I saw this on Facebook and thought I’d share it.

If Dave Perry says you need to read it, and it came from John Sumser, I’m behind it all the way.

Think about it – it could have a profound impact on your career, and careers in the future.  Click here to read it on John’s blog: The New Architecture of Work.

I asked a question on RecruitingBlogs:

What bugs you about candidates?

I got excellent responses, including (you have to read their comments, in their own words):

• Your (mis)use of LinkedIn,
• How and when you contact recruiters (including follow-up),
• Telling recruiters how to do their job,
• Having a bad resume or cover letter,
• Not being prepared for interviews,
• Talking too much,
• Addressing a (email, cover letter, etc.) to the wrong person,
• Overstating how great you are,
• And, praying for too long (seriously, read it – page two, by Sandra, #4. Sandra is awesome… )

I hesitated sharing this list lest you think you’ve read it before.  But you really should read their comments, because they see this stuff all day long.

How bad is this?  Check out Andrew’s parting words:

When economists say that our unemployment rate is at 8%….my general thought is, it is amazing it is that low cause based on some of the idiots I come in contact with…it should be much higher.

I’m sure none of my JibberJobber users, or readers, make these mistakes… right?  Of course not.

Read the comments anyway, just to make sure you aren’t violating anything

I just saw this on a career coach eList I’m on:

“While it may sound like an easy way to get a job is to turn the search over to a recruiter, it’s unlikely this will result in interviews or job offers. Today, most every candidate has to be their own advocate in a very competitive, very specialized job market.”

Debra Feldman, JobWhiz. Debra is an agent who works for candidates, not employers. She establishes networking connections that open doors to new job leads.

YES!  Debra is so right!

As a job seeker we’re looking for the easiest and most successful tactics to employ.  Like finding jobs on a job board and applying.  Or telling recruiters how great you are.

In reality, if they are easy, and supposedly lead to easy success, then you can bet tons of your competition (aka, other job seekers) are doing the same thing. When it becomes too easy, and too many people do it, you get lost in the NOISE.

Reality check: I heard a recruiter say one of her colleagues would regularly delete all the resumes she had collected just because it got to be too hard to go through them.

Yes, you are a noisy number.

Here’s my best experience with a recruiter.  I’ll never forget him.  Dave Steveson, owner of HirePointe (a recruiting shop), said this to me on our third meeting:

“Well, I think you are going to find a job for yourself a lot faster than I’ll find a job for you.”

WHUUUUUUUUH??????  At first I didn’t understand, but then it all made sense.  I thought Dave was my job search agent.  In fact, he wasn’t.  Not at all.  Neither were the 29 other recruiters I thought were my agents.

Take what Debra said above, and what Dave told me six years ago, to heart.  And stop thinking that talking to recruiters is your easy button.

Sorry.  But you actually do have to network.

Great post on RecruitingBlogs about job boards vs. LinkedIn: What kind of a threat does LinkedIn pose to job boards? And what should they do about it?

Not social networking, mind you.  It’s really just LinkedIn that’s the sole competitor to job boards… which was a HUGE industry.

If you are interested in the job search space (whether you are in a job search or not), check out the article…

I’ve already sent some of my advice and ideas to Monster.  Didn’t get very far.

My kind-of dream job?  To work as a VP at Monster, and be the job seeker advocate.  They’ve had someone at corporate advocate hiring companies (who paid them gobs of money) and recruiters (who paid them gobs of money), but no one advocated for the job seeker (who really doesn’t pay much, right?).

Well, along comes LinkedIn (or, shall we say CHANGE), and Monster’s model isn’t working anymore.  HR, recruiters and those who put money in hiring is moving their money elsewhere.

And, LinkedIn was able to accommodate the job seeker (and non-job seeking professional) in a way that Monster didn’t think about.  So they lost job seekers, too (I don’t have stats on this, just a guess).

I’ve spoken to thousands of professionals around the country … they talk about getting on two websites.  LinkedIn is one.  Monster is NOT the other one.

What do you think?  Is there a place for job boards?  Will they be replaced by something else?

(I LOVE the last line in the post - check it out)

I know, I know, you don’t love recruiters.

You are confused because they are supposedly there to help you, but they seem like they are part of the resume black hole. They don’t share much information, and rarely get back to you.

This was my experience.  I did not understand the recruiter / candidate (you, the job seeker, are the “candidate”) role.  I thought there were there to help me find a job, or to find one for me.  Indeed, that’s not how it works at all.

If you are frustrated with recruiters, you need to read this post: How Come Recruiter’s Never Call Me Back? CAUTION: SPOILER ALERT – IT’S YOU!.  Dan Levine shares two frustrations that recruiters have when they contact you.

The first is when you immediately ask “who is the client?”  They sometimes can’t tell you, but that’s the main thing you want to talk about.  Dan shares a great idea on how what you should do, instead of letting this be the stumbling block (read it here).

The second is when you ask about the compensation package.  I know why we do this.  If a recruiter calls and wants to offer me a job for $x, and I need to make $y or $z, it doesn’t make sense to talk much about that job, right?  Right!

Dan is suggesting that we (job seekers) take a different approach (read it here). I agree with him. I wish recruiters would be more open about the compensation, but whether they are or not, we need to start looking at recruiters as really good networking contacts, not just a tool.

A “really good networking contact” is a long-term relationship, not dependent on the one job that they called us about.  As Dan says, perhaps give them a referral instead of brushing them off.  You do that enough times and you should have a recruiter that thinks you are pretty cool, and might go the extra mile for you.

Good resume: check

30 Second pitch: check

Organized and on top of things: check

Online and offline networking: check

Doing informational interviews: check

You are all ready for your job search, to conquer the world, right?

What if you are doing everything right, and then you go to Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn (or your blog) to vent about how stupid a hiring manager was in an interview, or the ridiculous thing a recruiter or HR person said when you called them to check on your resume or application?

I’ve seen people post stuff online, assuming the company wouldn’t find out what they were saying.  It was shared just to their friends, they thought.  They needed a place to vent, they thought.

What they were really doing was ending any chances they had of getting that job.

You have to know that HR and recruiters can and do look online to learn more about you. Some use Google.  Some go straight to the social networks and do a search on your name. What will they find?

Check out this 2 minute video:

Social Media in Recruitment by Ciphr

This video was put together by a firm that helps HR and recruiters screen you, in your own social network.  You can learn more about recruitment software with Computers in Personnel at the link.

You NEED to know about this.  In this “war on talent” or “war for talent,” where it seems like it’s you against the hiring company, you must understand the tools and processes they use.

If you understand the tools recruiters use, or Computers in Personnel offers, you will know how to better optimize your resume to get through their system.  You’ll know that any “breadcrumbs” you leave online – your status on any social network, or what you post on your Wall, or on someone else’s Wall, or comments you leave on blogs, can be audited, and have an impact on your job search.

Job seekers, you can’t be too relaxed about this.  It’s getting more sophisticated.  Are you up to the sophistication?

This is a guest post from Will Kerr, who lives in the UK. Enjoy the language and spelling. It’s cool to get his perspective from “across the pond” on something I hadn’t heard about before, but it makes a lot of sense.

It should go without saying that, in order to stand any sort of chance at landing a job
by responding to an ad, you’re going to have to pay close attention to the language
it uses, and write up your cover letter and CV to make sure they chime with the tone
used by your potential employers.

However, as well as using the ad’s wording to try and discern how to most effectively
sell yourself, you should analyse it to see how the job is being sold to you. After all,
a job ad is an advert, and just like any other advert, it’s wise not to take everything it
says at face value.

This is an important skill to develop as a job hunter, as it will help you preserve
your most precious resource: time. A successful job hunt is all about having a set of
focused targets. By being able to decode the jargon and euphemisms so prevalent in
job ads, you can save yourself the effort of applying for a role that just isn’t suited to
you.

For example, you’ll see the phrase ‘self-starter’ used a lot and, whilst on the one hand
it implies that you’ll be working in an environment where you’re not going to micro-
managed and your talents for taking the initiative will be given space to flourish, it’s
worth your while being a little cynical about such a phrase. Ask yourself why being
a ‘self-starter’ is such a necessity. The likely answer is that you’ll need to improvise
solutions on your own because the company just doesn’t have the resources available
to give you all the support you might expect – a less enticing prospect.

Likewise, the working environment will almost invariably be described as ‘fast-
paced,’ which creates the image of a frenetic office trying to keep up with all the
business that’s being generated. If that’s the case, wonderful. But is it not just as
likely that employees are forced to work at a fast pace because of understaffing?

A ‘highly varied’ role sounds great. After all, nobody wants to do the exact same
thing day in day out. However, using this term ambiguously could well suggest
that there is no clear designation of responsibilities within the business, and that
said ‘variety’ will arise primarily from the fact that you’ll be picking up the pieces all
over the place rather than focusing on your own work.

As well as working out when an add is doing its best to make the company sound like
a more attractive place to work than it actually is, you also need to be aware that ads
will also occasionally do the opposite and attempt to put people off.

Often, to try and deter lesser candidates and thus speed up the process of filtering
the wheat from the chaff, firms will exaggerate the skills set a job actually requires.
This can result in some stipulations that are bizarre, or sometimes even impossible,
especially if the people responsible for recruiting don’t really understand the role.

Job ads for IT roles, for example, have been known to demand that candidates have at
least three years of experience working with a certain technology, despite the fact that
it’s only existed for two years! (Aside from anything else, this might indicate that the
business in question doesn’t have the keenest eye for detail…)

Therefore, when reading a job ad’s person specification, don’t be too perturbed if
there are one or two criteria that you can’t quite fulfil. If you offer 80% of what
they’re asking for, you should be in with a shot (though, as focus is key in a job
search, it is preferable to target jobs you know for certain you are 100% qualified for).

At the end of the day, when businesses recruit – as with every other aspect of
their operation – what they’re looking for is value. They want the most talent and
experience they can get their hands on for the salary they have to offer. If they say the
role requires at least three years of experience in the industry, they are far more likely
to receive applications from people with five to ten years experience. This doesn’t
necessarily mean that if only have one and a half years experience that you’ll find the
job impossible.

This also needs to born in mind if you are a highly experienced, highly skilled
professional on the look out for job opportunities. A recruiter may be overstating the
skills set required to reel you in and this could result in your taking a role where you
don’t get to make full use of your abilities.

Will Kerr writes extensively on the varied world of job hunting, from the latest
guerrilla tactics, to the ins and outs of old fashioned networking. You can read more of his work on http://www.job-centre-vacancies.co.uk/.

I gravitate towards blog posts from recruiters, and on age discrimination. I was delighted to find this one on Recruiting Blogs: Do You Know the Signs of Age Discrimination at Work?

The post is pretty good. The issue I have with some of the advice, like “document any discriminatory practices” and “document your work record” is that you would later have to do something with that documentation. I find that many people move on (get laid off, fired, etc.) and then sink into depression, blame themselves, focus on their next job, or anything other than pursue legal action.

I’m not saying don’t do it, I’m just saying it is such a daunting concept, and maybe the wrong place to focus.

Here’s the most profound part of that page… in the comment from Randall, the fourth paragraph starts:

I’ll say that too many older jobseekers fixate of age discrimination.

I totally agree!

I’m definitely not saying that age discrimination doesn’t exist, because it is abundant.  What I’m saying is, I agree with Randall.  TOO MANY people FIXATE on the issue.

Don’t become obsessed with all the reasons why you aren’t seeing success… stop FIXATING on this one issue.

If it is an issue, figure out how to get around it.  How do you deal with it?  Do you ignore it?  Do you tackle it head on?

Fixating on this will not help you resolve it.  No, you won’t get younger, but you will be able to identify the issue and use the right language to perhaps defuse any issues.

Here are some other age discrimination in the job search posts I’ve written.

I hate age discrimination. I hate all kinds of discrimination.

But it it isn’t going away.  One reason is because we all discriminate (even the people who think they don’t, they do).

Another reason is because companies are full of idiots who say bad things, and make bad choices, regardless of what is right, and what the company policy manual says.

So, what do older job seekers do?  As I speak across the country I have seen the pain and worry and concern about their age, and being discriminated against.  They feel it, whether they are getting discriminated against or not.

What do you do?

Here’s some interesting advice, from Adam Eisenstein at RecruitingBlogs: What Advice Should We Give to Older Candidates?

Make sure you read the post AND the comments… great advice from recruiters!

Question from Stephen, a new user:

How should you enter recruiters into the system?

In my case, I have a bunch of initial contacts with recruiters, who may then bring a company & job to me. It seems when you add a company you can’t link it to a recruiter contact. What’s the best way to do this?

JibberJobber is an online website that helps you organize and manage your job search.  Specifically, we are keeping track of:

• Network Contacts,
• Target Companies,
• Jobs you apply to (or are interested in).

So, what is a recruiter?  It is not a JOB… is it a Network Contact?  Is it a Target Company?

Here’s what I would do:

ENTER THE INDIVIDUAL RECRUITER AS A CONTACT.

If you are working with more than one recruiter at a company, enter the COMPANY, and then associate each recruiter (Contact record) to that company.

In the question above, Stephen asks about linking contacts with companies… indeed you can link (or, associate).

On the Company edit page, at the bottom, you have the ability to link existing Contacts, and create a new Contact that will be associated.  Also, you can easily designate the Primary Contact for that Company. (See how in this 2007 blog post)

So, when someone from the company calls you (whether it’s a target company of yours, or a recruiting shop), you can pull up the Company Detail Page and see all the associated Contacts for that Company.

NOTE: associating more than one Contact per Company is a premium feature (9.95/month).

Finally, here’s why I would make a recruiter a Contact record: The freaking amazing, awesome Email2Log feature.

In other words, as you communicate with the recruiter, especially via email, it’s super easy to record email conversations as Log Entries using this (premium) feature.  More here.

Hope that helps!