and within budget, without the additional information, it would not be nearly as impressive as this story.

An interviewer will want to know "what were the seemingly insurmountable obstacles" giving my client a further opportunity to impress (because they were some monumental obstacles!) As long as she doesn't say "well my boss was an ass and the company was stupid enough to think they could do the project on a shoestring" she is not being negative.

So avoid bashing your former employers at all costs - but don't confuse telling the truth about challenges with being negative.

Find Your Passion - Free Teleseminar

I always enjoy Curt Rosengren's Occupational Adventure Blog, and Curt just dropped me a note to let me know about a free teleseminar he's giving on October 17th. The session is called Planning for Passion: How to Get Wild About Work. Curt says:

You'll learn:

• How passion can fuel success
• How to consciously create a passion-based career
• How to create a tool you can use to purposefully bring passion into your path
• How you already have the answer (and how to uncover it!)

It looks interesting. More details here.

People Who Read Resumes Are Not Stupid! (How to write a career change resume the right way)

I recently received an interesting email from a potential client looking to make a career change. She asked whether a functional resume would be better than a traditional structure. She's thinking that she needs to distract employers from her background in one industry so they can imagine her in another ... I know we're not supposed to use capital letters on the Internet because it means we're shouting, but in this case, I am shouting, so my answer is "NO!" (Imagine lots of underlines underneath than "no").

Any trick to distract recruiters from the truth is bound to fail.

Why?

Because they're not stupid and they've been doing this a long time.

They've seen every trick you can think of. They know that the functional (or skills-based) resume is a ploy to hide something. The only thing they don't know is what you're trying to hide. If they have a few minutes to while away, they might try and figure it out. But this is just for sport, you understand, because they've already decided they don't like you very much.

The truth is that if you want to make a career change, you really need to go about it very differently from a normal search. Check out my article on career change for more information.

The key isn't a clever resume or a great cover letter, although these can't hurt. Successful career change requires a proactive strategy and an aggressive networking and personal contact campaign.

And resume-writing for career change requires that you 'fess up to your lack of experience right upfront and quickly show why it shouldn't matter. For example, once upon a time, I might have said started my resume with a headline:

Career Target: Resume Consultant / Career Coach
Experienced HR executive looking to transition to career marketing - offers 15 years
real world hiring experience, plus exceptional writing and marketing skills.

This approach would be honest, straightforward and truthful, and would be much more effective than a "clever" structure that tried to cover up the truth.

It seems that policitians and celebrities never learn, but maybe job seekers can: Tell the truth!