Practical Job Search Advice

The No-Juice Resume

2010-06-16T22:49:00.000-07:00

Dear Liz,

My resume is workmanlike. It describes where I've worked, but there's no juice in it. I can't get excited about it, so why should anyone else give it a second glance? I can tell you about the jobs I've held, but I can't give you a succinct explanation of what I do now or how my career fits together into a cohesive -- well, a cohesive anything. Where do I start?

Thanks,

Jamie

Dear Jamie,

In the past, we used to write a resume cold - just the facts, Ma'am. A resume didn't need any juice or personality. We knew the facts of our own work history, of course, and once we got those committed to paper we were pretty much done with the project. Today, writing a resume and creating a job-search/professional brand are intertwined. Until we know where we're headed, and how the work we've already done (together with our passions and interests) fits into that career direction, we can't write a resume. If we try, we'll end up with a juiceless resume like the one you're describing.

A good resume has a Point on the Arrow - it tells the reader exactly where you're headed, why you've chosen that path, and how your background equips you beautifully for the course you've set for yourself.

Your brand works the same way. Once you understand how your history and your present state impel you in a certain direction, you can speak with power and authority about what you do, in live conversations, in your LinkedIn profile, in interviews and anywhere you interact with other people. If you're in a reactive mode, answering the question "What do you do?" with, "Well, I've done some marketing, and I worked in a real estate office...." then your brand is juiceless, as well as your resume. We don't want you to be in that state!

We are launching two online courses on July 1, "Build Your Personal Brand" and "Put a Human Voice in Your Resume." Each online course contains twenty practical lessons. The lessons are delivered to you (one lesson per weekday throughout the month) via email. Each lesson contains an exercise to move you closer to a vibrant, clear professional brand and a strong Human-Voiced Resume!

Midway through the program, on July 21, everyone participating in the two courses will gather for a live, virtual coaching session with me.

Details on our two online courses are here:

TWO ONLINE COURSES LAUNCHING JULY 1:

Questions? Please write to Jackie Marrinan at jackie@asklizryan.com

Hope to see you in the class, Jamie!

Best,

Liz

Going back to my old career?

2010-05-26T21:08:00.001-07:00

Dear Liz,

I have been applying for jobs that I last held 12 years ago. I had 17 years
experience in this field when I stopped.

I stopped working in this field due to the birth of my first child. Then a
second child came and then when I returned to the workforce, I utilized my field
knowledge in the insurance side of things.

I am not getting any calls for these hand delivered resumes and cover letters. I
have gone back and gotten the necessary licenses and certifications for this
field, yet I am sure once the resume is reviewed, the doctor sees that I was in
insurance for the last 10 years and assumes my technical skills necessary for
this healthcare field are rusty, so they don't call.

How can I represent myself as someone who wants to return to the field and show
them I can do it, it is just like riding a bike, I did it for 17 years
previously and that I was darned good at it.

Please advise and thank you

------------------- NOTE FROM LIZ:------------------------

Dear Nan,

You will re-write your resume so that it doesn't just list your job titles and
years of employment, but it creates a philosophical and linguistic frame that
makes it instantly, abundantly clear to the hiring manager that s/he needs to
talk with you. We will take the buyer's (the hiring manager's) perspective and
use the resume to talk about what's most important to him or her. We can start
by finding the relevance of your insurance work to the pain the doctor is
feeling now -- the reason for the current opening, in other words.

Can you take a stab at answering the question "How did those ten years in
insurance make me a better candidate for this job today than someone who lacks
my experience?"

Thanks! Liz

Make the job interview about the pain

2010-05-25T21:34:00.000-07:00

Dear Liz,

I don't mind interviewing with an HR screener, it's the hiring manager meetings that spook me. Any tips?

Thanks,

Valerya

LIZ REPLIES:

Dear Valerya,

Congratulations! If you are sailing through screening interviews, you are ahead of the game. For many people, the hiring-manager interview is easier, because you and the hiring manager already have something in common (you both work on the same kinds of problems).

The HR screening interview is hard for a lot of folks because in that situation, you don't typically have business pain to anchor the conversation. It is easy for the discussion to devolve into a "so, do you have skill X? What about a Y and Z?" type of deal.

Once you get to the hiring manager, you can use the pain-spotting approach to zero in on what's most pressing about the job opening the manager is looking to fill. What isn't working? What are the stakes, in other words?

Here's how that could go:

HIM: So Valerie - uh, Valya - um, how do you pronounce your name exactly?
YOU: It's Val-LEE-ree-ya; it gets easier once you say it a couple of times.

HIM: Thanks, okay, Valerya, can you tell me about yourself?
YOU: For sure! I've been in the field for about ten years, and... gee, I don't
want to keep you here 'til midnight; can I ask you a couple of quick questions
in order to tailor my comments?
HIM: Shoot.

Read the full story here.

Online Courses Launching!

2010-05-25T15:15:00.000-07:00

Dear folks,

We've just launched our first two online courses, "Put a Human

Voice in Your Resume" and "Build Your Personal Brand."

Both online courses begin on July 1,
2010 (but if you can't wait to begin the course(s) with the

group on July 1, we can get you the course materials now!).

In each course, participants will receive a daily

(five days per week - you get
the weekends off) lesson that will include a how-to article

plus an assignment.
You'll work at your own pace, completing the lessons as they

arrive each day or
tackling a bunch of them at a time. Midway through the program,

on Wednesday,
July 21, 2010, we'll hold a live group coaching session for

course participants.
I will lead that session, and share tips and answer questions about both
Human-Voiced Resume-Writing and Building Your Personal Brand.

I hope you can join us! Whether you're job-hunting or not,

I predict you'll have
fun and get clearer about your professional brand working

through these courses
with us.

The cost for each course is $129; both courses purchased

at the same time cost
$199. We are excited about getting lots more of our members

on board with their
Human-Voiced Resumes and their Personal Brands via these

two online courses.

If you sign up for either course or both of them before

June 1, you'll also
receive my Super-E-book, "Ask Liz Ryan Job Search Essentials,"

for free. (The
E-book is sold for $49.99 on my website.)

Questions? Please write to me.

To Register for our Career Altitude Online courses

"Put a Human Voice in Your
Resume" and/or "Build Your Personal Brand,"

please jump here.


Best -- Liz

I Wonder How She Dresses Herself?

2010-05-09T09:41:00.003-07:00

LIZ RYAN: I wonder how she dresses herself?

I've worked around women forever, and nearly every one of the working women I've
met has seemed competent on the surface. These gals go to meetings, write
reports, and make and sell stuff all day long. They seem to know what they're
doing.

That's why it's surprising to pop into any bookstore and scan the shelf of books
devoted to helping women fix themselves. They have to fix themselves, you see,
in order to succeed at work.

It's astonishing to scan these books and realize how messed-up women actually
are. I had no idea women were so incompetent, until I visited the bookstore.

Here is a book that tells women how to negotiate, because their moms never
taught them that. Here is another book that teaches women how to communicate, to
act like a man, or to overcome their fear.

It's fascinating that men are so naturally equipped to excel in the working
world, where women are so obviously lacking. Women have babies and raise them
and grow crops and tend animals and run businesses all over the world. I don't
know how they do it.

Defects and all, they try! They get up every morning and dress themselves too,
and remember to brush their teeth. They get driver's licenses, despite their
natural handicaps. We have to give women credit for working so hard to overcome
the lousy hand that nature has dealt them.

I have yet to see a book that seeks to teach men how to get through the workday.
Men have the right stuff, I guess. That's a lucky break for them. Women need a
slew of books just to survive, much less thrive, in the office. That's the
impression I got visiting the bookstore, anyway.

I was thinking about this problem the other day, and I had a notion. I may be
crazy or just really badly informed, but I wonder: Is it possible that the
reason men are so perfectly suited to the business world is that it was built in
their image?

I mean, the stereotypical guy has one of those hierarchical, logical brains, and
from what I can see the business world loves brains like that. Some women -- and
a lot of men, too -- have brains that don't fit that linear/analytical mold.

I wonder if stereotypical men fit so well into the working world because they
made it? Now, I may be all wet here. For starters, I'm a woman, so my ideas are
naturally suspect. I'm just sayin'.

Could it be that the time-honored, hierarchical, rule-bound workplace is
actually the problem? Could it be past its prime, ready for an overhaul, or just
plain played out? And could those pesky not-naturally-equipped women actually be
canaries in the coal mine? Could it be that the working world itself is broken?

I'm just thinking out loud here. Maybe people weren't meant to work this way,
and maybe people of both genders aren't willing or intended to squash themselves
into tiny boxes just to keep a job or please a fear-based manager. Are all those
'woman, fix thyself' books perhaps a fearful reaction to the power that women
begin to show (and men, too) at work when they act like themselves?

Sounds crazy, I know.

Don't Suck the Juice out of Your Career

2010-05-03T16:33:00.000-07:00

Liz Ryan: Don`t suck the juice out of your career

I dreamed about Albert Einstein the other night. I dreamed I was reading dear
Albert`s resume, and it said ...
"Results-oriented scientist, researcher and author with a broad range of
experience in cosmology, astrophysics and related areas. Extensive background in
laboratory research, mathematical computation, writing and lecturing."

In my nightmare, one of the most exciting people ever to grace our planet was
reduced to a boring, lifeless shell on paper. If it could happen to Albert
Einstein, it could happen to you!

We pick up bad habits over time, but we can break them. Our moms got us to stop
biting our nails (most of us, anyway). We can stop describing ourselves in
soporific terms, and bring a little color and spark back into our resumes.

The weirdest thing about prevailing resume dogma is that it encourages us to
tell the reader everything he or she needs to know about what we`ve done so far
in our careers - everything except the punchline! A typical resume, for
instance, will include a bullet like this one:

"Answered calls for salespeople, created sales reports, and resolved sales order
discrepancies."

This resume bullet and the 10 million resume bullets like it leave me feeling
like a character on "Seinfeld" during the famous "Yada Yada" episode, where the
most important details of every story are glossed over with an airy "Yada yada"
in place of the deets.

We want the story! Why were those salespeople calling you? What did you tell
them? What good did it do, when you shared that information? What bad thing
would have happened if you hadn`t answered the phone? Who read those sales
reports, and what did s/he do with the information?

You get the idea.

Keep the blood and guts in your resume. Tell us not only what you did in each
job you held, but why. Tell us who cared, and tell us why that person cared
enough to put you on Task A or Project X rather than something else entirely.
Tell us why your work mattered to your employer, and why it mattered to you.

Give us a reason to care, too.

Read the full story here.

Put Your Accomplishments in Context

2010-04-28T15:32:00.001-07:00

Dear Liz,

I like how you are teaching us to view our career histories differently and more creatively. I never liked saying on my resume that I have seven years of progressively more responsible blah blah blah. But I am stuck when it comes to listing exciting accomplishments. I have done mostly staff assignments in HR and Benefits where I pretty much did the same thing all day. I resolved Benefits issues for employees and created reports and sat in meetings and worked on projects related to cost allocation and vendor quality. How would I make these tasks more exciting in an accomplishment-focused resume?

Thanks,

Tamara

__________________________________________

Dear Tamara,

We have picked up a lot of useless ideas (I call them barnacles) during our years as corporate Joes and Sallies. One of the worst, most hard-to-shake barnacles is the notion of describing our work histories sideways. What do I mean by that? Let’s think about it this way.

Employers want to know that when we encounter a problem or a hill to be climbed, we’ll have the will and the skill to surmount the challenge. They want to know that when we’re confronted with a vexing and unfamiliar puzzle, we’ll jump into action, gather the information we need, and go to work. They want to know that we understand the impact of our work, that we make thoughtful decisions as we devise an attack plan, and that we understand the consequences of our actions.

These are reasonable expectations on an employer’s part.

So why is it that when we’re taught how to write a resume, we’re advised to leave out the most important information, namely, the context for our actions in the past?

Read the full story and leave a comment here

April over?

2010-04-27T12:03:00.000-07:00

Dear folks,

Ask Liz Ryan's April special deals will wrap up this
Sunday.

These services only need to be purchased by Sunday; they can be
used whenever it's convenient, within three months. The list is:

One-hour
consult with Liz (normally $269)

This is a one-hour telephone consult
scheduled with Liz Ryan, to address your job-search or on-the-job
situation.
$189.00

Two-hour consult or two one-hour sessions with Liz
(normally $525)

This is one two-hour telephone consult, or two one-hour
sessions purchased at the same time.
$299.00

Resume Critique with
Suggestions (normally $325)

In this program, you'll send your resume to
Liz via email and get her concrete suggestions for strengthening it.
$159.00

Your Human-Voiced Resume (normally $699)
Liz will write or re-write your resume in her acclaimed Human-Voiced framework.
$499

Ask Liz Ryan In Gear Program (normally $1499)
Liz's popular bundled program includes three telephone consults with Liz, Your
Human-Voiced Resume, four Career Altitude virtual workshops, eight weeks of
email support and six Pain Letters that Liz will write for you.
$1299

Details are here.

or reach Jackie Marrinan at jackie@asklizryan.com
with questions.

Thanks!

Free Virtual Workshop: Surmounting Any Resume Problem

2010-03-24T15:39:00.000-07:00

Dear folks,

Please join me this Saturday morning, March 27, at 9:15 a.m. Mountain time for a special, public and free Career Altitude workshop called "Surmounting Any Resume Problem." We'll talk about career gaps, shifts in level, being laid off, coming back to work after kids, and whatever other resume issues you'd like to address. Please invite your friends! This workshop is free and open to everyone.

Here's the link to RSVP.

On the site (it's Calliflower, our teleseminar host) you'll find a list of local dial-in numbers. Questions? Please write to Jackie Marrinan at jackie@asklizryan.com

Thanks! Liz
www.asklizryan.com

Is this networking?

2010-03-18T16:59:00.000-07:00

Dear Liz,

I am new to networking and not sure of how it works all the time. Several friends of mine have referred me to friends of theirs who work in companies around town. They say "Call my friend Jackson" and they give me the number. I call Jackson at his desk, and I say "Hi, I'm a friend of Lauren's. I was wondering if there are any open Accounting positions in your company?" They say they don't know, and then they check it out and they send me an email message that refers me to the company's careers site. So what is the point?

Thanks,

Trevor

Dear Trevor,

I can understand your frustration. What you are talking about is not really networking, because it doesn't involve any connection between you and the person you're contacting, apart from the transactional question "Are there any open positions in your company?" We can't really be surprised when your new acquaintance refers you to HR in that situation. What else can he or she do? The person doesn't know you and can't recommend you. We're doing him or her a disservice when we call and ask a question that we could answer for ourselves by visiting the company's Careers site. In this scenario, simply being Lauren's friend doesn't give us enough social capital to expect the employed guy to do much for us, especially when we're really treating him as a means to our end.

Networking is a bit different. If we were networking with Lauren, we'd spend time with her in person or on the phone and learn about her, including her professional life and her ideas and plans. We'd see how we could help her, and she might help us too. She might make an introduction for us, for instance.

Let's say Lauren said to us, "I'll introduce you to my friend Willis, who works at Acme Dynamite." We'd say "Thanks Lauren! That is tremendous." We'd ask Lauren to send a two-way, email introduction that introduces Willis to us and vice versa. We'd follow Lauren's email message with a thank-you to her and simultaneous "nice to meet you" message to Willis. We'd ask Willis if he had a minute to talk by phone, in the same message.

If Willis had time to talk, we'd call him at the arranged time and introduce ourselves. We wouldn't ask him "Are there any open positions in your company?" If we were so direct about our needs we'd be signalling that the purpose of our call was strictly to further our job-search agenda. If that were the case, we could expect Willis to be insulted. He is a trusted friend of Lauren's and doesn't expect to be viewed merely as a conduit to someone's else's next job.

Instead, we'd ask Willis about his own professional life. "How did you get to Acme Dynamite?" "What do you like about the company?" You are meeting Willis and he is meeting you, in this call. If he wants to suggest a way that he could help you with your job search, he will. We can't ask him on such short acquaintance to join our cause.

To read the full story please jump here.

Put Yourself in Your Resume

2010-03-09T20:57:00.000-08:00

"I keep sending out resumes, but getting nowhere," says the woman on the phone.
"What kinds of jobs are you looking for?" I asked.
"I'm a full-service marketer," she said.
I asked, "Have you settled on a job-search brand?"

"Here's what I've got," she replied. "I'm a broadly skilled marketer with experience in pharma, consumer packaged goods, and legal services. I do PR, marketing communications, trade shows, and marketing research."

"Hmmm," I said. "That's one way to describe yourself. The only problem is, a lot of people have experience very similar to yours. A lot of people have worked in those industries and have performed those functions. Is experience in pharma, consumer packaged goods, and legal services really part of your brand? Are you very attached to those industries, or did you just happen to work in them? Are you especially focused on working in those industries now?"

"Well, I ..." my caller said, "I guess I thought that my history was my brand."

"It could be part of your brand," I replied, "if industry specialization is important to you now. But I can't imagine that any employer would be looking specifically for someone with experience in those three industries. I mean, why would those three industries matter to them?"
Read the full story here.

Oh, you mean THAT job market?

2010-02-23T12:11:00.000-08:00

Job-searching in the U.S. is like queuing in the U.K. Have you ever seen the lines next to the bus stops in London? In the U.K., people line up. It's like breathing for them. No jostling, no line-cutting. That's their thing. They're very good liner-uppers.

Here in the U.S., we apply for jobs the same way. Show us two velvet ropes, we're gonna stand between 'em. There's nothing quite like job-hunting to remind us of how rule-abiding we are. Fill out this online application. Take this personality test. Answer this twenty-minute questionnaire.

My husband says to me "There's something about forms -- online or on paper. You get a form, you start filling it out, suddenly you're six years old and every authority figure from your whole lifetime is standing over your shoulder, checking for accuracy." He's right.

We are trained to follow the rules, and when it comes time to job-hunt, we fall right in line. When I write about a rule-breaking job-seeker who got a job (and most of the folks I know who are getting good jobs right now, are breaking rules right and left) some people get discouraged. They even get mad. I always get comments that say "You're wrong, that's B.S., you can't get a job that way."

It makes some people angry to hear that other people are getting great jobs by not following the rules.
But think about it: whose rules are these? They're not laws. They're bureaucratic HR policies. You don't work for these companies (yet). Why should you follow their rules? Every resume must go into the Black Hole. No phone calls. No end-running HR, do not contact the hiring manager, do not pass Go, do not collect two hundred dollars. Yeah, well, who says?

Read the full story here.

Daily Camera offers "Career Reboot 2010" workshop series

2010-01-27T17:06:00.001-08:00

Career expert and Camera columnist Liz Ryan is hosting a three-part workshop series during February. The Career Reboot 2010 workshop is designed to help job seekers improve their “job-search brand” and interview skills.

All workshops will take place from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m. at the Daily Camera, 1048 Pearl St. in Boulder. The cost for each two-hour workshop is $99 and the admission includes a 10-page booklet of tips and resources and free parking. The cost for signing up for all three workshops is $250.

Brief descriptions of the workshops are below. Fore more information and to register, visit dailycamera.com/reboot or call 303-473-1272.

Feb. 4: Reclaiming Your Career Ground — Ryan will help job-seekers identify and articulate what they’ve done professionally and personally that will make them valuable hires.

Feb. 11: Solving the Pain Problem — Ryan will discuss avoiding the “black hole of HR” by spotting how to solve the business’ problems, locating and reaching decision-makers and relating backgrounds to the employer’s pressing need.

Feb. 18: Non-Traditional Job Search Techniques for Non-Traditional Job Seekers — This workshop will dig into non-traditional methods for finding jobs that the big job-search engines miss and about using networks (on- and offline) and communities to top into employment opportunities.

Tonight's Career Altitude Workshop: Building Your Online Soapbox

2010-01-26T10:27:00.001-08:00

Dear folks,

Here's the lowdown on tonight's Career Altitude virtual workshop, "Building Your Online Soapbox:"

Career Altitude Virtual Workshop: Building Your Online Soapbox

How do some people become known for their expertise while others toil away in obscurity? Why are some people well-connected and others mostly known among the six other people in their departments? Building Your Online Soapbox is an online branding, differentiation and tools workshop that teaches participants how to use LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, online communities and other approaches to build visibility, credibility, reachability and community online. Tap into your power with a megaphone for your ideas and a strong network for support and introductions – don’t miss this program!

Start time: 6:15 p.m. Mountain time

End time: 7:50 p.m. Mountain time

Workshop leader: Liz Ryan

This is a virtual Career Altitude workshop. We use the Calliflower service for our virtual calls. When you register for this workshop or for a set of Career Altitude workshops, you will be invited to join each of our virtual workshops until you've attended as many workshops as you purchased.

To register for this workshop or other Career Altitude workshops, please jump to http://www.asklizryan.com/careeraltitude.html

Questions? Please write to jackie@asklizryan.com

Attend an Ask Liz Ryan Career Altitude workshop as our guest

2010-01-22T10:19:00.000-08:00

Dear folks,

Maybe a dose of job-search or career advice and moral support could energize your career plans this month! Twice per week on Tuesday evenings and Saturday mornings, we meet for a Career Altitude virtual career workshop, and we'd like to invite you to join us at an upcoming Career Altitude workshop as our guest.

A schedule of upcoming workshops by topic is below. Please pick one that will be useful for you, and RSVP as our guest at this link:

Questions? Please write to Jackie Marrinan at jackie@asklizryan.com
Thanks!
yours

Liz
Liz Ryan
www.asklizryan.com

Here are some of upcoming workshops:

Tuesday, January 26, 2010
6:15pm - 7:50pm
Career Altitude Virtual Workshop: Building Your Online Soapbox

Saturday, January 30, 2010
9:15am - 10:45am
Career Altitude Virtual Workshop: LinkedIn Intro

Tuesday, February 2, 2010
6:15pm - 7:50pm
Career Altitude Virtual Workshop: Pain Letter Workshop

Saturday, February 6, 2010
9:15am - 10:45am
Career Altitude Virtual Workshop: LinkedIn Advanced

Tuesday, February 9, 2010
6:15pm - 7:50pm
Career Altitude Virtual Workshop: Growing Your Influence at Work

Saturday, February 13, 2010
9:15am - 10:45am
Career Altitude Virtual Workshop: Architect of Your Career

You can find additional workshops here.

When you decide which workshop you would like to attend, please sign up here.
We'll hope to see you soon!

Jackie Marrinan
jackie@asklizryan.com
Client Services Manager
Ask Liz Ryan

Watching the Employment Data

2010-01-21T15:14:00.001-08:00

Dear folks,

While I watch the employment statistics with great interest, I also worry when
folks relate their own job search prospects to the greater employment picture.
Twice a week or more often, I talk to job-seekers for whom the daily
employment-stats updates feel like critical, relevant information for their own
searches. That perspective scares me!

The unemployment rate for degreed people is much lower than the general
unemployment rate, but that fact aside, we make our opportunities. Finding a job
is not like taking a number in a deli and waiting for your turn to buy pastrami
and provolone. We can't wait for the labor-market rising tide to lift our
individual boats. We've got to figure out where there are problems we can solve,
and get that message across to the people who need our help the most.

The labor-market stats are interesting reading, but they don't necessarily have
any connection to our individual situations. Above all, we can't afford to take
the view "Things are so bad, why bother job-hunting?" There are good reasons to
bother. Employers need our talents, and we need the income, intellectual and
social stimulation, and self-esteem boost that our work provides.

If we say "Look how bad the job market is. Look how much competition there is. I
may as well stay out of the fray" we have surrendered before we've even begun.
For many job-seekers, competition from other job-seekers is the least of their
worries. Most resumes, for instance, are dreck. Most candidates don't customize
their overtures or speak to the employer's need in their boilerplate cover
letters. There is a massive, gaping opportunity for intrepid job-seekers to
manage every aspect of the job-search processes better than most of their
'competitors' do.

The newspapers tell us how many net new jobs are created or lost each month
across the country. That's useful information from a "I like to know how my
country is faring" point of view. Relevance to a personal job search? Little to
none! There is no deli, there are no numbers to be taken, and waiting out the
storm is perhaps the worst job-search strategy available. We can take a more
proactive approach. Good questions for us to ask include these three:

- Who (which employer or client population) needs my help?
- What do I offer to that employer or that client group?
- How can I reach those folks to let them know how I can help them?

Cheers -- Liz

It's 2010: I need a new resume summary!

2010-01-08T19:47:00.001-08:00

Hi Liz,

I am a technical communicator and project manager. I am a one-person department so I run the show with no hand holding. I’ve taken the initiative to save my company money and am always looking for ways to improve process. I have a strong work ethic and am respected by everyone I work with.

So, why am I so dissatisfied with my summary?

Experienced technical communicator, project manager, and team lead with an emphasis on database management. Seeking an environment that supports a problem solver who enjoys deciphering complex software and improving quality standards.

Please help.

Thanks,

Charlotte

------------------- NOTE FROM LIZ:---------------------------

Dear Charlotte,

Don't despair! Nearly everyone is unhappy with his or her summary!
I don't know enough about you at the moment to re-write your summary, but take a look at these two (below) and see whether they spark any ideas. Both of them use the first person -- you probably already know that I'm partial to that format, as "Experienced whatever whatever" is so robotic and impersonal. Both of them try to steer clear of jargon like "technical communicator" (what does it mean, exactly?) and both of them include some human details, or a mini-story. Let me know your thoughts -- thanks! Liz

Summary One:

I started out as a technical writer before veering into IT project management, where recently I herded forty-two programmer cats to wrap up a massively customized ERP implementation four months early. I get paid to move big projects through their pipelines, and for fun I dismantle broken processes and replace them with simpler, more intuitive ones. At CNA, I led the Software Quality team to win our President's Lifesaver Award in 2008, and now I'm looking for a PM role in a shop where human factors carry as much weight as technical ones.

Summary Two:

I'm an Office Manager whose strong suit is playing air traffic controller and First Mate simultaneously in a busy shop with lots of client contact. I'm happiest untangling thorny client issues, keeping a back-office infrastructure humming, and managing a CEO's travel and appointment schedules so s/he can focus on other things. At Pickwick Papers, I ran the office and served as HR Manager, learning a ton about payroll, benefits and HR law in the process. I'm fearless about trying new things, and fanatical about helping make my company a tremendous place to work.

Cheers -- Liz

Ask Liz Ryan: How Do I Give Notice?

2010-01-06T17:52:00.003-08:00

Dear Liz,

Hurrah for me! I got the job offer I've been waiting for, this morning. Granted, the process took over four months, but at least it's all finalized now. I need to give notice soon, because I promised the new company I'd be starting the job two weeks from now.

Do I do it in writing, or face to face? What do I say? My boss has been good to me, but the 80-minute one-way commute was too much for me.

Thanks!

Marina

Dear Marina,

Hurrah for you, most definitely! That's tremendous news. If you can manage it, a face-to-face resignation is the way to go. Talk to your boss first, before you tell your friends about your news. You don't want your manager to hear about your departure through the grapevine!

When you spot your boss in his office alone (assuming your boss is a 'he' and assuming your boss has an office) walk in there and quickly close the door behind you. Even if he's one the phone, stand there politely. Just that much activity will very likely let your boss know what you're looking to talk with him about.

In the unlikely event that your boss (shocked to see you barge into his office while he's on the phone, if he is) waves you out, then leave. He'll look for you when he's done on the phone, is my guess.

Now for the conversation. Either your boss will say "What's up, Marina?" or you'll say "Stan, I just need a moment." Next, you'll dive in. "Stan, I'm very grateful for your leadership while I've been here at XYZ Graphics. As it turns out, I need to give you my two weeks' notice. I accepted a job closer to home."

That's it - short and sweet. You told Stan that you're leaving, and you told him when, and you gave him a compliment in the process. You're done.

He may have questions for you. He may want you to put a two-week transition plan together. All of that is great. The two of you should talk about who'll be saying what to whom, when (he may ask you not to spill the beans just yet, even within the department), including what to say to customers, and when.

I know that you will spend your last two weeks on the job catching up on projects, training whomever you'll be asked to train and generally leaving a wonderful impression of yourself in your colleagues' and managers' minds.

During this time, take a few moments to folks (there may be lots of them) who have helped you on this job, thanking them for their help and support. The more specific you can be, the better ("Jane, I would have been lost during the annual sales meeting planning process if it hadn't been for you!"). Don't forget to get email addresses and to connect to folks on LinkedIn before you leave. You and your ex-workmates may be sharing LinkedIn endorsements before long. And, a nice note to your boss, thanking him or her in some detail for the learning and support s/he provided, is always welcome.

Don't forget to stop by HR and get squared away with any 'outboarding' processes they've got in place.

Hats off to you, Marina!

Cheers,

Liz

Give up salary history?

2009-12-23T13:05:00.001-08:00

Hi Liz,

I learned about a position of interest and I emailed several LinkedIn
connections asking about the co. and if they knew of an appropriate contact, to
(tactfully) avoid the HR black hole. Each time I was told to contact their HR. I
contacted HR and was told to complete an online app. I completed the app and
drafted a very tailored cover/pain letter, customized my resume and submitted
both online. I exceeded their experience by more than double and met their ed
preference for a grad degree. At the bottom of the app after completing
everything as I went to submit it, I was informed that I was subject to a
background check and verification of salary/experience. I wasn't thrilled about
it but had invested a lot of time so I submitted the app. I received a call from
HR asking me for my salary requirements - I gave the range and was told it was
high and asked would I flex $10K? I wasn't excited but said depending on their
compensation package, I would. Then in
spite of the years of direct experience I exceeded vs. their requirements, she
commented that it had been several years since I'd performed the management
areas needed by them ( in spite of having documented solid results for 4
companies on my resume), vs. what I've done with consulting the past few years.
From her comments, it sounded as if they haven't found the right person - now I
know why. I was starting to feel like I was getting attacked to bring me down.
While I could commute, it would be 2-3 hours commute each way, so I told her I'd
need to relo and wouldn't commute. Right now I'm honestly ambivalent about this
whole situation.

Since I submitted the app acknowledging past salary/employment verification, if
I am contacted re: an interview or additional info, in spite of my favoring
your recommendations to not disclose past salaries, do I have to provide company
HR contacts for salary verification or- can I provide an employee reference to
verify salary? I won't lie but I want to avoid HR.
I also don't want to disclose consulting income - do I say that's privileged as
part of my tax reporting information?
What else would you recommend addressing with this co. upfront before I commit
to more time/meetings with them?

Thanks, Liz,

Carmen

---------------------- NOTE FROM LIZ:---------------------------

Dear Carmen,

You filled out an online application, and in that process you gave the employer
permission to contact your past employers. That approval has NOTHING to do with
your own disclosure of your past salaries or your consulting income. It is
entirely up to you whether to say anything about that, or not.

As you mentioned, I don't see any reason for an employer to ask about your past
salary, and I encourage job-seekers to keep that info to themselves. Here's a
little script for that conversation:

THEM: So Carmen, what did you earn at ABC Plastics?
YOU: I'm focusing on jobs in the $55K range, so if this position is in that
ballpark, it makes sense for us to talk about it.
THEM: But what were you earning at ABC Plastics?
YOU (big smile in your voice): I think it's important for us to determine
together whether the job opening is in a range that works for me, and whether my
skills and background work for you and would command a $55K job in your pay
structure. Do you think that is something we could figure out in this phone
call?
YOU: Well, that number is in our range -- it's at the high end.
YOU: That's great, then, if you feel I've got the background that you're looking
for, let's figure out what the next step is.

You are already ambivalent about the job, and who can blame you? Who wants to
commute hours every day? Your on-the-fence-ishness is one more reason to keep
your past salary info to yourself. Don't worry about giving the employer ways to
verify your past salary. If you've already given them permission to get that
info from your past employers, it's up to them to do that spadework. Lots of
them won't bother, if your background fits the job requisition.

As for consulting income, you don't have to spill the beans on that, either. Why
should you?

Before you agree to more meetings, I'd get a straight answer on these questions:

1) Is your desired salary in their target hiring range?
2) Is there an opportunity for relo, or for you to telecommute, at least part of
the time?
3) Given the concerns that they expressed about your past management experience,
what is about your background that makes you still a candidate for this job? (If
they won't give you a clear answer on this one, RUN!)

Carmen, the biggest piece of advice I can give you is to trust your gut. If you're
qualified, you're qualified. If you're not, you're not. Companies who put down
their job candidates are not generally companies that anyone enjoys working for.

Best,

Liz

Ask Liz Ryan: different resume format for older workers?

2009-12-15T16:41:00.001-08:00

Hi Liz,

I attended a seminar and the recruiter recommended that older workers use functional resumes and delete jobs that don't pertain to the position for which I'm applying - this goes against my grain - esp. resurrecting the functional resume again. What are your thoughts?

Thanks,

Marta

Faith and begorrah Marta, what will they come up with next?

Deleting jobs that don't pertain? That goes against my grain, too. How about if we SHOW THE RELEVANCE of every job we've held, to the current opportunity?

A functional resume never deterred a hiring manager or screener from searching for the who-what-why-where facts that fill in what every hiring manager and screener wants to know: what we did, for whom, and when.

We are not the victims of our pasts. We don't have to say "Oh, that job I held a few years ago is unrelated to your job opening, and reading about it might scare you...so I'll pretend it never happened."

We get to create a job-search frame --- a philosophical and linguistic umbrella that makes perfect sense, that takes the reader through our journey and makes it clear not only why we made the moves we did, but also how each stop along the way relates to our readiness to slay the particular dragon that's facing THIS employer, today.

We can do it in the body of our resume, and we can do it in our Summary. We build the job-search frame and the message that connects each of our past jobs to the job we're pursuing now. It's our responsibility to make every job relevant, and it's not even difficult to do.

Thanks! Liz

Not everyone climbs up the corporate ladder

2009-12-11T15:08:00.001-08:00

Dear Liz,

I've bounced around at various ho-hum jobs beneath my ability, and although I
went willingly into each of them for various reasons, it gets tiring explaining
my job history to new people I meet, especially when they are executives with
big titles and responsibilities.

Sometimes they look at me strangely or with pity, and truly, these reactions
make me want to stop going to parties and meeting new people. It can be hard on
my self-esteem to tell my story, because people always want to know, "Since you
have these fairly menial jobs, you must be a playwright or a sculptor on the
side, right?" I'm not anything like that.

On top of that issue, I expect to lose my current job in the new year because of
cutbacks, and I have to muster some confidence to go out on the job market. Any
suggestions?

Thanks, Foster

Dear Foster,

I wouldn't assume that people who are quizzical about your
not-up-the-corporate-ladder career path are judging you. They may be sincerely
curious about your career choices.

There is a chance that some of the loftily titled people you meet have
second-guessed their own choices, at least once -- most us have done that!

When we have big positions, staffs and budgets, we may wonder "Have I sold out?
Is this what I was meant to do?" When we are at the other end of the spectrum,
not earning as much as we're worth, we wonder "Should I have taken that
internship at IBM years ago, after all?"

I wouldn't waste your energy competing with anyone else. You're not in the
infamous Rat Race, so you don't have to worry about what the racing rats think
about your career decisions.

Focus on what makes you happy and sustains you. When people work at low-level
jobs to support a sculpting or filmmaking passion, just to take two examples, we
instantly understand the equation. Their passion is in the nights-and-weekends
job.

I'd ask yourself: What is my passion? It is never too late to begin to push for
that answer. Comedian Rodney Dangerfield sold shoes and aluminum siding well
into his 40s, and the actor Danny Aiello didn't get his break in films until he
was about the same age.

Maybe the next job change will be the one that brings you a step closer to the
work you are meant to do.

Read the full story here.

Ask Liz Ryan: jazz up my resume bullets?

2009-12-07T14:30:00.000-08:00

Dear Liz,

I'm happy with my resume Summary but my bullets are boring and don't bring out
my abilities. Any suggestions? thanks,

Grace

----------------------- LIZ'S REPLY---------------------------------

Dear Grace,

Your bullets -- and everything else beneath the Summary on your resume -- make
up the meat-and-potatoes of your job-search brand. This is the information that
will let an employer know you're up for the challenge s/he is trying to
surmount. Let's take a few of your resume bullets and re-write them to get
across more of your power.

Here's what you sent me:

XYZ MANUFACTURING
Burlington, VT
Marketing Manager
2003 - 2008

- Oversaw Marketing functions including PR, marketing communications, trade
shows and product management.
- Supervised staff of three.
- Negotiated with and managed outside vendors including PR firm, ad agency and
website design firm.
- Maintained Marketing roadmap and calendar.

---------

These are not the world's greatest bullets; they are boring, and they don't
convey anything in particular that you launched, drove or improved upon. Taken
together, the four bullets say to the reader, "Here's what I did every day in
this job, exactly what anyone else would have done." That's not you, so we need
to pump up the energy level!

We can bring out a lot more of your talent and track record. Let's start with
the description of XYZ Manufacturing. We don't live in Burlington, so we've
never heard of these guys. We want to know - what sort of company is XYZ? How
large are they? Let's re-write the XYZ section of your this way:

XYZ MANUFACTURING
Burlington, Vermont
Marketing Manager
2003 - 2008

Family-owned XYZ is New England's second-larger distributor of maple syrup,
candies and flavorings with revenues of $58M/year. I led the Marketing/Product
Management charge, overseeing distribution, pricing, Marcom and sales support.

-----------------

Now, for the bullets. We've used up a bit more space with the two new 'framing
sentences' above than we used in your old resume, so we'll need to use our
bullet-space wisely. Let's focus on the problem at hand (what was going on when
you arrived) and your results:

- Arriving in 2003 after six years of flat sales, I cranked up the Marketing
engine to increase revenue 40% by 2006.
- Built a customer 'pull' loyalty program that increased online sales 85% in 18
months, and upped retail sales 14% in the same period.
- Launched our first social-networking strategy, attracting 4500 Facebook and
LinkedIn group members and 3750 loyalty-card-holders.

Your new bullets improve upon the old bullets in six important ways:

1) Reading the second version, we know the context for your job at XYZ - what
the company was about and what it was up against.
2) We know some of the things that you got done in that job.
3) We know that you understand the business impact of your accomplishments.
4) We get to learn some of the 'how' as well as the 'what' - for example, that
you grew the loyalty program via social networking tools.
5) We get a stronger sense of the human being behind the resume (for instance,
through your use of the vernacular 'cranked up' and 'upped').
6) Your new bullets are a million times more confident than the old, boilerplate
ones.

Hurrah! You can re-write your whole resume the same way.

Cheers -- Liz

No Employer Callback a Diss?

2009-12-04T23:22:00.001-08:00

Dear Liz,

My husband attended one of your seminars where he said that you said that it's a
good idea to keep calling an employer until you've heard a definite "No" from
them. The idea was that your fourth or tenth follow-up call may get you in the
door. I attended another seminar of yours where you were emphatic that there are
times to walk away from an opportunity because you've been treated badly. Isn't
radio silence from an employer the kind of red flag that should send you
running?

Thanks,

Margaret

Dear Margaret,

Great question! If you had been to an interview with an employer and didn't hear
back from them, then yes - definitely - it's time to hit the road! That is a
sure sign that, if they are interested in you at all and bother to call you back
one day, your talents will be wasted on them.

At the workshop your husband attended, we were speaking about following up on a
sent resume. Here, the story is a little different. Surprisingly often, our
persistence can pay off in this situation, because when a hiring manager looks
at an initial batch of resumes and isn't overwhelmed (or when s/he interviews an
initial batch of candidates and likewise, isn't bowled over) the search can go
dormant.

It happens all the time. After a first flurry of activity, the search slows to a
halt. If your follow-up call (whether it's your first, or third, or seventh or
nineteenth repetition) hits the hiring manager's voicemail on the day when s/he
is frustrated at the lack of progress and the volume of work that's piling up,
you may get the interview -- and the job.

Is the failure to hear back from an employer after sending a resume, a diss in
its own right? I wouldn't say so. It is easy to tell ourselves "I sent a resume
and heard nothing - they hate me - - they hate my resume" but of course, that is
just the kind of 'head trash' that gets in a job-seeker's way. I would love it
if every employer acknowledged every resume that came its way, but that isn't
the standard these days, and it's enough of a challenge to keep up with the bona
fide slights and disses in our lives -- we don't have to react to the imaginary
ones.

Best of luck Margaret! yours ---

Liz

Job-seekers, connect the dots

2009-11-30T16:28:00.000-08:00

Dear Liz,
I was laid off from a local company where I had a senior-level, cross-functional role overseeing projects with significant executive-team interaction. The job had a six-figure salary, participation in executive leadership meetings and a large staff.

Since I left, I have had few interviews and no offers. I have a huge skillset, a strategic approach and a great deal of high-level international experience with frequent transatlantic travel. I am a Six Sigma Black Belt with numerous certifications. Why can't employers see the transferability of my skills?

Thanks, Colin

Dear Colin,

I am sympathetic. The job market has shifted dramatically during the past few years.

"Look at my skills, my Black Belt and the large jobs I've held in the past" is not a powerful job-search slogan anymore. These days, it's "Here's how my background and knowledge can help (you, my next employer) surmount your business obstacles."

We have to connect the dots to show prospective employers why they should care about what we've done.

If you're looking at mid-market employers, your big-company experience could be more negative than positive for you. If your resume screams "Ivory tower, staffy guy who loves to sit in meetings and brainstorm about new cross-functional initiatives," CEOs of smaller organizations may toss it in the circular file.

They may fear dyed-in-the-wool big-company types, and who can blame them? They need managers who can jump in and solve immediate, painful business problems without Powerpoint decks or months of discussion.

On the job market, no one cares about the big staffs we've managed and the titles and salaries we've commanded in the past. This job market is all about value -- and that's in the eye of the beholder. Can you re-craft your resume and your pitch to emphasize the concrete and relevant business problems you've solved?

As you think through your approach to employers who need help right now, take care to get rid of phrases like "I have a strategic approach" that might be hiding out in your resume. The people reading our resumes aren't likely to believe a statement like that.

Use your resume to tell us what you improved at your past job and why that mattered. Get rid of abstractions like "I have a strategic approach." Anyone can say that, so it doesn't carry any weight.

When you can make the case that you're someone who has thrived by spotting problems early and avoiding or resolving them, you'll be way ahead of the game.

Keep your resume heavy on accomplishments and light on trophies -- things like the size of your staff and title, the executives you hobnobbed with and the number of transcontinental miles you logged.

To read the full story, please jump here.

In a Job Search? Look for the Pain

2009-11-25T18:53:00.000-08:00

Last week we talked about why the black hole is your worst-odds job-search channel. We won’t get a job by pitching resumes into the Black Hole. We’ve got to find ‘our’ hiring manager, and reach out to him or her directly.

If the employer you’re targeting is on the small side, with a few hundred employees or fewer, your target decision-maker may be the head of your function. If the employer is larger, your decision-maker may be a few layers down from that functional VP.

How to Find A Decision-Maker’s Name:

If you’re targeting the VP of your function, the odds are good that you’ll find that person on the company’s website. Piece of cake! If you’re looking for someone a bit further down in the organization, here are four ways to find the name of your very-possibly next boss:
•Conduct a LinkedIn search on the company’s name and your target person’s most likely title.

•Use ZoomInfo.com to find the manager you’re looking for.

•Google the company name plus the title — ‘your’ manager’s name may pop up in a search result.

It’s easy to find a mailing address for your manager, once you’ve got a name. If you check LinkedIn and check with your three-dimensional network and can’t find a conduit person (someone who knows your hiring manager, who’d be willing to make an introduction for you) then your best bet is to send a snail mail letter straight to the decision-maker’s desk.

Now, Spot the Pain
Finding the decision-maker’s name is fairly easy, unless your target organization is a huge company like IBM. After you’ve got a name and a street address, your next job is to spot the pain the employer is facing — that is, the reason for the job opening.
Every job opening springs from some sort of business pain. If there’s no pain, there’s no opening. If things were working perfectly, why would the CFO approve a job opening? Your job is to spot the business pain and show the decision-maker how you’ve surmounted a similar problem in the past.

To read the full story please jump here.

Addressing a company scandal during a job interview

2009-11-24T17:56:00.000-08:00

I'm interviewing at a company that underwent major scandals due to its former CEO (i.e. nepotism, fraudulent financial activity, ethics issues). All of these scandals were reported in the press about five years ago. How can I address these issues in the interview? I would (delicately) like to know if the company has bounced back from this turmoil or if it is still working its way out of muddy waters. Since I'm interviewing for a PR position, I feel it would be remiss not to mention these issues. However, I don't want to offend the hiring managers. Any advice would be much appreciated!

Thank you,
Jackson

Dear Jackson,

Since you're a PR person, the hiring manager will expect you to determine on your own whether the company's image has bounced back sufficiently well for you to consider joining them. I'd suggest that you begin by assuming they've recovered brilliantly, and ask them how they did it. For instance:

THEY: So, any other questions, Jackson?
YOU: Yes -- as a PR person with a bit of experience in crisis PR, I'm very interested in your take on the company's journey from the incident five years ago, up to today. Can you share with me how you navigated those waters, and perhaps the most important strategic moves that allowed you to surmount the challenge? I'm sure there is a great story there!

This way, you're complimenting the PR manager. In the unlikely event that s/he says "We just forgot about it and hoped everyone else would, too," you may think twice about the job, but more likely you'll get the inside scoop on how the company managed its way back from PR Hell.

Best of luck! Liz

Explaining a big salary cut

2009-11-24T08:28:00.000-08:00

Hi Liz,

I am currently conducting a job search and have run into a problem that I am unsure how to talk through on interviews. Most of my over 18 years experience has been in Purchasing, however my current position is a commissioned sales position for a luxury linen store. I have been at my current position over two years. I made this career change because I thought I wanted to be an interior designer. Most of my clients are interior designers. I thought it would help me decide if that is what I wanted to do. During this two years, I took a few classes in interior design, as well. As you can guess, I don't want to be an interior designer through these experiences. I did take a large paycut to do this. I do have a supportive husband, who agreed with my decision. I am having a hard time having employers understanding how I could have taken a large paycut to do this. I would appreciate any advice on how I can talk through this with confidence. Thanks!

Alana

Dear Alana,

There are two ways to think about a career change like this. One approach is fear-based and the other is confidence-based.

An interviewer may think, "Oh, Alana probably HAD to take that job, why else would she do it?" Very confidently you can say, "After 18 years on the buying side, I wanted to try something new and I knew my reputation and my resume could easily withstand whatever learning - easy or difficult - my first commissioned sales job brought with it."

It is the American Dream, in a sense, to get to a point in your career where you can take risks. That's just what you did!

You can say "I wanted to learn the interior design business, and I wanted to get experience selling. I accomplished both of those things and I'm delighted -- and more clear than ever that my calling is X."

Let people believe that you're independently wealthy! The more confident, breezy and stalwart you are in an interview, the more quickly this issue will fade away. Let's say you get the direct (rude!) question, "How could you afford to take such a large pay cut?"

Your answer will be a pleasant-but-quizzical mini-smile and the reply, "You know, as I made my career-shift plan, finances were not a concern, but the prospect of losing steam in my previous career worried me a bit. Two years later, though, the benefits of logging some time and hundreds of phone calls in the sales arena are clear to me." (Big smile.)

Take care -- Liz

Ask Liz Ryan: Handling a multi-part interview question

2009-11-22T16:02:00.000-08:00

Hi Liz,

A few years ago I was severely injured, including sustaining a closed head injury. While people can't tell now by looking at me, some of the mental stuff can still be challenging....including very short term memory, and is exacerbated under pressure. I can analyze issues well but in an an interview if I'm asked 2 or 3 part questions, that can be tough, especially if there's a group of people interviewing me. Not sure about asking for a copy at the beginning of the interview to review as they're asking me the questions. What do you suggest?

Many thanks,

Alana

Dear Alana,

I am so sorry to hear about your injury. Those two- and three-part questions are challenging for anyone. We can't really ask for a list of interview questions at the beginning of the interview; we have to go with the flow. Here are a few suggestions:

* Repeating the question as soon as it's asked helps you frame the question in your mind. You can split a multi-part question into its component parts, and answer each one separately. You can take notes for yourself so that you don't lose track. That might go like this:

S/HE: So Alana, I'd like to hear about why you left Allied Chemical and went to Jones Electronics. Also, I've heard that Allied did a lot of work with Federal Parsnips - were you involved in that?

YOU: I'll start with the Allied-to-Jones move. (looking down at your notepad and making a quick note for yourself.) Then, I'll tell you all about the Federal Parsnips deal. When I'd been at Allied for three years, I learned through a technical writers' group that Jones was beginning a project in..... [and so on]

* Another technique is to look for the point of the question -- the question behind the question, in other words. Very often, a multi-part question points back to one central issue (with luck, a pain point) the interviewer is curious about. If you speak to that issue, you don't have to answer every sub-question in the list. Here's an example of that:

S/HE: We have a huge amount of copywriting to do around here almost every week. We have website copy to write, copy for marketing materials, customized Powerpoints for the sales force and responses to RFPs. So there's a lot of writing, and a lot of version control and keeping track of pricing and feature changes. I'd like to hear about the writing you did at General Vegetable, and if you could tell me about your copy-editing skills, that would be great. One other thing -- have you used Framemaker?

YOU: I think I'm tracking with you -- you've got a huge volume of writing here, and version control is essential, as is accuracy. I ran the marketing library for Consolidated Products, where I wrote or edited anywhere from sixty to 100 marketing pieces per month, purged obsolete materials and coded and filed new ones. In that job, I launched a weekly mini-newsletter that kept our sales and marketing people up to speed on the language we used to describe our services, and people told me that they used that information even in their casual day-to-day interactions with customers.

We used a system called ThoughtSifter there, although I've worked with Framemaker more recently. I'm a fanatic for accuracy, not only on marketing docs but in packaging, sales-training materials and even customer-support protocols -- and I'm just as happy copyediting as I am writing. Can you tell me more about the content-creation process? I'd be very interested in that.

In this example, the interviewee (you!) only answered one of the three parts of the three-part question, but she got across the message that she sees what the employer is up against and has slain the same dragon before.

Best of luck!

Liz

Liz Ryan's virtual job-search workshops cover everything from writing a Human-Voiced Resume to negotiating salary and using LinkedIn. Liz also offers one-on-one career coaching and a free and friendly online community with 25,000 members. Liz is a national workplace expert and a former Fortune 500 HR VP with 50 million readers in the U.S. and abroad. Reach Liz here.
To keep reading, please jump here.

Keep Your Resume Out of the Black Hole

2009-11-21T19:10:00.001-08:00

My friend Stephanie wants to know why I'm so adamant about the Black Hole, the one that swallows resumes the way my dog eats mac and cheese off my seven-year-old's plate when the seven-year-old isn't looking. "I know there are a lot of people applying for these jobs, besides me," she says, "but my resume isn't bad. I know I'm playing the odds, but why not go for it?"

Here's why not. Stephanie doesn't understand how the Black Hole works, and in that respect she's exactly like most job-seekers, who think that the resumes lobbed into the Black Hole get reviewed one-by-one by a careful reader, either an HR person or someone in the hiring department. That happens sometimes, especially in small employers. Most of the time, the process works very differently. Here's a dramatization to give you an idea of the true nature of the Black Hole.

Let's say I'm an HR manager, and I'm sitting at my desk. Down the hall comes a hiring manager -- we'll call him Ted. "Liz," says Ted, "I just got a job requisition approved. You'll see it in your email inbox." "Cool," I say. "What sort of person are you looking for?"

"It's a product manager job," says Ted. "Five to seven years experience."

"Awesome," I say, and I spin around in my chair and check in my inbox. Sure enough, there's Ted's requisition. "Give me a second and I'll put it on Monster," I say. It could be Monster. It could be Craigslist. Whatever it is, I type the thing in there and I hit Submit and the job is posted. Took me a minute and half; it's a clerical thing. "Do you want to check with me on Tuesday?" I ask Ted. "I'll have a bunch of resumes in the queue by then."

Ted heads off to a meeting. I pretty much forget about that job spec out on Monster, crazed as I am with a million other things to think about. Ted shows up on Tuesday and he asks me "How's it going with those resumes for my Product Manager?" I have no idea, so I spin around in my chair again. I log into the company's Monster account and check the Product Manager file. "Eighty-seven resumes," I say. That's light. It could easily be two hundred and twelve.

Ted says "Why don't you phone-screen ten of them and give me the best five." Now look what Ted has given me: a batch process. An assignment. "You got it," I say. I start downloading resumes. Here's the question: how many resumes do I pull down from Monster, to get my ten people to phone-screen?

Ten resumes? Twenty? Some of them may have egregious typos and spelling errors. Maybe I need to go through twenty-five or thirty before I find ten suitable phone-screen-able people. That still leaves fifty-seven resumes up on Monster. I'm not going to look at them. Ted is not going to look at them. No one looks at them. Those people have no chance at the job, at all.

Why would I look at eighty-seven resumes when the first twenty I pull out of the stack are good enough? I wouldn't. In no sense will the best-qualified person who applied for the job, get the job. It'll be the best-qualified person out of the people who are interviewed. The randomness of the process, from a job-seeker's perspective, is crushingly discouraging.

That is why the Black Hole sucks....resumes.

As a job-seeker, you cannot put yourself in the position to have your resume ignored by employer after employer. There has to be a more proactive way to go after a job, and luckily, there is.

You can talk to hiring managers directly.

To read the full story, please jump here.

Ask Liz: too many jobs on my resume?

2009-11-15T22:06:00.000-08:00

Dear Liz,

I am on the job market again after an ill-fated short-term job that I took in March. I had to leave for a variety of reasons but I wasn't fired or laid off. Now, I'm looking again.

I have been steadily employed for 18 years (that's the good news). The bad news is that I've had twenty jobs in eighteen years. Never fired, but I have been laid off a couple of times. I have some gaps where I was looking for work. Is twenty jobs in 18 years something that's going to kill my resume in one second for any hiring manager who looks at it?

Thanks,

Brenda

Dear Brenda,

Don't despair! Yes, twenty jobs in 18 years is too many for most employers to countenance, but you have a few alternatives:

1) You can smash together some of these short-term jobs under the heading "Marketing Project Management Assignments" or "Administrative Projects" or something else. In a section like that, you'd list the start and finish dates (of this chapter of your career, that is - not the start and finish dates for each assignment) and describe the era with something like this:

"From 2002 to 2004 I served as the Marketing person for small Tulsa-area businesses, creating their marketing plans and executing them to build market awareness and client referrals." Your bullets would be items like:

-- "Created the first website for a children's apparel company, building from zero to 800 newsletter subscribers in four months"
-- "Built and managed a not-for-profit sponsorship campaign for an organic cookie maker, generating four local news stories in six months"

So, lumping some of your short-term positions together in an umbrella section of your resume is one option. Of course, you don't need to list all twenty jobs. Most of us don't carry our resume back 18 years. You could drop out some of that history and reduce the optical impact of a bunch of short-term jobs in succession.

Another approach would be to get your next job through a contracting or temp agency. They aren't likely to care about a series of short-term jobs, as long as your references check out. If you can get in with a good agency and stay there, then it won't matter so much whether the actual client assignments are long or short; you'll be able to say on your resume "2009 - 2013, Acme Staffing." So the temp agency itself will be the long-term employer that your resume needs right now.

Cheers,

Liz Ryan

p.s. Check out this week's Career Altitude workshops, here!

Ask Liz: Proof of Income?

2009-09-28T10:42:00.000-07:00

Recently I received a job offer that was contingent upon a drug test and credit
check.
It turns out that they now want "proof" of income, and made me send in my w-2
forms from five years back. In addition they asked me to supply a copy of my
school records that showed that I did indeed graduate from College. (A college
degree was not even required for the position)
I feel like my privacy has been invaded, but don't see any other way around
this.
Is it legal?
Sue

-------------------------- LIZ'S REPLY--------------------------

Dear Sue,

It is legal --- and horrendous, and I encourage you to back out of the deal and
walk away. Imagine what it would be like to work for people who have so little
respect for your privacy? Best of luck to you -- Liz

More on boilerplate resume language

2009-09-24T21:28:00.000-07:00

So Liz...you leave us hanging. Your observation of the "10 deadliest" only tell us what NOT to do...can you help those of us struggling with how to replace these?

lizryan 8 hours ago
Hiya Dan, there aren't any stock phrases to replace the boilerplate ones we're going to excise from our resumes. We want to be very specific about what we've done, and if we can talk about accomplishments that are especially relevant to the opportunity we're going after, all the better.

Let's think about the resume Summary. Here's a corporatespeak Summary:

"Results-oriented professional with a bottom-line orientation and twenty years of progressively more responsible experience in Finance and Accounting. Superior organizational and communication skills and experience leading cross-functional teams."

Yuck. Let's back up. Who(m) is this resume written for? It doesn't look as though it was written for anyone in particular. It's pure sludge. What sort of job are we going after? There are millions of different types of Finance and Accounting jobs. Our resume plan must start with our job-search direction - otherwise our resume isn't targeted to the audience we're pursuing!

Let's say we're going after Controller jobs in medium-sized manufacturing companies. We have lots of Cost Accounting and manufacturing stuff in our background, so we understand inventory turns, costed products, etc. Why do we like manufacturing so much? Here's why: Dad had a manufacturing company, and we worked there during summers through high school and college. Let's try that Summary again:

=====================================================

Since I helped out in the Accounting department of my dad's manufacturing business during high school, I've been drawn to manufacturing Accounting roles and the points of leverage that smart and nimble analysis can uncover. With six years of manufacturing Accounting for Caterpillar and a bent for spotting and exploiting cost-saving and revenue-boosting opportunities, I'm eager to help Eagle Manufacturing accelerate its growth in the Controller spot.

==================================

Notice that our job-seeker (we'll call him Jack) names the company and the job right in his Summary. Why not? He can tweak his resume every time he applies for a job. He's using a human voice in this Summary (the E-book "Put a Human Voice in Your Resume" is for sale on my site, www.asklizryan.com, if you're interested in that) and talking very specifically about what he's good at, without getting all abstract and lofty a la "I'm a strategic thinker and problem-solver yada yada yada." He's just saying, "Here's me, and this is what gets me up in the morning." Thanks Dan! Liz

On a cover letter, declare intention to solve the pain?

2009-09-24T21:25:00.001-07:00

I read your article and think one of your lines, would make a great first sentence to a cover letter. Your thoughts?

“I see what you’re up against in your business, and I understand what you’re looking for. In this letter, I’ll briefly share with
you now how my background relates to the issues you’re facing.”
By Kent on 2009 09 23

Hi Kent! I like your thinking; the only hitch is that we don’t get much if any “lead time” as the recipient of our letter reads what we’ve written. Rather than start with a set-up, a la “I’ll start by telling you what I’m going to tell you” could we jump right into the heart of the argument? Our job is to illustrate for the hiring manager that we understand his or her business pain and have relevant advice to share. That’s something we want to demonstrate rather than to assert. It’s strictly the manager’s (reader’s) job to determine whether we know his pain, or not - we don’t want to make that claim outright, as doing so could very likely elicit the response “Not so fast, Bucko” - I’ll make that call.“ If we simply describe what we believe the pain to be, and then share a relevant dragon-slaying episode of our own, we’ve allowed the reader to do what he or she wants to do, namely, to evaluate our fitness for the job.

You raise a very good point Kent, and that is the distinction between showing and telling in a resume. We can yak yak yak about our strategic vision and our superior communication skills and our experience leading complex multi-functional pan-continental yada yada ‘til we’re blue in the face, and somehow the whole things reads like lifeless dreck. That’s because we’re standing back and characterizing ourselves - never an appealing habit, in a cover letter or in a Personals ad (“I’m smart and cool and sexy, and chicks dig me.“) In every way - credibility-wise, readability-wise and likeability-wise - we’re better off saying “I have a feeling you have a Welsh green dragon flying around your castle, and I bagged one of those last year in the Hebrides.“ Cheers—Liz

Ask Liz: following up with a networking contact?

2009-09-06T13:18:00.000-07:00

Dear Liz,

I am an avid networker like you, and I meet with about two new people a month. I
send an email message as a followup, thanking them for their time, but unless
they're something immediate to follow up on, it is easy to fall out of touch
with the people I'm meeting. I want to be helpful and available to the new
people I meet, but I don't want to spam them. I don't add them to my newsletter
mailing list unless they specifically ask me to. Any suggestions for keeping
"new contacts" alive?

Thanks,

Reggie

=================

Dear Reggie,

I am glad you're networking as enthusiastically as you are. Since business
networking doesn't always pay off in the short run, too many people give up on
it and don't grow (or cultivate) their networks at all. Here are a few
suggestions for thanking and acknowledging new contacts (as well as folks you've
met over the years and don't see as often as you'd like to):

1) For starters, you're doing an important thing right - so, hats off to you!
I'm referring to the thank-you email message that you send to new acquaintances
after each coffee or lunch meeting. I recommend to networkers that they get very
specific in that message, thanking the new friend for a particular bit of advice
[a rundown of the best small-business events in town, e.g.] to let the recipient
know that you really 'got' and appreciate your coffee- or lunch-mate's
recommendations. If there were any take-away items from the networking coffee or
lunch, be sure to mention those a la "I've left a message for my friend at XYZ
Graphics, as I mentioned I'd do, and I'll let you know when he responds."

2) As an alternative to an email thank-you, you could send a physical card.

I use Send Out Cards like crazy, because it's ridiculously easy to use the site
to send thank-you cards to people you meet. You need a membership to use the
site, but once you sign up as a member, you just type the recipient's name and
address into the Send Out Cards database, pick a card, write your sentiment for
the inside of the card, hit Send, and you're done. You pick whichever card you
like (Send Out Cards has zillions of card designs) or create your own - you
could use your coffee-partner's logo or even his or her photo on the card, for
instance - and say something fun and clever inside.

If you want, you can send brownies or another treat with the card, and you
manage the whole shebang from your desktop in a few seconds (it's really
inexpensive, too - sixty-two cents per card, brownies extra).

If you want to try Send Out Cards for free, click on this link now and I will
have someone contact you to set up your free gift account.

3) For folks you haven't seen in a while, a great way to touch base is to send a
relevant article, podcast or blog post link with a note that says "I thought
you'd appreciate this, because..." The "because" is critical - I hate getting
"This article made me think of you" email messages that have been sent en masse
to a networker's entire database. (Crass!)

By the same token, you're smart not to add new contacts to your newsletter
distribution list without permission. It is easy enough to ask a person in a
p.s. at the bottom of your email thank-you or your physical card, "Let me know
if you'd like me to send you this month's edition of my online newsletter,
featuring [an interview with Robert Plant, e.g.]."

Best,

Liz

outdated job-search methods?

2009-08-12T13:02:00.001-07:00

Dear friends,

Last night in our virtual job-search coaching group, we were talking about
sending letters and resumes to employers via U.S. mail. As you know, I think snail mail can be a great way to reach a hiring manager, especially given the way that the Black Hole swallows resumes.

In the meeting I mentioned in passing, "Use the same type and weight of paper for the resume and the cover letter, and the same font in the same size." I threw in "That's good-quality white bond
paper, not old-fashioned resume paper" and the thought made me wonder whether
many job-seekers are still using that beige, white, grey or blue nubbly paper
that we used to get our resumes printed on when "Thriller" ruled the charts.

That 'resume paper' would date us now. We don't want to use it. What other
job-search tools of yore should we be wary of? I have already written about the
outdated accents aigu in the word 'resume' and of course, the phrase Dear Sir or
Madam. Are there other very-last-millennium job-search techniques and tools
job-seekers should avoid?

Thanks!

Liz

JANE REPLIES:

Liz,

Well this post really threw me. I'm currently in career transition and have my
resume on the "resume" quality cream-colored paper. In fact when I got some
freebies printed at Kinko's Fedex they said the color I chose was the most
popular.

With all the networking meetings I've attended this is something I've never
heard before.

The premise is if yours is standard white it will just be one in the pile with
all the others. This doesn't mean to go the route of neon pink, pastels,etc. And
these days we need to stand out (in a good way) any way we can, in addition to
our qualifications, character, personality, etc.

Am interested in getting your feedback regarding reasoning, and plan to share
this topic at a networking event I'm attending Friday.

Thanks again.

Jane

Liz replies to Jane:

Dear Jane,

Thanks for writing! The job search arena is changing fast. Branding is becoming
a bigger and bigger piece of the equation all the time. These things that I
mentioned in the "fading" post aren't evil, they're just not especially
up-to-date, and the danger of employing these methods is that we'll date our
job-seeker brand.

Dedicated 'resume paper' is a perfect example. That stuff was super-popular when
the most common way to get a resume in front of a reader was to send it by mail,
and when we ordered resumes in boxes of 100 copies. I subscribe to the idea of
using snail mail in job-hunting once again, because the Black Hole has proved to
be such a graveyard for resumes. But these days, we don't need (and I'd go a
step further to say we don't want) fancy resume paper, a branding choice that
suggests that we print and send a lot of resumes. After all, what other types of
business correspondence do we ever send anyone on special paper?

Resume paper is dated - that's why I don't like it. I don't doubt at all that
it's still popular. Fax-blast resume services are sadly popular, too!

Unfortunately, the not-especially-current job-search and career advice that is
out there gets spread far and wide in serious, authoritative tones every day. In
a reply to a LinkedIn query I had posted on this very topic, a lady wrote to
tell me 'In the resume-writing community, objectives in resumes are extremely
outdated.' Glad to know the RWC thinks so! I think that advice is bunk, and
random bunk at that.

An Objective that addresses the employer's pain a la "My Objective is to triple
inventory turns and reduce WIP costs as the Inventory Manager for Acme Plastics"
is spot on. I get nervous when I hear that The Resume-Writing Community (as a
body? Do they vote on this stuff?) makes pronouncements like this and,
presumably, teaches them to job-seekers in the same rote fashion by which we
learned our times tables in elementary school. Scary.

I heard a lady a booth behind me at Panera Bread the other day tell a hapless
job-seeking gentleman seated across from her that the phrase "Hands-on manager
with a bottom-line orientation" would make a snappy addition to his resume. This
is the prevailing view. That's why our Ask Liz Ryan members have a job-search
advantage over other candidates, if our worldview and methods suit their brands
and their job-search goals.

Nubbly beige paper would be the absolutely last way we'd want to differentiate
ourselves from other job-seekers. Assuming that the masses of candidates whose
resumes might end up in piles alongside ours are not writing to decision-makers
directly with pithy, pain-based letters and human-voiced resumes, I'd say we can
proceed with the bond paper and let the words on the page do the heavy lifting
for us.

Cheers,

Liz

Using LinkedIn In Your Job Search: free E-book

2009-08-04T06:15:00.000-07:00

Dear friends, my new E-book Using LinkedIn In Your Job Search is available as a free download here for the next 48 hours. (If you missed it, don't worry - I'm writing new E-books all the time, and they always go on my site for free for 48 hours before they go on sale).

Cheers!Liz

Five Waste-of-Time Job Search Activities

2009-08-04T05:42:00.001-07:00

Deceptive Targets in the Job Hunt
5 Methods That Waste Your Time
by Caroline M.L. Potter, Yahoo! HotJobs

Time is money -- whether you've got a job or not. While it may be tempting to chase down every possibility when you're searching for work, don't. Many can lead you down a blind alley -- where you may lose the contents of your wallet.

A focused search using tried and true methods, especially networking, will lead to your next job, not tactics that smack of desperation.

Avoid these five job-hunting "don'ts" that will yield the poorest of results, according to leading workplace advisor Liz Ryan.

1. Spray and pray.

Don't blindly send your resume unsolicited, electronically or otherwise, to any company without first making verbal contact. Says Ryan, founder of AskLizRyan.com, "Tossing out un-customized cover letters and undifferentiated resumes in huge volumes and crossing your fingers is a job-search non-starter. That doesn't work, and it hasn't worked in 10 years, or more." Establish a connection before sending a customized cover letter and, adds Ryan, "You can even customize your resume if a job opening calls for it."

2. Stand in line for a job fair.

Admits Ryan, "Sad to say, but most job fairs are a waste of time. Avoid the huge cattle call-type job fairs where zillions of employers have booths, yet no one is taking resumes." There are some job fairs that have value. Ryan, a former human resources executive, points to company-specific open hours and college placement job fairs. Tap your network to learn if anyone can recommend worthwhile fairs. "Ask around before you head off to a job fair or risk having your time wasted and your ego dashed."

3. Earn certifications nobody wants.

It's common to feel less-than-confident in your skills if you're having a hard time finding work, but don't rush out to spend money on any additional training unless you're certain it will yield improved results. Ryan reveals, "Before you sign up for a certification training program, check the job boards to make sure that employers are asking for it. There's no sense investing time and money in a certification no one wants."

If you're getting the hard-sell from an educational institution, Ryan says, "Ask the people at the school that's doing the certifying, 'Which local employers have hired your graduates in the past year?' If they can't tell you, run away."

4. Pay a headhunter.

Don't dole out money to any kind of recruiter or sign a contract agreeing to do so. "Real headhunters, also known as search consultants or third-party recruiters, won't take your money. They get paid by employers to fill open jobs." She warns, "If a recruiter calls or emails you to say s/he's got jobs open, and then invites you to his or her office for a counseling session and presents you with a range of career-coaching services, bolt for the exit. Real search professionals won't take a dime from their candidates."

5. Sign up with a resume fax-blast service.

This old-school -- and desperate -- tactic is a total turn-off to potential employers and smacks of spam. Ryan says, "Services that send out hundreds or thousands of your resumes might have been worthwhile 20 years ago. Today, they're worse than pointless, because it irks employers to get unsolicited resumes. Forget the fax-blast services and do your own careful research to reach decision-makers with messages they actually want to hear."

Ah, the Human Voice!

2009-07-09T22:10:00.000-07:00

I wrote a story about the human-voiced resume - that is, about adding a human voice to your resume by removing the dead boilerplate resume language and replacing it with clear, normal human speech. I got 2000 letters from Yahoo! readers after the story ran on the Yahoo! home page.

I didn't get to read all the reader mail, but from what I skimmed, most of the folks who wrote to me liked the human-voiced resume idea but weren't sure how to get there. (Some of them hated it - one person wrote "Leave well enough alone!" My take: if the corporatespeak resume is working for you, great. If it's not, you might want to try another approach.)

Today I heard from a reader who wrote:

Liz,

Thank you so much!

I have been sending my classic bullet type resume out for four months with zero results. Absolutely nothing. No emails, no calls, no interviews. I wasn’t even getting rejection letters.

I read your article and changed my resume. It wasn’t that difficult because I used the exact same information, just personalized it.

I began sending the new resume out last Thursday and I already have three interviews set up for jobs that pay in excess of $150k.

John

This is good news. My sixteen-year-old daughter says "Everyone your age has been taught corporatespeak against their wills - they sit down in front of a keyboard and out it comes." She's right!

Today I taped an interview on the human-voiced resume theme for CNN. This weekend is full of radio interviews on the same topic. Maybe the job-seeking public is ready for a new resume approach.

Conducting a stealth job search

2009-05-03T19:36:00.000-07:00

Dear Liz,

I have worked at the same agency for five years and I'm burned out on it. We laid off six people leaving ten of us to do the work done by sixteen previously. After the people were laid off, there was no mention of how to organize the work or when we might be able to hire people back. Our budget was reduced by seventeen percent and from what I understand this is not out of line for not for profits in this economic climate so the over forty percent headcount reduction seems like overkill. Our E.D. has only said that we all have to shoulder the burden, but we were working for drastically under market wages to begin with.

I want to begin a job search but I don't want to jeopardize my current job. I have picked up some useful Photoshop, Illustrator and technical web skills while I've been here. What's my best course of action for starting an under the radar job search?

Thanks,

Melissa

------------------------------------ LIZ REPLIES:------------------

Dear Melissa,

Here's a list of the CAN DO and CAN'T DO job-search avenues for your stealth job search:

CAN DO - STEALTH JOB SEARCH

1. Update your resume to show your recently-acquired skills.
2. Talk to search people - ones you know well or are referred to by trusted friends - about your plans and their current roster of assignments.
3. Ask your network to keep its collective eyes open for you. (see the note below about broadcast email messages). The best way to do this, both from a 'safety' perspective and an effectiveness standpoint, is in face-to-face coffees, lunches and breakfasts.
4. Respond to non-blind job ads.
5. Be referred into an employer by a friend.

CAN'T DO - STEALTH JOB SEARCH

1. Update your LinkedIn profile to show that you're job-hunting.
2. Send any type of broadcast email message (or Facebook blast, or Twitter tweet e.g.) to let people know you're job-hunting.
3. Go to job fairs.
4. Work with unknown/potentially non-confidence-keeping search people.
5. Respond to blind job ads.

The biggest CAN'T DO item of all, of course, is to job-hunt during the day, from your office. That it, you can do it, but that's the best way to get caught in the job-search act. If you are worried that your Executive Director would take exception to your job-hunt activities, then keep him or her out of it by conducting all or almost all of your job-search action after hours.

Best,

Liz

Job search video

2009-04-01T15:56:00.000-07:00

Can A New Grad's LinkedIn Profile Help His Job Search?

2009-03-31T22:08:00.000-07:00

Hello Liz,

I am a strategic communication student graduating in May from the University of
Michigan. As an entry-level job seeker, I want to ask some questions
about LinkedIn profiles.

Is it boring to include all job history and detail? What suggestions do you have
for using your LinkedIn profile as a resume supplement rather than duplicate?

Thank you for all your advice!

Best regards,
Paul Smith

NOTE FROM LIZ:-----------------------------------------------

Dear Paul,

Congratulations on your upcoming graduation! That is exciting. Hats off to you!
The first thing I'd tell you to do vis-a-vis your LinkedIn profile is to make
your "headline" (the line just under your name) part of your job-search message.
So, your LinkedIn "headline" might say

Paul Smith
May '09 Grad and Job Seeker in Communications

You get 120 characters including spaces for that "headline" field, so you want
to make sure to say that you're job-hunting! If you know the area of focus for
your job search (for instance, Chicagoland) you can throw that in there,
especially if your Location on LinkedIn is Ann Arbor right now. Then you could say
something like

Paul Smith
5/09 New Grad in Communications, ISO Entry-Level Job in Chicago

Those search terms will help you pop to the top of an employer's or headhunter's
search for candidates. The other thing that will help you pop to the top is
Endorsements a/k/a Recommendations on LinkedIn. If your professors, Career
Placement staff, and other working adults who know you can recommend you, that
will be wonderful!

You can definitely write your LinkedIn profile in a more conversational tone
than most of us use on our resumes. That won't be boring at all. So, as you
describe one of your jobs during school, you don't have to use bullets, you can
just say "I helped a local dairy create a unified voice for its employee
communication materials as a Senior Project. I did it by interviewing employees,
interviewing the owners to understand the firm's goals better, and accompanying
the milk-truck drivers on their delivery rounds to get a feel for the culture."
You can write the way you'd speak to a friend.

The last thing I'd say about your LI profile in your job search is that more
connections will be a good thing for you. Feel free to connect to me, if you
like, at liz@asklizryan.com -- and best of luck in your job search!

Liz

Second-Interview Seriousness?

2009-03-13T06:58:00.001-07:00

Dear Liz,

I am a weary job-seeker and I've been on more interviews than I care to remember
in my current job search. Last week, I had what seemed like a very promising
first interview for a Records Coordinator position in a bank. I have done this
type of work before. Last night, I got an email message from them inviting me
back for a second interview. I am sick of wasting time on jobs that don't pan
out and I'd like to ask them for them proof of seriousness before driving
another 40 miles for the second interview. How can I do that?

Thanks,

Todd

--------- LIZ REPLIES:--------------------------------------

Dear Todd,

You can establish that the salary will meet your needs, before schlepping back
to the bank again. You can call the person who sent you the second-interview
request, and say "Hi Jane, thanks for your email message. I'm excited at the
prospect of meeting more of your colleagues, but I'd hate for any of us to waste
our time, so let's make sure we're in synch on the compensation scheme before we
schedule that." Jane is not likely to tell you the salary range for the
position. She'll ask you to 'go first,' so you'll need to have a target salary
or range in mind.

You can use www.Payscale.com to zero in on a range for this Records Coordinator
job. You might say "I'm focusing on jobs in the mid-forties." If Jane doesn't
fall off her chair in a dead faint or slam the phone down on the cradle you're
probably in good shape. Apart from checking out the salary, there's not too much
we can do to establish a prospective employer's seriousness about us before
committing to a second (or third, or fourth) interview - the invitation for the
second interview is, of course, a statement of the employer's seriousness all by
itself. :-)

If you get Jane live on the phone you can ask her "What's the timeframe for
filling this position?" and "What does the selection process look like,
following the second interviews?"

At the end of the day, the only real leverage a job-seeker has is the existence
of other offers. If you got to the bank for that second interview and said
(either based on fact or a jolt of moxie you got somehow - let's say, by sipping
a Jamba Juice on your way to the interview) "I have some irons in the fire that
could take me off the job market by this weekend, so I want to mention that if
there's a serious interest in having me join the bank, we should act quickly"
the bank folks would be likely to pay attention to that. (Or call your bluff, of
course.)

Best -- Liz

Ask Liz: Confused About Job References

2009-03-07T20:58:00.000-08:00

Dear Liz,

What is the story with job references? How many do I need, and how recent must they be? Do they all have to be past bosses? Thanks, Craig

Dear Craig,

You'll need at least three references per 'shift,' so if you expect to have several job opportunities going at once, you may want to accumulate six or eight reference-givers for your list. That way, you won't burn out the same three people with calls and email messages.

The best references are accessible, credible and knowledgeable about you. That means that the lofty CEO of your last company might not be a great choice, if he spends ninety percent of his time in the Caribbean and away from phones and email. The reference-giver should be credible; that means your slacker friends from the landscaping firm might not be great choices, either. You need someone who can speak knowledgeably about you. I have made reference-checking calls in the past and had the reference-giver ask "Now, let's see, Mandy...blonde girl? Curly hair?" That's not good.

Because it's not so easy to instantly assemble six or eight references on the spot, reference-cultivation is a career-long exercise. Leave no stone unturned when it comes to getting your references ready to go. A bad reference - that means not just a negative report, but an unavailable reference, or one whose contact info has changed since you checked in last, or one who doesn't quite remember you - can tank your opportunity for a job, so it pays to take this piece of the puzzle seriously.

Don't provide personal references unless the employer asks you to. If you're strapped for work-related references, go back in time, or look to former co-workers, vendors and customers. You can have references from fifteen years ago on your list (along with more recent ones; it wouldn't be great to have your most recent reference a person who worked with you five or six years ago). Your references don't have to be supervisors. At least one boss is imperative, and two or three are even better, if they're all card-carrying members of your fan club.

If you're in doubt at all about that last point, get someone to call and check references for you. I have been appalled more than once by a left-handed compliment given by a trusted reference ("Well, Joe is a great guy - really great guy, I love him like a brother - but he's not all that business-savvy.") It is unethical to agree to be a reference for a person and not to tell the person that you intend to slime him, but folks do it anyway, so you don't want to take chances.

Best -- Liz

"I" in your resume Summary?

2009-03-05T10:18:00.001-08:00

Hi Liz,

I was trained to train others not to use "I" in their summary statements (purely
for the purpose of brevity). However, I see in your spruce-up you did just
that. Can you say a bit about your perspective on switching to "I"?

Thanks,

Chris

NOTE FROM LIZ:

Hi Chris!

I like the first person Summary style because it personalizes a resume. I've
always hated the Summary format "A results-oriented professional..." (whatever
the actual words) because it's neither first nor third person exactly - it's a
kind of anonymous subject-less weird military/industrial jargon-y yuckspeak. I'm
fine with the third person, a la "Jane is a research-happy Marketer who..." but
as soon as I write something like that, I think, "Isn't it arch to write about
ourselves in the third person, in general? When, in life, would we ever do
that?"

We typically write about ourselves in the third person in only one place that I
know of, and that's a professional bio, because those are meant for publication.
There's no me-to-you correspondence involved. We read the actors' bios in
Playbill and we don't expect a personal greeting from the actors, but when we're
sending a resume from one person to another, why the formality?

There's a kind of distance that comes from writing about ourselves as though we
aren't speaking to the reader directly, and for me, that distance is
off-putting. A lot of people commented on the third-person thing when Roland
Burris recently joined the Senate, because Burris reportedly speaks about
himself in the third person all the time. If you hear me do that, please knock
me over and kick me.

Compare these two mini-Summaries:

A savvy Marketing Research professional with background in healthcare, finance
and apparel.

I'm a Market Researcher who's fascinated by the study of why people buy and why
they don't.

We can achieve a Summary of whatever length we want with or without "I," so
brevity shouldn't be a factor. Cheers! Liz

The Human-Voiced Resume

2009-03-04T17:02:00.000-08:00

Dear friends,

Here's a Summary Spruce-Up for the benefit of our members who are in resume-writing mode:

OLD SUMMARY

Seasoned Human Resources Manager with twenty years of progressively more responsible positions in Compensation, Benefits, HRIS, Employee Relations, Succession Planning and Organizational Development. Strategic Business Partner perspective and focus on bottom-line productivity enhancement. Ability to work with all functions and levels of associate.

NEW SUMMARY

I started out as a Labor Relations rep before taking on a Plant HR Manager job and ultimately running HR for a $2B manufacturer of electronic controls. I'm equally at home creating an HR strategic plan and budget or untangling thorny performance and interpersonal issues in real time on the shop floor. My view is that carefully-selected employees, given tough goals in transparent and well-led organizations, will beat their targets every time. I'm seeking a new HR challenge with an organization whose leaders rely on the connection between top-notch 'people' practices and competitive success.

=====
Cheers! Liz

Job Search Coaching Group Forming in Boulder

2009-02-24T20:07:00.000-08:00

We're forming a Job Search Coaching group that will meet on Mondays, from March 2nd through April sixth, 2009. We'll cover a new job-search base (researching employers, LinkedIn, et al) each week. We're meeting at the Egg & I restaurant on Baseline and Broadway beginning next Monday, from 8:30 to 10:00 a.m. Join us! More info here.

When to Ask What?

2009-02-17T21:48:00.000-08:00

What to Ask, When?

MOE: Liz, I'm about to go on a job interview, but I really don't want
the job if it doesn't pay at least $60K. How much time do I have to
waste before I can inquire about the salary?

LIZ: A great time to ask about the salary range is between the first
and second interviews. Once the employer has let it be known that
there's interest in you for the job (by inviting you back for a second
interview), you've got an opportunity to ask whether the salary range
will work for you.

MOE: How do you do that?

LIZ: Let's say you get an email message inviting you for a second
interview. Reply to the message with a quick one of your own that says
"Thanks very much, Cheryl - I'm looking forward to learning more about
the Accounting Supervisor role at XYZ Electronics. Would you have a
moment for a quick phone call today?" If you're asked to confirm a
proposed interview time or to suggest a time, don't do it - or that
salary-check call may never happen. If you get a phone call inviting
you for Interview Number Two, ask the question on the phone.

MOE: And what do you say?

LIZ: You can say "I'm excited to come back. I want to check on the
salary range to make sure we're in the same ballpark. Can you give me
a feel for the salary range for this position?"

MOE: What if they won't tell you?

LIZ: Very often, they won't, but it's still worthwhile to ask. In case
the employer won't share a salary range, you'll need your own range or
number to throw out there. You can get do some online research at
www.PayScale.com.

MOE: So they ask me for my range, and I say "Fifty-five to sixty
thousand dollars." Then what?

LIZ: They'll either drop the phone and collapse in a dead faint, or
tell you that salary range is in the ballpark, or tell you it's not.

MOE: What if I just keep quiet and wait for a job offer?

LIZ: I don't recommend it. It's a gazillion times harder to nudge a
salary offer up after it's been approved than before. The onus is on
the job-seeker to bring up salary, before something gets carved in
stone on the employer's side.

MOE: Okay, what about benefits?

LIZ: You can ask about benefits on a second interview. Ask for the
roster of folks you'll be meeting with. After you hear the names and
titles, you can ask "Which one of these folks would be the best one to
chat with about your benefits?" Sometimes it's the hiring manager.
Sometimes they'll stick an HR person in the lineup to cover that ground.

MOE: So I have to go all the way through a second interview before I
can learn what the benefits are?

LIZ: Some employers list their major benefits on their websites, under
the Careers section. Sometimes they highlight the most significant
benefits in their job ads. You can also use a forum like ours (one of
our local ones) to contact a current employee in the firm for more
info, earlier in the pipeline.

Does Attitude Influence Job-Search Success?

2009-02-11T10:57:00.000-08:00

Liz Ryan: Does attitude influence job-search success?
Liz Ryan, For the Camera

Dear Liz,

My job search is going well so far, I guess. I joined a job-search networking group that has weekly meetings. There are several very vocal, negative people in the group who basically spoil the experience for everyone else.

They use our meeting time ranting about how the job market stinks, every employer stinks, and the world is a cesspool. (I'm not exaggerating.)

The kicker is that when I try to turn the conversation to more positive topics I get criticized for my naivete and called "Pollyanna." I briefly left last week's meeting and when I came back in the room, one man was saying "What happened to the hippie girl?" (He meant me).

I guess I'm a hippie because I believe that intention is important in a job search or anything else I'm trying to accomplish. When I talk about positive intention and attitude in this group, I get mocked. So what's the point of going? Still, I hate to quit because I feel I have a positive influence on the less cynical members of the group.

What do you advise?

Thanks, Lauren

Dear Lauren,

First, I'm happy that job-search groups exist; most of them are fantastic resources. The YWCA Career Center offers awesome job-search support, so you might check with them. I'm sorry your group is such a downer.

My advice is to bolt. You need all the positive energy you can get right now. This group sounds like an energy-sucker if there ever was one. Don't stick around just to support the less-cynical members; they can find you if they want to.

Maybe you and they could create a new group, together! Let the doom-and-gloomers rant at one another. We can have compassion for people in that state, but we don't need to spend time around them.

As for hippies: I hail from Northern New Jersey, possibly the most cynical place on earth. I have zero doubt that intention and attitude have everything to do with success on a job search, a Mt. Everest expedition or the quest for a scientific discovery.

If attitude isn't everything, it's pretty darn close. We can -- and sometimes need to -- vent. "Man, this job-search thing is hard. Listen to this awful thing that happened to me last week."

We need our supportive friends to say "What a bummer! Now, let's talk about this week." They'll help us up, and we'll dust ourselves off and confirm our commitment to see the project through -- the job search, the mountain climb or the scientific discovery.

I deal with naysayers in my work occasionally, if by "occasionally" we mean a million times per day. I get letters that say "What's the point of job-search advice? Companies stink, life stinks," etc.

The good news is that I also hear from hopeful people like you -- folks who are game to try stuff, then try it, and find that it works. I feel sorry for the ones who've thrown in the towel. I don't know how to convince them that attitude matters. They'll learn it for themselves one day. As for you: plant yourself in fertile soil, and then blossom! You'll do more good that way than by trying to swim against the cynical tide.

Best, Liz

What If they Want a Salary History?

2009-02-09T16:14:00.000-08:00

Career Q&A: What if they want a salary history?
How to get around that question when seeking your first job
By Liz Ryan

BOULDER, Colo. — Boulder's Liz Ryan is a former Fortune 500 human-resources executive, a syndicated columnist and a career adviser. Every Monday and Wednesday, she'll dish out job-hunting advice for college students.

Q: When I write a cover letter and I have to give a salary history, what should I do? I mean, I'm graduating college. I earned 10 bucks an hour at my last job. I don't want to earn 10 bucks an hour now.

A: Instead of salary history, give a salary requirement. Companies use the salary info as a sieve, to screen out people who earn too much (and sometimes, people who've earned too little, assuming that they're underqualified). Say, "I'm targeting jobs in the $XX range." That should get you past the salary sieve.

Q: How many references do I need in my back pocket? I have two good ones, and one shaky one.

A: You'll need three solid references, and four or five are better. Most employers will want three,but if you're in the pipeline with two or three employers at the same time, you won't want to burn out your principal reference-givers.

Ex-bosses, ex-co-workers and ex-customers are fine; toss in a professor and a friend of your parents who's in business, and you'll be set to go.

Q: I feel like my name is hurting me in my job search. It's not an easy name for Americans to pronounce. Can I use a different name on my resume?

A: Definitely, and I recommend it, if you're comfortable doing so. You can bet that the Tylers andBrandons we talk to during international tech-support calls weren't born with those names.

Pick a first name you like and use it on your resume, your LinkedIn profile and your cover letters.How about "Liz?" That's a good one. "Ryan" is always popular, too. :-)

Got questions? E-mail them to liz@asklizryan.com.

Help - I Set My Salary "Floor" Too Low

2009-02-03T12:46:00.001-08:00

Dear Liz,

I was so excited to get a call from a company recruiter that I flubbed the salary test. When she asked me "Would $X be acceptable?" I said yes. I went on the interview, the job seems fine, but the people I talked to who already work in the department are years less experienced than I am. I don't want to lose the opportunity but I don't want to be drastically underemployed either. Do I have any wiggle room to change what I've already told them about my salary threshold?

Thanks,

Chip

----------- NOTE FROM LIZ:----------------------------------

Dear Chip,

It depends. If it's Macy's and they said "Would $9.00 an hour be acceptable?" and you said yes, I fear that you are stuck with that. If it's a salaried job that typically comes with a bonus plan, you have wiggle room. You can say during the next interview, or the next conversation with the recruiter, "Shall we talk about compensation? We talked about base salary on the phone, and I'd love to flesh that out with a bit more information about bonus, benefits, annual reviews, etc."

If you told them you could work for $50K but now you see that you underpriced yourself, you can say "Fifty thousand would be a great base salary if the annual bonus potential is in the $10-$15K range. Oh - your annual bonuses are ten percent? Okay, let's see...can we talk about a base of $55K with the ten percent bonus?"

The big myth and fallacy is that companies are being flooded with QUALIFIED people. They're not. I hear from recruiters and HR people every day who say "There are a lot of job-seekers, but not a lot of people who are well-suited to the jobs we're most desperate to fill." You have leverage, if you have skills that employers are looking for.

Cheers --
Liz

Ask Liz: Who Pays for Interview Travel?

2009-01-31T14:26:00.001-08:00

Dear Liz,

I have two interviews coming up, one 65 miles from my home and the
other one 150 miles away. The employers know where I live because my
home address is on my resume. Who pays for my travel expenses (gas and
tolls, and possibly parking)? They invited me for the two interviews
via email and I confirmed via email so I haven't talked to anyone live.

Thanks,

Fedor

------------- REPLY FROM LIZ:---------------------

Dear Fedor,

Every company has its own reimbursement practices, but in general, if
the job is within a reasonable everyday commuting distance you're on
your own for the interview-travel bill, as you would be for the daily
commuting expenses. That definitely covers the job opportunity 65
miles away from your home.

The folks who have the job opening 150 miles away may assume that
you're planning on moving closer to the job if you get it, or that
three-hour commutes don't bother you, or perhaps that you have friends
or family you'd stay with in town if you got the offer. Either way, if
they didn't offer to pay travel expenses and you didn't bring it up
when you RSVP'd, you have for all intents and purposes passed the
point where you could have broached the subject.

Going forward, if you get invited to come to an interview with a
company more than 100 miles away from you, you could bring up the
subject of interview-travel reimbursement when you're invited to come
see them. However, be ready to have your request turned down. Many
employers will take the view "Hey, you came to us - we didn't post the
job in your city" and will consider the interview trip part of your
investment in exploring the opportunity.

As a corporate HR person I would fly candidates in for interviews if
their resumes suggested that they were as strong as or stronger than
the local folks we were considering. For a long drive - three or four
hours - we'd reimburse gas and tolls. For an even longer drive, five
or six hours, we'd put the candidate up at a local hotel for one
night. Keep in mind that the interview-travel conversation is
completely different from and not necessarily correlated with a
conversation about relocation expense.

Best,

Liz

The Underemployment Trap

2009-01-29T16:23:00.000-08:00

Dear Liz,

I lost my job as the VP of Communications at a software company, back
in August. I applied for a bunch of things but the competition is
fierce. Last week, I accepted a job as the Director of Communications
for a not-for-profit. Punchline: the salary is 40% of what I was
earning before. I am not sure how to proceed. Of course I'm doing my
job, and my not-for-profit employer is getting a heck of a bang for
its buck. I don't know whether to park here to sit out the recession
or keep looking for something more in line with my background and
comp level. Thoughts?

Thanks,

Maricel

---------- LIZ REPLIES:-------------------------------

Dear Maricel,

So sorry about the layoff, and hats off to you for rebounding
quickly. Paying the bills is central to every single one of our
personal Maslow's hierarchies. I don't blame you a bit for taking
that job. However, let's look at what comes next. You are
underemployed, and you don't want to stay that way.

If you do, you say to the world (via your resume) "I thought I was
worth $X and so did my employer, but now I find that I am worth
$.4X." You can stick around and help these guys for a short time and
keep your antennae up. Beyond some point -- a year to 18 months,
let's say -- you can't stay in a job like that without massively
devaluing your resume. If it's more than a job, if it's a calling for
you, that's one thing. You can adjust your lifestyle and do this work
until you retire. If it's a less-than-optimal job that you took
because optimal jobs weren't available, you can't afford to get stuck
in the underemployment trap.

The reason underemployment is a trap is that it has its advantages.
Sometimes, the hours are nice. The people are nice. The pace can be
refreshingly slow after a corporate job. Again, if all that really
suits you and you're willing to give up the pay trajectory you once
knew, fantastic. If not, you don't have an infinitely long time to
hide out in your port-in-a-storm situation while the rest of the
talent pool accumulates resume fodder and salary growth.

If you approach the nfp situation as a consulting gig and essentially
donate several hundred thousand dollars worth of communications
consulting to them for several months or a year, beautiful. You'll
describe your time there in the same consulting-assignment terms on
your resume. It would be great if you had time and energy to keep a
hand in the for-profit world throughout, perhaps by doing some
consulting alongside your full-time job. I want to caution you in the
strongest possible terms about getting stuck in an underemployment
rut; I hear from at least five or six people a week, across the U.S.,
who regret taking an underemployment assignment and gradually getting
caught there like a sabre-tooth tiger in a prehistoric tar pit.

I'm not talking strictly about not-for-profits, of course; you can
fall into the underemployment trap believing that managing a local
branch of a massive retailer for a year will get you promoted to a
lucrative Regional Manager position. You can get stuck underemployed
in a healthcare organization where you're told on a regular basis
that more senior roles open up all the time (yet, strangely, it's
always external candidates who get hired for those jobs). Once you
set the level of your value, expect it to stay fixed throughout your
tenure.

Many of us will find ourselves underemployed at some point - or more
than one point - during a career. The trick is to see underemployment
for what it is, and not to stay in that zone a minute longer than
necessary.

Cheers,

Liz

Ten Ways to Ruin a Job Interview

2009-01-27T03:31:00.000-08:00

Dear friends, here's a new story on Yahoo!:

TEN WAYS TO RUIN A JOB INTERVIEW

The great thing about a job interview is the way that it narrows the
field. If you can get in front of the people making a hiring
decision, that means that you've already moved from a group of
perhaps 100 resumes to a field of just a few serious contenders. At
that point, your chance of getting a job offer improves dramatically.

Of course, having surmounted that huge hurdle, the last thing you
want to do is blow it. To that end, here are 10 job-interview gaffes
to avoid.

1. Complaining about the parking or directions.
Don't think it doesn't happen! As cordial and happy-go-lucky as your
interviewers may seem, they don't want to hear a job-seeker complain
that the place was hard to find or that the parking is inconvenient.
The best (that is, the worst) example of this I ever experienced as
an HR person came from the candidate who said, "Seven handicapped
parking spaces next to the front door? What, are you having a
wheelchair convention or something?" That was a short interview.

2. Bad-mouthing your previous job, manager, or company.
If you've been laid off or suffered some other unpleasant experience
at your last job, it's easy to launch into a litany of everything the
old employer did wrong. Don't do it! The interviewer is bound to
wonder "Will this person be bashing me behind my back on some future
interview, too?" Zip it.

3. Digging into details off the bat.
The typical selection process allows plenty of time for you to learn
everything you need to know about the company's dental plan, its
tuition-reimbursement policy, and the size of your cubicle. Don't ask
about any of these items on a first interview, when you should be
focusing the conversation on the role and the organization.

4. Groveling.
Employers want to hire people who can do the jobs and who are
enthusiastic about the work. What's not so appealing is the candidate
whose every word and gesture conveys the message, "Hire me, I beg
you!" Joblessness is no fun, but you don't help your chances of
getting the nod by presenting yourself as a candidate whose most
notable attribute is desperation.

5. Answering a question before you understand it.
The absolute worst answer to any interview question is the response
that shows you weren't really listening. When an interviewer asks a
question that requires thought, like, "Tell me about a time when you
had to convince a team of people to change gears," you don't want to
blurt out, "Oh, I've done that a million times!" Any "tell me about a
time when" question is a question that the interviewer has chosen to
elicit a specific problem/solution story from you. Take the time to
think through the question and compose a thoughtful answer. A few
minutes of silence in the room won't kill anybody.

6. Spacing out.
Any interviewer worth her salt will be able tell when you've zoned
out. If you're wondering whether the 5:40 train will get you home in
time to watch the playoff game, the interviewer will spot it in your
eyes. If you're really out of it, he may throw you a curve ball
like, "So, who would you say was the most effective member of Teddy
Roosevelt's cabinet, and why?" Stay in the room, with your eyes
either meeting the interviewer's or looking thoughtfully at the
ceiling. Or your shoes.

To read the full story, please jump here

25 Hours Per Week Job-Search Schedule

2009-01-26T13:38:00.000-08:00

Dear Liz,

I graduated from college five years and have been lucky not to have
job-hunted since then. I am job-searching now and struggling with the
question of how to spend my time. Do you have a simple schedule to
share with me?

Thanks,

Deniece

______ LIZ REPLIES:_______________

Dear Deniece,

This is a big hurdle for newly unemployed job-seekers: how do I spend
my day? Here's a roadmap to get your job search and your new (just-
for-the-duration) schedule going:

1) Make a plan.
You can't apply for everything. You'll want to zero in on a certain
job-search geography, the types of companies you'll be targeting, and
of course the job titles/families that are closest to your experience
and interests. You'll need the plan first so that your resume,
LinkedIn profile and job-search business card (those are in Step Two,
below) can 'point' in the direction you've identified.

2) Get your materials together.
Your sharp, human-voiced resume is the very first priority where your
job-search toolkit is concerned. Your LinkedIn profile is next.
Third, you'll want a set of dedicated job-search business cards. A
grownup email address (not luvcats@gmail.com) and outgoing voicemail
message round out the list.

3) How much time have you got?
You'll need to know how much time you're willing to spend on your job-
search every day (M-F) in order to create a schedule. Let's say five
hours per day is your target. (I like it!). That means you've got 25
hours/week available for job-searching; that's equivalent to a full-
time job search, because job-hunt work is Very Taxing.

4) Build your schedule.
Here's my recommended daily breakdown:

One hour/day of jobs-site research. Target: Apply for five new jobs
every day M-F. Once you find a few jobs sites that seem to turn up
the best opportunities (I like Indeed.com, SimplyHired.com, and
CareerBuilder.com, but if you tell us your area of specialty we can
recommend others) set up email alerts to send new job opps to your
inbox.

One hour/day of company research. You don't want to apply for those
five jobs until you've researched the companies that are advertising
them. One hour/day gives you twelve minutes on each employer's
website and on LinkedIn to gather fodder for your pithy, customized
cover letter. You're looking for a specific person to write to, and a
topical 'hook' for the first paragraph of your cover letter.

One hour/day writing cover letters: You'll use the previous hour's
research to construct a customized cover letter for each opportunity.
Read more about customized cover letters at
www.practicaljobsearchadvice.blogspot.com.

One hour/day assembling and sending out your five packets via snail
mail. You can also use some of this time to write a second great
cover letter per opportunity, in case you decide to double up your
direct-outreach efforts by sending a resume and cover letter into the
Black Hole (the employer's website or its ad on Monster,
CareerBuilder, et al). (It can't hurt.)

One hour/day networking - that's lunch, coffee, a walk around the
block or some other face-to-face contact with a human being who can
give you leads, ideas, and/or moral support for your job search. If
you have a friend who's game for a weekly get-together, sign up, even
if s/he has no ideas and no leads - the moral support is the most
important element! Job-searching is hard, solitary, often
discouraging work.

There's your schedule. If you get a burst of energy in the evening
there's "pure" employer research -- that is, writing to companies who
haven't posted jobs -- and there's online networking, which isn't
included in your daytime schedule, above. No space left in this
message to write about those two job-search prongs, but we'll get to
it down the road....cheers, Liz

www.asklizryan.com/details
liz@asklizryan.com

Ask Liz: What's an "S" Got to Crow About?

2009-01-19T20:20:00.001-08:00

Dear Liz,

I love your idea of "I Left a Wake" statements in your resume, but I know my resume is pure "I Showed Up" drivel. The thing is that I'm not a leader type. I took the DiSC profile and I'm almost all "S." I like to keep the home fires burning. I like to keep things organized, rather than to start things. What can I say on my resume that will make me appealing to employers?

Thanks,

Marie-Anne

Dear Marie Anne,

The great thing about "S" types (steadfast, stable, solid) is that these are employers' favorite folks. As you say, they keep the engines turning! You can crow about your "S" characteristics in your Summary, your cover letters and even the sections of your resume that describe each job. Here's a bit of "S"-crowing to get you started:

"At Sympatico Systems, I ran the publications schedule and coordinated ads with our tech folks, sales reps and clients. My forte is taking projects that have become unfocused with parts strewn about, and getting them back on track. I'm a bit fanatical about weekly reports arriving on time, keeping processes current and functioning, and knowing that my colleagues are well-informed. I thrive in a job where the pressure's on to keep scores of large and small items from falling through the cracks."

This is pure "S" lingo. You don't have to single-handedly get a new product to market or steal the competitor's biggest customer, to be a star. As you know Marie-Anne, there's more than one way to be a leader. :-)

Cheers -- Liz

How To Account for Years of Experience in Each Skill Area?

2009-01-14T18:32:00.001-08:00

Hi Liz,

I have held several jobs where I have performed all tasks in the software life
cycle.

To keep it simple, let's say I have had a job for five years that involved
analyzing requirements, designing a system or a bug fix (sometimes formally
but often informally), coding the programs (often using multiple languages
and tools), testing and further tweaking the product, implementing the
solution in the production system, and documenting the changes.

Can I say I have five years worth of experience in each of these tasks/tools
used, or do I need to think "well I spent maybe three months analyzing, two
and a half years coding, a year and a half coding and testing and integrating
changes, but already considered the coding part earlier, a month plus a few
days here and there implementing the changes ..." ... and you get the
picture. I could break down my experience in the tool sets (Oracle,
programming and scripting languages, HTML vs. XHTML vs. CSS vs. XML, etc.) in
a similar fashion.

Is five years of coding languages A, B, and C 60% of the time worth five years
or three - and presumably one year each language?

Is five years of analyzing requirements 20% of the time worth five years or
just one?

Yikes! As you can see this really gets complicated when one has worked with
multiple tool sets on multiple jobs!

Is there some way I can keep it simple yet honest about how many years and
months I have spent doing these tasks and using the tools involved?

Thanks in advance, Liz, I greatly enjoy reading your advice to members of this
group!

Dear Tom,

This is a great question, and this is the first time I've been asked it - it's a perfect engineer or IT person's question, because a lot of folks with less analytical perspectives wouldn't even stop to think about this issue, I imagine.

First off, I wouldn't split up the skills on your resume and attach a timeframe to each one. The fewer lists and tables on your resume, the better. Of course, somewhere you'll need to list your technical cred items, but telling stories (like the wonderful story you've just shared with us - that is, a narrative version of how you got a product from requirements to launch) is much stronger. That being said, some companies will ask you (in an online application form, or in an interview) exactly how much time you've spent doing X, Y and Z.

You will tie yourself into knots trying to quantify the exact amount of time you've spent in each of these arenas, and the thing is, if you do that even somewhat accurately you'll end up underselling your skills. We're entitled to credit for analysis time when we're coding and vice versa, just to use one example. Most people think about their skills-deployment time this way:

"How long have I been coding, even though I haven't spent all of my time on any job coding? Well, heck, I guess I've been coding for about twelve years, along with the other things I've been doing. Voila! I've been coding for twelve years."

It's the same way with particular languages, tools, applications and protocols. The question is "When did I touch this thing for the first time? 1990? That's nineteen years ago. If I've been using it since then, even if not continuously, I've got 19 years of experience with it ['it' in this case being Lego Mindstorm]."

Cheers! Liz
p.s. Thanks for your kind words.
p.p.s. I'm not sure there was Lego Mindstorm in 1990.

Ten Questions Never to Ask on a Job Interview

2009-01-14T11:38:00.001-08:00

10 Questions Never to Ask in Job Interviews
by Liz Ryan

You know enough to bring a list of questions to a job interview. When the interviewer asks you, "So, do you have any questions for me?" the last thing? You want to say is "No." But that could be the best option if you're at a loss for words, because some interview questions are better left unasked.
Here are 10 highly unsuitable interview questions that should never make an appearance, unless you don't want the job:

1. "What does your company do?"
This was a reasonable interview question in 1950 or in 1980, before the Internet existed. Today, it's your job to research any company you're interviewing with before setting foot in the door. We need to show up for a job interview knowing what the employer does, who its competitors are, and which of its accomplishments (or challenges) have made the news lately.

2. "Are you going to do a background check?"
It is amazing how many job candidates ask this question, which provokes alarm on the part of the interviewer, instead of the more general, "Can you please tell me a little about your selection process, from this point on?" Lots of people have credit issues that cause them worry during a job search, or aren't sure how solid their references from a previous job might be. If you're invited for a second interview, you can broach any sensitive topics from your past then. Asking "Will you do a background check?" makes you look like a person with something to hide.

3. "When will I be eligible for a raise?"
Companies fear underpaying people almost as much as they fear overpaying them, because a person who's underpaid vis-a-vis his counterparts in the job market is a person with one eye on the career sites. Instead of asking about your first raise before you've got the job, you can ask (at a second interview) "Does your organization do a conventional one-year performance and salary review?"

4. "Do you have any other jobs available?"
A job search requires quick thinking about straight talk, and if a job is far below your abilities, you're better off saying so than beating around the bush with this question. You don't have to take yourself out of the running; you can say, "The job sounds interesting, but frankly I was earning 30% more and supervising people in my last job. Could you help me understand the career path for this role?" That's the cue for the interviewer, if he or she is on the ball, to highlight another job opening that might exist.

5. "How soon can I transfer to another position?"
You're broadcasting "I'm outta here at the first chance" when you ask this question. If you like the job, take the job. If it's not for you, wait for the right opportunity. Almost every employer will keep you in your seat for at least one year before approving an internal transfer, so a job-search bait-and-switch probably won't work out the way you'd hoped.

6. "Can you tell me about bus lines to your facility?"
Get online and research this yourself. It's not your employer's problem to figure out how you get to work

To read the full story, please jump here!

I Don't Like to Praise Myself. Is That Bad?

2009-01-12T14:16:00.000-08:00

Dear Liz,

I've been to the outplacement sessions my company purchased for me
and I've been to networking classes. I still cannot get comfortable
with the idea that I should write (in cover letters and in my
resume) "I am smart" and "I am a great communicator" and "I am
talented." Am I just hung-up or what?

Thanks,

Edyta

---- LIZ REPLIES: -------------------

Dear Edyta,

Let's see - how long have you been communicating with other people,
at work and at home? I'm guessing you've got somewhere between 25 and
65 years of experience communicating with people. During all that
time, have you ever said to a complete stranger, "I'm smart" or "I'm
a great communicator" or "I'm talented"? Of course not.

The advice is wrong, and your gut is right. We don't need to and
absolutely shouldn't write things like "I am smart and capable" in a
resume or a cover letter, on a LinkedIn profile or anywhere else. We
shouldn't, because it's tacky and unprofessional and impolite. We
also don't need to! We can DEMONSTRATE these things far more
effectively and convincingly than we can assert them.

If you read a Personals ad that said "I am a smart, witty, cool guy
[or gal]" would you be impressed? Most of us would groan and
think "Ick." It's not pleasant to be in the presence of that sort of
self-adulation. We feel sorry for the person who writes that type of
thing, because s/he seems to lack an understanding of how people
communicate with one another.

It's the same way in job-search correspondence, which is, after all,
a form of communication. It's just like conversation. If we say "I'm
smart and talented" people read our materials and think "Well,
everyone says that, and if you are those things, why don't you prove
it instead of talking about?" If we write, instead, "I was pleased to
be chosen for the team to launch our firm's private-banking business
in Russia, and to beat our targets by four hundred percent" then
we've accomplished far more than our self-praise could ever have
done, in three ways:

1) We're being specific.
2) We're sharing a fact that could be checked out, if someone wanted
to verify the information.
3) We're talking about what happened in the real world, rather than
about how we see ourselves. The reader can decide for him- or herself
whether the fact is impressive. We're not saying "See how impressive
I am!"

Trust your gut, Edyta, and steer clear of the hackneyed, resume-
sinking verbiage that begs the resume-screener to believe in our
fabulousness. We don't need it, and it's demeaning to write. Use
examples and stories, instead, and your clever way with words to
share who you are and what you've done - just as in face-to-face
conversation.

Cheers -- Liz

I Showed Up vs. I Left a Wake

2009-01-09T10:12:00.000-08:00

Dear friends,

I have been reviewing resumes like crazy lately. Evidently a lot of
people have "Get a new resume" on their 2009 To-Do list.

Here's one item that jumps out at me. A huge amount of resume 'real
estate' in most of the resumes I see is spent describing what the
resume's owner did each day on each of his or her jobs.

Here's an example:

WISE POTATO CHIPS
Customer Service Manager 2001 - 2004

Led a department of six customer service reps, reporting to the
Director of Operations. Hired, trained and managed staff to handle
incoming calls. Created reports detailing calls received and
answered, hold times and problem resolution. Represented the
department at management meetings.

-- This kind of stuff, I call "I Showed Up" information. It
says, "Believe it or not, after I got the job, I did all the stuff
that the job required." This is a waste of resume space. We already
know what a Customer Service Manager is expected to do. We could
guess that you hired and trained staff and created reports.

A better use of your precious resume real estate is to invest it in
the I Left a Wake category. While you were working at that job, what
did you make better? What did you add to the mix, what big problems
did you solve, how did you leave the place more functional than it
was when you got there? Here's the Customer Service section rewritten
in I Left a Wake form:

WISE POTATO CHIPS
Customer Service Manager 2001 - 2004

When I arrived, our six-person Customer Service department had 14-
minute average wait times and a 68% customer-sat rating. Via regular
group discussion, a peer mentoring program launch and the use of
group incentives, we reached two-minute hold times and 91% customer-
sat levels in one year.

Both approaches use the same number of words. The I Left a Wake
approach is always stronger! Is your resume a litany of what you did
at nine o'clock and ten o'clock and two-thirty in the afternoon? If
so, you want to shift it to show the reader how you left your mark.

Cheers! Liz

How to Manage the Networking Coffee or Lunch Date

2009-01-04T23:49:00.000-08:00

Hi Liz:

Could you share some tips & suggestions as to what to do and talk about
during the meeting when you are face to face with the "new" network contact for
lunch or coffee?

My biggest challenge is establishing the small talk and developing the right
formula for what to say and what to ask. Also the proper follow up and thank you
note after the meeting, thanking the person for their time & helpful
suggesrions, or next contact.

Thanks again for your tips & suggestions.

Thanks

Sammy

Dear Sammy,

The easiest and friendliest way to conduct a lunch-or-coffee networking
conversation is to interview the person you're with. That's interview - not
interrogate! The person's answers to your simple questions dictate the direction
of the conversation. So, rather than a list of prepared questions, you might
start with:

YOU: Thanks so much for meeting with me, Jane.
JANE: No problem at all, Sammy. Horace thought we'd have a lot to talk about.
YOU: Well, I'd love to learn about you. I understand you're in the pet food
industry....?

Almost any starting point is okay - your task is to learn a ton about the person
you're with and to establish a bond by listening carefully and
relating/responding to what's being said.

But wait, isn't the point of the meeting to have this person know a lot more
about YOU?

Ix-nay -- your purpose is to create trust, to develop the kind of
work-friendship that would make this new acquaintance feel comfortable referring
you to a person who could help you -- a hiring manager, a friend, whatever. And
that only comes about when you are sincerely curious and involved in what he or
she, your lunch-or-coffee-mate, has to say.

Naturally, you'll be just as quick to offer any help that you can to him or her.
A common and deadly networking pitfall is to imagine that, as a person in need
of a job, you have a special privilege to accept free help and advice, and no
special obligation to reciprocate.

At some point in the conversation, every well-brought-up new person you meet
will say "But enough about me! I'd love to learn about you." Is there a risk
that that table-turning will never happen during the hour or 90 minutes you
spend together? Yes!! Not everyone is especially well-brought-up. That's okay -
you're bound to politely interview and listen to the person you're with, firstly
and foremostly :-), nonetheless. If the meeting results in a one-hour, one-way
exchange and you never get your job-search spiel out of your mouth, it's no
tragedy. Better that outcome, than the opposite one - that you regale your
coffee partner with your job-search story and create no glue whatsoever.

In the best case, you'll learn a ton about your new acquaintance and vice versa;
then your lunchmate will say "How can I help you, Sam?" and you'll say "I am
very grateful for the question! I'm eager to expand my network. Perhaps there is
someone you can think of who might have thoughts, advice or leads related to my
job search, who'd be a good person for me to meet and who might enjoy meeting
me, also?"

In your post-meeting followup message, you'll thank your new acquaintance for
his or her time; recount something specific that he or she told you - a piece of
advice is the best choice - with your specific note of gratitude for that; and
thank him or her for offering to make an introduction, if indeed that happened
(this is also a reminder to actually make the introduction, as this kind of
to-do item can be easily forgotten). A couple of big Don'ts are:

1) Don't subscribe this new acquaintance to your blog or email newsletter
without asking permission to do so. Horrors!
2) Don't introduce another person to your new acquaintance - after all, you
barely know him or her - until/unless the relationship deepens over time and
until you've asked specific permission to do that.
3) Don't 'poach' an introduction to someone your new pal knows, by contacting
the person you're interested in meeting and name-dropping your new friend's
name. That's a cardinal networking sin.

Making a new contact/acquaintance is not a transaction; we can't expect a job
offer to come during coffee or even as a direct result of that coffee meeting.
That can be hard for job-seeking networkers to accept. Networking is a process
of planting seeds. Some of them will grow and bear fruit. All of them need
cultivation - and that's hard, considering how seldom we see even our true-blue,
long-term friends! That's why we say that a job search is a job. This type of
inside-out networking (you're the center of your own networking circle, and you
network from the inside out) is one-third of the puzzle. The other two puzzle
pieces are targeted employer outreach,
and thoughtful, well-researched responses to posted job ads and
third-party-recruiter overtures.

Offer Negotiations and Oliver Twist

2009-01-03T18:09:00.000-08:00

Dear Liz,

I got an offer for a job that pays $48K. My last job paid $62K. I
understand that job offers aren't going to necessarily be generous
right now and I also can see that jobs aren't as plentiful as they
might be. But, this is a big drop. Also, the job requires a huge
amount of experience in a specialized field, which I have.

I'm working through a headhunter and he told me, "Take the offer." He
said, "Don't negotiate." That feels like a huge red flag to me. I am
tempted to say to him, "Tell them that I'd like to take the job but I
need to start at around $52K." They could rescind the offer, I guess.
But what kind of company would do that? What are your thoughts?

yours,

Mitch (p.s. I can't live on $48K. I would go into debt having the job
at that salary.)

------------ LIZ REPLIES:-----------------------------------

Dear Mitch,

If you couldn't get a good job after lots of searching, you'd begin
to make a series of changes. You'd get a smaller apartment, you'd
take a stopgap job outside of your profession, perhaps you'd move to
a less expensive area. People are doing all of these things. I'm not
suggesting that you do any of them, only raising the question: what's
the worst that could happen?

For sure, you should negotiate the offer. You're merely asking the
search guy to tell the employer how you view their offer. That's his
job, by the way. Any company that would actually rescind an offer to
a candidate who showed a little backbone and self-esteem is a company
you don't want to work for. Remember Oliver Twist? If you didn't read
the book, it's about a little kid (Oliver) who is in the poorhouse,
and he gets a bowl of gruel to eat, and the kids draw lots. The loser
will be the kid who has to go up the head guy and ask for more gruel.
Oliver draws the short straw, so he goes up to the head guy with his
bowl and says "Please sir, I want some more" and that gets him kicked
out of the poorhouse. Over the years this poorhouse manager, Mr.
Bumble, has come to be viewed as the personification of
scrupulousness and meanness.

A company that would actually rescind a job offer for the crime of
negotiating is not only mean, they're fear-based; they don't want
anyone around who knows his value and will speak up. What do you
think it would be like to work there?

Let's be clear - it does happen. A friend of mine got a job offer by
phone two weeks ago, and when he said "Is there any flexibility on
the salary?" the guy said "You know what, I've got five people on my
list to call, if you turn us down." The only imaginable answer to
that bullpucky is "CALL AWAY, AMIGO!" because you can't afford to
work for a company like that. More than money is involved when you
take a job, of course. It's like a marriage. A bad employer can trash
your resume, your reputation, your emotional state and your physical
health. It's no joke.

The essence of negotiation is choice. You have the ability to turn
down this job, even if you'd rather not to do it. Let's say you ask
them to move to $52K. Maybe they say "We can do $50K." Maybe they
say "We can do $48K with a review in six months." Maybe they
say "Sorry, we can only do $48K." What have you lost? You can still
accept the offer at that point.

If they did rescind the offer, you'd have dodged a bullet. You're not
asking for the moon, Mitch. It is unethical for a search guy to tell
you "Don't negotiate," especially since he must know that the company
is paying under market (even this market). Don't let him talk you out
of doing what your gut tells you to do. Follow your instinct, Mitch,
and keep us posted!

Info on Liz's career-guidance and job-search programs is here.

Degree Not a Choice?

2008-12-29T13:07:00.000-08:00

Dear Liz,

I am 27 and I work in a small financial-services firm. I started
college after high school and completed a year and a half of courses
before I left school to get the job I still have. I was promoted from
a clerical position to a secretarial position a year ago. Last week,
my manager sat down with me and said that I need to finish my degree.
She said "It's not optional." She basically said that I have to have
the degree or be in school working on it in order to keep my job. The
company will pay fifty percent of the tuition. Is this legal? It
doesn't seem fair since I'm doing a good job now.

Thanks,

Martine

Dear Martine,

It's legal. You know, when adults are asked their biggest regret in
life, the most common answer is "I wish my parents had insisted that
I continue piano lessons." As a kid, these folks got tired of
practicing scales and so on, but as adults they wish they had stuck
with it.

You're in a similar situation. Your boss is doing you a huge favor
imho. You DO need the degree, not only to advance professionally but
to hold steady. You will be thankful that you went back to college,
years from now - I can almost guarantee it! A generation ago, lots of
people didn't go to college. Today, a four-year degree has the
professional value that a high-school diploma did back then. Whatever
your life situation is now, you'll be glad to get the degree under
your belt at your age rather than waiting until your life is more
complicated down the road. The fifty-percent tuition reimbursement is
the icing on the cake. Your boss's message might have been delivered
more sensitively but it's good advice nonetheless. Dig in now and
start taking classes asap; you'll be glad you did.

Last note: be sure to schedule an appointment with the Registrar's
office before you register for any classes at the college you choose.
Call or write your old college to get your transcripts sent to you,
and bring those to the meeting in the Registrar's office. The more
credits you can get accepted from those classes a few years ago, the
better.

Best, Liz

Don't Have Experience They're Looking For?

2008-12-22T20:20:00.001-08:00

Dear Liz,

What does one do when all you've had are admin positions, you finish
your education with a B.A and M.S. but employers want X number of
years of experience to be able to qualify for managerial positions.
Now that I am well educated, I seem to lack the experience that
company's want. I feel between a rock and a hard place like getting
an education as an adult was somewhat pointless. Any advice??

Pam

Hi Pam! You have the experience. We just have to
translate what you've done into terms the hiring manager is looking
for (or his or her designated HR screener). They want to see their
own favorite terms on your resume. We can put 'em there! You'll need
to customize your resume for almost every position you apply for.
Here's an example:

Job opening: Manager of a Medical Office

Let's say you don't have any medical experience. That's okay; we know
what these folks care about. They care about confidentiality, careful
handling of patient records, appointment scheduling, billing, and
negotiation with the insurance carriers. Let's say your background is
administrative, mostly in consumer-products companies. We'd write a
cover letter like this:

Dear Amanda,

Congratulations on the addition of Dr. Stephanie Perlmutter to your
physician staff! Dr. Perlmutter brings an impressive background that
should be especially appealing to your patients looking for holistic
healthcare alternatives. [We got the Dr. Perlmutter news from the
practice's website, and we Googled Dr. P. to learn more about her.]

I'm writing to let you know of my interest in the Practice Manager
job opportunity. I've spent the past 12 years running high-volume and
client-focused departments where careful record-keeping and
confidentiality were top priorities. In my current role, I oversee
client records and handle the sometimes thorny negotiations with
vendors. I supervise three staff members, and spend a lot of my time
training and mentoring them through tricky client situations. [We're
drawing every possible parallel between your life in a CPG Marketing
department and the screener's life in a medical office.]

My guess is that you're looking for a stable, process-friendly leader
with great people skills and a calm manner to keep the practice's
office running smoothly and cheerfully, juggling daily fire-fighting
and long-term practice management projects with aplomb. I'd love to
meet at your convenience and brainstorm with you.

Sincerely,

Pam Smith

Then, we'd look for a live person to send the letter to - not
just the "talent@xyzmedicalpractice.com" email address. We'd find
that person via Google or LinkedIn or our own networks, and we'd send
the letter to him or her directly. That should get you an interview.
Then, we'd zero in on how your background in all sorts of non-medical
settings qualifies you beautifully for this physican-practice job. At
that point, the only person who could beat you out for the role would
be someone who's already doing the exact same job - and you might
beat that person anyway (not that we're into a competitive thing, but
we need to face reality) because you're going to bring three or four
killer office-management ideas to the interview with you!

After the interview, you'll send along a pithy follow-up email
message with another fantastic idea that didn't come up at the
interview. That's the approach, in a nutshell. Customize, get inside
the hiring folks' head and talk about their needs as opposed to our
talents. Everyone has talents. Not everyone has anticipated
the "client's" needs and developed solutions for those needs. Cheers -

Liz

The Cringe-Free Job Search

2008-12-16T20:41:00.000-08:00

I got a call from a woman who said, "I love to work, but I can't keep doing what you have to do to get a job." I thought of online applications and goofy honesty tests, but that's not what she meant. "I just can't sell myself to the degree that seems to be necessary," she sighed.

"Tell me what you've been doing," I said.

"Well," she began,

"I was advised to write a resume that gushes about how smart and capable and well-spoken I am. That made me gag, right there. Then I was advised to write letters talking about how I'm an out-of-the-box thinker and a strategic visionary. It's too much for me. I write this dross and I have to look at myself in the mirror. Plus, it's not working."

"Lookit!" I exclaimed.

"I'm talking to you right now. You didn't pick up the phone and say 'Listen Liz, I'm smart as a whip.' But you are -- it's obvious."

"Well," she said in the most plainspoken way,

"I ran a $27 million division of a global company up until recently. I don't know if I'm smart or not, but we were profitable and our customers liked us. Our employees liked us. Everyone liked us except the parent company, who decided we were too small to bother with."

"And that is your job-search message," I told her.

"That's it. You don't have to describe yourself as smart or strategic or visionary or lactose-intolerant or anything else. You told the story in about eight seconds. You had a big job, and you rocked at it. You did it once, and you could do it again."

"I've been running stuff for years," she said wearily.

"I love working, like I said. I just hate writing yeah-for-me letters that make me cringe as I write them."

"That's because you have a sturdy gut and a functioning gag reflex," I told her.

"That sell-yourself advice is all over the place. I see resumes every day that trumpet the multi-dimensional high-altitude troubleshooting abilities and superior cross-functional collaboration-facilitation skills of their owners.

People write the craziest stuff in their resumes. I don't blame them; other people tell them to do it. They end up not sounding non-human. They sound like robots, and boring, self-important robots at that."

"Plus, I'm cringing and I'm not getting calls," she said.

We jumped into action. We wrote a new resume for her using human language. We reminded her of her career story, which springs from the craziest place (who she is -- imagine!) She used the plainspoken human approach, and she got a good job.

"My faith is restored," she said.

"Your faith in the job market?" I wondered.

"No," she said, "my faith that smart business people will find other smart people and hire them, if you take the stupid filters away."

"I still want to know how you could have doubted your gut for so long," I said.

"There's a lot of job-search dogma out there," she told me. "'You have to say this, you have to do that.' Sounds idiotic, but you figure 'Well, a job search must not be like regular life.'

But it is -- thank goodness.

Wrap It Up!

2008-12-12T10:13:00.000-08:00

If you have a resume, you want a pithy Summary at the top of it to pull the resume together.

Your Summary tells the reader that you know what's salient about what you've done, that you can pinpoint and describe your strengths and that you can write in a compelling way. The typical Summary is a morass of corporate boilerplate, like

"Results-oriented professional focused on bottom-line results achieved through strategic use of best practices across a wide range of cross-functional initiatives."

It would be better - at least more creative - to write

"A turtle was walking down an alley in New Yorkwhen he was mugged by a gang of snails. A police detective came to investigate and asked the turtle if he could explain what happened. The turtle looked at the detective with a confused look on his faceand replied "I don't know, it all happened so fast."

But it would be even better to write something specific and human, like

"I'm a Software Quality Specialist with a focus on educational software and a fascination with testing methods and tools. I'm well-versed in A, B and C and happiest in a fast-paced shop wheredeadlines and quality standards are both absolute requirements. I'm at home anywhere in the pipeline from writing test scripts to debugging code to interpreting test results. I had the lead role in getting the three most recent versions of the top-selling middle-school math tutoring application out the door, and I'm up for a new and thorny testing challenge."

Is your Summary getting the job done for you? Step one: get rid ofthe boilerplate!

Reclaiming Your Brand

2008-12-01T12:08:00.000-08:00

One of the worst things about working for other people is the way we get branded via our jobs. Sometimes, the branding is just what we want it to be - for instance, if you're the head of Consumer Products for Google, you might really like that branding. But lots of times, we take jobs because we need to have a job, and then we're stuck with the branding the employer bestows on us - it lives on in our resumes forever. The worst case of this I ever saw was a woman who showed me her resume, and her last three titles were

Member of Department
Staff Associate, and
Coordinator

I mean, please!

When employers give us crizappy titles like that, we have to reclaim our functional turf. We can do it in our cover letters, and in our resume Summary.

Let's say you had those three awful titles, above. Let's say that during the fifteen years you
spent working under those titles, you became a whiz at sales analysis. Then your Summary could say

Jane is a Sales Analysis pro [or you could use the first person and
say "I am a Sales Analyst"] with deep experience in database
management and data mining, and a passion for spotting and digging
into demographic and buyer-behavior trends to create business
opportunities.

We still have to list the bad titles on our resumes, but we can use the rest of the document to show what we did while we labored under those dreary labels. At the end of the screening process, the titles won't matter so much.

There's one case where we have to act when we have a lousy title, and that's when the title says we do X but we actually do Y. I heard from a fellow last week whose title is HR Assistant, but he spends his days interviewing candidates. That's just wrong. He should get credit on the job market (let's face it, his company could tank tomorrow) for being an interviewer, if not a full-fledged recruiter.

But so far, his boss won't change his title. In a case like that, he might make a deal with his boss and say "Keep the three percent raise you were going to give me at my review, and change my title instead." The title change will be worth more to him than the fifty dollars a week after taxes the raise would give him.

Reference Standoff?

2008-11-17T22:13:00.000-08:00

Dear Liz,

There's a job I am interested in at our local Chamber of Commerce. I
sent in a resume both through the website and via a friend of mine
whose neighbor works there. Good news, I got a call and did a
phonescreen and on the call, the woman asked for three references. "I
would be very happy to share my references with you," I told
her "when there's a mutual interest; I can't ask my references to
take phone calls from folks asking about my work history and so
forth, before those same people have met me. I'm sure you
understand." She was very pleasant and said yes, yes, but the next
day I got an email message from the Executive Director saying that it
will be necessary for the Chamber to check my references before
interviewing me.

Do I bail, stand firm, or something else? What's your opinion?

Thanks -- Carla

LIZ REPLIES:

Dear Carla,

This is absolutely your choice, but think of what the Chamber is
saying to you: we don't have an hour to meet you, Carla! We have time
to call your references on the phone, disturbing their peace, to see
whether it's worth our time to meet you. That is a loud message.

You don't have to bail or cave. You can write back to the Executive
Director and say "I have four references who are always happy to chat
with prospective employers about me. Those four colleagues of mine
naturally require that the people who'd be checking my references are
people who have already spent time with me; I couldn't abuse my
reference-givers' time by asking them to sell a prospective employer
on the notion of meeting me! If the references-before-interview
requirement is hard and fast, I'm afraid we must part ways. All the
best, Carla"

If you cannot get the ED to budge, you'll have to go right or left,
and I'd urge you to think about the cultural ramifications of
that 'your references' time means nothing to us' message. I am sure
there is plenty of ignorance out there, along with outright rudeness
and lots of things in between, and/but when we get these messages
about organizational culture it is wise to heed them. Perhaps your
friend, whose neighbor knows someone at the Chamber, would be willing
to exert whatever influence s/he has in support of reason and
courtesy; that being said, there are people that can't be helped, and
your Chamber folks may fall into that category.

Best -- Liz

Ann's New Summary

2008-10-06T16:17:00.000-07:00

Hi Liz,

I really need a summary spruce up. I have been looking for a new opportunity
for about three months but don't feel my summary is communicating my abilities.
Here it is:

Summary:
Bottom line focused, goal driven, proven leader with twenty years progressive
experience in improving customer service, profit margins and cost reduction in
global enterprises. Demonstrated success in improving organizational
performance through strategic planning, process management, staff development
and technology application across supply chain functions. Industrial engineer
by trade with Master¢s degree in business administration.

As background, I have worked for a privately owned, multi million
dollar, wholesale distributor for the past 10 years as an Operations Manager and
later General Manager. As an Operations Manager, I led a company turnaround,
restoring profitability and increasing net profit by 8%. I also increased
inventory turns by 50%, re-engineered several key business processes that
increased cash flow and decreased debt, and leveraged purchasing volume which
increased gross profit 7%. As a General Manager, I had P&L responsibility in a
jack of all trades role, overseeing all functions. I developed and implemented
a strategic plan resulting in company wide focus on customer service that grew
sales by 5% in the first year, mobilized a multifunctional team in the analysis,
recommendation, and implementation of an ERP system, and negotiated the
acquisition of the company by a $10 billion competitor. Prior to working for
this company, I worked for 10 years at a
Fortune 30 company as an IT manager overseeing new information system
development and support across a variety of supply chain organizations.

I would like to work in a similar role as a General Manager or Unit Manager or
whatever title would be appropriate. Any help would be appreciated!

Ann

LIZ REPLIES: Here you go Ann!

ANN'S NEW SUMMARY

I am a General Manager/Division President fresh off a P/L assignment managing
$75M in revenue and 350 employees for a wholesale distributor. I'm seeking the
next opportunity to grow a business using the operations, client-service and
people-management skills that allowed me to engineer a turnaround resulting in a
one-year, 8% bump in profits. I got my last employer into shape for successful
acquisition by a $10B player; now I'm ready to move the markers for sales,
profitability and industry reputation in a new environment.

Cheers -- Liz

Ask Liz a Question Now!

Career Manholes to Avoid

2008-09-18T08:23:00.000-07:00

The other day I had a light appointment schedule. That turned out to be a good thing, because two of my career-advice stories ran on the Yahoo! homepage side by side and my inbox got flooded with letters — 560 of them.

As I read and responded to the queries, it struck me that there are certain job-search problems that are much easier to avoid than to solve.

Here's my list of three career manholes that are far better to sidestep in the first place:

"I got money; I’ll take some time off."

It's a common scenario: a mid-career worker is in a career slump, unhappy at work and no longer acquiring new skills. A relative dies, leaving him or her some cash, or an insurance settlement or other windfall arrives.

The working person quits, thinking, "I'll solve my career problems when the money runs out."

I typically hear from these folks two or three years later, at the juncture when a job search is urgent. The candidate is in trouble at that point, because skills aren't current, the last role wasn't impressive and he or she is out of practice and out-of-mind for contacts. That's about the worst-possible job-search scenario.

My advice is never, ever to take the money and run from the workplace unless you're at the top of your game and flush with contacts. It's far easier to solve a career problem when you're employed and sitting on cash than when you've got neither resources nor job-market cred.

"But I’ve got 20 years of experience!"

I hear from lots of job-seekers who've been laid off after working at one company or in one industry for twenty or more years. Their contacts are in the same boat and unable to give much job-search aid.

Their skills are stale and not marketable to other employers. In this scenario, a job-seeker thinks "I was well-paid at XYZ Corp., earning $98K with a BA and essentially a middle-management role. I realize that I may have to take something at $80K."

How do you tell this person, "You will be lucky to find a job at $55K?" Currency of skills, freshness of accomplishment and track record for delivering high-impact business results quarter after quarter are critical job-search elements, and this unfortunate job-seeker has none of them.

Read the full story here.

Ask Liz: Out of State Job History?

2008-09-10T21:11:00.000-07:00

Dear Liz,
Yeah! I got the interview for an ideal job. However, over the last year, I've come in 2nd for several positions. The pattern that I see is that the hiree appears to have a connection and is known to the interviewers or organization. The connection could be an internal employee, a contractual employee, someone who has worked with collaborating organizations, etc. As I am newly relocated to this area, I don't have those local connections, but I'm working on them. Question: what can I do to break through, and make a convincing presentation even with most of my references in another state, and my competition has local cred.

My thought is to put this on the table during the interview; state it as a problem that needs to be solved. (ie: the problem being that I have the skills they need, but not the local proof of those skills). The job requires strong people skills, strong communication skills, facilitations skills and problem solving skills- the kind of skills that are nice to observe in action, not just have someone describe in an interview, so I understand the hiring local aspect.
Anybody out there with suggestions?

Carmen

---------------------------------------------

Dear Carmen,

Congratulations on the interview! In a situation where one has a real or potential obstacle that has a solid explanation - for example, a break in work history - I'd definitely recommend naming the issue and addressing it. I'm not sure I'd do that if the issue is the 'no local proof of skills' obstacle as there isn't a specific remedy for that. There will always be competition in a job search and it's safe to assume that most if not all of the competition for any job will come from local folks. I'd tell your best story during the interview, one that captures how you approach problems and that illustrates why you'd be a fantastic person on whom to offload the manager's most vexing problems. If you have ties to the area apart from your own short-term residence there, I'd definitely talk about them:

"I lived here in college, and am having fun looking up my old friends now"
"I vacationed here as a kid, and still have relatives all over this county"

If you talk in the interview about some of your reference-givers and paint compelling portraits of them, and the work you and they did together, that'll make it easier for the hiring manager or the HR person to pick up the phone and call those people and get the warm references they're standing ready to provide for you.

Also, as soon as possible [obviously it won't happen in time to affect this interview] I'd join a well-known charity Board or take on some other volunteering role that will build your local network. That helps you in two ways - not just to hear about jobs and to have an in when you do hear about them, but so that you can refer to the volunteering post - and to people you and decision-makers at the employer may know in common - when you interview for jobs you located on your own. Best of luck!

Yours,

Liz

Company is Appealing, Role Not So Important

2008-09-05T09:41:00.000-07:00

Re: company is attractive, role not so important

Hi Liz,

What do you do when you're targeting a company because of their
culture and are open to a diverse role? For example a startup or local
company that you believe in?

Thanks,

Laurie

Dear Laurie,

Great question! If the company is the draw and the role
isn't so critical, we tend to think "It doesn't matter so much how I position
myself role-wise; I just need to let them know that I love what they're doing
and could fit in any number of roles."

But it doesn't work that way, because even companies who love to hear that we
love what they're up to still work in terms of job descriptions and job
openings. We have to be incredibly specific about what we want to do for them.
It is far better to be specific and miss, but impress them with our pitch, than
to be vague and general, in which case we've essentially got no chance at all.

When I was a corporate HR person I ran into this all the time. The
breath-catching letter would arrive: brilliantly written, packed with insight,
beaming energy and alignment with our company's self-image and goals. All good
stuff. If the person wrote "I could help you with your Release Engineering
process" but we really needed help in circuit design, I'd call him or her up and
say "We'd love to meet you, but here's the thing...." and most of the time,
people would say "No problem, let's get something going." We know that we are
versatile, and companies also know that people are versatile, but the absolutely
worst way to approach a company is to say "I'm a versatile
Sales/Marketing/Operations/Cusomer Support leader who...."

In any outreach, we have to zero in on the spot where our skillsets and the
company's need appear to intersect. That's why the more information we can get
up front, the better. We say "I'd love to join the Google Marketing team" and
hope that if they like what we bring but don't have a Marketing role, they'll
talk to us about Product Management, a need they DO have. Thanks --

Liz

Parroting Terms from the Job Ad?

2008-09-02T11:27:00.000-07:00

Dear Liz,

I notice that in your resume advice you say that we should not praise
ourselves in our resumes by saying things like "I am smart" or "I have excellent
communication skills." But surely we can use terms like these when they're
included in the job ad, to show that we have those skills the company is looking
for - for instance, if the company asks for "Excellent communication skills"
isn't it best to say in the cover letter "I have excellent communication
skills"?

Thanks,

Sammi

---------

Dear Sammi,

If we parrot back in our cover letters the same words and phrases the
employer used in its job ad, we'll be showing that we can read and
can transcribe what we've read. That's very different from
demonstrating our skills in areas like written communications and
business savvy.

Instead of parroting the words we find in the job ad, let's use our
cover letters to SHOW how we communicate and how we think. That
starts with careful research (beginning with the employer's website,
and including LinkedIn, ZoomInfo and Google News, for starters) to
fill us in on the company's current situation and most likely
challenges.

Armed with three or four facts about the company's opportunities and
obstacles, we can write a killer cover letter that illustrates
(rather than talks about, sans evidence) our business-judgment and
our writing skills). Unless the job ad mentions technical or industry-
specific certifications that we possess and choose to call attention
to, our cover letters should never recite back the words and phrases
contained in the job ad. We can do better than that! If you need help
writing a cover letter in response to a job ad you're thinking of,
send an excerpt from the job ad to us, for some tips.

Cheers --

Liz

Ask Liz: Job-Search Essentials?

2008-08-30T12:29:00.000-07:00

Dear Liz,

I don't even want to tell you how long it's been since I've job-
hunted. My husband and I are winding down the business we've run
together for [ahem] years and I need to get my job-search engine
going. What do I need, to get started?

Thanks,

Meg

-------

Dear Meg,

Exciting news! Don't be intimidated - lots of our members haven't hit
the job search trail in a while. Here are the first four job-search
Must-Haves I'd encourage you to think about:

1) A direction.
Your job search needs a direction - what sorts of jobs will you be
looking for, where, and in what sorts of companies? The hardest job
search is the one that doesn't have a focus - the more specific you
can be, the better.

2) The tools.
You'll need a resume, a great 'second paragraph' for your cover
letter (that's the paragraph that talks about you and why you're
qualified and eager to work in position X at company Y) and a
LinkedIn profile. You'll also need a straight-up Your Name-type email
address and a phone number that has a friendly, business-ready answer
on its voicemail.

3) A plan.
You'll want to think about where you're going to look for jobs
(aggregation sites like Indeed.com and SimplyHired.com, plus local
job sites, industry- or function-specific sites, associations, etc.)
and which companies you're going to reach out to directly - whether
they've posted jobs or not - along with a plan for your online and
face-to-face job-search networking.

4) A story.
The last thing you need is your career story - the one that trips off
your tongue to share the story of who you are, where you've been
career-wise and where you're headed. Practice it, refine it, try it
out on your friends, and make sure to address any gaps or hiccups
until the story is smooth and confident and breezy.

We can help with all of these job-search elements. Let us know what
sort of advice or moral support you need! Best of luck -- yours,

Liz

Why Aren't My LinkedIn Invitations Being Accepted?

2008-08-20T23:32:00.001-07:00

Dear Liz,

I am a new online networker and I am a bit frustrated. Of the seventy-
six LinkedIn invitations I've sent out, only eighteen have been
accepted. What am I doing wrong?

Thanks,

Bastian

------------------

Dear Bastian,

I am sorry to hear about your online networking bump in the road!
Your 25% invitation-acceptance rate (give or take) is indeed low. The
kicker is that on top of spinning your wheels on fruitless invitation
activity, you may be ticking people off with unwelcome invitations
without knowing it. Here are some ideas for getting your networking
out of neutral (or reverse):

1) You can get your LinkedIn connection-invitation acceptance rate to
100% by never inviting anyone to connect with you that you aren't
absolutely positive is going to accept. How can you guarantee that?
Well, outside of the Classmates and Colleagues features you can only
invite people to connect with you if you've got their email addresses
anyway. If you have an email address, you can hold off on the LI
invite and write to a person directly to ask him 'Would you like to
connect with me on LinkedIn? If you would, please let me know and
I'll send you an invitation via the site."

2) The Colleagues and Classmates features don't require you to have
an email address in order to invite a person to connect. If you're
inviting people to connect with you this way and seeing a low
acceptance rate, you may also be collecting IDKs, the dreaded "I
Don't Know Bastian" designation that could get your invitation
privileges revoked. Avoid these features until you've got a better
(if not perfect) acceptance rate from the folks you're inviting to
connect with you the old-fashioned (non-Classmates-and-Colleagues)
way.

3) Even if a friend or associate has already told you verbally or by
email that s/he'll accept your LinkedIn invitation when it arrives,
don't use the LinkedIn boilerplate invitation language. Change it up
and make it unique. Say "Dear Sally, nice chatting today. Glad to
hear that Stan's patent application was approved. Here's the LinkedIn
invitation I promised you. Happy to be part of your network and vice
versa!"

4) Unless LinkedIn tells you, you won't know whether the fifty-eight
people who spurned your invitations IDK'd you or simply archived your
invitation when it arrived (or left it in the Inbox to rot). You can
write to these folks now via email and say something like "Hi Nadia!
I hope you are well. I wonder if I could ask for a bit of feedback
and advice. I noticed that you hadn't accepted the LinkedIn
invitation I sent, and I wondered whether I might have fumbled my
early LinkedIn efforts or if I'm using the site incorrectly somehow.
I'm new at this LinkedIn thing and would be horrified to think I
might have bothered or offended you. Sorry if I overstepped and if
you have any guidance for me on using LinkedIn, I'd love to hear it."
You may hear from a bunch of the 58 folks with tips/insights that
could shed light on your low hit rate so far.

Best of luck! Cheers, Liz

Six Reasons to Run from a Job Interview

2008-08-03T22:25:00.000-07:00

Job seekers have issues to keep them up at night. They worry that the beautifully crafted cover letters they're sending off won't be read and that plum jobs will go to less deserving candidates. They worry that their résumés don't showcase their shining accomplishments well enough to command the six-figure offers they're hoping for. If they're job hunting while working, they worry that a stray comment by a hiring manager or human resources screener to the wrong person will make its way back to their own boss.

These are all reasonable worries. Personally, I worry about something else—on behalf of job-seekers everywhere. I worry that they'll tumble into The Vortex and accept a job they should have scorned.

What's The Vortex? It's the set of forces that overtakes a job seeker when he or she is deep into the selection process, somewhere between the first and third interviews, when the employer begins to send signals that he's interested. The Vortex is deadly, because in the face of all that approval and positive feedback (way more, in many cases, than we get on our jobs most of the time), it's easy to lose one's head. It's easy to overlook slights and red flags that should warn us away from dangerous waters. It's easy to get sucked into The Vortex and let our brains override what our instincts are telling us: that no matter how much wining and dining and affirmation is involved, some companies don't deserve our talents.

Charm Offensive

If we end up taking a job because of Vortex effects, we'll regret it, and we know it. That's why we've created this list of Six Reasons to Run from a job opportunity, no matter how pleasant and charming the company representatives are, and no matter how much latte, red wine, and discussion of end-of-year bonuses is involved.

to read the full story, please click here.

Dealing with Age Discrimination

2008-07-29T08:24:00.000-07:00

It's a common scenario: the phone rings. A headhunter is on the line, wanting to chat with you about a position that's open at one of his client companies. You chat. He sounds interested, and you're interested too. The headhunter says he'll call back soon, but he doesn't. A week later, you call him, and he says, "They wanted someone -- er -- someone closer to college." Translation: you're too old. The company is scared off.

We all know that age discrimination in employment is against the law. That's the booby prize, as it were - knowing that age discrimination is illegal doesn't help us when stories like the one above unfold. Sex discrimination in employment is illegal too, but there are only seven women running Fortune 500 companies, and 493 men. Is someone breaking the law? I'd reckon someone is. But whom? Who's going to make the case? The situation is much the same in the age-discrimination arena. Plenty of companies discriminate, but so-called Failure to Hire discrimination claims are among the hardest to win. All the employer has to do to prevail in court, after all, is to hire someone as qualified as the over-40 applicant is. It's a thorny, and frustrating, situation.

Still, we don't have to roll over and play dead as over-50 job-seekers. There are certainly employers that are re-evaluating their views on maturity and the workplace. Walgreens, for instance, has a program called "Hiring Your Wisdom" that seeks out older workers specifically. More and more employers are realizing that all the youthful exuberance in the world can't equal the life and work experience that a seasoned employee can bring. It takes some investigation to determine which employers are likely to share that view, but it's worth it.

Here are specific tips for over-50 job seekers looking to minimize the Age Penalty in their job hunts:

Click here to read the full story on LifeMeetsWork.com.

How to Describe Your "Mommy Time"?

2008-07-24T23:55:00.000-07:00

The mid-2008 job market is a tumultuous place. On the one hand, employers complain about a shortage of talent so dire that the media has dubbed the phenomenon "The Talent War." At the same time, qualified job-seekers bemoan the tedious and insulting processes that employers subject them to before even a phone interview is granted. What gives?

Employers DO need people, in some cases to the point of desperation. The bad news is that corporate HR and recruiting departments haven't figured out how to simply identify and interview talented people without running them through the Seven Trials of Hercules first.

The byzantine selection processes knock too many good candidates out of the pipeline, as they fail to hear back from employers or simply opt out of overly complicated, demeaning selection hurdles. And already challenging job searches are often especially tough for moms returning to the workforce.

Fearful HR folks and corporate recruiters can be quick to treat returning mothers like modern-day Rip Van Winkles, perhaps believing that five or ten years away from the workforce transforms an intelligent woman into a relic who'd be undone by the latest version of Word.

It's a ridiculous bias—After all, how many office types spend their days juggling babies, schedules, budgets and household logistics with the precision that most moms do?—but a prevalent one. In a climate where hiring managers don't want to take a chance on anyone—including an applicant with sixteen out of seventeen 'must-have' skills listed on the job requisition—returning moms are often seen as dicey contenders.

The silver lining to this returning-mom obstacle is that a clever marketer—that’s you—can rise to the challenge by making her returning-to-the-rat-race story a plus in her job-search efforts. There are three critical elements to promoting your returning-mom status as a positive feature:

To read the rest of the story, please click here to jump to LifeMeetsWork.com.

Ask Liz: The Least I Can Live On?

2008-07-20T23:57:00.000-07:00

Dear Liz,

I got a call from a search person and we followed up with an in-depth
conversation about an assignment she is working on. After 45 minutes
on the phone, the subject turned to salary ranges and requirements. I
was surprised when the headhunter asked me, "What is the lowest
salary you can live on?"

What the heck kind of question is that? I suppose if the bottom fell
out, I could manage to keep body and soul together on thirty or forty
thousand dollars a year, but I've been earning $85-$95K for the past
decade. I said I would think about the number and get back to her.

What do you think about this question, and what do you advise?

yours,

Dominic

-----------

Dear Dominic,

It's a good thing I've heard about that disgraceful question before,
or I'd have had to lay down with a cold compress on my head when I
received your message. Sad to say, this question is becoming more
common and we should all be prepared for it.

The answer to "What is the lowest salary you can live on?" is your
exact salary target and not a penny less. If you're earning $95K in
your current job and you're not miserable there, you should be
looking at a five percent (or better) increase for the hassle of
changing jobs. That means your minimum-to-live-on salary is $100K, or
$105K. The search person did not literally want you to quote the
number that you could live on; she meant "What is the minimum salary
you could live with?"

Either way, it's tacky to ask a job candidate "What's your minimum?"
Who wants to change jobs for a minimum salary? We know perfectly well
that if you say X, the company is going to offer you X less ten
percent to get a negotiation going. You may even want to propose X
plus ten percent --- imposing a tacky-question penalty. It would
serve them right! As HR folks, we need to be very attuned to the
methods employed by the search partners we choose.

I learned this lesson when I received word that a formerly-trusted
search partner of mine was telling candidates, "Go to [the company I
worked for] for two or three years, get the stock options and let
them appreciate some, and then I'll put you in somewhere else." Nice,
eh? When I called him on it, he said "No one can rely on technical
people sticking around, anyway." Hmmmmmmm

Enjoy your Sunday evening - Liz

Mom Returning to Workforce

2008-06-27T16:31:00.000-07:00

Dear Liz,

I am a 27 year old mother of 2 young children (3.5 & 1 year old). I got my B.S. degree in Computer Science in 2003 and did two 1 year co--ops (during college) at big computer companies. However, since 2003, I have not held any computer related jobs and have been home with my kids. (I've worked small jobs in other work areas.) I feel rusty in my programming skills andI feel like so much time has passed that my knowledge and software experience is probably so out of date.

However, I study things online and feel that I am able to pick things up quickly-most of the software and program languages have some similarities so one can learn the differences and pick up things easily at this point. I found a job that I really like and want to apply to in the website area. I've worked on website stuff in my co-ops in the past and on a personal level but I don't remember what software was used. The job requires some experience in Dreamweaver and CSS which I don't have but I have read about and learned online. I feel confident that I would be able to pick things up quickly and do the job well but I am just not sure how I can address these issues with the interviewer should I get to that point. For now, I want to make sure the information I put in my resume and cover letter would be consistent with what I might talk to them about in the future.

Also, is it acceptable to tell an interviewer that I was home with my kids these past few years?If I'm asked about things from my co-ops that I don't remember-what do I say? Unfortunately I haven't been able to get in contact with any of my bosses or coworkers from either co-op job-especially after so many computer companies went out of business and groups and people got shuffled,reshuffled, and laid off in the past 5 years. Any advice?

Marwa

FROM LIZ:

Dear Marwa, here are a few pieces of advice as you pursue thejob that you spotted:

1) Definitely take some time to learn about the company [unless it's a 'blind'ad, in which case you won't be able to do that] in order to write a terrific cover letter to send with your resume.

2) If you can find a contact via LinkedIn or your offline network that can help you get your resume into the company without going through the dreaded BlackHole, i.e. applying to the job online, that's the best way to go - especially since you're a non-cookie-cutter candidate.

3) Spend some time trying to reach co-workers and managers from those two co-ops. You said that you haven't been in touch, but it's extremely easy to find people online these days. It's worth some research time and a few phone calls to see if you can make live contact with a person who could recommend you. With your most recent years having been spent out of the workforce, these recommendations are extremely important for you.

4) For sure, say in your resume and cover letter that you've been home with your kids. There's nothing disrespectable about that!

5) Also, spend some time online to try and remember the software you worked with before. It's one thing to explain that you don't have Dreamweaver experience -not the end of the world - but another to say "Five years later, I don't remember the name of the application I learned." It'd be worth your time to have this information at your fingertips. Experts in this group and in your other networks can tell you how the software you used compares to Dreamweaver.

Cheers,

Liz

Explaining Resume Gaps?

2008-06-27T16:26:00.000-07:00

Dear Liz,

At two different times in my career and for two different reasons, I have gaps between my past jobs. One gap is four months long, the other seven months long. I feel uncomfortable writing in my resume or in my cover letter about these gaps, one of which was due to a relationship situation (I quit a job planning to go into business with my SO, but that didn't pan out) and the other to a health issue which has not recurred. Any suggestions for minimizing the impact oft hese gaps, on my resume?

Yours,

Robin

Dear Robin,

There is no need to list the months of your employment on your resume. Simply list each job that you've held with the years of employment next to your job title (e.g. 2002-2004) and those gaps will disappear. In the unlikely event that a prospective employer conducts a background check and asks you later about one or both of the gaps, you'll at least have moved further down the selection pipeline and with luck have established enough rapport to enable a more comfortable conversation about these somewhat sensitive topics. In many cases, however, your prospective employer won't care about short gaps in employment, as long as your skills are a match for the job and your references are excellent.

Cheers,

Liz

Lose the Lame Lingo (Resumes and 70's Pickup Lines)

2008-06-18T22:10:00.000-07:00

When I was 19 I lived in New York, where the drinking age was eighteen. Thus it was perfectly legal for me to go dancing to Rick James and his ilk at the Ipanema Ballroom with my friend DeeDee, and I did.

One night, as I sat at a table by myself (DeeDee having taken a moment to powder her nose) a somewhat unsteady young man pulled up a chair at my table and sat down. Before I had a chance to react, he began a conversation with "Say, youdon't look so bad yourself," causing a question to flash into my mind: What'sthe term for a non-sequitur that doesn't follow anything?

Before I landed on the answer, the young man opened his mouth again and I thought, dear god, don't let him say "So, you come here often?"The poor thing did not disappoint. Gazing groggily across the table, he delivered the two-fer, "You come here often? And what's your sign?"

DeeDee soon regained her seat at the table and ousted the young man, and we all carried on with our lives right up through the present day. Surely these many years later the young man in the story has put aside those hackneyed ‘70's pick-up lines. No club-goer with the slightest grasp of what is seemly would dare let questions like "What's your sign?" or "Come here often?" or let "You don't look so bad yourself" pass his lips outside of a Wild 'n Crazy Guy imitation at a Halloween party.

We know better. Those old pickup lines are trite and embarrassing.

What does this story have to do with your resume? Plenty.

If you'd be horrified at the thought of greeting a fetching stranger with"What's your sign?" you should know that there are equally tired, unoriginal and cringe-worthy phrases strewn across the resumes of job-seekers today. It's time to root them out. In fact, it's long past time.

To read the full story, jump here.

Why Isn't My Resume Working?

2008-06-09T20:50:00.000-07:00

There are a lot of job-seekers on the market at any given time. It is easy for anybody's resume to get lost in the mix.

Many resumes are never read by resume-screeners at all. That's one reason we can send out twenty or thirty resumes and get no replies from employers for our trouble.

Still, if you're sending out a lot of resumes (and if you're writing pithy, customized cover letters to go with 'em) then it's fair to assume that your resume is not getting the job done for you. What could be wrong?

Check your resume for one of these ten common problems that will sink your interview prospects like a toy boat (say that ten times fast!):

Your resume isn't suited to the job.

Even if you write the world's greatest cover letter, you've got to have a resume that fits the job description. So, if you're qualified for the job but your resume doesn't show that: change it! That's why God invented MS Word.

Your resume is too hard to read.

A huge problem with lots of resumes is that they're too dense and dry. A resume isn't supposed to read like an 1845 international shipping manual. It should have a human voice. Does yours?

Your resume is too long.

Related to the previous problem, an overly long resume is off-putting to screeners. Two pages is the max - yes, editing is a business skill!

Your resume has mistakes in it.

The downside of being able to change our resumes at the drop of a hat is the ability to add new mistakes to them any time we feel like it (even at 3:00 a.m., when we can't sleep). Double-check your resume every time you revise it, and every time you look at it - it's easy to miss misteaks that we tpyed oursleves.

Your resume isn't up to date.

If your resume says that you worked Al's Fish and Game, and Al shut down the business in April, you're not credible from the get. Make sure your resume is current, with your current job and your current contact info. If your resume says "200x to present" you need to still be working at the job. Otherwise, change it.

Your resume is wishy-washy.

Another common resume mistake is to say "I do Customer Service! I do Sales! I do Marketing! I juggle, and I play the tuba!" Too much stuff in a five-lb. bag will not help you get a job. Use your precious resume real estate to describe what you do best.

Your resume has no meat on the bone.

Yet another common resume hurdle is this: lots of resumes are full of vague generalities: "I added significant value to the bottom line through best-in-class leadership of strategic initiatives." Yeah, what? Be specific. Tell us what you actually did, and tell us in context.

Your resume is alarming.

A resume full of job shifts, twists and turns requires explanation. Use some of your cover letter real estate to explain why you left Job A for Job B, and B for C and so on, or use the last bullet point in each job's details to explain why you bolted. Inquiring minds want to know, before they'll call you for an interview.

Your resume has unexplained gaps.

Multiple gaps of long duration raise questions, and your resume has to answer them. Explain what you were doing when you weren't working, and why you're chomping at the bit to get back to the rat race now.

Your resume doesn't sell you.

A resume that merely lists the tasks and duties you performed each day on each previous job doesn't say "Let's hire this person!" Use your resume to showcase accomplishments. What did you do to make each place better than it was when you arrived?

Hope these resume don'ts are helpful in your job search! Questions about your career and how to get to the next step? Write to me at liz@asklizryan.com

What About A Bad Reference?

2008-06-06T20:17:00.000-07:00

You may be job-hunting, and come to the realization that someone is saying bad things about you. It could be someone you worked for in the past. It could be someone you worked with.

If the bad-mouthing person is one of your references, you're in luck, strangely. If you discover that one of your 'official' references is sliming you behind your back, you can drop that person from your reference list.
How would you find something like this out? You'd be well along in an interview process, things going swimmingly, when suddenly the recruiter or the corporate HR person calls and says "We've decided to in a different direction." You'll be mystified. If this happens two or three times, you might want to re-check your references.

Sometimes reference-givers don't mean to shank you, yet they do it. They'll say something like "Samantha is a a terrific marketer, but I understand she's trying to move into Sales - I'm not sure she'll succeed in a Sales capacity." Thanks for nothing, buster!

If someone can't recommend you heartily, he or she can't be one of your references. But it may be tough to pinpoint your reference problem. If you suspect that one of your references is not doing you any favors, ask a friend in a staffing or temp firm to call your references for you and check. Don't know anyone like that? Get thee out to some local networking events and meet some of those people! Undoubtedly there are favors you could do for them, in turn.

It's easy enough to replace a reference who's sinking your submarine. But what if the person who's bad-mouthing you is not someone on your list? There are people in every town who take delight in slamming other people. I overheard a woman at a networking event say, "Oh, Shelly is a nice person, but she planned an event for me in 2000 and it was a disaster." Yikes, that was eight years ago! Give Shelly a break.

There's not a lot you can do about sideways bad references. People know people. That's one of the reasons that you have to know people, too. Your reputation should be strong enough so that one unfortunate dent in your reference-list won't kill you. There should be three people willing to trumpet your fabulousness, for every one who doesn't.

Not sure if you've got all the people you could use in your corner? Get out there and network, my friend. That's what a network is: a net of colleagues who know you and trust you. If you know someone who knows the bad-mouther, you may be able to 86 the slander or at least tamp it down. All it takes is for someone to come to your defense a couple of times in public, a la "You talking about Shelly? Shelly is an amazing event planner. She planned my corporate retreat last year and it was incredible" to slow the slimer down a tic. The next time s/he's asked about you, that naysayer may say "I had a less than sensational experience working with Shelly, but it was a long time ago, and I hear her service is fantastic now."

We can't guarantee that outcome. But we can keep moving in the needle in the right direction.

You Can Tell the Change Agent by the Arrows In His Back

2008-05-26T00:01:00.000-07:00

Dear Liz,

I am interviewing for an exciting Director of Materials job, but in every interview I've had (three so far - one with the VP of Manufacturing, one with the CFO and one with the company President) someone has come out with the phrase "Change Agent." I understand that as a new Director in a fast-changing organization I'll be expected to implement new processes and that's fine with me. Should I be nervous that everyone keeps talking about Change Agents?

Sincerely,

Philip

Dear Philip,

I'd get an employment agreement if I were you. Companies look for Change Agents when things aren't going well and they haven't been able to get the necessary change to happen on their own. Look at it this way: what can you accomplish as a newcomer that the combined VP of Manufacturing, CFO and President haven't already been able to put in motion?

If a person is hired as Change Agent, that means he or she is absolutely guaranteed to come in and tick people off, no matter how agreeable he or she may be. It means the job assignment itself requires shaking things up to a degree that will make many people uncomfortable. You deserve some assurance that if you tick off the wrong people in pursuit of the Change your managers require, you won't take the fall for it. You should ask for an employment agreement that guarantees you one year of base plus bonus if your job is eliminated or if you're otherwise asked to leave the company (with an exception for a 'for cause' termination). That way, you can take the job with the knowledge that if the Change they seek turns out to be a bit too much for them to handle, you won't be the patsy.

As a Director who's hearing Change Agent This and Change Agent That, your employment-agreement request is eminently reasonable. If they get squirrelly about it, run away. Talking about Change is cheap. Actually supporting it when the old guard is bound and determined to keep things the way they've always been, is a different story. Best of luck -- Liz

Applying for a Job That's Not Posted

2008-05-03T21:50:00.001-07:00

Here is a post from the Ask Liz Ryan online community:

Dear Liz,

I am trying out the best way to apply for a position that is not posted at a local company. I am interested in working as a recruiter for them, but have not seen the position posted. This company is hiring like crazy and I would love to work for them. Good bad-tips for success.Thank you for sharing!

Susan

Dear Susan,

This is a big theme in the job-search process we espouse here in our group! You don't have to wait for a job opening to be posted, and in fact if you're interested in a particular employer it's best not to wait foryour desired job opening to be posted.

If you wait, you're tossing your resume into the mix with a zillion other job seekers. If you approach the company directly before they post your dream job, you've got a much better chance of getting an interview.

Here's what you do:

Identify the company you'd like to approach.
Use LinkedIn, ZoomInfo.com and the company's own website - plus Google - to identify a person by name and title, whom you'd like to reach out to.
Write a great, pithy letter to that person, using the Cover Letter Formula shown at the link below. Attach your resume to the letter.
Send your brilliant cover letter and the attached resume to this person via surface mail.
Repeat - for every employer you're targeting.

Here are the relevant how-to links:

HOW TO FIND A NAME INSIDE A TARGET COMPANY

TEN RULES FOR THE PERFECT COVER LETTER

p.s.
What are the odds that a given company is hiring people like you right now? The odds are very good. Eighty percent of jobs never get posted. Jobseekers whoreach out to companies proactively, in addition to or instead of responding toposted job ads, get jobs that never see the light of Monster, as it were. :-)
Cheers -- Liz)

Ten Attributes of a Great Resume

2008-04-06T15:40:00.000-07:00

We were asked to share an example of a great resume with the members of the Ask Liz Ryan online community. As I started thinking about this, I realized that an example of a strong resume, while undoubtedly helpful, wouldn't really do the trick on its own. You could read a good resume and not necessarily be able to write your own great resume as a result. The key, it seems to me, is to understand the elements that go into a killer resume, so that you can write a great resume for yourself.

So here is a resume example (a short one) but more importantly, I believe, a list of Ten Attributes of a Great Resume. Can you inject these attributes into your own resume and bring it up to its highest level?

Ten Attributes of a Great Resume

A Great Resume Has:

1. A human voice.

Before you do anything else, delete and replace all of the corporate boilerplate language from your resume. Your resume won't do its job for you if it's written in boring, traditional Resume Language. Write the way you speak! If you need help getting a human voice into your Objective or Summary, send it to us at the Ask Liz Ryan discussion group for a complimentary spruce-up.

2. A clear, compelling Objective or Summary.

The point of your Objective or Summary statement is to let the reader know what this page, or two pages, of job history means. Without an Objective or Summary to tie it all together, your resume says "Here is a person who did some stuff. What is the point of it all? Beats me - you figure it out." You need your Objective or Summary to put the point on the arrow. Do you know what's important about what you've done, what the theme of your career has been so far, and what your strengths are? Figure these things out, and proclaim them, right up front!

3. A storyline.

The reader desperately wants to know what you did, but just as badly wants to know why you did what you did, and why you made the changes you made in your career. It is absolutely appropriate to include the reasons for leaving various jobs if doing so helps your storyline. For instance, the last bullet point in a list of bullets describing your role at XYZ Corp. might be this: "Left company due to family relocation to Maryland."

4. An emphasis on accomplishments rather than tasks and duties.

The worst resumes are full of the dreaded sleep-inducing corporatespeak, but the second-worst resumes ares the ones that list every duty you fulfilled at every job you ever had. No one cares about that - we care about what you got done, and what you made better during your time on the job. Use that valuable resume real estate to list the feathers in your cap during each assignment, not the reports you filed and the meetings you attended.

5. No duplication.

If you learned XYZ skill at Job A, we will assume you still had it when you moved on to Job B. Don't use your valuable resume space to repeat what you've already told us about yourself. Point up the differences, rather than the similarities, between the jobs you've held.

6. A Punchy, Succinct, Un-Stodgy Style.

Punchy and brief go hand in hand. Use fewer words rather than more words, and edit yourself mercilessly. Two pages is the absolute maximum for a business resume (an academic CV is a different story) - one page is better. Ask yourself, again and again: does this matter? It is marketable? Editing is a business skill. Show the reader your editing ability! Punchy means pithy and real - use Thesaurus.com to help you find punchier word choices.

7. Specifics over generalities.

I read more resumes than most, and what strikes me far too many of them is their reliance on generalities, like "Led multi-functional team to meet and exceed business goals." What the heck does that even mean? It doesn't signify anything, and for that reason, it's not impressive. Better to say exactly what you did than to list airy-sounding, ambiguous resume-isms. Say "After a late-in-the-year merger, created Annual Report from scratch in three weeks." Don't say "Responsible for all corporate communications graphics strategy and direction." Give us the goods! Hiring managers want to picture you in the job. Sharing specific accomplishments lets them do that, and shows more of the human side (that's the good side!) of you in the process.

8. Few, if any, lists.

Kill the "List of Qualifications" or "Summary of Qualifications" that no one will read, in any case. Kill those horrible lists of "Skills" that cover all the bases, usually using bullet points between the words (e.g. "Operations - Sales - Marketing - Finance - Customer Service"). Those things are worse than a waste of space. What have you done in each of these functional areas? - that's the question! Make your resume come alive by nuking the lists and giving us the stories. Note: if you're a technical person, you can list your technical competencies, in the form of certifications or software programs or whatever, somewhere down low on your resume. Ditto for financial, insurance-industry and other function-specific alphabet soup bowls. The rest of us should be listless, as it were.

9. Thoughtful contact details.

Which thoughtful details do we have in mind? For starters, your name - pick a job-hunting name that you can live with throughout the interview process. That means choosing between Chaz and Charles, or Penni and Penelope; using a middle initial, or a middle name, or not; and choosing a surname (if you have a choice) that'll serve you throughout not just the job-search process but into the job-holding process as well. It's disconcerting to recruiters to strike up a conversation with Spike Spencer and be informed two weeks later that Spike would like to be called Krishnamurthy, and that Spencer will henceforth be Spencer-Quayles. Likewise, your email address should be suitable for a grown-up job search (that means bill.c.benson@hotmail.com, not billtheman@gmail.com).

10. No "References Available Upon Request"

There are certain phrases, like "This sentence is the one you're reading now" and "References Available Upon Request" that don't have any meaning. If you want to get some upfront mileage from your lofty references, include a line on your resume that says "My references include a Dean at The University of Michigan, the VP of Sales at Ford Motor Company, and the Mother Superior at the Convent of the Sacred Heart." Or you could leave the references out entirely, because everyone already knows that your references are available upon request.

Now, here is the resume (one of an infinite number of possible great resumes) that we promised:

Carl Sanders

123 Washington Lane

Montclair, New Jersey 07042

(phone number) (email address)

Summary:

I'm a Graphics pro with a Sales orientation, keen on creating powerful designs that sell products and bring new clients to my employer's door. I've won a handful of prestigious design awards (listed below) but I'm more proud of the fact that my marketing materials helped my employer win the Best New Product award at the Consumer Electronics Show in 2006 and bring $125,000 in pre-launch orders home with us. I love collaborating with Sales, Engineering and Manufacturing to produce collateral, packaging, and product design that is fundamental to a product's success.

Experience:

XYZ Corporation, Hoboken, NJ
Graphic Designer 2004 - 2008

Led design program for the X-12, X-15 and X-20 family of wireless computing devices.
Collaborated with Sales, Marketing, Engineering, Manufacturing and with clients to create and implement design strategy for the product itself; packaging; collateral materials; and sales/customer training aids.
Won Graphics Magazine "Best Design 2005" award for X-15 product and packaging.
Was invited to Chairman's Retreat along with top 12 company execs to create 2007 design approach.
Left XYZ upon its acquisition by YenZen Holdings, Ltd. (didn't fancy move to China)

My ADD is kicking in - I'll stop here. You get the idea. Punchy. Concise. Questions? Write to me at liz@asklizryan.com.

Have You Seen This Resume?

2008-03-21T22:52:00.000-07:00

JAHNE DOE

123 PARK AVENUE

SPRINGFIELD, OI 12345

SUMMARY

Results-oriented, Proactive Management Professional with a proven track record of consistently meeting or exceeding expectations in a variety of strategic business interactions across functions with all levels of staff, providing end-to-end solutions while translating complex big-picture paradigms to facilitate implementation of cross-functional initiatives, continually raising the bar for best-in-class process architectures leveraging out-of-the-box client-focused deliverables.

EXPERIENCE

XYZ Corp

Director, Best-Practice Business Client Analysis Process Execution

Was instrumental in creating top-down and bottom-up excellence initiatives driving success across multiple product lines of global process leadership benchmarking strategic initiatives. Served on congruent multi-functional Centers of Excellence creating high-leverage multi-stage business planning processes for End-User Re-Engineering Acquisition Management Functionality Development, Interdepartmental Team Focus Client Engagement Growth Trajectory Planning Methodology, and Continuous Improvement Global Outsourcing Technology Management Maintenance Architecture. Third-Place Winner, Division Six Communications Sector Upper Midwest Regional Cross-Functional Rock Paper Scissors Championship, Q3 2004.

Jazz Up That Resume

2008-03-09T00:14:00.000-08:00

If you're going rock-climbing, you want good equipment - ropes that won't break, for instance, when you're in the middle of a 1,000-foot rock wall. When you're job-hunting, you need a killer resume! The last thing you want on your job search is a boring, stiff resume that feels like it was written by Resume-O-Matic software. Yuck!

You can add some life to your resume. Here are some Resume Spruce-Ups that we've done in the last couple of weeks for the members of the Ask Liz Ryan discussion community. Join our group if you want your resume spruced up, too! The original Objective or Summary from each resume is shown below along with the Spruced-Up version of that Objective or Summary. See what you think ---

Original Version:

Accomplished marketing professional experienced in developing products and messages that penetrate marketplace and deliver results. Combines analysis, creativity and ownership in critical addressing issues. Leads teams to deliver results on time and on budget. Collaborates successfully with internal departments and outside vendors. Supports sales success with top-notch presentations and sales materials. Reduces costs and increases profit margins by incorporating new technologies and processes.

Spruced-Up Version:

My Marketing approach begins at supporting the sales process with top-drawer materials, pitch and message development, and continues on to branding and marcom campaigns that create pull from the marketplace. As a leader, I'm an avid talent developer and cultivator of internal and external client relationships. I live by a mantra of On Time and Under Budget, and view technology as the chief enabler for cycle-time reduction and decreased cost.

Original Version:

Accomplished, resourceful management professional with 20+ years of experience leading initiatives that improved efficiency and workflow across departments at the University of X. Energetic, innovative team player who consistently produces results that exceed quality, quantity and time standards. Possess a Master's in Management and a Bachelor of Arts in Organization Management. Creative and proactive problem solver, with 'big picture' vision and the ability to work with management, staff and clients toachieve objectives. Strong team builder, skilled at motivating employees to deliver unparalleled customer service and attain major companyobjectives. Adept at staying on-task and on-time despite shifting priorities and tight deadlines. Always calm under intense pressure,with superior decision-making abilities.

Spruced-Up Version:

Here is the resume of an OD professional with hefty credentials in an academic environment teamed with a bottom-line business orientation. I've brought innovative and targeted OD interventions to the University of X to improve performance and financial results during its last two decades of tumultuous change. My distinction from the conventional OD practitioner is my ability to combine the 10,000-foot strategic view with spot-on tactical solutions, under tight deadlines and quicksand-like shifts in priority. I'm a mentoring, calm leader with a steady hand on an organization's cultural wheel -and ready for the next daunting, exhilarating challenge.

Original Version:

Highly motivated professional with proven track record of helping customers
reach their business goals using technology. Experience in full life
cycle development of web based and client-server applications, systems integration, distributed processing, designing databases, project management, developing & managing customer relationships.

Spruced-Up Version:

I'm a systems developer/project manager who's equally at home building web-based and client-server solutions. I've designed robust databases to suit sophisticated requirements and managed projects ranging from [X] to [Y]. My strength is getting in at the earliest stage of conceptual thinking and leading a project through its full lifecycle, slaying whatever dragons appear along the way. I thrive on relationship-building with clients, internal and external, and get excited about tackling the thorniest problem on the docket.

Original Version:

Over the course of my life I have lived, studied and worked in four countries – India, Kuwait, England and the US. This has allowed me to gain a diverse perspective on living and working in a global marketplace. In my most recent professional roles, I have been involved in most aspects of running a businessfrom business strategy and contract offer development to supply chain optimization of a global manufacturing system and running the executive office as Chief of Staff for one of the top 30 people in a fortune 100 company. This has been during a period that the business models have transitioned and leadership has changed, which has given me a unique insight into managing change. My contributions to the organization have been recognized by my selection as one of only 89 individuals, for the management development program for employees with the potential to develop into top tier management for a global organization of over 50,000 people. My experience has provided me with a well-rounded spectrum of financial planning, strategic management and client relationship skills that can be applied in all areas of business management and consulting.

Spruced-Up Version:

I'm a an Operations chief, with success in roles from COO to Chief of Staff to head of Operations and Supply Chain. My strategic focus comes from a career spent managing tumultuous change in business models, requiring me to bring teams through massive change processes without losing ground. My global awareness comes from years living in India, Kuwait and the UK. I bring a strong portfolio in financial management and a heavy dose of strategic planning paired with large-client relationship management. I thrive on line and staff assignments that require sophisticated consulting skills, addressing burning issues that involve diverse functions and geographies.

Keeping An Employer On Hold, Waiting for Better Offer

2008-03-03T09:01:00.000-08:00

Here is a question from a member of the Ask Liz Ryan online community:

I am all types of excited because I had a really great interview this past week and I am feeling very confident that I will get an offer to free me from this contractual hell hole, lol (yay). However, I have a second interview with a different company this week and perhaps another interview on the horizon. I'm interested in knowing how others have handled telling employer candidates that you are still fishing? The interview I have coming up is the position I am most excited about and I would really like to hold out to see what develops with that before moving forward with the other place, or any, if given the opportunity. Any suggestions?

And here is my reply:

Ryan's Law of job-hunting is that the job you really want is always a week to two weeks behind the job you've already been offered, in the job-search timeline. That puts you in the awful position of either having to pass on the job you've been offered, hoping for the job you want, or trying to keep the first employer warm while the second opportunity progresses, or doesn't.

You may be able to keep the first employer hanging on for a week, but that's about the limit. You can ask for a few days to consider the offer, but my suggestion is instead to delay the offer itself by asking some pithy questions and/or making requests that your contact at the first employer won't be able to handle on his or her own.

It may take a few days for those answers to come back to you, giving the second employer time to act. There is also nothing wrong with letting the second employer know that you have an imminent offer from the first employer and don't have much wiggle-room timewise.

Some of the offer-delaying questions you could ask the first employer include

Since it seems as though you are contemplating an offer to me, I would love to meet with a few of my prospective teammates on the job. Could we set up that up for late this week or early next week?
(For a customer-facing role) Would it be possible for me to chat with a client of yours about the role?
As it seems that we're getting close to the brass-tacks stage, I'd like to meet one more time with the hiring manager. Unfortunately I am booked this week - does s/he have time early next?

It is vital to remember that if an employer is ever going to show you the love, it is going to be now - at the point of making an offer. If an employer balks at your request to meet the team, chat with a client, or meet once more with your prospective boss, think about the message the employer is sending!

"No, you can't meet the team." Run away!

"No, you can't talk to a client." Get on the bus, Gus!

"No, the hiring manager can't meet with you - we're sending an offer." Make a new plan, Stan!

With apologies to Paul Simon!

"So, What Do You Do For a Living?"

2008-02-26T10:21:00.000-08:00

When you are job-hunting, you're supposed to network. But then, as soon as you start to network, you run into an obstacle, and the obstacle is this question:

"So, what do you DO?"
You don't want to say "I am job-hunting." That's like having someone ask you "How are you?" and answering "I have shingles." It's a conversation-stopper.

Here is an article that can help. Take a look!

Why Do Interviews Get Scheduled While You're Working?

2008-02-20T19:54:00.001-08:00

You're job-hunting and so you send out all these letters. Then you get a call. "We've set up an interview for you, next Tuesday at ten a.m. We can't wait to meet you!"

Well, um, the thing is....I'm doing my job at ten a.m. If I have to take a day off work for every first interview and second interview that comes along until I get a job offer, I'll be fired!

When I was a corporate HR person, the conventional wisdom was that unemployed job-seekers could interview at any hour, and employed job-seekers could do interviews late in the day or early in the morning. They could come into the office late or leave early. That conventional wisdom seems to have gone out the window. Now, companies expect job-seekers to come in for an interview at any old time. Two o'clock, ten in the morning, whatever.

The one and only time I stealth-job-hunted, I was able to go on four separate interview rounds at my prospective employer (some of 'em including three or four different interviews) without my then-current employer catching on. That's because my prospective employer was able to schedule each of those interview rounds to start no earlier than three-thirty or four p.m. That's a rarity these days.

If you get a call asking you to come in for a first interview in the middle of the day, you can beg off. You can say "I would love to come, but I am busy at work and people are relying on me. If we could schedule that for eight in the morning or five-thirty in the afternoon, I will be there." The further you get in the process, the more sense it makes to juggle your schedule so that you can get to a mid-day interview.

If you have to miss work for an interview, you should be vague about it, but try not to lie, not only because of the karmic damage but because you could be busted in the lie. You can say "I have some personal business I've got to take care of" and leave it at that. Your boss may require you to take a half-day or even a full-day off, using up one of your paid days off. That's why it's good to save those missed days for second and third interviews, if you can.

Don't, please don't, call in sick to go to a job interview. Sick days are supposed to be used only when you are physically sick. If you don't have personal days left, use vacation time. You can say "I have to do some legal stuff" if you have to. Job-hunting is sort of legal. If you get an offer letter, it will say "This offer is not to be construed as a contract. " A lawyer wrote that. I guarantee it.

Like so much else in job-hunting, there is a power play that goes on around interview scheduling. If you're supposed to meet with the VP, that's good for you - you're a lofty candidate. Still, the VP is like corporate royalty. There'll be plenty of harrumphing if you're not available when His or Her Royal Highness is. At the same time, if the company really wants to meet you, they'll bend. Back during the crazy dotcom heyday, I'd routinely get on airplanes to fly to strange cities and meet candidates in the airport and then head back home without having left the airport. Daily stuff. Nowadays, not too many companies will treat candidates that well. You have to decide where your point of equlibrium is.

For instance, if you took off work for a first interview, you can say when they call you for a second interview, "You know, this could be a great opportunity for me, but I missed a half-day of work to meet you guys last time. Can we figure out how I can meet Amy and Phil without missing work again?"

One of the reasons companies like to put interviews in the chunky middle of the day is that they don't always know upfront whom you'll meet. They get you buttoned down on the schedule first, and then start checking with hiring managers and HR folks to see who will actually meet you. You can circumvent this to some degree if you set your boundaries early. It's not that you'll say "I don't want to meet anyone who isn't in the selection decision process," unless you're self-absorbed. It's just that you'll say "I can find two hours this week for interviews, so we may want to just have me meet the people that you feel are most critical to this decision process."

You will feel horrible if you travel very far down the pipeline and get tossed out of it - and you'll feel that much worse if you've risked your current job by taking off a bunch of time to pursue what turned out to be a dead-end opportunity. So be wise. Yes, yes, I know, life involves risks. But you owe your current workmates something, and you don't need everyone looking at you sideways when you saunter back into the office after taking four hours off to interview. "Yo Chuckie, why didn't you answer your cell phone?" "Um, I didn't hear it." Companies who know anything about the job market know that lots of great candidates are booked to the gills. Don't be afraid to push back when the interview scheduling puts too much pressure on your current gig.

Surmounting "You're Overqualified"

2008-02-13T07:18:00.001-08:00

Dear friends,

There are some steps we can take as job-seekers to mitigate the dreaded "overqualified" hurdle. We can address this issue right up front with a recruiter, a temp agency or a resume screener by calling it out and taking our best shot at extinguishing any concerns via our cover letter.

You have heard me say ad infinitum already that the first paragraph of a cover letter should talk about the employer - not about you. The first paragraph calls attention to a particularly relevant [to your career interest, that is] accomplishment or milestone the company has reached, or a remark that the individual you're writing to has made to the media, or comments of his/hers from a recent conference, etc.

The first paragraph says "I'm smart and up-to-date, and I'm paying attention. I have researched your company, and this cover letter is different than any other cover letter I've ever written." It saysthat without overtly saying so, of course!

The first paragraph concludes by hypothesizing around the most likely business challenge the company is facing at the moment.

The second paragraph makes the argument that your skills, experience and worldview mesh perfectly with this need!

Here is where you also address the perception, if you think such a perception is likely to arise, that you're overqualified for the job.

An example:

Dear Joan,

I was intrigued by your interview in the Daily Herald this week and in particular by your comment, "Hemp underwear may well be the Next Big Thing." As a longtime believer in the qualities of hemp and a follower of your company's progress since the launch of your Woven Kelp Teddy product line, I was also pleased to have the chance to hear you speak at last week's Agricultural Lingerie conference.

Coming off a year of double-digit sales growth and your recent acquisition of Sea-Weedy Thongs Ltd., I'd imagine that keeping up with frequent and demanding new-product launches is a high priority for your team this year.

As a seasoned marketer with stints at the Cornhusk Bras division of Farm-Grown Lingerie and at Field of Dreams Sleepwear, I'm a veteran of a few dozen fast-track product launches and itching to manage the next one. Although you may view my background as Director of Product Marketing as too senior for your current Product Marketing Manager role, I'm excited about the fit; having taken on the responsibility of leading the local Sheltie Rescue organization this year, a slightly less demanding position is exactly what I'm looking for.I'd love to talk live about the opportunity at your convenience. Congratulations on your tremendous success and thanks --

Yours,

Anita Beecup

Whose Voice is In Your Resume?

2008-02-07T20:32:00.000-08:00

I read more resumes that anyone I know, except for recruiters. Eighty percent of the resumes I read fall into one category, a stylistic grouping. These resumes are written in a particular style that we could call Resume Style.

Who invented this style? It's the worst. It's pompous, formal, and boring. Resumes written in heavy Resume Style are almost unreadable.

Your resume should sound like you. Your voice should ring through it. Don't be afraid to sound like a human being in your resume, and not just any human being, but you in particular. Sparky, thoughtful, witty, creative, reverent, irreverent...your resume should put you across, not just your skills and accomplishments.

Now here is a bit of a resume that I just found on QuestCareer.com. I know nothing about QuestCareer, but this is about the crizzappiest resume you could ask for. It's boring, it's stodgy, and most of the words say nothing. Who wants to read it? Who wants to be this person?

Here's the Professional Summary from this sample resume:

Experienced and goal-oriented medical professional with a track record of consistently meeting and exceeding established goals and objectives related to management, training and education, and client relations. Skilled in building long-term relationships with all levels of hospital staff and pharmaceutical and medical equipment representatives. Achieved significant results related to promoting organizational growth and staff development, securing necessary industry-related designations, and increasing overall patient volume. Motivated and ambitious with excellent interpersonal communication, relationship management, and presentation skills.

MAMA! That is horrible. I almost killed myself out of boredom while I was reading it.

Let's deconstruct: what does Experienced and Goal-Oriented mean? Who wouldn't say that about him- or herself? It's so vague and trite.

Consistently meeting and exceeding established goals? What the heck? If you're exceeding goals, why mention meeting them? and what does the word 'established' add? This is a non-sentence if there ever was one, or it would be, if it were a sentence; but there's no subject, so it's ungrammatical, too.

I could go on, but you get my point. This Summary statement says "If you hire me, I will overwhelm you with my ordinariness." What about, instead:

I'm looking for a pharmaceutical sales job, transitioning from a nursing career I loved. My passion is solving problems for patients and physicians. My colleagues have called me "fanatical for patient care" and audiences have said about my presentations, "They're spirited and authoritative." My professional certifications are listed below. My energy level and views on the state of health care aren't listed below, but we can talk about those in a face-to-face interview.

Beware of Job-Search Site Scams

2007-12-13T16:11:00.000-08:00

Here is an article on ways in which posting your resume posted on a job-search site can get you scammed. That's the last thing you need when you're job-hunting!

The members of our Ask Liz Ryan group talk about this kind of thing all the time. When you get a call from a search firm whose name you don't recognize, I hope you'll post a message to the group and ask the members for their advice. If the firm isn't reputable, you could be in danger of being ripped off or, at best, having your valuable job-search time wasted.

Apart from the obvious scams, there are other ways to get burned in your job search. Here is a common one. You post your resume online, or otherwise get the word out about your job search. Then one day, you get a call or an email message from a headhunter you've never met or heard of. "I've got all kinds of openings for people like you," the headhunter says. That sounds great! He or she wants to meet in person, so you go for an interview. There, you here the harsh reality. After taking a careful look at your resume, the search person has some bad news.

Your skills stink! Your experience is worthless. You're a job-hopper, you don't know beans about marketing, or you can't type fast enough. You're downcast, perhaps at the verge of tears. You go home, wondering whether you'll ever get a job.

The next day or a few days later, the headhunter calls with a job opportunity in hand. This is the perfect thing for you! s/he says. Surprise: the job pays bupkus and it's with a lousy company. But with your pitiful resume, you'd better take it!

See the pattern? Break you down so that any crumb will feel like manna from heaven. That's an old, unscrupulous employment-agency trick.

When I moved to Chicago, I had some temping experience at Smith Barney under my belt and half a college degree. I was 19 and not a complete idiot. I was waitressing and earning good money, but at that time (maybe still) you had to be 21 to serve alcohol in Illinois, and all of the decent restaurants served alcohol. So I had to find an office job. I bopped into Ivy Personnel and was immediately told that if they could get me any job at all, I'd be lucky.

I knew that was a crock. But they loved to tell me what a loser I was. They wanted me to take the most hellish jobs you can imagine. They did the same thing to everyone who walked in the door, and the whole time they'd say "We are doing you a big favor."

Don't get stung by that one. Write to me at liz@asklizryan.com if you need a shot of moral support.

Podcast: The Best Bullet Points For Your Resume

2007-11-07T15:22:00.000-08:00

Here is a podcast about creating bullet points for your resume. These bullet points are important - they can be really boring and insubstantial, or they can be powerful. You want to get 'em right.

A lot of people list a job title and employer name and dates of employment on their resume, and then they write a paragraph. Yuck! Kill the paragraph. Turn it into bullet points. Really good ones - not tasks and duties, but accomplishments. You'll hear all about it in the podcast.

Hey, What's In Your Wake?

2007-11-01T13:32:00.001-07:00

In a standard resume, you'll see a job title listed, and an employer name and some dates, and then you'll see a list of bullet points. There are the What I Did There bullet points. It's great to have a list of the things that you did on each job.

But here is the problem. People think about listing What They Did, and they think of duties. They think of daily tasks. At nine o'clock I did this, and at ten o'clock I did that. This is unfortunate. The stuff is boring. Plus, it's obvious. If you're a Customer Service Manager, we can guess what you had to do at nine and ten o'clock. You trained Customer Service folks, you answered the phone yourself, you monitored service levels, you ran reports.

Of course. What else would you do in a job like that?

There is a better way to talk about the What I Did stuff on your resume. Instead of those task-and-duty bullet points, what if you used your bullet points to talk about your accomplishments?

Here's a short list of some typical accomplishments on the job:

Created first New Employee Orientation program

Mentored summer intern working in our department, creating Training Plan and monthly learning goals for her

Combined four cumbersome weekly reports into one consolidated decision-making tool

Planned, executed, hosted and emcee’d large (300+ guest) donor events

Launched first internal newsletter, showcasing company milestones and including weekly contests for employees

Created Trade Show Operations Manual which became the cornerstone of the company’s trade-show knowledge management system

Now, you can see that not one of these accomplishments includes winning a competition, being awarded a patent or being the Number One Anything. When we think of accomplishments, we often think “What was I best at?” Nothing on this list of accomplishments entails being best at anything. Rather, you’re specifying what you

Made Better
Did for the First Time (Innovated)
Thought Up On Your Own, or
Got Done

on the job. Now, we could argue semantics and you could say “Liz, that event-hosting thing, that’s a duty” and for sure hosting events WAS a duty at your old job. But it’s an accomplishment, too, to plan and execute and emcee a big event like that. It’s a feather in your cap. Producing a weekly report week after week and answering customer calls and serving on this or that task force – these are not accomplishments. They are just the duties that any normal adult would expect any other normal adult to attend to, day after day.

So am I saying you're bad, because you don't have any accomplishments to list on your resume? No way! I know you have accomplishments to list on your resume. You just have to think back, about what you made happen at each of your jobs.

Now, let's jump back to that "served on task force" thing. Serving on a task force should be an accomplishment, because presumably the task force made something better than it had been before. But that note about serving on a task force won’t become a resume-worthy accomplishment unless you also tell us what you accomplished on that task force.

Otherwise, you might as well say on your resume "Was in the room when a historic event occurred."

Whenever you’re tempted to write on your resume, “Served on XYZ Task Force,” stop and think: what was my role on that task force? Surely, there was some unique piece of the puzzle that was yours to own.

For instance, at my son’s kindergarten Halloween party yesterday, I had something specific to do. I had two things to do, in fact: to bring a fruit tray to the party, and to supervise one table of five kids making happy-face gourds. I did those two things, and I did ‘em well, baby! No one can take that away from me!

These are my accomplishments. I didn’t just volunteer for the party. I’m falling asleep just writing that. I supplied fruit for the children and supervised a gourd-painting craft activity at a kindergarten Halloween party. Is that resume fodder? I hope not. It was fun, though. It’s just an example of how to claim responsibility for the specific piece of the larger project that was yours to own, versus saying "Worked on a large project," which is the most un-useful thing you could say on a resume.

Don’t say “served on.” Don’t say “participated in.” Talk about what you owned. Talk about what you got done that made the company or the kindergarten party more successful than it would have otherwise been. You've got those feathers in your cap, but you've forgotten about them, because we don't dwell on things like that as years go by. Sit down right now and think about those past jobs you've held. What was your contribution to each one?

What's in the wake behind your boat?

Stop! Don't Send That Resume!

2007-10-26T16:28:00.000-07:00

You already know that the majority of job openings don't get posted. Still, you apply for jobs in the newspaper and online. I don't blame you, because that is the easiest way to apply for a job. But if you do that, your resume goes into the throng along with a zillion others. You have to help your resume stand out.

So, when you see an ad in the paper or online, don't rush to apply for it. Stop! Read the job again. Is there a company url anywhere in the ad? Perhaps it's in the reply-to email address: "reply to hr@xyzindustries.com."

Now, open up a window. Jump over to XYZ Industries' home page. If you can't find it right away, enter "XYZ Industries" into a Google search. You'll find the company. Browse around the website. See who's who and what the company is up to. Read about what they believe in.

Now, go back to your cover letter and incorporate those elements into your cover letter. Check over your resume. Is there anything in the resume that you should tweak, based on what you now know about this specific employer? Here is the watchword for job-searching in 2007 and beyond: no more boilerplate cover letters. No more boring resumes. Talk about them. Talk about how you can help them. That's how your resume gets to the top of the stack.

If you are job-hunting right now or contemplating a career change, write to me with your job-search questions! My email address is liz at asklizryan.com. Two more ideas to consider:

Join the Ask Liz Ryan online discussion community to share job-search tips with professionals all over the world.
Visit my website to learn more about my programs for job-seekers, career changers and working people at a crossroads.

Next post: LinkedIn in your job search!

How to Find a Name Inside a Target Company

2007-10-01T14:16:00.000-07:00

Career experts always say, “Don’t send your resume to the Human Resources department, where it will get lost in the shuffle - send it to an individual person in the company.” Well, great - but how do you actually do that?

It’s not so easy to pin down a name for a person who could actually read your resume or pass it on to the hiring manager. Here are ten tips to get you going.

1) Look on the company website, under About Us. There should be Management Bios section. Either the VP/leader of the function you're interested in (e.g. Marketing or Engineering) or the VP/leader of HR is a great person to call or write to. Both of those people should be listed on the website (although a lot of the time, the head of HR is not shown in the Management Bios, because HR is often a second-class citizen, function-wise, sad to say).

If the company is enormous - say 10,000 employees or more - the very lofty manager whose bio is on the website may be too lofty to do you much good, unless you are interested in an executive position. If that's true, you need a closer-to-the-action person who will not pitch your resume (hopefully) immediately upon receipt.

2) Use LinkedIn, searching on the target company name, to find people who work there OR who used to work there OR who do business with the company now. Make contact with one of these folks (via a mutual LinkedIn connection) to express your interest in communicating with the correct person at your target company, about a job.

3) Use the Ask Liz Ryan online community to get contacts in a target company.

4) Use Google to find someone appropriate at the target company. Try a search like Apex+Foods+marketing+director. Try a bunch of different things. You'll find media profiles, reports of Apex Foods managers speaking at events - a ton of stuff, very likely. It's actually pretty easy to collect names inside a company. The key is to get the appropriate names, and of course, to contact people who still work for the company.

5) Also use Google's Blog Search functionality to locate people. Lots of stuff shows up on blogs that wouldn't make it into typical Google web-search returns.

6) Check out the online archive for the local business paper in the city where the company is located (that is, the location that you're interested in joining.) Sometimes you have to pay for a subscription to access the archives. If you buy and read the paper frequently anyhow, you might want to go ahead and pay for a subscription, if it will help you get the job you want.

7) Also search the archives at Yahoogroups.com to see any mentions of the company and its key folks, the ones you are seeking contact with, in any of the Yahoogroups discussion lists. Current or recent job postings show up like crazy in Yahoogroups archives, and if they're current, the person who posted the job opening is almost certainly either the hiring manager (or connected to the hiring manager) or the assigned HR person. The only exception arises when a random (unconnected) employee of your target company posts a current job opening on a Yahoogroup that he or she belongs to, just to be helpful. That's okay - if you contact this person about your career interest, he or she will understand why you did so (as long as they remember posting that job on Yahoogroups)!

8) Go to the website of the most relevant/logical association for the person you seek (in other words, the association that he or she would most logically be a member of), and search the site of the local chapter. Here's an example. If you want to reach the PR manager at Apex Foods, and you're located in Tallahassee, visit the PRSA website, Tallahassee chapter, and look for anyone who's a member who works at Apex Foods. Most likely it will be someone in PR at Apex!

9) Back on the company's own website, review what they say (if anything) about Community Involvement and local causes. There won't be tons of detail on the company's page - just, most likely, a link to the site of the charitable organization they support. Then go to the website of that charitable organization, and nose around for information (name and title) of representatives from your target company. For instance, if your target company is a big supporter of a kids' toy drive, someone from the company will very likely show up on the toy drive group's website. Then you can contact that person by phone (I doubt that you'll find an email address) to ask for help in locating the person most closely related to the kind of career opportunity you seek.

10) Lastly, go to your alma mater's alumni website, and search the database for a current employee or alum of the company you're targeting. Contact this person, letting him or her know your connection (you went to school at the same place and you both have made contact information available to fellow alums - otherwise, your message would be spam) and ask for his or her help in locating an appropriate person to talk with about your job search, at your schoolmate's employer. With these tips in hand, you should be able to vault right over the HR department and get your resume to a live human being. Here’s to your next interview!

Ten Questions for Your Next Boss

2007-09-26T15:32:00.000-07:00

It's a very funny thing, a job interview - especially if you make it past HR, and you're face-to-face with your next prospective manager. There is no one more important in your job satisfaction equation than your boss. So here you sit, and he or she is asking you questions, and youre trying to get a read - what will this person be like to work for? Is he patient? Is he smiling? Is he testy?

Are there any questions that you can ask him, to get a sense of his management style? Here are ten, to get you started. I doubt that you'll get the chance to ask all ten of them, so pick your favorites in advance!

1) Can you tell me about some of your proudest professional moments so far?

2) What are some things that have driven you crazy about subordinates in the past?

3) What is the skill or attribute that you most value in a member of your team?

4) What sorts of things do you do outside of work? (Listen to me now: if you don't feel comfortable asking this question, that's a big red flag. It's a perfectly appropriate question to ask the person who might be managing you, a few weeks from now. If she's giving off a vibe that such a question would be too intrusive, that's not good.)

5) Can you tell me a little bit about the interactions that happen within the team?

6) I'd love to hear about my predecessor - what worked in the job when he or she had it, any elements that you're changing now that the job is open again, and what happened to that person. (See the note after question #4 - ditto for this one.)

7) What keeps you up at night, work-wise? What's your biggest concern?

8)I don't know whether you've ever done the Myers-Briggs assessment or DiSC or any of those, but how would you describe your communication style - forceful, or interpersonal, or detail-oriented, or what?

9) Can you tell me about your boss, and his or her big priorities?

10) From our conversation so far, what are concerns that you may have about me? Where do you think a person like me might thrive in this job, and where might someone like me have trouble?

You need to feel comfortable with your next boss. I just heard from a friend in Chicago who had to leave a job after six months because the fit between her and her boss was atrocious. Loving the work, the rest of the team, and the view from your office window is not enough when you work for someone you don’t like or don’t trust.

Don't take a job like that. Like your boss. I know, it's not always easy. When you’re under pressure to find a job, it’s easy to overlook little quirks (and even big ones) that could make a person tough to work for.

But you'll know right away, if the interview doesn't create a safe space for you to ask questions like this, that working for this boss might be dicey. And then you can decide whether you want the job so badly that you're willing to walk eyes-open into a possible bad-boss situation to get it.

Practical Job Search Advice

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Going back to my old career?

Make the job interview about the pain

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I Wonder How She Dresses Herself?

Don't Suck the Juice out of Your Career

Put Your Accomplishments in Context

April over?

Free Virtual Workshop: Surmounting Any Resume Problem

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Put Yourself in Your Resume

Oh, you mean THAT job market?

Daily Camera offers "Career Reboot 2010" workshop series

Tonight's Career Altitude Workshop: Building Your Online Soapbox

Attend an Ask Liz Ryan Career Altitude workshop as our guest

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It's 2010: I need a new resume summary!

Ask Liz Ryan: How Do I Give Notice?

Give up salary history?

Ask Liz Ryan: different resume format for older workers?

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Ask Liz Ryan: jazz up my resume bullets?

No Employer Callback a Diss?

Job-seekers, connect the dots

In a Job Search? Look for the Pain

Addressing a company scandal during a job interview

Subscribe

Explaining a big salary cut

Ask Liz Ryan: Handling a multi-part interview question

Keep Your Resume Out of the Black Hole

Ask Liz: too many jobs on my resume?

Ask Liz: Proof of Income?

More on boilerplate resume language

On a cover letter, declare intention to solve the pain?

Ask Liz: following up with a networking contact?

outdated job-search methods?

Using LinkedIn In Your Job Search: free E-book

Five Waste-of-Time Job Search Activities

Ah, the Human Voice!

Conducting a stealth job search

Job search video

Can A New Grad's LinkedIn Profile Help His Job Search?

Top Five Resume Problems

Second-Interview Seriousness?

Ask Liz: Confused About Job References

"I" in your resume Summary?

The Human-Voiced Resume

Job Search Coaching Group Forming in Boulder

When to Ask What?

Does Attitude Influence Job-Search Success?

What If they Want a Salary History?

Help - I Set My Salary "Floor" Too Low

Ask Liz: Who Pays for Interview Travel?

The Underemployment Trap

Ten Ways to Ruin a Job Interview

25 Hours Per Week Job-Search Schedule

Ask Liz: What's an "S" Got to Crow About?

How To Account for Years of Experience in Each Skill Area?

Ten Questions Never to Ask on a Job Interview

I Don't Like to Praise Myself. Is That Bad?

I Showed Up vs. I Left a Wake

How to Manage the Networking Coffee or Lunch Date

Offer Negotiations and Oliver Twist

Degree Not a Choice?

Don't Have Experience They're Looking For?

The Cringe-Free Job Search

Wrap It Up!

Reclaiming Your Brand

Reference Standoff?

Ann's New Summary

Career Manholes to Avoid

Ask Liz: Out of State Job History?

Company is Appealing, Role Not So Important

Parroting Terms from the Job Ad?

Ask Liz: Job-Search Essentials?

Why Aren't My LinkedIn Invitations Being Accepted?

Six Reasons to Run from a Job Interview

Dealing with Age Discrimination

How to Describe Your "Mommy Time"?