Clue Wagon » Surviving Unemployment

Why Candidate Pipelines Are Good For You

Kerry Scott — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 14:00:41 +0000

A reader writes:

I just had a half-hour phone interview with a recruiter. Right off the bat, she told me that she doesn’t really have a job opening. She’s just building her “pipeline.” I almost hung up. Why do they waste my time like that?

Well, it’s possible that she was wasting your time. I don’t think so, though.

Recruiters build candidate pipelines so that they have people in mind when an opening occurs. For example, when I was working for a brewery, we worked hard to build relationships with all of the people in the brewing industry who might be a fit for the types of jobs we had. Then, when a job became available, we didn’t have to run an ad. We just went to the database and pulled up the people we already knew from our months of relationship building.

This model doesn’t work when the candidate is somehow deceived. If you’re tricked into thinking there’s an opening, that’s not cool. It sounds like this recruiter was up front with you though, in which case there really isn’t a problem. Basically, you’re networking…with someone who fills jobs in your line of work. That’s good for both of you.

I think we’re going to see a lot more of this after the holidays. The economy isn’t good yet, but one of the first glimmers of hope you’ll see is recruiters starting to rebuild candidate pipelines. I’m already hearing about people who are planning to do that in January. That’s good news for all of us.

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Why Smart People Use Umbrellas When It Rains

Kerry Scott — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 14:00:14 +0000

I’m always amazed at how questions from readers go in streaks.

A few weeks ago, I had a flurry of relocation questions. Now, suddenly, I have a bunch of people who are asking some variation on this theme:

I’ve been out of work for months. I have a job offer, but it’s not in my field (or the pay sucks, or it’s a step down from my old job, or whatever). I was considering taking it, because I need money and I have no other prospects, but career experts keep telling me that it will ruin my resume and I’ll never work again. What should I do?

First, you should require those “career experts” to pay your bills for a couple of months, as penance for giving you such crappy advice. Next, you should ask yourself the following questions:

Does having money suck more or less than not having money?
Does sitting on my ass watching The Real Housewives of Orange County marathons make me a more attractive candidate than going to work, even if the work is un-glamorous or “beneath me?”
Would I ever want to work for someone so stupid that she thought it would be better to spend months watching the aforementioned The Real Housewives of Orange County marathons instead of earning a living somewhere?

Then, assuming you’re not an idiot and the position being offered is not “ho” or “crack dealer,” TAKE THE JOB.

I call these jobs umbrella jobs. That’s because when you’re caught in a downpour, and someone offers you an umbrella, you take it. You don’t lament the fact that it’s not a designer umbrella, or it doesn’t match your shoes, or it’s a color you hate. You take it, and you open it, and the rain stays off of you. Then, when you get home and out of the rain, you get your own (better) umbrella…or, maybe, you find out that you actually really like that umbrella they gave you after all. It happens.

Let me tell you about the two times I’ve taken an umbrella job:

When I first moved to Milwaukee from Los Angeles in 1992, I came with no job lined up. I got here on a Friday, and when the Sunday paper came out, I went through it and cut out all of the administrative assistant ads and taped them to index cards. Then I typed out cover letters for each one of them on my trusty electric typewriter, on my fancy cream colored paper. Then I paired them up with the resumes I’d had printed at the print shop, and walked them to the post office to mail. Kids, this is how we did things back in the day.

When I got home, I found that there was one more little cut out classified ad on the floor below my desk. I was tired, and I’d just typed out 32 cover letters by hand, and I’d already mailed the whole stack…so I debated whether it was worth bothering with #33. The ad didn’t look like much, and the pay was really low. Then I remembered I was alone in a strange town, with rent to pay on my first apartment and no money left after paying for the move. So I typed up one more letter, sealed the envelope, and went back to the post office.

I ended up getting the job from that ad. It sucked. In fact, it sucked so badly that I would have quit the very first week if it wasn’t for the fact that the intern who also worked there was hot. I endured that crappy job for several months for the sake of that intern…who is now my husband (and still a hottie). I still have the index card with the ad. It’s in a box somewhere with my notes from boys in 10th grade and my yearbooks and the “I Voted” sticker from my first election.

About four years later, I moved to Washington, DC with a degree in political science and a vague idea that I was going to work on Capitol Hill or at the White House or something. Again, I didn’t know anyone, and I didn’t have a job lined up. I’d never been east of Chicago before this.

I took a job with a temp agency. They sent me on a three-week stint as an executive assistant at the phone company (an assignment that irked me, because I’d worked my way through college as an executive assistant, and I thought now that I was a college graduate, the world should recognize my brilliance. I was an idiot.). The three weeks turned into a couple of months, and one day, I overheard a couple of managers in the copy room complaining about having to drive downstate to help conduct interviews on college campuses. I volunteered to go with them and help out. I had a great time. I volunteered to do more on-campus interviews. That was the start of my career in human resources (a path I’ve never regretted for a minute, even though I’m changing directions now).

Now, your umbrella job may not lead to a spouse or career…but it will almost certainly lead to a paycheck. Paychecks are your friends. If you’re in a position to be picky, well, more power to you. But if you’re wavering because some idiot told you that earning a paycheck was a bad thing…nope. That’s a load of crap. Don’t listen to ‘em.

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9 Things to Do In Your First Week of Unemployment

Kerry Scott — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 21:16:17 +0000

Your first week of employment can be a real mess. You don’t know what to you with yourself, and you don’t yet realize that the patterns you start that first week tend to continue through your unemployment. That means it’s important to make good choices right from the start. Here are some things you should do right off the bat:

Shave. There’s nothing sadder than a recession beard…except maybe that weird pallor the lower half of your face has when you finally shave off the recession beard because you have an interview. If you already have facial hair, fine. Otherwise, this probably isn’t the time to go for the homeless look.
Wear pants with zippers. It’s really tempting to lie around in your pajamas, just because you can. It’s okay to do this for, say, a day. Maybe two. Beyond that, trust me when I tell you that this will not contribute to your effort to maintain a positive outlook. Get dressed in real clothes every day. It really does make a difference.
Make a list of things you want to get done. One of the sucky things about suddenly being home all the time is that you don’t ever achieve anything. When you have a job (even a lousy job), you get things done. When you’re home looking for a job, it can feel like all you do is email resumes into black holes. You can help combat this by assigning yourself work and then completing it. A couple of months ago, I ripped out the awful carpeting in our living and dining room. It took a week or so to get it done, because being home with a 2-year-old and a 4-year-old is pretty much incompatible with a project like this. While I was doing it, though, I was amazed at how great it felt. Every day, I could actually see the progress I made (specifically, I could see that the hardwood floors underneath were in astonishingly bad shape…but that’s a whole other story). Job hunting can feel so sisyphean that you have to find other ways to create that sense of accomplishment you got from work.
Clean and organize. You’re going to be home a lot. It will be less depressing if your house isn’t a mess. This is the opportunity to clean out your closets, basement, garage, etc. You’ll start your next job with everything organized, and you’ll probably find a lot of stuff you can donate to charity as well. That’s good, because although unemployment sucks, there are people worse off than you who need that stuff. You’ll also get a tax deduction, which will help offset the fact that you’re going to owe taxes for that unemployment check you’re (hopefully) receiving.
Clean up family photos. You know what’s hugely time-consuming? Scanning in your old family photos. Since you’re unemployed, you have time for this. Then they’ll all be on your computer. Then, when you get a job, you can get one of those online backup services (I love Carbonite, but there are others out there too). People always say that if their house burned down, they’d miss the pictures of their kids and other family members the most. If my house burns down, I won’t have that problem, because my pictures are all backed up (well, not all…but I’m working on it). I never had time for this sort of thing when I had a job.
Leave the house daily. Seriously. Make sure you leave every day, even if you only go for a walk around the block. Here in Wisconsin, it can be tempting to hole up when it’s cold and snowy. I did that the first winter. It was not good. Don’t do that. You need air and sunlight and stuff.
Brush up on your tech skills. If you’ve been saying you don’t get this Twitter thing, or you aren’t sure Facebook is for you or Google Wave is for you, now’s the time to try them out. It’s easy to stop keeping up with stuff…and before you know it, you’re way behind. Take advantage of this opportunity to see for yourself what the kids are doing these days.
Be a tourist. A lot of cities have free discounts for various places on certain days of the week. I can get into museums here in Milwaukee for free once a week, just because I’m a Milwaukee county resident. That’s the sort of thing I never had time for when I worked full-time, and they’re much less crowded on those days. See what your city has to offer.
Do something that feels decadent. Most adults don’t get big chunks of time off. Like it or not, you have one. Find ways to make it a treat—go grocery shopping in the middle of the day, or take a nap after lunch, or do whatever else you always wanted to when you were working. Right now, I’m wearing slippers and watching it snow. I never got to do that when I had a job (because I spent most of my time in windowless conference rooms, wearing uncomfortable shoes). There’s always a silver lining, but sometimes you have to remind yourself to look for it.

Note: I wrote notes for this list about two months ago. That’s when a friend of mine got his 60 day notice that he was losing his job. I got out a calendar, figured out when his first week of being unemployed would hit, and then planned this post for that date. Apparently, I reverse-jinxed him, though, because at 3:15pm on his very last day of work, he got a great job offer…so he won’t need my list after all. Sometimes the good guys win.

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Candidate Dealbreakers? Let’s Hear ‘Em.

Kerry Scott — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 11:44:57 +0000

Since a lot of Clue Wagon readers are HR/hiring people, here’s another one of those ask-the-audience things:

What are the things candidates do (aside from the actual content of the interview or experience) that will get them disqualified?

I don’t mean the stuff that annoys you. I mean the stuff that, if the candidate does it, you will immediately put them in the “NO” pile.

I ask because I’m starting to feel a little uncomfortable with some of the stuff I’m reading, both in my email and out in the world. I see a lot of candidates who are saying, “Oh my gosh, I thought my resume had to be one page, so I shrunk it down, and then I just read your post, and now I’m like, is this the reason I’ve been unemployed for 10 months?

No. The reason you’ve been unemployed for 10 months is more than likely the fact that there are six candidates for every one job opening in the United States. In some places, the ratio is slightly better. In some it’s worse. But the math sucks from coast to coast, and although I give advice to job hunters three times a week, I can’t think of a single thing I’ve posted (aside from the Tales of the Cluefree) that would actually make me disqualify you for a job before an interview. For example, I talked about not calling women with double-surnames “Mrs.,” and the truth is that it annoys the crap out of me when people call me that. But would I disqualify a candidate for doing so? Of course not. I’d suck as a recruiter if my personal preferences trumped my mission to find the person who is the best fit for the position. The same is true for most every other little peeve I’ve written about…even the follow-up calls. It all factors in, but when I hear from candidates who are stressing over small details like this…well, I feel bad. Because job hunting sucks hard enough without people telling you that you will never work again if you get some tiny detail wrong. Plus everyone’s tiny detail is different, so how the hell are you supposed to know what they are for the person you’re emailing? You’re lucky if you can even find out the person’s name.

So anyway. Dealbreakers. What are yours?

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The Myth of Resume Buzzwords

Kerry Scott — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 20:54:50 +0000

Yesterday’s post on why you shouldn’t customize your resume generated a fair number of comments. One of the things that came up a lot was the idea that you have to have certain buzzwords from an ad in your resume in order to have a recruiter actually see it.

Let me tell you a secret:

That’s pretty much bullshit.

This is more or less an urban legend. It’s something that some talking head said on some 24-hour news channel once, and then other people started saying it, and now there’s this whole legion of people who earnestly believe that recruiters have secret codewords, and you only get to have your resume viewed by a human if you know these secret codeword. Being codewords, they’re very, very hard to figure out, and you probably need to spend a lot of time pondering it (or better yet, hire somebody way smarter than you to “coach” you).

Doesn’t that just SOUND like a load of crap? Because it is. I really can’t say enough what a load of crap this is. It’s right up there with “Microsoft will send you $1,000 if you forward this email” and “If you go to New York, people are going to kidnap and drug you and steal your kidneys.”

Here’s the truth:

Not every company has an applicant tracking system (that’s the fancy resume database—it’s called an ATS for short). Most big companies do, and some mid-sized companies do (but not as many as the media and the blogs and the people who sell them would lead you to believe). The company I last worked at had 3,400 employees and a TON of turnover/recruiting, and they only just implemented an ATS in 2007. It cost $600,000. A lot of companies don’t have that kind of money…so they don’t have an applicant tracking system. Very generally speaking, if a company has you apply by filling out a long form online, they have an ATS. If they have you copy-and-paste your cover letter and resume into a very brief form, they may or may not have an ATS (but mostly they don’t, or the form would take you an hour to fill out). If they’re having you email a resume, they probably don’t have an ATS (there are some ancient systems from the 1990s into which you’d email a resume, but they’re the exception, not the rule).
When you enter your cover letter and resume into the ATS, they’re both searchable. That means that, to use the example Charles gave in the comments on yesterday’s thread, if your resume says that you have experience as a trainer of beginners, and you’re concerned that the ad says they want someone with experience with novice users, you can call that experience out in your cover letter using phrase novice users. That way you’re covered no matter what phrase they’re using (although I would bet you a lot of money, if I had it, that even the dumbest recruiter is using the phrase trainer).
I’ve been recruiting for 14 years, and I’ve hired more corporate recruiters than I can count. Most of my friends are in recruiting and/or HR (jealous?). I know a lot of people who fill jobs for a living. I don’t know a single one (even the ones who suck) who is using secret codewords to filter resumes. They’re using words so obvious that if they’re not on your resume, you’re probably seriously un qualified. For example, when I’ve run an ad for a recruiter position, the words I use to search the ATS are: Recruit*. Hire/Hiring/Hired. Interview*. If I’d run an ad saying I wanted someone who was AIRS-trained, I might search on AIRS…but never in a million years would I ONLY look at the ones that had that word, even if I knew I was ONLY going to hire people who had that training. Even the recruiters I know who suck wouldn’t do that, because then they wouldn’t have a sense of their candidate pool. Recruiters want to know what sort of population their ad drew in. They want to know whether their ad drew in 10 good people out of 250, or 200 out of 250. It makes a difference, because the hiring manager is going to ask, and because that’s part of how they determine how much to pay the person who gets the job, and because they need to know whether that was a good ad to run or if it needs work. So nobody, and I mean NOBODY is going to be dumb enough to ONLY use the secret codewords. Seriously. In fact, I don’t know very many recruiters who don’t at least glance at every submission, for curiosity’s sake if nothing else. I’ve never run an ad and not looked at every submission.
Some people are putting out this information because they want to make money. One of the reasons I’m so fired up about this today is because a couple of days ago, a friend of mine got an email. This friend works for a company that is widely known to be laying off a ton of people, and the email was an offer from a “resume coach.” The email talked about how employers only search for certain words on resumes, and these words are very hard to figure out for lay people, and since my friend didn’t know these secret words, he’d never get a job and his children would starve and they’d be buried in unmarked graves under a freeway overpass. For the low price of A THOUSAND FREAKIN’ DOLLARS, though, this guy would help my friend by writing him a resume that would get past the pearly gates of every employer in the U.S., and ensure that he took his rightful place among the incredibly lucky few who knew the secret and were therefore gainfully employed. My friend, who is facing a job loss after 15 years with the same company, is feeling pretty vulnerable, and she sent me this email asking if she should hire this clown, because she certainly didn’t know the secret codewords, and she didn’t want to starve her children. Now, how the hell would this “resume coach” know the buzzwords of my friend’s particular line of work better than my friend, who is actually IN that line of work? And how many people has this “resume coach” actually HIRED? And how many people actually fell for this line of crap?

Bottom line—corporate recruiters search for resumes using keywords. They do it the same way you search, say, Google for something you’re looking for. If you’re looking for a job hunting blog, you probably search for job hunting blog. You don’t search for clue boob ice cream Sandberg (well, actually, one person DID use that to find me…so maybe that’s not the best example). People try to make this (and lots of other things about job hunting) into this big scary thing that you can’t possibly figure out because you’re an idiot and they’re not. It’s just not true. It’s hard, but it’s not THAT hard.

Disclaimers: I’m not knocking all resume coaches. In fact, I’ve met some great ones through this blog and through Twitter. I’m just knocking the ones that prey on your insecurities and treat you like a moron and make stuff up. Also, there’s no picture on the RSS version of this post and it’s probably full of typos because I’m trying to get it done before the bus drops off my daughter, who is on her third day of kindergarten. I want to get this pissed-off post done quickly so I can play Candyland. Also, it’s fine with me if you want to put buzzwords on your resume. I just don’t want to you to feel you have to spend two hours on each opening. That’s going to beat the crap out of you, and then it won’t matter if your resume had the right buzzword, because you’ll suck in the interview. That’s a bad investment.

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Why You Shouldn’t Customize Your Resume For Each Job Opportunity

Kerry Scott — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 15:24:18 +0000

Something came up in the comments of this thread that I’d like to talk about further: the idea that you should your cover letter and resume for every job opportunity.

I see this advice posted fairly frequently, and I always wonder what those people are smoking. Then I hear from job seekers who say they are spending a couple of hours crafting a response to each job posting (aside from the online application itself, which can’t be helped). I’m always shocked when I hear that. It just seems nuts to me. If I spent a couple of hours on each cover letter/resume bundle, I’d be depressed and crabby…and that depressed crabbiness would probably show in the finished product, in my interviews, and in my interactions with my family and friends. That’s bad.

Here’s the part I don’t get: What are you all customizing exactly? Because the cover letter should be 4-5 (short) paragraphs at most, and since the first and last paragraphs are standard stuff like contact information. That leaves you a couple of (short) paragraphs to customize. You definitely should do that, but there are only so many things you can say, and after a few months of job hunting, you’ll have said all of them. This part should take 10-15 minutes, tops. If it’s taking longer, you’re probably just stressing yourself out, which isn’t going to improve the end product one bit.

As for customizing the resume….well, here I’m completely stumped. If you have equal experience in two or more fields (like, say, you’ve worked a couple of years in retail and a couple of years in HR), you can have two different resumes for each of those fields, so that you can look for jobs in both. I can see why that would make sense. But to change the resume itself for each opening seems unnecessary to me. Your experience is your experience, so how can you change it that much? That’s what the cover letter is for—to draw out how your experience applies to this particular position. That’s the entire purpose of a cover letter. Doing so on the resume as well means you are sending them a version of yourself that’s based on your guess as to what they’re looking for. You’d have to be a pretty good guesser to make that worthwhile.

Your resume should be focused on presenting your experience in the best possible light, not in a light you think they might want to see. Even if you happen to guess right (which is unlikely), it’s creepy to receive a resume that looks like a copy-and-paste of the job description. I always wonder about the authenticity of the ones that look like such a direct match that they can’t possibly be real.

Unless you’re applying to one of those long-shot, way-out-of-your-field opportunities, I suggest sticking to a (short) customized cover letter and the version of your resume that best reflects your achievements in the field that applies to the position. The time you save can be better spent networking, and the energy you save can be spent keeping your spirits up so that you can continue to plug away at finding a job. It’s hard enough not to get sucked into the abyss of depression and self-flagellation when you’re job hunting without torturing yourself by investing a couple of unnecessary hours in each opening. Better investing that time will lead to more opportunities, and that’s a better return on your investment.

If you’re one of the candidates who does this, enlighten me. What are you customizing? How long does it take you to apply for a job (aside from those heinous online applications)? Do you feel it’s worth the investment?

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An Application is Not a Marriage Proposal

Kerry Scott — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 12:02:03 +0000

I just have to get this off my chest:

When you are applying for a job, you are…well, applying for a job. You are not making a lifetime commitment. You are not signing a blood pact. You are not tattooing some guy’s name across your chest. You are not signing over your firstborn. All your application says is, “I’m interested in hearing more about this.” That’s all it is.

This means that you don’t have to decide up front whether you want the job before you even apply. You just need to decide that (a) you need a job, and (b) this might not suck. That’s it.

You can fritter away weeks, even months, waiting for the perfect job to be posted on some job board…just so you can apply. Here’s what’s going to happen then: a thousand other people will apply too. Then you’ll spend the next couple of months make yourself crazy by checking your email every four minutes. Odds are you won’t get the job, because a thousand people is a lot. Then you’ll be crushed, and you’ll feel like a loser, and that feeling will make it even harder for you to beat the odds the next time a perfect job comes along. In the meantime, you’ll starve to death, because perfect jobs are pretty hard to come by (and they’re rarely posted on job boards). That’s why they invented the lottery.

You don’t find a spouse by dating only people you are 100% sure you would want to marry. You find a spouse by meeting lots of people. Otherwise, you end up either alone or married to the wrong person (usually, and I’m sure there are exceptions, but they mostly happen on compounds in the western United States, before the government agents arrive). The same is true for finding a job. You have to kiss a lot of frogs to find a prince (or princess, or whatever you’re into).

Oh, and here’s another clue: The one you think you really, really want might actually suck. Once I got a job at a place that is a major “employer of choice” in my town. Everyone was envious. Getting that job was like getting into Harvard. Then I started the job, and I hated it. Taking a new job is always a gamble, even after a bunch of interviews. If you think you can tell the good from the sucky just by reading the ad, you’re either crazy or psychic. My money’s on crazy.

There’s no perfect job. There are only jobs that suck and jobs that don’t. Most jobs don’t suck harder than unemployment.

Apply. Get out there. The worst that can happen is that you get some interview experience, and find out where you DON’T want to work. That’s useful information that helps you find the job that suits you. Don’t apply for jobs that are a crazy stretch, but if there’s a reasonable chance that you’re qualified, go for it.

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“Would this annoy you?” Yes. Yes it would.

Kerry Scott — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 11:18:43 +0000

A loyal Clue Wagon reader sent me a link to this article, asking, “As a recruiter, would this annoy you?”

Yes. Someone calling me at the end of a meeting when I have to pee, to recite a script that says…what? “Please hire me, because I’m really sick of being unemployed, and I’m really fabulous?” Yep, that would be annoying.

I see these articles a lot. In fact, they’re one of the reasons I started this blog. And the thing is, the advice isn’t really too far off the mark. I mean, you can’t just apply and wait for something to happen. You have to make contact. But this article is missing a few key points:

Phone calls suck. I’ve said this before: a telephone is an inherently rude instrument. You’re busy doing something, and suddenly a loud bell rings, and you’re supposed to drop everything because it was a good time for someone else to talk. That’s a flawed concept. That’s why email was invented. If you want to cold-call complete strangers, cold email them instead. At least then there’s some chance that you won’t annoy the crap out of them, that they’ll remember your name, and that they’ll be able to actually respond to you. I don’t have time to talk to people when I’m running from one meeting to another, but I have time to respond to emails at 5am (when I can’t call, because it’s too early). The email candidates get a response. The phone candidates probably won’t.
Scripts suck. Have you ever received a call from a telemarketer? They have scripts too, and they’re annoying. Most people aren’t good at delivering a script. That’s another reason email works better than phone calls. I’m a fan of having a few key bullet points written out to help keep you on track during difficult conversations. But scripts? Nope. Additionally, what are you going to say that’s going to make me want to throw out my current hiring process and just pick you instead? Even if the hiring process is bad, most people aren’t going to admit it that easily.
Everyone’s doing this. The economy is bad, and it has been for a while. That means salespeople aren’t making sales. Do you know what salespeople do? They cold call. The HR people I know aren’t answering their phones at all anymore, because they’re being bombarded with cold calls from desperate salespeople. Do you really want to get into that mix? Because if you think you’re the only one calling to say you want something, you’re crazy.
“Key hiring positions” are relative. I hope the book spells out that someone in a “key hiring position” is a hiring manager, not an HR person. Remember, HR people don’t hire (unless the job is in the HR department). Hiring managers hire. That’s why they’re called “hiring managers.”
It’s a whole lot of peddling in the wrong direction. You’re supposed to do in-depth research to find all of these names of people to call, and “the point is not to know them personally, just [to get names of] people to call.” That’s a lot of work just to get 50 names so you can get one interview (and really, I think that’s an incredibly optimistic ratio). What if you put that same effort into building a network so you DID know someone personally? Because cold calling doesn’t get you a job. Warm calling gets you a job. Spend your time building your network so that when you put a message out to everyone you know saying, “Does anyone have a contact at Acme Corporation?” someone does. THAT’S a good use of your time.

Don’t get me wrong—there are a few things about this message that are dead on. I agree that you have to be aggressive about looking for a job. I agree that you have to talk to a lot of people. I definitely agree that you have to be prepared for rejection, and that you can’t let all that rejection get you down. It’s part of the job of finding a job.

In terms of the mechanics of how this is supposed to work, though, I have to ask: Do you like getting calls from telemarketers? Do you buy what they’re selling? Because this approach boils down to the same concept…calling a bunch of people hoping someone will bite. That plays to your desire to DO something to alleviate your frustration, but that doesn’t necessarily translate to a job. Putting that same about of effort into a more targeted approach will get you back to work much faster.

FULL DISCLOSURE: I haven’t read the book in question…just the blog post I linked to above. I tried to find the book, but they didn’t have it at my nearest giant two-story bookstore, and my local library didn’t have it either. I didn’t think I knew the author of the book, but in trying to find his company’s website or something else to tell me about his background, I found his LinkedIn profile. Apparently we worked for the same company at the same time. I worked in Milwaukee, and he evidently worked in Chicago. I don’t remember him, and I don’t think we ever met (although I suck at remembering stuff like that, so if he reads this: Sorry dude. Nothing personal. I’m bad at remembering stuff like that). I avoided going to Chicago whenever possible, and I was on maternity leave for a big chunk of his time there, so I don’t really know anything about him. His LinkedIn profile appears to be incomplete, and I couldn’t find a company website for him.

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5 Reasons the Employer Re-Posted the Ad

Kerry Scott — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 13:00:10 +0000

You know what sucks?

When you apply for a job, or even interview for a job…and then they re-run the ad a week later. Job hunting is hard on your ego to begin with, but this seems to be the thing that really makes candidate feel like crap.

The thing is, I can only think of a couple of times in my whole career when I’ve re-run an ad because I truly didn’t have a single good candidate in the whole batch. You always think that’s the reason, but I can tell you that usually it’s something else. Here are five reasons my corporate recruiting friends and I have re-posted ads:

Something went wrong. Most of the recruiters I know are looking for jobs. The people who are doing the recruiting at a lot of companies are not recruiters…they’re HR generalists or hiring managers. These folks are doing the best they can, but they aren’t always experts on the technology the recruiters use to fill jobs. Sometimes they don’t know how to use the fancy applicant database. Sometimes the email gets screwed up. I once knew a harried HR manager who accidentally deleted the entire Outlook folder with every applicant she’d had for the past two years. Stuff happens. That’s why you might need to go old school.
They waited too long. As I mentioned in last week’s post on unresponsive employers, sometimes nothing happens because…nothing happens. The manager wants an ad, so the recruiter runs the ad…and then the manager goes on vacation, or gets busy with something else, or just sits on the stack of resumes. Weeks (and even months) go by, and by the time they’re ready to actually work on filling the job, they think the candidates must surely have found jobs by now. Plus, truth be told, they’re a little embarrassed by the fact that they’ve kept these people hanging so long. They’re afraid that if they call you, you’ll say something like, “Geez, I applied for that one two months ago—I’ve already accepted another job. What took you so long?” So they don’t. They just start over instead, because it seems easier. Sounds ridiculous? Yep. But this happens all the time. Seriously.
The person they hired didn’t work out. Hiring is not an exact science. Sometimes they get it wrong. Other times, a candidates accept the offer, then takes another job instead, or doesn’t pass the drug test, or fails to show up on the first day (really!). It’s embarrassing for the employer to call the applicants they’ve already rejected (or left hanging). Plus, it’s awkward to say, “We really liked you, and it turns the guy we thought was even better actually smokes crack, so we’d like to offer you the job instead.” So they don’t. They often think it’s easier to just start over. In this market, though, you can’t be offended by being the runner up. The competition is incredibly fierce out there, and some really good people are ending up being the second choice. Obviously, they should have picked you to begin with, but nobody’s perfect.
Something’s shady on the job board. There’s a popular job board here in Milwaukee that used to have an interesting practice. Their account managers would “refresh” employers’ job listings “as a service to the employer.” They claimed it was to make sure employers had lots and lots of candidates and were satisfied customers. My take was that they were doing it to make it look like they had a lot of viable job listings when they really didn’t, and that they were pissing off my candidates by making it look like I’d blown them off and re-run the ad. I complained bitterly, and I know a lot of my HR colleagues did too. Eventually, they listened, and they no longer do this (and actually they’re a great job board now, which is why I’m not naming them, because this was quite a few years ago). Unfortunately, I know there are other job boards out there that are still using this technique. Sometimes employers accidentally refresh their own jobs (it’s easy to do when you’re cleaning up your job listings), but if you’re seeing a pattern on a particular site, it may not be the employer at all.
The place is a hellhole. There are a few employers in every town who are constantly looking to fill jobs. That’s because they suck. If you see the same position listed over and over, and it’s not a traditionally high-turnover job (like, say, call center work), there might be a reason. I know one employer, for example, who is constantly looking for HR people, because the HR department there is so bad that everyone quits within a month or two. When I saw a recruiter opening listed there every other month for a couple of years, I knew something was up (and I later found out that the boss was a whack-a-doodle). Keep an eye on your local job market even when you’re actively looking, and you’ll gain some valuable insight into which companies you should avoid.

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6 Things You Need To Know About Unresponsive Employers

Kerry Scott — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 19:35:56 +0000

Last week I posted about candidates who are angry with companies who don’t respond when they apply and/or interview with companies. The comments were interesting, and I started to reply…but it turned into a list.

First, let me be clear: Every employer should respond to every resume submission, and follow up after every interview. While it’s not as automated as candidates seem to think (because most companies actually do not have these fancy applicant tracking systems you keep hearing about), it’s not that hard to set up an email auto-reply for resume submissions, even if you’re just using Outlook or something. There’s no excuse for not doing it. As for companies that don’t respond after an interview—well, that just blows my mind. It’s not physically possible to interview so many people that you can’t send them a canned rejection email, at the very least.

This list, then, isn’t meant to make excuses for these people. There’s no excuse. They should always respond. But there ARE some things you should be aware of:

Stuff gets lost. If you didn’t get a response to your resume, it’s possible that it’s because they didn’t receive it. It happens. That’s one more reason it’s up to you to avoid depending entirely on technology to get the job.
Your spam filter might have eaten it. When I was recruiting full-time, I’d get at least one angry phone call/email a month from a candidate who was mad because she’d never heard from me after applying or interviewing with us. Each time I was mortified, and each time, I checked my “Sent” folder to see if I’d sent them something. In my 14 year career, only once did I find that I’d failed to send the candidate the email (and that was because I’d spelled the email address wrong—duh). Before you fire off a letter to the errant employer, check your spam folder.
The recruiters lost their jobs months ago. When companies stop hiring, they often lay off all of the recruiters. Most of the recruiters I know are out of work right now. The HR people you’re dealing with now are often not recruiters, but HR generalists (people who handle stuff like sexual harassment complaints, terminations, people who can’t get along with their managers, etc.). I only know two HR generalists in the whole world who actually like recruiting. They’re often doing their regular job in addition to the recruiting job…and they also don’t always know how to work the applicant tracking system, if there is one (that’s the big database your resume goes into). This is pretty much a recipe for a bad candidate experience. I’m not making excuses for them, because having a sucky job is not a license to be rude. I do, however, think that’s part of the reason that so many people are being treated poorly by companies right now.
The worst part of recruiting is the managers (at least a few of them). I pretty much loved everything about recruiting. The only thing I didn’t love was working with incompetent hiring managers. Every so often, I’d get one who just couldn’t be bothered to actually fill the job. He’d insist on running an ad, and we’d get all these resumes, and then he’d sit on them. And sit. And sit. And I’d bug him daily, and weeks (even months) would go by, and this idiot keeps saying, “I’m too busy to look at the resumes.” He won’t let me just pick some and screen them—no, only he can do it. Then, when we finally get to interviews, he can’t make a decision. We’d agree up front that we’d make a decision within a week of the last interview, and this guy couldn’t do it. By then he’s not returning phone calls, so I’m stalking him in person…only he’s “too busy” to decide. People always think it’s the HR person who is responsible when they’re not getting an answer back. That’s just not always the case.
HR people don’t hire. Hiring managers hire. The hiring manager is ultimately responsible for filling the job. HR people do not hire anyone. They’re in a service role, serving the managers by helping them hire effectively. That’s why when you’re following up after the interview, you need to do so with both the HR person AND the hiring manager. If the HR person is the problem, the hiring manager needs to know that you’re not hearing back (in the same way that the store manager needs to know if a cashier treats you poorly…because that HR person serves the hiring manager). If the hiring manager is the problem, the HR person needs to know so that she can shake things loose and get the process moving. But if you’re directing your anger at the HR people, save some of the person who is actually responsible for filling the job: the hiring manager. Hold them accountable as well.
If you have a bad experience, speak up. Tell your friends. Companies who treat candidates like crap need to be held accountable. I knew one person who had an experience so bad that she wrote to the company president (and really, the circumstances in that case were so extreme that he really needed to know). The worst offender got fired as a result, and she deserved it. It’s very easy these days to share your experiences, good or bad…and companies who haven’t figured that out yet are in for a rude awakening.

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