Recently a JibberJobber user sent me a resume that one of my colleagues did for him and asked me what I thought.

The resume was really quite impressive.  I’m not surprised. The resume writer is someone who has been doing this for a long time and loves to stay current and do a great job.

My first impression after looking at the resume was that this guy had decades of doing amazing things.  The companies he worked at, and the products he worked on, are household names.

If I were interviewing I would want to satisfy curiosities and ask more.  I would want to ask stories about his experience.  Some of my questions would be because it would be intriguing to know, and others to learn how involved and instrumental he really was in each of the things he claims on his resume.

He needs to go through his resume, pull out every claim, and put at least one story behind it.

I’m not much for critiquing resumes.  I almost always decline when someone asks me to look at their resume.  But I opened this one and that was my very first impression.  You have a great resume, now what?  Be ready to TELL STORIES!

My second thought was to be careful not to ask too many UNQUALIFIED people their opinion of the resume you just got.  I asked people for opinions of my resume and the information I got was misleading (making me think it was great, while it really kept me out of interviews).  Everyone will have their opinion but recognize this is a marketing tool to get you interviews, and that is it.  Dick Bolles talked about resumes very frankly in our last Ask The Expert – you can view the interview here (he comes on 20 minutes into it).

After getting some interview training, I was apalled to go to an interview and see how unprepared the interviewers were.

I’ve heard this repeatedly… how bad interviewers are.  It feels offensive. It feels like they are wasting your time.  You wonder why you are unemployed while they still have a job.

I’d guess that the majority of job seekers complain about how unsophisticated (or unprepared, or unprofessional, etc.) their interviewers are.

Here’s a fun video to start your week. I found it from a TechCrunch post. It’s funny, but for me it’s all too real!

You must watch this – it’s a great way to start your week

Have you heard of this?  It’s been in the headlines recently.

What do you do if, in an interview, you are asked for your Facebook password?

RUN.

Walk out.

Leave.

It seems that if that’s how the relationship is going to start, it’s going to be abusive.

Strong language, right?  Who would think their employer would abuse them?

If someone asks me for something like that, I’d question their personal ethics, and wonder what kind of work environment they are in that would even allow such a question.

It’s a red flag.  And you deserve better than to be in a hostile or abusive situation.  RUN.

John Hadley, a career coach in the NY/NJ area, asked me to be his guest on a teleseminar titled How to Accelerate Your Job Search.  I’ve been receiving Johns newsletter for years and almost spoke for him in person last year when I was in his area… I was excited to be able to do this teleseminar with him.

You can sign up for it here.

It is on Wednesday morning at 10:30 am MST (that is 12:30 Eastern, 11:30 Central, 9:30 Pacific).

There is no cost.  John is asking his newsletter subscribers: “If you could ask Jason Alba just one question, what would it be?”

I’ll be anxious to see what questions come up…. I’m guessing this will be much less technical than I usually do, and there will be a lot of general, basic job search questions… we’ll see

Want to join? Sign up here. I’m not sure if it will be recorded and made available later.

Last year the first post of the year was titled The Job Search Rabbit Hole.  I think I should make a (kids) book out of it.

I’ve used that idea as the 2011 theme, and focused a lot on job seekers chasing something that doesn’t exist (read the post for the story/analogy).

This year I want to talk about something I’ve realized as I’ve spoken to thousands of professionals and executives  across the U.S.  I have started to say that “the job search is 99% communication.” Written, verbal, body language, etc.  It’s all about how we communicate.  And we can communicate A LOT better.

I just finished a life-changing book written by friend and mentor Mark LeBlanc titled Never Be The Same.  It is a fast read, and completely intriguing.  It was written after Mark finished a 500 mile walk across Spain… the famous Camino de Santiago pilgrimage.  Get the book here – I loved Mark’s unique style … it was just delightful to absorb.

Mark gave me permission to share this excerpt from his book… I LOVED this story as it illustrates the communication problem that I want to help YOU think about this year.  Mark talks about going to a networking event and sharing his elevator pitch. It had all the bad, junky, jargon cliche yuck that most elevator pitches have.  One day, though, he wasn’t in the mood to share it, so he shook things up (almost accidentally).  He writes:

It was my turn-my minute-to stand up and introduce myself, again.  Only this time I didn’t blather on about my broad range of services and menu of presentation topics.  None of which, you might recall, had I provided to a single client or audience since Small Business (No-So-Much) Success was born.  My calendar was empty from Day One. Instead, I simply got up and shared my dream. In a monotone, mind you, with nary an inflection of enthusiasm whatsoever.

“My name is Mark LeBlanc, and I run a company called Small Business Success. I work with people who want to start a business and with small business owners who want to grow their business.”  Period, end.  I shut up and sat down.

There were about twenty five business people at this meeting, and when it was over, seven of them came up to me.  Now, this was a total surprise, because for ten months, no one-and I mean no one-had any interest in what I did or had to offer. Instead of repelling people, as was my habit, I seemed to be attracting prospects. There was a line, for heavens sake!

“I want to start my own business,” said one woman.

“My wife has been wanting to start her own business; give me your card,” said a business man.

“I’ve been in business ten years, but seem kind of stuck. I’d like to know more about growing my business, cranking it up a notch. Can you help me with that?” came from another.

My favorite response was a friend’s: “I’ve been listening to your introductions for ten months, and I had no clue this is what you do. I think I can refer a few people to you.”

Within thirty days, seven prospects wrote me a check and engaged me in the process of helping them start of grow their business. It was as if the floodgates opened and soon prospects came in faster than I could handle. Okay, maybe not that fast, but when you did not earn a nickel for nearly a year, this new-found success felt like I was sipping from the fire hose.”

WOW.

I had a similar experience, which I blogged about here: Substantiate Yourself.

I am convinced that the canned 30 second pitches job seekers are coached to work on lead to really, really bad results.  The pitch sucks. No one responds.  Mark changed his, focusing on the outcomes of his work, and he got results.

Small, minor, easy changes can change the results.  He didn’t throw in bigger words, fancier phrases, or more stuff.  He whitled it down to the core message, and he got results.

This is a theme that will be on my mind all year.

Will you join me this year, on our journey to better career management?

Today I sent someone an email talking about a service I’ve had for years, and she replied:

Gosh, Jason, you have never told me about this……

I have this problem because I have multiple revenue streams.  My business is more complex than just offering one or two products/services.

I bet you have the same problem:

As a job seeker you start out wanting to be a ______.

After the job search goes on, you decide you could really do ______ and ______.

A month or two later you finally come to terms with doing _____ and ______ and ______.

After six months you are fine to _____ and _____ and ______ and _____ and ______ and ______.

Then you face a new problem.

Someone who knew you from early in your job search only knew you as the guy/gal who could only ______.

They didn’t realize you had a number of other capabilities or interests.

I did this in my job search.

I started out looking for a “project manager” job, and then added “business analyst.”  Eventually I add “product manager,” which was all very confusing to people who thought I was an IT Manager (past job title), or CIO (past job title), or VP (past job title), or General Manager (past job title).

Some people thought I was a GM, others thought I was a PM.

What do people think, or know, about you?

Job seekers have this problem (Gosh, Jason, you have never told me about this……).

Happily employed people have this problem (Gosh, Jason, you have never told me about this……).

Companies have this problem (Gosh, Jason, you have never told me about this……).

It’s a branding problem… and it can take a number of things to help solve it…. how are YOU solving it?

Check out this tweet from Steve Levy, a professional recruiter who shoots from the hip:

What does it mean to be a transformational leader?

What does it mean to be anything?  Have attention to detail, be customer-service oriented, be a rainmaker, be ____ or ______ or _______?

THEY MEAN NOTHING!

When you see a resume (or email signature, or hear a 30 second pitch or any of these branding tools) that is filled with cliche, what are they saying?

NOTHING!

They are saying nothing!

I know it means a lot to you, because after all, you are the best problem solver in the world (or whatever cliche message you have), but the problem is, it doesn’t matter what it means to you.  It matters what it means to others (NOTHING).

You have to say things in plain, simple English, and communicate your real value, or you will be saying nothing more than dribble.

And that’s not good branding.

In a comment on my job search depression post, “Blissful” shared some very interesting thoughts from her MBA level econ class regarding the economy:

>> What I learned in my Economics class is quite disturbing. The economy is actually not getting better.

Any surprises here?

>> When you hear on the news that unemployment rate decreased, well it’s not because people are getting jobs it’s because people become so discouraged that they dropped out of the labor force and stopped looking for work so the #unemployed/labor force = a lower percentage.

I’ve been saying this a lot – glad to hear the econ profs are talking about it frankly!  Newspapers and politicians have to know this but they always seem to paint a rosy, misleading picture. It’s practically right out of Atlas Shrugged :s

>> When you think that the stocks market improved and you’re getting more returns on your investment; well that’s not really the case here.

Oh crap. I haven’t read much on this… explanation from Blissful below…

>> The Federal Reseve purposely devalued the dollar so we appear cheap to the foreigners to invest in us. When there is a high demand for dollars, the price for investing in dollars will go up. That is the law of supply and demand in economics. So now, all of a sudden it looks like your ROI is getting so much better.

Yuck.  This is not a good path.  It is not sustainable.

>> The government is trying to make you think that you’re wealthier so that you can go out and start spending again.

I’m afraid of “so we can go out and start spending again,” considering so many people spent money they didn’t have (aka, loans).

>> That will put more money into the circulation of the economy.

True, but if people aren’t responsible for the money they spend (in other words, they don’t have it, or it’s a loan, etc., than pumping junk money into an economy will only result in more bankruptcy, foreclosures, etc.).  If this is what the government is doing it’s very, very flawed.

>> But what they don’t understand is that we’re NOT going to spend more money if we don’t have JOBS!!!!!!!!!

Spoken like a true unemployed person  Jobs is what we need.  Unfortunately, fake jobs is not what we need.  Government spending to create jobs is not what we need because it’s not sustainable, and it’s not the role of government.  We need policies in place that help business thrive.  When businesses thrive, they hire, and spend, and feed the economy.

Scary times?  Yes, indeed.

Recently I watched two organizations start a project that was very exciting.

Both organizations were excited and dropped a lot of obligations to make this one project move forward quickly.

Shortly into the project, however, there was an interesting discussion.

Organization A wanted to take the project in one direction.

Organization B wanted to take the project in a completely different direction.

Both directions could have been okay, for different reasons, but the directions were dramatically different.

What started out as very exciting and “drop everything else” turned out to be a long series of emails and phone calls about the objectives, and the path to get there.

Unfortunately, the project died.  And no one won.  Time was spent on the bureaucratic nausea instead of the exciting project, simply because neither organization was clear about, or maybe even understood, what the final objectives were when they started.

Worse, when they started to understand the objectives, they were not aligned.

I’ve thought about this and how it applies to a traditional “job,” and job interview.

Some of my objectives in a job are to:

• Reasonably give all that I can to the job to be successful for the company.  This means I’ll work long and late, but not all the time.  I need to have balance with other parts of my life, but when I’m there, I’m THERE.
• Excel professionally.  Become more expert in my trade.  Grow.  Advance.
• Network with other leaders in the industry.
• Be a part of something big and exciting.
• Make a difference to individuals, touching their life.

As a hiring manager, my objective in finding the right person for the job is to:

• find someone who will do the job right, the first time, and not require rework or add overhead to my system.
• Find someone who is high-speed, low-drag.
• Find someone who has enough expertise that they don’t need me to handhold them to do their job.
• Find someone who is a quick learner so they can jump in and get going, instead of me spending months with them training and retraining them.
• Find a team-worker who wants to contribute to making my team a massive success (and make me look good).
• Find someone who is not offensive, who is ethical, who has a strong work ethic, who is honest and is proud of doing a good job.
• Find someone who has a balanced life, and gives their job/work 100%.

Maybe there are other things in either lists… here’s my thought: What can YOU do, or how can YOU position yourself, so when you interview you can communicate that you are aligned with a hiring manager’s objectives?

If you don’t have the same goals/objectives, either (a) your workplace will be miserable or (b) you won’t last.