Job Seekers often ask me if they should post their resumes and/or search on Career Sites. Depending on the circumstances I tell them that it is their best interest to post or not to post.  Since I get so many questions about web sites, I wanted to share the following;

Career Sites Fail Job Seekers

Very often candidates are asked by company hiring officials how the Third Party Recruiter (Headhunter) found them.  This rather innocuous seeming question is often asked early in the interview process, why? 

There is an obvious answer to this question.  The company is gathering intelligence so they can do a better job of recruiting candidates directly, and since the job seeker wants to ingrate themselves to the company, they are more than happy to answer the question.  After all the candidate has nothing to lose, right? - WRONG!

If the job seeker responds that the Headhunter found him or her on a Job Board, or they responded to a Job Board posting by the Third Party recruiter, the candidate may ultimately actually be hurting them self.  How can this be?

• The company now knows that you are an active job seekers and decides not to hire you.  Companies that hire Headhunters to find candides to fill their job openings want to believe they are getting passive job seekers.  Passive candidates are perceived to be a rarer commodity by companies and, therefore, move valuable.  The logic is that if the candidate is not looking for a new position, the company must be taking care of him or her and they must really be good at what they do.  In fact, I have found many “passive” candidates to be too lazy or scared to look for a new job and are not necessarily that “valuable” to their current company but they are hanging on for dear life. 
• The company now believes they know where individuals with your skills and training “hang out” when looking for a job so they pass on hiring you so they can find their own candidates on the same job board.  Many years ago I found a candidate for a President’s position on Headhunter.net.  He interviewed well and was basically hired.  The last step in the process was to have dinner with the company’s CEO and the head of the Personnel Department.  The dinner went well but at the end of the dinner the CEO asked the candidate how I found him.  When the candidate replied the Headhunter found him on Headhunter.net the CEO told the Personnel VP not to hire the candidate and to begin using Headhunter.net to find their own candidates.
• The company now knows you are an active candidate but decides to try to hire you anyway.  Obviously, you were not hurt by revealing you responded to, or you resume was found, on a job board, or were you?  I have worked with companies who after finding out that the job seeker was found on a job board, the company decided to offer the candidate less money than they were originally planning, because they perceived the job seeker was not a valuable as they originally thought.

These are just a few of the reasons I believe it is in a job seekers best interest to be very careful when answering the, “How did the Headhunter find you?”, question.  Even if you know the Headhunter found your resume on the Internet via a Job Board, such as Monster, Hotjobs, Careerbuilder, etc., try to sidestep the question, or if cornered, respond with “He/She told me his/her Research Department found me.”  However you decide how to respond to the, “How did the Headhunter find you?” question, never guess and say they probably found me on a Job Board.

Previously, I have talked about the fact that when an individual interviews for a job, the purpose of the interview is to get the job.  Recently another of my candidates lost an excellent job that he fit perfectly because he was worried about the potential commute during the interview.  The company took his reticence during the interview as an indication that he really was not interested in the position or the company, when really he was worried about driving to work in heavy traffic.  When told that he was not getting a job offer he was very disappointed because he had decided he really wanted the job.  When asked why he acted so cool during the interview process he explained that he was worried about the potential commute.  He asked to have the company reconsider him for the position but the opportunity was lost and the ironic thing is that he was probably the best candidate I could have placed with the company.

Unfortunately, the traffic he saw was from the airport to the plant site and the company was located in a suburb and had he driven a few miles west he would have found that he could have lived virtually in the country.   The moral of this story is during the interview, concentrate on the interview process and getting the offer.  The details can be worked out later and if the concern is real and cannot be eliminated, the offer can be rejected.  

Ken Nunley, a third party recruiter and owner of Ken Nunley Gate House Consulting gave me a Questionnaire that he asks candidates to fill out and submit if they are interested in one of the positions listed on his web site www.QualityEngineerJobs.com.  I am sharing this Questionnaire, with Ken’s blessing, with my avid readers four a couple of reasons.  The first reason is that Ken is a very successful third party recruiter and this list provides excellent insight into what information a recruiter wants from a job applicant.  The second reason I am sharing this questionnaire is that before Ken became a very successful third party recruiter, he was a very successful human resources manager and has inside knowledge of what information companies want from job applicants. 

The following questionnaire should be used as a guide by anyone preparing  a resume, responding to a company job advertisement, responding to a third party recruiter job advertisement, or during a telephone or face-to-face job interview.  The questions are not in any particular order of importance but yet, they are all important. 

• As a part of our QUALITY process please indicate your SALARY and RELOCATION preferences, what type of products and/or industries you’re experience with?
• What is prompting you to leave your current or last employer?
• What prompted you to leave your next to last employer?
• What is your completed BS degree and/or your advanced degree in?
• Your  SALARY or RELOCATION preferences?
• Salary Range?
• Relocation – Urban, Suburban, Rural?
• Is the salary posted for this position within your interest range?
• Will you consider CONTRACT work?
• Are there any required skills in this job description that you are not experienced with?
• What types of products and/or industries are you experienced with?
• How many years of experience do you have in each industry?
• What is your availability to travel domestically and internationally?
• For DOD and DOE job submittals or no-US citizens – what are your current citizenship/VISA status and/or past or current security clearance?
• Do you require relocation support because you are a current home owner?
• Please list the contact numbers at which you can be reached, HOME #, CELL# and WORK#.
• Employment tenure of less than 36 months with any employer should be explained, i.e., lay off, plant closure, released, etc.
• Employment gaps of more than 1 year should be explained!
• Please provide us with the following information from your last two jobs:
   -  What was produced at that site? - Include:  Employer/Company name and product/services produced?
   -  Who were your major customers? – Include: Employer/Company name and services/products sold to?
   -  With what process were you most involved? – Include: Employer/Company name and your focused contribution   and accomplishments?
               
• ALL resumes MUST have dates of employment, employer name and job title!!!

Obviously this Questionnaire is written for anyone applying for a job.  I have a similar questionnaire on my web site www.discoverypersonnel.com that is tailored for someone requesting Discovery Personnel’s help with their job search.  Either questionnaire will provide a good overview of what information a company or third party recruiter needs from someone applying for a position or requesting help with a job search.  BE PREPARED!

When writing a resume be sure to include a brief description of what the company manufactures or the service(s) it provides for each company listed on the resume.  These statements can be as brief as “manufactures injection molded plastic components for the automotive industry” or “manufacturer of non-invasive blood glucose monitoring devices”. 

Including a brief description of your past employer’s services or products seems very basic but probably 30 percent of all the resumes I read lack this information.  I realize that a lot of job seekers believe that if they have an engineering degree they can engineer anywhere or if they have sales experience they can sell anything.  Maybe this is true, but it does not matter if the company will not hire an engineer or a salesperson who does not have experience in their specific industry.  Companies do not hire recruiting firms just to send them resumes of all engineers or all salespeople.  They pay us to find people that match their job requirements and if there is no product or service experience on the resume recruiters have no way of knowing if it is worth contacting the job seeker. 

It should be remembered that the average recruiter receives over 100 resume per week, and Corporate Recruiters at large companies receive many times that number.  If 20 minutes are spent talking to each person who sends a resume, approximately 33 hours of the Third Party Recruiter’s work week will be spent just talking to candidates that may or may not have the experience their client companies want.   Third Party as well as Corporate Recruiters depend on the employer’s products or services being stated on the resume as one of the primary screening criteria.  If there is no mention of past employer’s products or services, the person doing the screening usually assumes the job seeker does not meet the job requirements and discards the resume. 

A recent straw poll of approximately 1,700 recruiters, members of the Top Echelon Network (the largest group of independent recruiters), found that over 33% of all job seekers lie on their resumes.  The lies range from stating that they have degrees, that they do not have, to vastly overstating their job skills and experience.  Probably the largest single lie is the candidate stating that they are still employed by a company when they are not.  I know a lot of job seekers feel justified stating they are still working for a company when they are receiving some type of compensation but if they are not physically going to work every day, they are not working for the company.  The first question I ask every potential candidate is, “are you still working for the XYZ Company?”   If the job seeker is not working for the company but the resume indicates they are, I still work with them but my write up on the job seeker that I present to my client company or a fellow recruiter (headhunter) states they are not working.

Why is telling such a seemingly white lie bad for the job seeker?

• When the recruiter (corporate or headhunter) sees on the resume that the job seeker is still employed, they do call during the day because they believe the job seeker is not available.  This forces the recruiter to call at night which they may or may not do if their schedule is too busy.  I call on the average 10 potential candidates every evening and find out half of them are not working.  This takes time away from my family and when I find out the job seeker is not working its me with the feeling that I may not be dealing with an honest job seeker.  Starting out on the wrong foot with a corporate or third party recruiter is not something a job seeker really wants to do.
• When the recruiter finds the candidate has lied on the resume, they may not present the job seeker to their company manager or their client company for ethical reasons.
• In my previous life, I spent 16 years in engineering management.  I withdrew several offers when I found out my potential employee had lied about still being employed.
  I felt that if they would lie to me about that, what would they lie to me about when they reported to me?  How could I trust someone to handle hundreds of thousands and sometimes millions of dollars of corporate dollars who was less than honest on their resume?
• If one of the first things the hiring manager sees on the resume is not true does it then make sense to take what the job seeker says about their contributions to their past employers at face value.  Does the job seeker really want statements made on their resume discounted unnecessarily?

Maybe the hiring company or recruiter is not appalled by the lack of honesty on a resume but do you really want to roll the dice with your career when really good jobs are hard to find?  Really good jobs are getting scarcer despite the less than honest government reports to the contrary.   Being unemployed in this era does not carry the stigma it once did but being dishonest still does.

I  was just looking through a listing of Recruiters’ Top 10 Resume Pet Peeves by Norma Mushkat, from a Monster.com posting that I had downloaded from the Internet several years ago.   Since I was one of the 2,500 recruiters who contributed to the ResumeDoctor.com survey, I received a copy.  The original list had 20 items and is listed at www.iscworld.com/Top20.htm.   Norma Mushkat shortened the list and added some recruiter comments.  I will list everything verbatim and just wanted to make a note that the number 6 pet peeve is functional resumes.  I was going to devote a blog to writing functional resumes but since I really dislike them, and I don’t seem to be alone, I decided to provide this listing instead. 

Recruiters’ Top 10 Resume Pet Peeves:

10.  Personal Information Unrelated to the Job

With the limited time recruiters spend on your resume, you don’t want to distract them with your age, height, weight and interests unless they’re directly related to the work you want to do. 

 9.  Unqualified Candidates

You may want a job, but if you don’t have the skills and experience needed, recruiters will feel you’re wasting their time.  Look at the job description.  Be sure to highlight the skills the are looking for with a bulleted list of your related qualifications at the top of the document.

7.  Long Resumes and 8.  Paragraphs – Long Paragraphs instead of Bullet-points.

“I simply don’t have the time to read them,” says Bob Moore of Computer Recruiters, Inc.  Focus on the skills and accomplishments that directly apply to the job you’re trying to get.  Every word counts so don’t dwell on the specifics of each job, but rate the highlights specific to you.

6.  Functional Resumes

Whenever possible, recruiters advise you go with chronological resume and focus on the skills and accomplishments that pertain to the job you’re seeking.  If you are concerned about a layoff, be assured that “nowadays, unemployment is quite prevalent, and recruiters regard it differently,” says Jeanne Pace of Pace Search Services.  “Most people do something to keep their work (skills) going.”  Use that information to fill in the gaps.

5.  Poor Formatting

Different typefaces and boxes may look nice on paper, but if the resume needs to be scanned, they can cause confusion.  Recruiters suggest keeping your resume in plain text.

4.  Inaccurate or Missing Contact Information

“You create a resume for one reason:  To get a phone call,” says Kim Fowler of Fowler Placement Service Inc.  How can someone contact you if the phone number is  missing a digit or your email address is incorrect?  Be sure every resume you send has you correct contact information, including name, phone number, email address and street address.  Recruiter will not look you up; they’ll move on to the next candidate.

3.  Inaccurate Dates or None at All

Recruiters need to know when you worked where to get a better understanding of your work history and to use the dates for background checks.  According to Kathi Bradley of Bradley Resources, “Missing dates, especially for long periods of time, could send up a red flag, and the resume may be discarded as a result.”

Include specific ranges in months and years of  for every position.  If you have gaps, explain them either in your cover letter of introduction, but not you resume.  “It always helps to continue your education and training and to list any volunteer work during a slow period,” says Bradley.  “listing these under education or volunteer work should explain some of the gaps.”

2.  Too Duty-Oriented

“If you’re using your company’s job description, you’re missing the point of your resume,” says Paul Schmitz of Hufford Associates.  Recruiters already know what the job is; your resume should highlight your accomplishments in that position.  Schmitz advises you show what you’ve really done by outlining the process, outcomes and results that are specific to you.

1.  Spelling Errors, Typos and Poor Grammar

According to Bruce Noehren of J. Douglas Scott & Associates, this directly reflects your reputation.  “You don’t gain anything by getting it right,” he says.  “This is credibility you should already possess.”