Tag Archives: Resume

      By Jacqui Barrett-Poindexter

Are you telling prospective employers what you think they want to hear? Or, are you giving them the facts?

As human beings, and especially human beings trying to land a job, we all tend to err on the side of saying what we believe will give us the best chance for success. (Watch any election debate if you don’t believe me.)

While I would never suggest lying on your resume, here is a little game called, “Say This, Not That,” to help you get a leg-up while keeping the facts of your career history intact.

Say This: Accomplished relocations slated to cost $12M and 6 months of effort within 3 months with $900K in expenses.

Not That: Accomplished relocations slated to cost twelve million dollars and six months of effort with nine hundred thousand dollars in expenses. 

Looking at the two sentences above, it’s easy to see how using numbers instead of spelling them out adds impact to the accomplishment instead of having it hidden in the text.

Say This: Added $100K to the bottom line by developing relationships with new accounts through a consultative sales approach and resuscitating dead accounts.

Not That: Responsible for developing relationships with new accounts using a consultative sales plan and bringing dead accounts back to life.

Phrases such as “responsible for” are considered redundant at best and elementary at worst. The reader isn’t as concerned about what you were “responsible for” as they are about the actions you took and the accomplishments those actions produced.

Say This: Invigorated struggling department being undermined by outdated systems and employee absenteeism, boosting productivity by 50%.

Not That: Took control of ailing department left in shambles by predecessor’s mismanagement, decreasing employee absenteeism and increasing employee morale.

Criticizing former management makes you look “petty.” Guard yourself against that perception by highlighting the hurdles you surmounted without demonizing those you replaced.

Say This: Recruited improved level of sales professional and firmly established sales quota mind-set.

Not That: Cleaned house of dead weight sales people and introduced quotas to keep sales numbers high.

Again, the second sentence is only serving to criticize personnel for poor performance instead of sharing what actions you took to improve the performance of the sales department.

Say This: Developed network of key contacts with developers, lenders, brokers, builders, contractors and more, helping pave way for new business channel that ultimately generated one-half of divisional revenue.

Not That: I know everyone in this business and everyone knows me.

While the second sentence may very well be true, it lacks polish and specifics. And the fact that people in the business may know you doesn’t necessarily make them a “key” contact.

So, there you have it. Just a smattering of things to be aware of when developing a career resume document or social media profile that will most likely be your first chance to make an impression on the company in which you want to secure a position. If not executed properly, it could be the last chance you have to make an impression, as well.

While these examples may not fit your specific goals or industry, they do provide you with the fodder that could mean the difference in making it to the short-list or being tossed back into the job search sea.

Jacqui Barrett-Poindexter is a Glassdoor career and workplace expert, chief career writer and partner with CareerTrend, and is one of only 28 Master Resume Writers (MRW) globally. An intuitive researcher, she helps professionals unearth compelling career story details to help best present their unique experience, skillset and interests in resumes and other career positioning documents as well as through social media profiles. In addition to being interviewed for television and radio stories, Jacqui has written for the Career Management Alliance Connection monthly newsletter and blog, ExecuNet’s Career Smart Advisor, The Kansas City Star, The Business Journal and The Wall Street Journal. In addition, she and her husband, “Sailor Rob,” host a lively careers-focused blog over at http://careertrend.net/blog. Jacqui also is a power Twitter user listed on several “Best People to Follow” lists for job seekers.

The Glassdoor Team is a small yet seasoned group of individuals looking to provide greater transparency into one of the most important aspects of our lives – our jobs. Contributions to the blog are designed to present a unique perspective on current events, offer commentary on the inside workings on specific jobs at a multitude of companies, and provide details on the latest happenings from within Glassdoor.

      By Heather Huhman

What You May Be Ignoring In Your Job Search

You did your research, tailored your resume, and applied for a great position. You may have even scored an interview, came prepared, and impressed the interviewer. Now it’s just time to play the waiting game, right? Wrong!

If you’re sitting around waiting for your dream job to find you, you’re ignoring a crucial part of your job search: the follow-up. Job seekers should follow up after applying for a job and after interviewing for a position. Following up is essential in your job search because it reinforces your interest in the position for which you applied or interviewed and it helps you stand out among other candidates.

Following up could even be the difference between getting the job or getting the hose — almost 15% of hiring managers said they wouldn’t hire someone who didn’t send a thank-you note after an interview, and 32% said they would think less of a candidate who didn’t follow up.

Here are 5 tips for following up: 

1. Do it soon

Don’t waste time after your interview — send an email follow up within 24 hours, and a snail-mail follow up soon thereafter.

If you’re pre-interview stage, a recent survey found that job seekers should follow up within two weeks of submitting a resume; specifically, 38% of senior managers surveyed recommended following up in one week or less, and 43% said one to two weeks.

2. Ditch the keyboard

Email is a great way to follow up quickly, but nothing replaces a hand-written note. You don’t need to do this unless you’ve formally interviewed with a company; if they gave you their time and consideration, you can surely take the time to write a note thanking them. A handwritten note will show that you’re thorough, detail-oriented, and very interested in the position.

3. Reiterate your qualifications

Use your follow up as an opportunity to reiterate why you’re qualified for a position.  If you’re following up after an interview, take this time to say anything you had forgotten to say during the meeting. This is your last shot to sell yourself and your services!

​4. Keep it short and sweet

Hiring managers appreciate follow-ups, no doubt — but don’t ramble on and don’t be repetitive. Keep your thank you email to one or two short paragraphs, and limit your handwritten note to the size of a basic thank-you card. Remember, you’re saying thank you and reinforcing why you’re right for the job, not applying a second time.

5. Don’t limit your follow up

Following up is necessary after submitting an application and after interviewing for a position; but, another important time to follow up is after networking. In times like these, send a quick email to your new contact saying how nice it was to meet them and that you hope to stay in contact in the future.

——————————————————————————————————————————————–

Heather R. Huhman is a Glassdoor career and workplace expert, experienced hiring manager, and founder & president of Come Recommended, a content marketing and digital PR consultancy for organizations with products that target job seekers and/or employers. She is also the author of Lies, Damned Lies & Internships: The Truth About Getting from Classroom to Cubicle (2011), #ENTRYLEVELtweet: Taking Your Career from Classroom to Cubicle (2010), and writes career and recruiting advice for numerous outlets.

The Glassdoor Team is a small yet seasoned group of individuals looking to provide greater transparency into one of the most important aspects of our lives – our jobs. Contributions to the blog are designed to present a unique perspective on current events, offer commentary on the inside workings on specific jobs at a multitude of companies, and provide details on the latest happenings from within Glassdoor.

      By John Sumser

Job Hunting for Veterans is very different than it is for civilians. Veterans face misunderstanding and suspicion in their search for work. Translating military experience into something a civilian boss can understand is a unique challenge.

The United States Military is a land unto itself. It’s a place where the language is a sub-dialect of English focused on the specific tasks and realities of military life. It’s hard to overestimate the difference between being inside and being a civilian.

At about $1 trillion in annual budget outlays, the first layer of Defense spending is over 4% of the economy. When you add the local impact of those dollars, it’s easy to argue that Defense has a 10% footprint. The size of the budget swings significantly depending on whether the military is actively engaged in conflict operations. The world that gives us veterans is a big maze.

It involves a lot of people. Roughly 1.5 million people are active military, 500 thousand civilians support them, another 900 thousand are in ‘reserve’ forces. That’s nearly 3 million before you count the various shapes and kinds of Defense contractors, vendors, suppliers and family members. (Wikipedia)

The unique tasks and orientations of the military make it a relatively closed ecosystem. But when it shrinks and swells, it has significant consequence for the worlds around it. Military veterans have extraordinary levels of experience. Responsibility, which is won slowly in civilian life is big and rapidly acquired. Being responsible for the lives and safety of your peers on an always on basis matures active duty personnel quickly. 

This means that veterans face different competitive pressures than the rest of us. When there are a lot of veterans in the market for work, things seem harder.

Because it is a highly technical environment, veterans are comfortable with the complexities of decision making in a high stress, high data, high ambiguity environment. Typically, great responsibility is placed on the shoulders of relatively young people. After time in the military, the rest of the world seems smaller and less important.

Under ‘normal circumstances’, about 250 thousand people leave the active duty military each year. As the various global conflicts conclude that number will grow for the next several years. The predictable problems associated with translating military experience into civilian language significantly slows the rate at which veterans make the transition.

The unemployment rate for vets is bad and getting worse. “Fair or not, eight years in the Army is viewed by some employers as eight years without private-sector skills and experience,” says Business Week “The skills issue is particularly troubling. Hiring is strongest in jobs that require specialized education, and weakest for blue collar jobs……Even military jobs that are in the right ballpark for growth industries — say, software or electronics technician — may involve specialization that doesn’t readily apply to Silicon Valley’s Web 2.0 or software-services jobs.”

If you are a veteran getting ready to join the civilian workforce, here are several things you can do to ease the transition.

1. Start reading FastCompany. This site and magazine are the best single source for insight into the language and culture of American business. Remember, you are coming from a different culture and you need to ‘go local’. FastCompany will give you the clues you need to start to pass as a native. After a while it gets easier.
2. When you move from the military to civilian life, you always go from being a little fish in a big pond to being a big fish in a little pond. The trouble is that your colleagues may not know this. Be patient as you learn about new work environments.
3.  Glassdoor is a great place to survey both the ways that people think about their employers and what it’s like to work there. Read about the employers you’d like to work for.
4. Some common military management techniques don’t work quite as well in the civilian world. The difference is that employment is generally ‘at will’ for both employer and employee. The great things you learned about ‘toughing it out’ don’t translate very well.
5. Being in the military forces you to be very good at decision making. Most civilians don’t have this sort of leadership experience. If you relax, you can emerge as a natural leader because of your training.
6. Understand how your military skills translate into civilian skills. Both Military.com and Jibe.com have useful ways to translate your skills into job requirements.
7. Prepare to work hard on the transition. Time in the military is a firm foundation for the rest of your life. The first step in making the most of it is learning to translate it into civilian terms.

—————————————————————————————————————————————-

Guest Blogger John Sumser, a member of the Glassdoor Clearview Collection, is the founder and editor-in-chief of HRExaminer, a weekly online magazine about the people and technology of HR. Widely respected as an independent analyst, Sumser has been chronicling and critiquing the HRTechnology industry for eighteen years. During that time, he has consulted with more than 100 HR vendors on matters of strategy and positioning in the market. Prior to his involvement in the HR Technology industry, Sumser was a senior executive in Defense Technology. From large scale software development to naval architecture, he was the leader of tech development teams in a broad variety of settings. His passion is the intersection of people and technology.

The Glassdoor Team is a small yet seasoned group of individuals looking to provide greater transparency into one of the most important aspects of our lives – our jobs. Contributions to the blog are designed to present a unique perspective on current events, offer commentary on the inside workings on specific jobs at a multitude of companies, and provide details on the latest happenings from within Glassdoor.