Magic Pot of Jobs

I know, I know, vow to write better, post more, and then… disappear for a week. Sorry dudes.

But I wanted to draw your attention to this Washington Post piece about spider/scrape job sites. It’s an interesting idea, and the benefits to both employers and jobseekers are obvious.

Of course, Monster is going to hate sites like SimplyHired and Indeed, because it’ll no longer make sense to pay $400 to post a job on Monster.

I’m still formulating my opinion on this one. On one hand, the benefits to jobseekers and employers are obvious. And Monster’s own Terms of Use state that all user-submitted content remains the property of the user who submitted it, so it’s not as though Monster’s content is being stolen. I suppose technically it’s theft of content from the employer, but employers choose Monster to get wide exposure for their posting, so it’s hard to imagine that they’d object.

On the other hand, the sites pretty much are spidering Monster’s own database (forbidden by the TOU) essentially to undercut them. That seems shady.

I love the idea of a pay-per-click, search engine-style model for paying for job listing exposure. It seems like it’ll save all kinds of time and money for everyone except for the pay-per-posting sites they compete with. And I love the idea of competing business models- I firmly believe that the model that provides the best value for the money will succeed, even if it isn’t even the best known. I also firmly believe that businesses which do not provide good value for the money deserve to fail in the face of competition from worthier businesses. So I’m not worried about poor ol’ Monster’s success in the face of a new model for posting jobs.

I’m just not sure it’s fair to use Monster’s own system to clobber it.

UPDATE Dave McClure of SimplyHired has stopped by to clarify their use of Monster listings in the comments on this entry. I encourage you to read his remarks and consider them in your own opinion-forming. Thanks, Dave!

The company I work for has a certification program that everyone has to go through if they want to be promoted. It’s a few tests of operational knowledge and a couple of online trainings. The idea is that you have to be there at least a year and have a performance review rating of “good” or better before you can become certified. If you’ve been there less than a year, you can request to have the service duration requirement waived.

The catch is, you have to write the “business case” for why you should receive this special treatment. A business case. For why the company should send me a certificate and a pin, and allow me to put the word “Certified” on my business card 6 month early.

We’re taught to be modest and not to brag about our accomplishments, which is a nice ideal for social settings, but can screw us a bit in business. In interviews, resumes, client presentations, we have to sell ourselves as much as is necessary to achieve our desired objective. But we still don’t want to appear arrogant.

So how do we accomplish it?

First, there are numbers. Everyone wants high-producing people who work ahead of deadlines. I wrote about how I achieved the productivity standard of X dollars for a new employee in 7 months instead of twelve. So talk about how at your previous position, you finished a project a month ahead of deadline and 15% under budget. This works in sales, too- talk about how much time and money your product or service will save the client.

Second, understand how you can solve an employer’s problems. It’s a rare company where they hire on extra people just because they have some extra money in the budget. Companies have problems that they believe can be solved by additional staff. So what do you bring to the table? In my business case, I wrote that since I have recently become the most senior technical recruiter in my office and am participating in the training of the others, it would make sense for me to be certified, lending me extra credibility in that role. Give the employer an additional way to think about how you would fit in at the organization. What’s special about you that will solve their problems?

It’s not enough to present your qualifications and expect that the employer will connect the dots to see what a great employee you’d be. You have to show them all the reasons that you are uniquely qualified for their opening.

I’ve had a request for my thoughts on cover letters. To tell you the truth, in my line of work, I don’t see many cover letters. One of my coworkers does all the incoming applicant screening, so by the time I see a resume, there’s not a cover letter attached. When rresumes are sent to me, they’re usually from people I’ve just spoken to on the phone.

But I do see just enough cover letters to know that the most common problem with them is the same problem that plagues Objective statements on resumes. That is, they’re BORING and generic.

Don’t just ramble about being a hard worker who is flexible to all kinds of environments. Don’t write a cover letter that you could have sent to 50 other companies. Write one that tells me a little about what kind of person you are, what you’ll be like to work with. Here’s a hint: Everyone and their grandma tells me that they’re a hard worker, customer service-oriented, and a quick learner. Tell me something that everyone else isn’t telling me.

While both resumes and cover letters ought to sound very professional, it’s important that they give the sense that there’s a real person behind them, rather than a drone with a list of skills. Joel Spolsky rants pretty effectively on both cover letters and resumes.

Let’s talk for a minute about the “Summary” and “Objective” portions of a resume. When used well, choosing one of these resume features can really tie your experience together and present you as a person, rather than as a collection of dates and job titles. When used poorly, they either make you look like you’re trying (poorly) to pad, or like you didn’t even bother trying to learn anything about the job for which you’re applying.

It should be noted that in many cases, a summary or objective isn’t really even necessary- when in doubt, just leave it out.

The Summary

The summary is best for people with several years of experience, especially those who want to highlight skills that aren’t necessarily assumed to be part of their job descriptions. For example, if you’re a network administrator who has also managed a migration or a rollout and want to highlight that project management experience, you might say something like:

Network administrator with 7 years of progressively responsible experience in user and network support. Experienced in project management and systems migration. Supervised teams of up to 7 people.

What you should not do is use the summary to talk about how smart you are if you don’t have the experience to back it up. Don’t say things like, “Candidate possesses a deep understanding of Information Technology from a substantial perspective.” Even if you come up with a more intelligent way to say it than that, it just looks like you’re trying to make something out of nothing.

The Objective

The objective is best suited for people who have a wide variety of experience, or who are trying to change the focus of their careers, because the experience listed on the resume might not suggest what it is they’re looking to do. For example, if you’ve always done help desk but are looking to move into networking, this would be a good situation in which to use an objective, because it tells me as a potential employer to be looking at your help desk jobs to see if they’ve given you any real network experience.

First, let me tell you what not to do. Don’t use the generic “To obtain a challenging position in the field of ____ that will allow me to utilize my _____ skills.” I see 10 variations of that a day and they’re all useless! Useless, I tell you! It doesn’t tell me anything about what your goals are or what you’d like to specialize in. If you can’t come up with something better than this, leave it off.

Instead, try to tailor your objective to the specific job for which you are applying. This isn’t dishonest- you only apply for jobs that you want, so there’s nothing wrong with saying, “To obtain a position on the development team for a web-based information management system in a start-up company environment,” on the resume you’d send to a company like the software company I used to work for, and then sending the non-profit who needs a webmaster the resume that says, “To obtain a website management position at a non-profit organization focused on education.” Because in each case, it’s true. It also demonstrates that you’ve taken the time to understand the position as well as the company you’re applying to, and you’d be surprised at how many people don’t even bother with that step.

This is especially critical if you’re going to work with a company like mine- I might be looking at your resume and thinking that you’re perfect for this job order I have open that I can’t fill- until I look at your objective and discover that in fact you want to do something completely different.

Someone protested to me today that he doesn’t have enough experience to know what he wants to specialize in. Fair enough. If you don’t have enough experience to know what you want to do, then you don’t have enough experience to use an objective. It’s not strictly necessary. And everyone knows that right out of college, your objective is to get a job, and if it’s in the field you majored in, that’s a huge bonus.

Just a few pieces of advice that ought to go without saying, but apparently don’t (where do people learn to write resumes?):

Be sure that your name is spelled correctly, everywhere it appears on the resume.

Use the advanced features of Word to format your resume. Don’t use a bunch of tabs to align your text. First of all, if you tell me you’re an expert in Microsoft Office, you’d better believe I’m going to do “Show hidden characters” to see if you really are. Secondly, as a staffing agent, I have to strip out your contact information before submitting it to a client. And if your resume needs a little tweaking (just tweaking, wording improvements, no substantial changes), I’m going to do it. If you’ve used the electronic equivalent of paperclips and bubblegum to hold your resume formatting together, you’re very quickly going to irritate me.

Finally, don”t list your experience building a website for a community group you’re part of, and then tell me that its web address is http://www.MCORG@YAHOO.COM. I’m going to think you’re bullshitting me, because you probably are.