by Dr. Wayne Ripley - Mar 19, 2010
Good morning. Unfortunately I think I know most the people in this room and that’s not a good sign. Not that I don’t want to see you. For those of you who don’t know me, I work for a company called Right Management. I work part-time, but I’ve worked with them for nine years as a career counselor, and a career coach. I’ve worked with several of the people in this room. Prior to that, I had set up my own consulting practice and ran a consulting business for six years that specialized in Human Resource consulting. And I made a pretty decent living from that. Prior to that, I was in corporate life. I spent 20 years in one company, most of that in Human Resources. So I have a background in this. I’ve interviewed people. I’ve looked at resumes, as a recruiter and as an HR professional. I’ve done salary offers. I’ve negotiated offers. I’ve done a lot of this over the years. So I have a certain amount of experience in this.
I’ve met with this group on two or three different occasions. I went to Bobby a couple of weeks ago and said I was available. A lot of times when you have speakers like this, whether it’s me or somebody else, you have questions that don’t get answered. Either because it’s off-topic or there isn’t enough time. So I thought it might be worthwhile to just come and answer questions. Let you decide what you want to talk about, and decide which path you want to go down. And I can talk a little bit and maybe get everybody here engaged. So it’s intentionally free-flowing today.
Some Questions & Answers
Q: If you submit your resume, it ages over time because it gets further down on the pile. So if you re-submit your resume every 30 days, do you move yourself back up on the top of the list?
A: Yes. I do it every Monday.
Q: Do you actually change it when you resubmit it?
A: Sometimes. It depends. But I pull it down and put it back up. It has to refresh. The idea is to change the time tag on it. So you can take a character out and put it back in, and re-save it. I’m sure you’ve all got a resume posted on Monster and Career-Builder. Some of you have been at this awhile. I don’t know if you have to do this every week, but every 2, 3, or 4 weeks. Make sure you go in and update it to refresh it.
Q: Do you keep a hard copy of your resume?
A: I’d keep the description of the job you’re applying for, a copy of your cover letter and a copy of your resume. Because what happens is, 6 weeks after you sent that in, you applied for that job. Someone’s going to call you. And they assume that you will immediately know who they are, and what you applied you for. And your not going to remember it. So you need a very quick access to this information.
Customizing your Resume
The rule is, you need to customize the resume, whatever the job is you’re applying for. You need to read the ad very carefully. And then you need to look at your resume. And then you need to read the ad again, and look at the words in the ad, and look at your resume. Whatever the words are in the ad, have to be in your resume. They will not try to interpret. It may go into a database. A human being may not even look at it. If the words are in the ad and they’re not in your resume, and they do a keyword search, its not going to pop out.
Now I’m not telling you to lie, if it says you need this certification and you don’t have that certification, then you can’t put it on. But there are lots of words that they use that could be the same as the words you’re using, only you’re using different terminology for the same thing. They’ve got to be able to look at your resume and instantly know that you’re the person within 30 sec. That you’re the person they’re looking for. But if you don’t even talk the same language, how are they gonna know that you’re the person they’re looking for?
You need to go further. Don’t base it just on a little ad on Monster. If you know the name of the company, go to their website. Try to find the job description. Talk to someone in that company, "Before I apply, can you do me a favor? Do you think you can give me the job description?“ Read the job description. Look at your resume. Read the job description. Look at the words. Look at the sequence, and you need to customize that resume. You’ve got 30 secs in most cases to convince them that you’re the person they’re looking for. And you make it difficult for me. You could be the perfect person, but if I can’t figure that out in 30 sec, I’m going to move you aside and go on to the next one, and the next one…
In this day and age, and with the recruiters here, there are 50 resumes, a hundred resumes, and 500 resumes for that job. They’re not going to work at this. They’re not going to work hard. They’re trying to figure out who you are. They’re going to go on to the next one until they find somebody, a resume that they understand. You may be the most qualified, but if they can’t figure that out in 30 sec, it’s over.
You have to customize it. You’ve got to figure what’s the most important qualification they care the most about, and make sure that’s on the front of your resume. I like to use this example. Maybe it says, “MBA preferred”, and you’ve got an MBA. Well, you’ve got your education on the bottom of the second page. But if it’s so important to them that they say in this little ad that an MBA is preferred, and you’ve got your MBA on the bottom of the second page, what are you going to do? They won’t get to the bottom of the second page. You want to move it up. In the qualifications we’d like somebody that’s MTSE certified, but you’ve put all of your qualifications on the bottom of the second page. Move it up. They’ve got to be able to see it.
So you have to customize it. And in this day and age where everybody has word processors, or everybody has a computer, everybody probably has Word, most people do, or Works, or Open Office, so it takes very little effort to tweek your resume. I’m not telling you to re-write it every time you do this, but you certainly need to tweek it, and customize it.
And then you need to keep track of it. It doesn’t matter that you’ve got 15 versions because you’re only sending these to the individual companies. So they’re not going to compare notes. These won’t be up on the Internet, they won’t end up on Google. If I send one version to Acme and another one to this company, and another one to that company and I Google it, those won’t show up because they went to HR departments, or recruiters in a company.
When you go in to Monster, all you can do is take your best shot. You’ve got to figure out what’s your career objective, write a good, effective resume that’s geared towards that career objective, and that’s the one that goes on Monster. And you can send a couple of versions. Sometimes you say, “I’ll either do this, or I’d be just as happy doing that”. You can have two or three versions of this, but you can’t have 20 versions.
If this one says you’re and engineer, and this one says you’re and interior decorator, then they’re going to wonder, “What is this person, really?”
I’m telling you to customize it, to just modify it, put things in the right sequence. I’m not telling you to totally re-do it and present yourself as a totally different person. Although there are occasions when you want to do a functional resume, even if you’re not real qualified, and try to make it look as if you’re qualified. But no, I don’t think an individual is going to look at it negatively.
Worst Ways to Find a Job
Richard Nelson Boles wrote a book called What Color is Your Parachute? If you look at his statistics, he does a ranking of the five worst ways to find a job, and he updates this every year. This is current. What’s the number one worst way to find a job according to What Color Is Your Parachute? The Internet. Now I’m not saying, don’t touch the base. You need to cover all the bases. A lot of you haven’t signed up with a recruiter because you either have misconceptions about recruiters are, or you don’t understand how they work.
You know what you need? You need to spend time on the Internet. You need to have a recruiter. You need to go to a job fair, and you need to spend 80% of your time networking. It’s like going to Las Vegas. Which machine are you going to put your money into? The one that has an 80% chance of winning, or that one that has a 5% chance? Well, it doesn’t mean I’m not going to throw a $1 at Lotto, but most of my money is in my 401K. Because I have a much better assurance that it will be there in 5, 10, 20 or 30 years. But you know, the $1 is fun. And it’s ok to spend some time on Monster.
I understand that Monster and Career Builder are very tantalizing. You can go on Monster, and within five minutes you can find five jobs that are perfect for you, right? There’s a million jobs. I know that within five minutes you can find the perfect job for you, the job you’ve wanted all your life. And you’re hooked. Because you’re going to sit there, and you’re going to put a resume and a cover letter, and you’re going to do your research. And then you’ll find a second, and a third one and a fourth one. And I can almost guarantee you that six months later you will hear nothing from that.
Little Known Facts about Keywords
Let me tell you about the keywords. A lot of companies today use software that will automatically scan your resume and will automatically scan through thousands of resumes to find qualified people. So human beings won’t read resumes anymore in these companies for the initial screenings. The database, the software will read through them. And what they do is they use keywords. And the way it works – and this is an over-simplification, but if Tony’s the hiring manager and I’m the HR person, Tony calls me and says I’ve got an opening, I want to fill a job. So I go up and I want to sit down with Tony, and I say, “Alright, Tony. What are you looking for?” And Tony says, “I’m looking for this. I want a software engineer." So I right down software engineer. “I’d like somebody that’s Microsoft certified. I want somebody that’s got an MBA. I want somebody that’s C++, HTML, Digital Basic, etc.” And I’m writing all of these down.
So then I go and code this up, and I put it into the software, and it searches for those 10.000 resumes and it searches for those key words. The resumes that have those keywords, and it’s a little bit more complicated than that, because in some cases it’s an important keyword. And if you use that keyword 2 or 3 times on your resume, the algorithm is that you go above somebody that only uses it once. So you need those keywords on your resume. And unless you know whether or not they have that software, you need to figure out “Well, I don’t know if somebody is going to actually physically look at it or they’re going to put it into the database and scan it." So you need to cover the bases and make sure you’ve got the right keywords.
Now you can take your generic job search like Monster. You need to do your resume listing a career objective and take your best shot. Try to figure out if somebody is looking for a software engineer, what are the most likely keywords that they’re going to be looking for, and make sure that you get those in there. But when you start applying for specific jobs, it gets back to the customizing.
You need to read the ad. They may be using different terminology for the same thing. And if you just send it as is, and don’t use their keywords, and they use the software, it won’t pop out. You can’t not customize it. You could be the most qualified person in the world, but if you don’t have the right keywords, and use them enough times, your resume won’t pop out.
So you need to do your homework. I even recommend people to go to Monster, not to look for jobs, but to look at openings. If you’re a financial expert, what are most of the people looking for in their open positions? Then you will see patterns. You know, things have changed since I did this. It seems like this has become more important than it use to be.
As a recruiter I don’t want to see just a bunch of words strung together to satisfy the software. I want it in context. It don’t know if Right Management is preaching this or not, but just for your awareness, some of you may have seen this, or are aware of it. You can put a list of keywords in at the very bottom of your resume, in white. It’s invisible on your physical copy, but to the database it’s very visible. And the system will recognize it. I’ll let you use your own judgement.
The Changing Face of HR
At one time they were advocates for the employees, there were an abundance of HR people. Some of you who have been around awhile remember the days when you could actually go to a company and knock on their door. Somebody would let you in, talk to you right away. Now you go there and there’s somebody with a gun, who tells you to go away. So it’s very lean. They’re not advocates for employees anymore. They are strictly advocates for the management for the purpose of making money. They’re an extension of management. It doesn’t mean that they’re not concerned with employees’ well-being, but their first loyalty is to management. There are fewer HR people. It’s become much more automated, with the software that they use to screen resumes. They’re doing a lot of outsourcing. They’re finding they can get it down cheaper through Administaff or EDT.
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