Magic Pot of Jobs

I am not a perfectionist.

My house is messy, there is often a spot on my glasses, and I always forget to set aside some extra frosting when decorating a cake. (Take that, Martha Stewart!) As a result, I rarely expect perfection in other people, with one glaring exception. Please don’t submit a resume with spelling and/or usage errors.

Before you send off your well-crafted cover letter, make it a priority to proofread your resume. Better yet, have someone else read it for you. One thing that I learned as English major was that your eye sees what your brain intends, not what your hand wrote. So have mom, your best friend, your cube-mate, someone other than you carefully read the piece of paper that is supposed to represent you and your accomplishments.

Think about it — wouldn’t you rather have someone you trust break it to you that you’re the “director of pubic relations” for a major company, than have the CEO laugh at you and dismiss your accomplishments?

Here are a few points to look out for when proofreading your resume:

1. Font consistency. A resume that uses four different fonts, some bold, others italicized, and a few underlines thrown in for emphasis, is flat-out distracting. To spot this common complaint of resume readers, look at the first thing that you bolded/italicized/underlined/changed style/changed case: was it a header? Are your other headers bolded/etc.? Rinse and repeat for all font changes.

2. Periods. If you use them after bullet points or sentences, make sure they’re after all bullet points and sentences.

3. Spelling. Check the spelling of companies and computer programs. These are often not spotted by spell check. I recently read a resume for someone looking for an advertising position. She mentioned that she worked with “Leo Brunet.” What she meant was “Leo Burnett,” a prominent, well-known advertising agency. I wonder if hiring managers at the major ad agencies overlooked her resume based on this error.

4. Headings on multiple pages. If your experience warrants more than one page (more on that on another posting), create a header with your name, e-mail address, and phone number on all pages after the first. Most recruiters and HR folks still print and read resumes.

5. And + &. Only use & or + as a substitute for “and” in official company or product names. For example: “Created brochures + flyers for a local marina.” doesn’t look artistic or creative, it looks sloppy.

6. Too, to, and 2, two. For too and to, see http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/to.html. For 2 and two, Associated Press style dictates that numbers less than ten are written out. Exceptions include dates, addresses, phone numbers, and software versions. For 2 and two see http://www.utexas.edu/coc/journalism/SOURCE/journal_links/AP_style.html#d.

7. Verb tense. If an accomplishment was from a past job, it should be in the past tense, as should all other accomplishments and duties from that job. If you are discussing your current role, define your tasks in the present tense.

8. General quirkiness. This is not always easy to spot when you proofread, but another person should be able to see anything strange. If you can’t rely on anyone else to proof your resume, try reading it aloud, SLOWLY and CAREFULLY. If you (or ideally, your proofreader) have to re-read something to understand it, it needs to be rephrased.

These are the first things that I look for when reviewing a resume. I’m interested in hearing feedback or your favorite tips.

Introducing MPOJ’s first contributor-who-is-not-Tiffany (guest author? contributing editor? whatever…): Stephanie Wasilik!

Stephanie is my very able partner-in-geek-pimping here at the Major International Staffing Firm, and has heard me yammering on enough about my blog that now she wants to join in the fun.

Stephanie has a wealth of experience in writing, tech, and PR, and on top of matching techies with employers like peanut butter and chocolate, she’s teaching me about the difference between “who” and “whom.”

When I go on vacation this week, the comment form issue might even get fixed so you can give her a warm welcome. Yay Stephanie!

I’d like to take a moment to rant about something that has been bugging me all day.

I hate when clients blow me off in the middle of a search-in-progress. I have clients that receive résumés from me and then stop returning my calls. I have clients that will go so far as to interview my talent, and then stop returning my calls.

If you don’t want to hire my talent, say so. If you’ve found an internal candidate, or if your CEO decides that there isn’t enough money in the budget to hire someone, or whatever, just say so. It’s part of my job, and you won’t hurt my feelings. You win some, you lose some.

But don’t just blow me off. Look, while you’re taking your time to get back to me, I’m still getting paid. You’re still getting paid. You know who probably isn’t getting paid? My candidate, who is waiting around to find out if he’s getting a job or if he’s going to have to squeak by on unemployment, or put up with his low-paying job a little longer.

Not only is your avoidance disrespectful of me and my time, it’s disrespectful of my talent, who may very well be dealing with all manner of unemployment and underemployment-related stressors. This is someone who is calling me every week, wanting to know if I’ve heard anything about that really great job she interviewed for, and knowing she’s going to have to go face her family over the holidays and answer all kinds of questions about her employment situation.

I had two clients today finally give me feedback after weeks of ignoring my calls and emails today, and only because when I emailed them this morning I explained that I was trying to get some resolution for my talent over the holidays.

Subtext: “Do not ignore me again and leave these people hanging over Christmas, you Grinch.”

Look at that… apparently my comments form is broken, at least in IE. If you are using IE and can’t leave a comment, please go get yourself a real browser and try again. I haven’t had a chance to test it in other browsers yet.

Otherwise, you can email me at tiffany -at- baxendell.com to comment for the time being while I sort this out (which I hope will be sometime after I get home from my networking event this evening).

Look dudes! I am up for Best Third Party Recruiting Blog at Recruiting.com.

So, you can vote for you favorite recruiting blogs here, including for me, if I happen to be a favorite of yours. If you think I suck, attach your comments to items purchased from my wishlist, and you never have to read my blog again, promise.

Tiff and Pud

Originally uploaded by tbridge.

When I went to Webzine 2005 a couple of months ago, I was giving this blog rather a lot of thought. I only had the vaguest idea of what I wanted to do with it- my thoughts were pretty much limited to wanting to take all my incredulous ranting and turn it into something at least moderately helpful for others.

After reading a number of other recruiting blogs around the intarweb, I was reluctantly coming to the conclusion that I was going to have to clean up my act, use more professional language, and lessen the snark if I wanted to make anything of my little sandbox.

But you see, at Webzine, I met Philip “Pud” Kaplan, currently of Adbrite, and creator of Mobog and FuckedCompany, the latter of which was one of my favorite sites when I was being dotcommed.

You see, Pud is my hero. If I recall correctly, at it’s peak, FC was making approximately $90,000/month, while companies all around it were tanking. All this off the efforts of one guy, who was adamantly snarky and posted entries which involved phrases like “rock out with your cock out” on a regular basis. According to Pud, Mobog is just a hobby site of his that makes $3000/month.

It’s not that I really intend to make money off the Magic Pot of Jobs. Making back my hosting costs would be nice, but not necessary. But my point is, if a guy like Pud can turn his snark into gold, there’s no reason I have to go all straightlaced to turn my little site into something bigger than I originally planned.

We’ve been having a lot of conversations at the office about a trend we’re noticing a lot of in the IT field lately. We’re getting all kind of employers who essentially want an eight-armed, Jack-of-all-trades, interdisciplinary employee to solve all their problems for the low, low price of $15/hour.

First it was the company that wanted an experienced web designer who was also a competent Linux administrator.

Then there was the company who wanted the programmer, with client relations experience, who could also manage a network and VoIP system.

Today it was the company who wanted the administrative assistant who is also an expert in Quark and is willing to work for $30,000.

How does this happen? How do employers’ expectations get so wildly out of sync with reality?

We have a theory about this. It goes like this:

After the dotcom bubble burst and thousands of techies lost their jobs, the ones who were left suddenly found themselves having to wear a wide variety of hats- designer, developer, administrator, even receptionist. The ones who didn’t get to keep their jobs found themselves in a hostile marketplace, and had to take administrative jobs not related to their disciplines.

People grew into unique roles in organizations, roles that not only included the jobs they were hired for, but all the other skills they had, and they developed new skills while waiting for the economy to rebound. Suddenly you’ve got office manager/web developers, client service/programmers, sysadmin/designers, etc.

This isn’t entirely bad, of course. Well-rounded IT people are good for companies, and strong overall business process knowledge makes IT people more valuable. But there’s a downside too- all these companies who built complex roles around employees who took on lower-skill, uninteresting, or rare responsibilities or skills are seeing the economy rebound. Employees, tired of hunkering down and waiting for better times, realize their skills and hard-won business experience make them worth a crapload more money elsewhere, so they look out for their own career path and jump ship.

The company is left with this oddly-shaped hole where their employee was. Then they call us and want us to replace the employee they took 5 years to train tomorrow, and for cheap.

Riiiiight. Let me just get out my fairy dust and take care of that for you.

So I was talking to a candidate today about his experience, and he was telling me about his time at “Mead, you know, the maker of Trapper Keeper…”

Is it bad that it took every ounce of self-control I had to not sing the “I love my Trapper Keeper” song from South Park?

I spent the rest of the interview supressing a smile as the dulcet tones of Eric Cartman played through my mind.

Although I work for a company that does the majority of its business in office and light industrial placements, I work in the Professional division, which specializes in IT and Creative solutions.

I had hoped that my cushy spot in Professional would shelter me from ever having to have The Stinky Talk with a talent. Alas, it did not.

A client called me the other day to tell me that while he was thoroughly pleased with the quality of work my talent was doing, there was… an issue. The embarrassment was evident in his voice.

“Well, just go ahead and say it and we’ll figure it out. It’s what I’m here for.”

“There’s… an odor problem.”

“Okaaaay. What kind of odor?”

“He needs to shower.”

“I see. I’ll discuss it with him.”

Great. Now I’ve committed to telling someone that not only does he smell, but it’s enough of a problem that his coworkers are complaining to me about it.

I’m not good at this kind of stuff. I do reasonably well when I have to confront someone who has clearly done something wrong that I can be mad about, but how do you tell your employee that he smells bad?

One of the advantages to working for a large company (especially if you’re fairly new to the recruiting field like I am) is that we have an entire department dedicated to helping us figure this stuff out. And again, because so much of the company’s business is industrial, they get this question a lot.

It turns out, my instincts on how to handle the situation were pretty good, but it was nice to hear them confirmed. Here is what I learned:

- Start by complimenting the employee on the work they’re doing. (If they’re doing bad work, then you have bigger problems than B.O.)
- Explain that there is a concern that is uncomfortable to talk about, but you’d rather the employee hear it from you, privately, than in some other fashion.
- “There is a concern about… an odor issue. With us all working so closely together, odor is becoming a problem.”
- DO NOT suggest the causes of the odor yourself. Just ask the employee if it’s something he or she can address.
- LISTEN very carefully to the answer. Odor can be caused by any number of things- hygeine habits, diet, medical issues, etc.
- Tread carefully. Suggesting that someone change his or her diet could be seen as discrimination, since diets are often culturally determined. If there is a medical cause, it could be an ADA issue.
- Ultimately, treat the problem like any other performance issue and just ask the employee to take care of it.
- Remind the employee that you respect him and the work he does, and that’s why you want to help him succeed as much as possible.

As it turned out, my talent took it really well. So well, in fact, that I was afraid he hadn’t understood what I was telling him- I didn’t want to press the issue and make things more uncomfortable. My business partner heard the conversation and assures me that I was quite clear without overstating the point, so we’ll see.

Dudes, it seems that MPOJ has been nominated for Best Recruiting Advice Blog.

You like me, you really like me.
Votes in every category can be sent to blogawards -at- recruiting.com.