employeeze

A lot of candidates ask the questions:
I sent my resume for a job that I’m perfect for; how do I find out if they received my resume? I submitted my resume, spoke to the recruiter but haven’t heard back from them. What is a reasonable amount of time to wait before I check in? How often is too often (ie I don’t want to bug the recruiter but I really want to know what is going on?)

These questions are going to vary widely from person to person and organization to organization.

First question. Just because *you* believe you are perfect for a position doesn’t mean the company agrees. It is unrealistic to assume that every resume submission you make is going to generate a personalized followup.  It is safest to assume that your resume has been received and that the company will contact you if they are interested in you as a candidate. Calling a company to see “if they got your resume” is usually futile and does nothing more than antagonize the HR/Recruiting department.

 If you have already spoken to/emailed with a recruiter directly, and are waiting to hear back on the next steps, it is a different matter. Regarding *how* you contact the recruiter for an update, I would recommend you follow their lead. Did they first approach you by email or phone? Have you received more communication with them via one mode or the other? The advantage of the phone is that perhaps you get a chance to talk to them and get an update. Email gives you a tangible record, for example if you need to keep track of your efforts for UI.  I would suggest you drop an email or wait for the recruiter to get in touch with you regarding a phone screen or interview, but give it at least 2-3 days after your conversation with the recruiter. Remember, the recruiter’s job is to identify candidates; the hiring manager has dozens of other priorities and may not get back to the recruiter immediately with feedback. Don’t assume that at any point in the process that the recruiter is the stopgap.

If you have already interviewed for a position and are waiting to hear back on the outcome it is vital to remember that you are probably not the only candidate. Most organizations will keep their first and second tier candidates viable until they have an acceptance and a start date so that of their first candidate doesn’t work out, they still have their second tier available. This process generally takes a week or more. In that instance, I would recommend one check in a few days after your interviews, and then if you don’t hear anything inside five more business days, a call or email is appropriate. After you have interviewed, follow up with thank you notes as appropriate. Reiterate your interest in the position, thank your interviewers for their time. You’ve already sold yourself. Don’t go overboard trying to continue selling yourself. Refer to the conversation you had with them, but keep it brief.

If you are entertaining other offers but this is the position you really want, be transparent with the recruiter. Tell them, “I just wanted to let you know that this opportunity is my first choice, but I have been offered a position at another company and they need and promised them an answer by Tuesday.” Some candidates try and use this tactic to pressure a recruiter when they *don’t* have a competing offer. It is your decision, but if you do this and the recruiter isn’t able to either speed up the process or make you a “counter offer” you must be prepared to walk away from the opportunity.

The best advice I can give any job seeker is to *not* pester the recruiter. Don’t bombard them with email or call them every day. Your recruiter is your biggest ally in a job search; you do not want to antognize them. You can get a reputation as a high-maintenance candidate, and the recruiting community is *not that big.* If you do not hear within a reasonable amount of time, you should probably assume that you are no longer in the running. It is not professional, it is the biggest complaint of candidates, but it is a reality that recruiters don’t always have time to get back to you. I, myself, have sent email withdrawing my candidacy to organizations that don’t treat me as a valued professional resource. My rationale is that if a company’s recruiting/HR department cannot extend me professional courtesy as a candidate, that tells me about their recruiting culture and I wouldn’t want to represent such an entity.

There is a term for the most desirable candidate in recruiting, the “passive” candidate. This is someone that is happy in their job and not looking to move. The rationale is that if someone is happily employed, they are valuable and will make a positive contribution to a *new* organization. Believe it or not, this adage is still proving true in recruiting circles.

 So, if recruiters are looking for those that are employed, and you are *unemployed* how do you make yourself look more desirable to potential employers?

First and foremost: do *not appear desperate*. All over the place I see social media (LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook etc.) profiles that scream “I’m looking for a job as ZYW in Anytown USA.” 

 OK, this is *totally* the wrong way to go about marketing yourself. First of all, this is a major turn-off for potential employers. If you are this unsubtle in the world of social media, how do you think they are going to look at you as a representative of the company? Uh huh. Not very professional and certainly someone that doesn’t understand the meaning of business “subtlety”. It also shows that you don’t understand how to cultivate business relationships or make value-add connections. 

Networking is about 1:1 personal relationships. It *is not* about trying to get yourself in front of as many people as humanly possible. That mentality is akin to the old “shooting fish in a barrel” concept.

It is crucial to use social media and networking tools effectively. This means being calm, cool, collected and professional in how you approach others. It is fine to let someone you are networking with to know that you are seeking new opportunties, be it by attrition or a RIF (Reduction In Force or layoff). But screaming it to all and sundry on the internet is the fastest way to lose face with those that could potentially help you. If you cannot market yourself in a way that is positive, why on earth would they want to pass your profile along to their colleague that is hiring?  So do yourself a favor; spend the $25 to get a business license, set up shop as an independent business owner, and cultivate *clients*. Whether you do any actual work, as long as you appear to be doing something with your credentials and expertise you will come across as a professional. 

You know those options on the big job boards such as Monster and CareerBuilder that allow you to post your resume “anonymously”? Some people use them when they don’t want their current employer to know they are looking or to cut down on spam. But here’s a secret: recruiters *hate* it when those anonymous resumes come up in a keyword search and most of them will just toss those resumes into the “no interest” pile not matter how good the candidate looks on “paper”. I, however, always will send an email with a detailed job description. I mean, if the resume comes up in a search, they are obviously open to receiving communication. But I would definitely caution you to be careful of using the anonymizing feature if you are sincerely and actively looking for a job. It may be better to let your current employer find you on a job board than not. If you are posting to a very open forum like Craigslist (and yes, it is a good move to post your resume on CL), by all means take advantage of the anonymous email address option. This can save you from email harvesting for spam.

But here’s the thing. I would *never* recommend my client, or anyone, apply to something so completely blind. To me this smacks of bad branding, and possibly a bad reputation in the recruiting community (it’s very small and most of us know each other.) I think it’s even more crucial for employers to be transparent. This kind of recruiting tells me quite a bit about the company and their business practices. I would never apply to a company that doesn’t even feel good enough about its own brand to evangelize it to potential employees.

I saw an interesting Tweet over on Twitter about UK job seekers with the question “who is actually helping the jobless?” I’d have to say this is one of the first summaries I’ve seen on the internet that I agree with.

 I also got an email from one of my clients that I am helping with her job search strategy, and she showed me an email she had gotten from our local UE office. (She had a mandatory job log check in last week.) They sent her two attachments on “using linked in” and “how to write a letter of intent” (as opposed to a “Cover” letter.)

 First of all, I’ve written all of my client’s cover letters. And while I agree with their approach in theory, they advise using a table for sending matching the JD to a candidate’s skill. Bad move. Most systems will tear apart a table and make it unintelligble. You want to put it in paragraph form, *if* you decide to use a cover letter. Secondly, my candidate has had a LI profile for years and the first thing we did was update it when she got her pink slip; way ahead of you.

I was at a Career Panel the other night for my local collegiate sorority chapter. I’ve participated for the last three years, and have actually made some good contacts and friends from it. I was the only recruiter on the panel, and there was a Hiring Manager sitting next to me. It amused me that most of the students asked resume and interview questions of her rather than me. In 75% of companies, unless they are very small, the first person to see resumes is the HR department.  I would say that while hiring managers can certainly tell you what they like to see on a resume, it’s generally going to be the HR department that is the gatekeeper to what the HM *sees*.  And since we see *thousands* of resumes weekly, it’s probably a good bet that we are a pretty good resource for initial resume distribution.

It’s always a great combo to have a HM and recruiter/HR rep in tandem. Hiring managers will tell you what *they* look for for their departments in terms of content and interviewing.  Recruiters can tell you how organizations in general view resumes, and they can also tell you about how the systems work from a sourcing perspective. In this economy, *that* is the most important information to know WRT resumes. Luckily there are a lot of recruiters out there happy to give you information and share. It makes our jobs easier, because if you write your resume well, we have an easier time finding you. 

I was over on Twitter yesterday and there were several blurbs aimed at job seekers for “resume blast” sites such as Resume Zapper. Basically, you pay them a fee and they “blast” your resume to tons of recruiters. What they don’t tell you is that all they are doing is sending emails to email addresses like “jobs@microsoft.com” or “careers@acmewidgets.net”. They don’t have any real “in” to specific companies and they aren’t targeting your job search for you.

It’s your money to spend, but I’d recommend investing it somewhere that will generate positive returns, like taking former colleagues out to coffee or attending networking functions.

There are tons of articles, web pages, and tools out there referring to social networking. Recruiters have been embracing them for years as a way to find candidates. I have cautioned you about using inappropriate or unprofessional profiles on your Facebook and MySpace profiles. “Listservs” and BBS’s were the precursor to YahooGroups and other Special Interests communities. But how to *effectively* use social networking?

One cool little application is PingFM . Ping allows you to aggregate your microblogging by posting to several places at once.  I haven’t started using it yet because I’m trying to keep a separation between my various mediums and track where I have the most impact.  Good luck in your venture into social networking; you can find me on Twitter under “employeeze”.

What picture does the words “Career Fair” conjure up for you? For many of us it reminds of us of the huge booths set up at trade shows, or in my case the humongous bunch of campus recruiters that came to my University and generated not one lead for me. As my friend RJH stated so eloquently, “a cattle call”.

Hopefully if you do decide to attend a job fair, it is of benefit to you and not a waste of *your* valuable time.

It astounds me how many people, especially corporate recruiters, *don’t* keep up their networks.  Here is an example; I posted this morning to a local listserv I’ve been on for years. We have strict posting guidelines on certain topics, and I made sure to follow them. The moderator immediately posted a response reminding everyone what those guidelines were, and told me she knows I am careful about my posting and that I follow the community standards. I got the answers I was looking for, and it in part because people know me and my reputation. They are willing to share information with me because I share information with others.

 Two days ago out of the blue I got an email from someone wanting my help getting her roommate a job. She has barely written to me in the last two years, not even responding to my overtures. 

So here is the thing. As a recruiter, and even just as a person in the business world, I’m going to be more inclined to help those people that have made the effort to keep up ties with me, *all* the time rather than when they need something from me.  I treat my friendships the same way. When I have free time, I tend to spend it with those people who have consistently shown an interest in my life. 

The moral of the story is simple: don’t just contact someone when you need something. Especially if you are suddenly unemployed and find yourself with a lot of free time on your hands, reach out to people just to say “hi”, and they will remember it.

 As my favorite quotation goes: “I believe in karma, what you give is what you get returned.” (Savage Garden, “Affirmation”)

  In the last year, I’ve been interviewed by two organizations via the panel  interview. Most people, myself included, dislike (or dread, or hate in many cases) this interview style.  I don’t mind a 2:1 approach, but more than two people evaluating me feels too much like a power match (and putting the candidate in a “stress” situation is often the actual goal). And what I *really* don’t appreciate is not *knowing* I’m going into a panel interview ahead of time.

Although the intellectual preparation for a panel interview is no different than for a traditional 1:1, the *mental* aspect is much different. In my case, it may even affect  the decision of what I’m wearing and the type of note-taking tools I use.  There is a different dynamic  for me talking to one person than a group of people. My body language is different, and my concentration is both more and less focused.

That being said, what are some of the things you can do in a panel interview to make a better impression?

-Recognize that when you are in a panel interview, it actually levels the playing field for you as a candidate.  The interviewers are outside of their respective comfort zones as well, especially if most of them have offices containing personal momentos. It also means that they don’t have a computer screen in front of them, or a phone, which can be distracting and break the flow of your conversation with them. Keep your poise and try not to fidget.

-If you know in advance that you will be interviewed by several people, ask the recruiter or recruiting/HR assistant how much time will be allotted for you to ask questions, and whether it is built into the interviews as a dialogue or “them first, me second” agenda. If at all possible, try to engage in a dialogue, where you have the opportunity to gain some authority and show your understanding of the myriad questions being thrown at you.

-Make sure that during your interviews you main eye contact with the person asking the question; don’t let your eye wander all over the room.

-Take notes when you first sit down and each member of the panel is introduced. Get name and title if you can; don’t be afraid or nervous to ask then to repeat the information while you are writing.  The first panel I had in the last year was with four people, and it was pretty easy to figure out who was who. The second involved eight people and they were introduced so fast that I only got about half of them, and had to try and figure out what department and function they represented based on the context  of their questions.

-DO take notes. Listen to what the questions are, what they repeat in different ways, and try to determine if there is a pattern or theme to the sorts of questions they are asking. From my eight-person interview,  I got a lot of questions about “finding” talent, and what methodology did I use to identify the competition. This led me to believe that their previous recruiter was reactive rather than proactive, which was later confirmed when I had my follow up interview with the director of HR.

-If you are offered cup of water or some other beverage, take it.  A lot of interview etiquette guides counsel against accepting beverages, but in a panel interview, you may need it.

 Above all, don’t let this type of interview truly stress you out. Stay as calm and collected as possible. 

So you have secured a phone screen with the company, and in the spirit of transparency you are willing to discuss your compensation expectations in broad terms. But how do you determine your worth in the current economy?

There are some good free tools online to help you get a broad idea of your current worth.  Remember that the title you last held may not be the most accurate for your industry, so look at different grades and levels within the titles listed to make sure you are targeting the right one.

http://salary.com

http://t.conquent.com/M300