Bad news folks! This kind of resume doesn’t work when there are many job applicants to choose from unless you have a very strong recommendation from someone the hiring manager trusts. The result is a generic or commodity pitch that gets lost in a tall pile of applications. Without a strong recommendation the job seeker may, at best, receive a phone screening from HR, which has a low probability of maturing to a deeper discussion.

Many of these phrases are more job description than superlative. I estimate that 70% of the sales resumes I see have the phrase “relationship builder” which renders the phrase useless. Consider that the Hiring Manager of Sales may receive several thousand resumes a year with “relationship builder.” The typical resume includes one phrase on communication and one on team building. Again, the frequency and sameness of these phrases neutralizes them.

What do you do about it?

• Spend more time thinking about how you are different or better than job seekers with the same title and then demonstrate it with a more differentiated collection of key words. Include accomplishments and case histories.
• While it is good to announce that your efforts increased sales or reduced customer complaints, the people who demonstrate additionally how they increased sales or whatever are more credible and will be valued more at the negotiation table. The people who show how they successfully applied the technology and how well they know it are valued more than the people who just offer a long list of technologies. In order to “own” your successes you need to show your impact on the process. Don’t just claim the results many people in the group influenced.
• When you understand your differences, think through for which clients those differences are advantages, and concentrate your efforts on the clients with the most pain for your skill set. If you have done this with enough scrutiny, you probably have only 10-25 companies on your list.

It is easiest to establish yourself as a must-hire resource with an audience for whom that skill provides the greatest ROI (return on investment.) You need to show them you can apply industry/technical knowledge more effectively than anyone else.

1. In the Twin Cities Metro there are 4K LinkedIn listings with “marketing communications” mentioned, 59K with “sales,” and 31K with “engineer.” 65% social media participants users use to stay in touch with friends, 47% use social media “for work” and but only 26-28% use it for “career search.” # That means you need to develop strategies to be appealing to all kinds of networkers who will find you there and you need a very well written profile and customized communications to rise above the clutter.
2. The average reader spends 8-10 seconds with a profile. Your full resume does NOT belong in LinkedIn. The correct profile is closer to an executive bio in a corporate website.
3. LinkedIn should not be viewed as a stand-alone tool especially by those of you who are uncomfortable pairing LinkedIn activities with networking done in-person or by phone. Using LinkedIn exclusively can actually damage your professional image if your best means of reaching out to someone is the pre-written and highly superficial messages available by default in the system. Aim for a small, high quality network of people you can vouch for and whom you can trust to recommend you effectively. Consider that you will be judged by the quality of relationships you exhibit there. When you suddenly need a strong recommendation, a large quantity of poor quality contacts in your network will dilute the credibility of someone who really has considerable knowledge of you, especially if they use the standard messaging and tools to recommend you.
4. Hide your contacts. You want to manage how, why, and when others are reaching out to your best contacts and clients. The social media are mechanical software tools that encourage use without much thought which may be good as a strategy for the company LinkedIn, but bad as yours. Approximately 1/3 of the requests I receive through electronic social media I consider inappropriate to someone else in the relationship. The sender did not think hard before sending the request because it was easy to do so. If they had to make the same request in person they would have thought about it a lot more carefully. I think it is also happening more because people are in a panic over job security.
5. Hiring managers prefer people who are currently employed and can buy access to all 40 million names. There are many ways to reach potential hirees without buying a job ad in LinkedIn and most hiring managers are not bothering to. Ads on the 2 big job boards declined 5-44% last year depending on industry.
6. You are judged in LinkedIn as much by your EQ as by your IQ. An ExecuNet study (12/08) showed:
   • 86% exec recruiters search online for information beyond resume
   • 70% say their opinion of job seeker improves if find positive info on internet
7. We know that being active and engaged in LinkedIn activities improves your rank in LinkedIn searches:
   • Include a picture
   • Participate in discussion groups and Q+A with others
   • Answer InMail queries from others and pass profiles onwards if and only if you can vouch for the recommendation
   • Give and get recommendations
   • Name corporate, academic awards, boards, associations, biz charities
8. Remember that what you post in social media is VERY public and available to be scrutinized and commented on by many critics. A recent survey by Career Builder and highlighted in the Wall St Journal stated that 35% of employers report they found content on social media sites that caused them not to hire a candidate. ##
   • Candidate showed poor communication skills – 29%
   • Candidate lied about qualifications – 24 %
   • Candidate shared confidential information from previous employer – 20 %
9. If you think about the experience of the person searching for a resource in LinkedIn, he/she is confronted with 100-500 profiles (depending on subscription level) with similar titles or search criteria. The first profile the seeker will reach out to will demonstrate:
   • Better accomplishments than their peers
   • Good communication skills, and transparency of skills
   • Candor, warmth, accessibility, and ethics
   • NO Political, racial, religious, marital status, or sexual preference mentions because Hiring Managers will avoid downloading it for fear of an EEO lawsuit

So, invest some time and effort into your LinkedIn strategies. Don’t use the software as your only means of networking. Don’t settle for its default messages. Think about the paradigm of the other people in the LinkedIn network and what they might want from you when they are looking at your profile. LinkedIn has huge potential but can be more damaging than helpful to your career image if used too casually.

#   http://www.pewinternet.org/pdfs/PIP_Adult_social_networking_data_memo_FINAL.pdf
## http://online.wsj.com/article/PR-CO-20090819-902554.html

I am in my 50s. Yes, age bias exists and, yes, it is illegal. You won’t always be able to avoid it. But age bias is sometimes not really about your actual age, it is about certain soft skills and attitudes that employers desire but older employees are less likely to value. And if you learn to address those issues, you can make concerns about age go away.

Attitude

First of all, if you think the world is against you, I will bet it shows in your interviews. You need to peel back the layers on your emotions. Do you think society has fouled up again? That young managers don’t know what they are doing? Or is it that you don’t know how/where to sell yourself at this stage of your career and are afraid?

Your focus should be to find the companies for which you are a highly desirable applicant just as you are and to present yourself to those companies in a manner that makes you one of the first applicants to be selected for an interview. While this may require a stronger sell than was necessary a few years ago, it is not at all impossible. It just requires some additional strategic layers and may indicate a different kind of company than the one you left. For instance, a smaller company or start-up may prefer a more experienced candidate to obtain a greater depth of industry knowledge with a smaller staff count. Or target your skills in business development (well-documented with case histories) to a company who has been struggling with the issue for some time.

If you are significantly overqualified for a job description as written, don’t spend a lot of time applying for it. The company will be concerned that you will leave as soon as you find a job for which you are better suited. You could offer to sign a contract promising that you will stay at least 2 years, but they will still be concerned that you will become crabby in the role because you are being under-utilized and that you will be disruptive to the balance of the team structure.

Trends in age of employees

• 2000-2003
  • The number of workers under the age of 45 was constant.
  • The number of workers over 45 increased 86%.
• 2005
  • 45% of workers are over the age of 45.
• 2010 projected
  • Labor shortage due as baby boomers retire
  • Most boomers plan to work full-time or part-time after retiring.

How older workers are perceived

• More expensive than younger employees doing the same work (usually true).
• Difficult to supervise, they think they know more than team mates. Poor or selective follow-up.
• Inflexible, grumpy, frumpy, more likely to argue. Poor communication skills. Less political.
• Hard to train, don’t know new technology.
• Disconnected from company vision and younger team-mates. Prefer to be sole contributors.
• Get sick more often (false).
• Low and declining energy. Resist overtime.

Market demand for new hires

• As the pace of corporate innovation increases, the duration of the average permanent job decreases because company priorities change more rapidly, and your seniority or longevity may be irrelevant. The career track you were on for the last ___ years doesn’t matter. The employer wants to know if you can hit the ground running for today’s needs.
• 2 out of 100 resumes result in a job offer.
• A resume needs to be better written to be effective because employers have access to more resumes through websites and job databases. Is your resume well-written enough that you will be one of the interviewees chosen from 20 resumes? 100?

Strategies to try

So what am I saying? Learn and emphasize what a company values in today’s market. Make sure you know how to sell yourself. Focus on the benefits of your depth of knowledge, but make sure you also counter the expected negative attitudes associated with older workers. Note the ways attitude as well as knowledge is being addressed in the bullets below:

• “I really enjoy being on teams which solve problems and grow business.” Don’t just say “I have lots of experience” which would emphasize the gap in age but not the quality of experience and your willingness to be a team member.
• “I have the contacts to drive growth.”
• “I thrive in fast-paced environments.”
• To an insurance or medical company with older customers: “I may understand your customer better than a younger applicant.”
• “Yes, I supervised many people. Learned how to work with lots of different kinds of people. Can we take a tour of the company? I would like to see how you do it.“
• “I can start as a part-time consultant to let you evaluate what I offer at a small cost.”
• “I just attended a conference on that new technology and was a panelist.”

The simple answer? Don’t do it.

• I have seen national studies that claimed about 70% of resumes have “mistruths” in them.
• Other studies state 25-50% of resumes have “embellishments” (an exaggeration but not lie.)

The most common lies:

• Length of employment gaps
• Titles
• Degrees completed
• Salary
• Reason for leaving
• Not mentioning a job from which you were fired
• Taking credit for an idea developed by the team
• When career started (age)
• Size of business or projects managed
• Rank as a sales person or total revenue you represented
• Claiming to be “Consulting” when you were billing zero hours

I could quote more studies, but the point is: Recruiters and Hiring Managers EXPECT there to be many lies in resumes and in the interviews we have with applicants so we look and listen for them.

Easiest to detect

The one I hear most frequently is about salary/bonus. I ask people their current salary and bonus in a very deliberate way and listen to how they handle it. I can hear the long, pregnant pauses while the speaker is trying to figure out how much they can increase the answer since I gave them a chance to. The process varies if I called them versus when they called me. Rarely does the speaker need the same length of time to answer other questions. It is one of the lies that are easiest for the listener to detect. And it is a very good indicator of whether I should trust the other answers I hear will hear from the same source.

Legal penalties

I called a lawyer I know who specializes in employment law for his knowledge of possible consequences. There are apparently no formal legal penalties in Minnesota for lying in the job application process, but lying on a job application certainly is a ground for immediate termination (not that the employer necessarily needs grounds under the employment-at-will doctrine). Call me (anonymously if you wish) for a referral to him.

Situational stress

We also know that lying increases:

• In a recession as the stress of finding a job increases
• As age of the applicant increases because the stress of finding a job increases
• If an applicant was a poor fit for a job and it ended very badly
• If the applicant is not good at articulating their value to their past employers

So what do you do if you are tempted to lie? Don’t. Instead, take a few steps back in your process and analyze which hiring manager SHOULD want to hire you and why. Have you done enough homework about the companies you are targeting? Do you know for which roles you are most marketable? Have you done enough selling to show the hiring manager why you are a must-meet-applicant? Instead of applying to 200 companies, figure out the 15-20 companies for which you will be one of the most desirable applicants and tailor your pitch to discuss why you are indeed worth knowing for that role.

Illness

A woman who just finished with a long illness called me today and asked for advice on how to handle the gap in her resume. Illnesses and disabilities are complicated and deserve their own very long article but don’t hide the gap or offer a lie. On the other hand, don’t volunteer more information than is necessary, especially if disabled. Talk to a certified disability job counselor for advice if that applies to you.

In the case of the woman who had been ill but was not now disabled, I told her to simply say she had been on sabbatical for an undefined personal issue but was now ready and able to work 40 hours a week without distraction. She needs to carefully research the clients who would be thrilled to have her for what she does know and have a very polished selling statement ready to offset fears related to the unexplained gap. She should have strong testimonials ready. If necessary, she could offer to work for them on a contract-to-hire basis or discounted pay scale until she establishes her value in the present time-frame. She still may have trouble “getting back in” but she shouldn’t compound doubt about her reputation/ability with a lie. If there is no fear the illness may return, you could offer a doctor’s note to show you are fully recovered.

Fast facts:

1. 70-80% of jobs are filled through referrals and networking where the client is familiar with the reputation of the job applicant before receiving the actual resume. Those resumes are read very differently than the resumes of total strangers. (Read my blog posting The “Hidden Job Market.”)
2. When a hiring manager reviews resumes for people he (or she) has not had referred to him, he reads them looking for cues that will maximize his ROI (return on investment) for the available budget. Therefore, the first applicants to be called for an interview will be closest to an ideal fit. If and only if one of these candidates does not work, will the hiring manager widen the search to applicants who offer a less perfect fit.
3. Hiring managers don’t always put everything they are looking for in the job ad, just the “minimums.” And they usually make the ads broader than the ideal to widen the net and catch more fish in case the ideal candidate does NOT show up in the narrow definition of the specs.
4. A job ad for a JAVA programmer when posted in a big database like www.monster.com will generate 300-400 applicant resumes after about a week. A job ad for a Director of Marketing will generate 25-75 applicants.
5. At least 50% of the people who send a resume to any job posted in a public place will not actually be qualified for the role. Responding to ads for which you are not a close fit is a poor use of your job hunting efforts. It also may annoy a hiring manger who has limited time available.

Are you the best candidate?

You should do homework on what might be important to the client beyond what the job ad says. You can research this through:

• Annual reports
• Informational interviews
• Former employees of that company
• Trade press
• Internet
• Networking
• Reading other jobs ad from the company

If your homework reveals you are a strong candidate, make sure you add content to your resume to demonstrate you are an excellent risk. Instead of applying to 100 companies for which you are a long shot, send tailored resumes to the 15-20 clients where you are most likely to be the preferred candidate.

How to show you are the best applicant

This is done through case histories, testimonials, and details in the resume that show your strategic leadership. If possible, you should show you made the company money, saved the company money, or made it more efficient.

The introduction

70% of hiring managers don’t read beyond the first half of the first page of the resume or spend more than 30 seconds reading before they decide whether or not to opt out. This means that you need a powerful introduction to your resume that makes builds the reader’s expectation that you are a relevant and exciting candidate. This will keep him reading longer so he is more likely to be sold on you.

Beyond the resume

If you think about it, you need to be ready to use similar strategies in networking, cover letters, interviews, in every contact with a potential hiring manager. Your objective is to reinforce repeatedly that you are the best of possible candidates for the job.

This is one if my favorite networking stories and it shows the power of enlisting family and friends to help.

A man I was counseling, we will call him Max, was on his way to a Hanukkah celebration where there would be 50 family members. He had been out of work for several months, working only part-time as a consultant, and his uncles were asking him whom they could call on his behalf. He was dreading the event because he was imagining aunts pinching him on the cheek and uncles having people call him with leads that would not be a close fit.

He had a problem, you see. He has been a CFO (Chief Financial Officer) for a custom machine shop and few of his relatives were likely to understand exactly what he had been doing for a living. So he called me before the event and asked my advice.

The family and friends resume

We created a half page resume in prose form in “plain English” that explained that a CFO not only makes sure that incoming bills and outgoing invoices are paid by his staff, but also figures out how a company will be able to raise money to build another factory 5 years into the future, etc… He then went on to explain that the custom machine shops he had been associated with did things like replace broken machinery parts that could not longer be bought from the original manufacturer.

On the day of the big event he had 40 copies of the “family resume” but not enough for everyone. His 88 year old Aunt Hattie said “I want one!” several times in a shrill voice and after a while he gave her one reluctantly, figuring he had just wasted a copy.

Aunt Hattie saves the day

The next morning Aunt Hattie calls him up at 6 a.m. and says: “So you are a CFO. That means you… ” She delivered a correct definition of what a CFO does. Then she says: “And Company X is your competitor, right?” Finally, she announced she had been reading the obituaries that morning and the CFO of his largest competitor had just died.

He called me up laughing very hard and asked me for advice. Obviously it would be very inappropriate to call up the company and tell its President: “Hey, I heard your CFO died.” What should he do?

After we spoke he called the President and asked this question: “I am working as a consultant with one of your competitors, Company Z. Would you be interested in sharing resources with us? When we can’t handle a particular job because of a scheduling conflict or because we don’t have the right machinery, we will ask if you can if you can help. And you could do the same in return. Does this interest you?

The moral of the story

The happy ending to the story is that he started work for the other custom machine shop a week later. And the moral of the story is to remember to empower friends and family to help you reach your goals.