Guerrilla Marketing for Job Hunters 2.0

Getting to Yes; 2nd Edition

Me, Myself and Why; The Secrets to Navigating

If you haven’t completed any assessments as you prepare to launch a job search, you should.  This is true even if you have done assessments many times before.  One key reason I think this is an important time to do this is there is no pressure, no employer involvement, so you can really be yourself.

Assessment can be as informal as going to the top of the mountain for some quiet time to focus your thoughts and goals.  Or, it can mean completing a battery of formal assessment tools which are interpreted by a professional counselor.

Community colleges are great resources for the formal tools.  For free, or very low cost, you can complete several well-chosen instruments and have them evaluated and interpreted for you.  And, you don’t have to be a current student or alum.

I tell clients not to expect a great epiphany from assessments.  That only happens once in a hundred cases.  But it is reasonable to expect several good things to emerge: 1) confirmation about what makes you tick and how you operate, 2) concise, accurate words to describe yourself to others, and 3) some clarification as to the job content and work environment that will maximize your chances of success.

For most of my clients I use a simple tool that evaluates passions, interests and abilities.  The passion portion asks them to think about the various constituents in their lives–self, family, friends, employer, community, state, nation and the world–and consider what they want to achieve vis-à-vis each.  Then they prioritize and, finally, consider what the findings imply about the job they should be seeking.

The interests and abilities section first identifies the abilities they have used to achieve important goals in the past–things they are good at.  And, it looks separately at their interest in using each ability in a long list.  Where we see matches between high interest in using an ability that has also been instrumental in achieving goals, we have a list of job components we want to find in our next job–a job that will make our tails wag when we go to work.  We also develop a list of low-interest abilities that we want to avoid using in our new job, or at least minimize.

All of this information helps crystallize their vision and focuses their efforts in the job search.  It also helps them explain their vision to others,  which invariably optimizes the help offered.  All in all these are good outcomes for a few hours of effort.

You can be smart, or you can be like all the other job searchers during the holidays.  Almost everyone stops the job search process in the last five weeks of the year because they mistakenly think nothing is happening between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day.

Now it is certainly true that the volume of ads and postings is way down during the holidays. But there are still jobs being filled, with start dates after the New Year for the most part. The truth is lots of things are happening in the way of job search. It’s just different than the rest of the year.

There are lots of opportunities to interact with friends and meet new people at the many holiday parties going on. Those social functions are not the best time to haul out your resume and have a deep conversation about your value in the workplace. But, it’s a great time to tell people briefly about your job search goals and ask for an opportunity to meet later to get information and advice on that topic, while assuring them you won’t put the arm on them for a job or interview. If you handle yourself well, you will get several opportunities to have productive follow-up meetings.

Read my other posts on Networking and you’ll get a good sense of what to do. Keep working at your search during the holidays and you’ll have a great leg up on the competition when the new year comes. And, maybe you’ll be starting a new job right after the ball drops in Times Square.

The biggest obstacle you face in networking may be you.  And you may trip over yourself before you ever get started actually meeting with people.

Early in my work with a client I ask them to make a list of everybody they know–in other words, list their network.  Ever heard Charlie Brown’s mother on the phone, “Wah wah wah wah wah.   Wah wah wah.”  I think that’s what my clients hear because when they come back to me, their list is 5 to 10 people.  They’ve heard my words, “…everybody you know,” but it gets filtered in their brain to, “…everybody you know who you think has a job or job lead for you.”

The problem in most cases is people start by looking at the list of people they know and thinking of reasons why a person in their network would not be helpful.  For example: he doesn’t work in my field, she is retired, his level is too high [or low], she doesn’t work in that part of the country.  The reasons go on and on.  Before you know it only about 5 to 10 people qualify for the list.

However, the way I look at these short lists is they comprise the people to be contacted first, but not to the exclusion of the others.  Clients have merely skipped to the next step in the process, sorting the list and putting the most likely helpers at the top.

As to the other people on your list, first you have to fight your impulse write them off before you give them a chance.  When this negativity hits you, think about your own life experiences where you were surprised to find friends had unexpected information or connections that were helpful on other issues.  The same will be true in your job search.

It takes only a brief discussion to find out the fact of the matter.  A few minutes which is very likely to produce helpful information and connections, and might just open the mother lode.

Statistics tell us that most of the time the connection that lands the job is not from your top picks in your network.  In fact, it very likely comes from a person you would have eliminated from your list on first impulse.

A client was drafting a cover letter for a particular job that had been recommended by a contact.  There was no ad, no posting, so there wasn’t much to go on for writing a cover letter.  Nevertheless he created the draft and, predictably, it was pretty ho-hum and without much detail.

Before sending the letter we decided to do some research.  We put the job title and company name into Google.  Voila!  We hit a mother-lode of matches.  We found some old postings that had a lot of detail about the job description and requirements.  Now we had the information we needed to write a great cover letter.

Our letter listed the requirements we found, using a bullet for each one.  Opposite each of these bullets we created another bullet describing his qualifications on that topic.  The left column was labeled, “Your Requirements,” and the right column was labeled, “My Qualifications.”  We added short opening and closing paragraphs putting the finishing touches on a letter that made a great case for calling him in for an interview.

If we had not hit the mark with Google, my next option was to use job boards to find postings of similar titles in competing companies.  I am confident this would have worked quite well too.

Cover letters may, or may not, get read.  But, if you are going to take the time to write one, assume it will get read and, do your best to make it a winner.

The way you are groomed makes that first impression–even before you shake hands–and can knock you out of contention before you say a word.  It’s that important.

First, let’s be clear about what comprises personal grooming:

1. Cleanliness
2. Clothes
3. Hair
4. Nails
5. Make Up
6. Perfume / Cologne
7. Jewelry

Today it’s not so easy to be brief in giving advice on this subject.  Personal grooming standards are highly variable in our society generally, and vary substantially by industry, by company–and even by department within a company.

It used to be safe to advise a man to wear a suit and tie.  But, today there are great variations in how people dress in the workplace.  In some cases, wearing a coat and tie makes you a misfit and leads to an early rejection letter.

Still, there are a few principles that hold true.  Here they are:

• Go in dressed like your boss’s boss.  You may need to get some inside advice to know what this means in the context of the company interviewing you.
• Your clothes, whatever the style, should fit right.   Your pants or skirt needs to fit comfortably around your waist, not under your stomach.  And, get the waist taken in when you’ve lost weight and the garment is gathering in the back.  Make sure your suit coat buttons comfortably–no stressed button look.
• No matter what the situation you need to look and smell fresh-scrubbed
• Go with no perfume / cologne–or VERY light at most.  This is important and you are not a good judge of your effect on people.  Get some input from others on your olfactory aura.
• Try to select an outfit that can be dressed down during the interview.  So, if it turns out you are a little overdressed, you can find and opportunity to slip off an item or two and fit in much better.
• Women, keep your makeup to a minimum.  Have your nails professionally manicured.  Men can get away with doing their own nails, but don’t forget this important feature of your appearance.
• Jewelry is a nice accent to your appearance, but can be overdone too.  Keep it simple but tasteful.  Avoid big clangy bracelets and long dangly earrings.
• Hair…hmmm.  Conservative styles are better.  Men, I know some of you work hard and pay good money to look like you just got out of bed after a hard night of drinking.  Others deny they are balding with comb-overs.  These are not good looks for job hunters.
  Gray hair is generally OK for men…not so much for women.

If you are going to color your hair (men and women), go to a professional.  I once had a white-haired man for a client.  He had dyed his own hair black (he thought).  It looked black in some light, but it turned out the color showed up as purple under fluorescent light.  He had been out in public many times before we started working together and no one had the courage to tell him until I did.  It took several weeks to fix it and delayed his job search.

Another client I had was significantly overweight and the waistline on his pants was far too tight.  It became a sling under his belly.  I sent him on a shopping mission.  He bought a suit that fit and, WOW!, what a difference.  He suddenly looked the executive he was–and he instantly felt so much more confident.

Spend some time on this issue, and some money if you need to.  It will pay dividends and you will feel at your most confident.

I never believed bright colored paper or odd-size stationery was a value-added approach to getting an interview.  Factors like organization and content were truly the things that set resumes apart and got recruiters to call.

However, now there are some options that are not only eye-catching, but functional too.  For example, you could create a link within an accomplishment statement which could take the reader to a page on your own website that shows a feature article about you in the company’s internal magazine.

Or, as another option, a link in your resume could take the reader to an addendum page right within your resume itself.  So, your resume document could be many pages; the first two pages being an excellent stand-alone resume and the additional pages being linked support material for those who want more detail.

The margin is a place where employer’s logos might appear and have a link embedded which takes the reader to the company’s website for more details.  Colorful logos can be eye-catching, but they lose luster if the company is not well known.  Nevertheless, even a plain link to the employer’s site could be helpful in some cases to better explain your history.  Use your imagination.

Like any other feature, you can overdo it of course.  So use discretion and consider whether these features are needed [or even make sense] in your individual case.

One caution, make sure the reader can easily find his way back to the point of origin.  Don’t let your reader get confused or frustrated.  Providing a return link should take care of this.

And remember, the more gimmickry [i.e. fancy formatting], the greater the chances that the document will lose its formatting when it’s read by the reader’s computer system.  So, use a PDF file format for transmitting to human readers and use a TXT format for resumes to be scanned to a database.  None of the fancy stuff will get sent in the TXT file.  But, computers really dig TXT files, so they’ll be smiling.

It is my contention you should NOT hide your age unless there is a compelling reason to do so–and age, in and of itself, is NOT a compelling reason.  But, if you truly believe it’s necessary, it’s pretty simple to disguise your age on your resume.  Here’s what to do:

1. Leave off the first chunk of your early job history,
2. Leave out school graduation dates,
3. Leave out dates on other items like seminars attended, activities, offices held in non-profit groups, awards, etc.

However, leave in dates of all jobs that you do show on your resume.

Recognize when you do this any reader will  be suspicious that you are hiding your age.  Recruiters know when education dates are missing, this is usually the case.  And, it may be pretty obvious when your oldest job title listed is higher than entry level.

One final note.  If you decide to create an abbreviated resume, I suggest you also develop an unabridged version–including all jobs and dates.  When interviews come you will undoubtedly find it helpful to be able to provide the complete version instead of going through the tedium of adding the missing information on the spot each time.

Almost every client I work with asks this question about the right way to follow up with recruiters.  They don’t want to be a pest, but they know they shouldn’t just wait by the phone for a call.

So, once a recruiter has your resume, how should you follow up?

Initial follow-up should happen immediately after you send your resume, or post it to the recruiter’s website.  Before you sent or posted the resume, you should have done your best to ID the recruiter within the firm who specializes in your area.  Now, call that person.  If you can’t figure it out on your own, call the main number and ask to be transferred to the right person.

When you reach the person, DON’T say, “I’ve sent / posted my resume.  Have you seen it?”  Recruiters bristle at that approach because it puts them on the spot.  And, immediately,  DO reference any mutual friends, clients, etc. you have in common.

Make the main thrust of the call about whether you have connected with the right recruiter and how she works with candidates.  To figure out if you are talking to the right person, you have to give your background, but keep it to a maximum of 30 seconds at this point.  Once you establish you are talking to the right person you will find out if there are any active searches going on that are a match for you.  If “yes”, you are likely to suddenly be in a full-fledged screening interview, so be ready.

If “no”, you want to start talking about how to work together over the coming weeks.  You can start the conversation with something like, “I haven’t worked with you [your firm] before.  How do you work with candidates?”  You’re trying to find out more about their processes–do they use a database, how often do they purge resumes, can you only be involved in one search at a time through their firm, do they share resumes across all company offices, how / how often would they like to hear from you, etc.?

As to the last point, some will say, “I’ll call you if we have something.”  But, most will say, “Drop me an email, or call, every [X]  weeks so we can give each other a status update.”  Once you have gotten the answer, the anguish about when to follow up is gone.

But, let’s say you have posted your resume and tried your best, but failed, to talk with a recruiter.  Here is what I suggest:

1. Put this recruiting firm’s name on a list that you will show to people in your future networking meetings and ask if anyone has a connection and will make an introduction,
2. Better yet, send an email to everybody in your network you have been in contact with during the search and ask the question [1. above], and
3. Renew you posting on the recruiter’s website at least once each 90 days.

The bottom-line goal is to establish a relationship, then let your new recruiter friend define what is the right amount of follow-up.

A client of mine had worked in the transportation equipment manufacturing industry for many years.  His role had been dealer management and support, so he dealt with the retail side of the business in marketing and sales.

We were having one of our review meetings and he told me he had been sending his resume to several big-box retailers [e.g. Best Buy] in response to Internet postings.  I told him there certainly might be a role for him somewhere in the retail industry, but his approach was likely a waste of time.  Why?  Because his resume was landing in a stack of resumes of people who had lots of big-box experience.

My recommendation was for him to start by having some informational meetings with people in the big-box retail segment.  We thought through who he might know.  There was no direct hit in his network, but he did know someone who was likely to know someone in the big-box segment.  So we talked about how to connect with the person he knew and get an introduction to someone more on target [no pun intended].  Next we looked at my connections and found someone who manages a big-box store.  So, I helped make a connection.

His approach to these people was purely information-gathering in nature.  He will not ask for an interview, nor whether jobs are available at the contact’s employer.  Instead the mission is to find out more about the industry: how they talk, what their challenges are, what initiatives are ongoing, what roles are in the industry that jibe with his background, how best to persuade decision makers that he is a great candidate.  And, very important, secure introductions to others who can help in a similar way.  Link by link these meetings inevitably lead to meetings with decision makers.

My experience shows that with every meeting he has, he will become a better candidate for employment in that new industry.  He will start to use their lexicon.  He will be better at relating his experiences to their needs.  He will, more and more, appear to be one of them.  And, without asking, he will likely be recommended to a hiring manager, assuming there truly is a transferability of his background to the new industry.

Through this networking approach he will have enhanced his chances in two important ways:

1. He will significantly improve his chances of being selected for an interview and will have eliminated a huge amount of competition before the interview takes place.  When he responds to an Internet posting his odds are likely 1:2,000 [maybe worse] of just getting a chance to talk to a screener.  If he comes to an interview through his network the odds improve to better than 1:10 of actually being selected for the job.  And…
2. When he gets an interview, he will be more effective at presenting himself as a viable candidate because of his improved knowledge base.

Now it may be that after a couple of meetings it’s obvious to you and your contacts that there is no future for you in this different industry.  But, isn’t that helpful too?  Rather than wasting your time responding to postings, getting nowhere and getting discouraged, you can redirect your energy and time in a more productive pursuit.

This is a process that really works, and saves you time in the long run.  Be creative in thinking about how your talents can be used in new industries and who you know that can help you learn more or meet the right people.  Then take the smart approach by making connections and having informational meetings.