Recently, an individual sent me a resume for a management position that I was trying to fill (for the few of you that have not read this blogg before, I am a third party recruiter) but I did not respond very quickly because the resume was so poorly written I saw no reason to send it to my client company.  The candidate followed up with a telephone call (always a good idea) and wanted to know why I had not contacted him.  I told him his resume needed to be rewritten because the resume did not provide any compelling reason for my client company to be interested in hiring him.  The candidate agreed to update his resume but instead, sent an addendum, which provided little more insight into his qualifications for the position.  When the candidate called again and I told him he still had not not done an adequate job of presenting his skills and accomplishments.  He demanded that I give him the name of the company or call the company and get them to call him because once the owner of my client company talked to him they would be so dazzled by his qualifications and his oratory abilities.  He went on to say that his background was so complicated that he could not write it down (he also said he had paid someone to write the original resume).  At this point in the telephone conversation,  I had to let potential candidate know:

1. I work for the client company not the candidate.
2. One of the reason I am paid by a client company is to screen candidates and not just throw resumes at my client company.
3. It is unethical to provide my client company’s contact information to anyone who demands it.
4. Client companies still want to see resumes.  If everyone that saw an add for a position at Ford called Ford, the Human Resources Department would
   soon be overwhelmed.
5. If you cannot write down your career qualifications and achievements as they relate to a position you probably should not be applying for the position.

I realize there are some people who have writer’s block when they try to write a resume.  If you are one of those individuals who feels you can articulate better than you can write, I recommend buying a tape recorder, get someone to role play being the hiring manager, and record the conversation.  Then you can take the salient points off the tape and place them on the resume.   After all, writing started as a means of recording information that had been handed down in the spoken form for hundreds or thousands of years.

The main point I want to make with this particular article is that the resume is not dead and you do need a well written resume that relates work experience, qualifications and accomplishments to the particular position you want.  The talking part comes after the resume peeks someone in the company’s interest in you

Most college students receive their degrees in May or early June and many still do not have jobs (much to their parents horror). How do I know this? I am a third party recruiter, recruiting for companies in the Plastic Industry at Discovery Personnel, Inc. and my electronic in-basket is overflowing with resumes from graduating college students. Don’t get me wrong, I welcome the resumes because it gives me a chance to develop business relationships with engineers starting their careers in plastics and associated industries but there is one ugly secret that keeps me up nights, THE ODDS ARE VERY HIGH THAT I WILL NOT BE ABLE TO FIND ANY OF THESE YOUNG ASPIRING COLLEGE GRADUATES A JOB!

Is this because I am not a good recruiter? My boss would probably answer yes to that question but the truth is, I am a successful recruiter by most standards. So why is it so unlikely that I will not be able to find these recent college graduates their first meaningful position in the business world? The answer can be summed up in one word, MONEY. Most companies do not want to pay recruiters for finding employees with no experience when they believe they can find all the recent graduates they need.

Am I writing this blog to ask graduating college students not to send Third Party Recruiters (Headhunters) their resumes and as for help? – NO! The reason I am writing this blog is to tell graduating college students not to rely on Headhunters solely to find jobs. Third Party Recruiters should be only one arrow in the job hunters quiver. Networking through the college is without a doubt the best method of finding an entry level position when graduating. Be sure to utilize all the resources that your college provides and don’t be afraid to let friends a neighbors know you are graduating from college and looking for your first career position.

And don’t even get me started about using job boards to find your first job after graduating from college.

Recently in my role as a Third Party Recruiter for the Plastics Industry, I have run across what seems like an epidemic of people leaving their jobs in order to find a better job. Not being employed while looking for a job might have okay in the late ’90s, but this is 2007 and things have changed. Companies are much more selective about who they hire than they were about 17 years ago in spite of the Government “statistics” (lies, damn lies and statistics) to the contrary. If you have a great resume and good contacts in the industry, getting a new position is not too difficult but anyone with multiple job changes in the last few years (often through no fault of their own) and limited contacts is finding job searching much more difficult than they imagined.

One individual I talked with recently left her job because she had not received a pay raise in the last two years and she “had to pay the rent”. The problem is that when she left the job she did not have another position. Now she has been out of work for several weeks and cannot understand why recruiters and job boards cannot find her another job. Unfortunately, being out of work and a couple of job jumps recently makes helping her find a new position very difficult. Another job seeker I talked to has been out of work for several months and he said “I would not have left my job if I had known finding another would prove so difficult”. He had a very good job but became disenchanted with his company and decided he wanted to leave to provide more time to seek a new employer. He has had 20 plus interviews but no offers.

Leaving a job to devote ones self to finding a new one sounds good but too much time on ones hands can work against you, especially if desperation sets in. Interviewers, like sharks, can smell blood in the water and that can really work against the interviewee. The job seeker can also become too aggressive when search for a position and alienate the very people he needs help from. My advice is; if the job is not totally broke, don’t leave until you find another position.

There really is enough time in the day when you are still working to search for a position especially in this era of cell phones. Even if you get caught looking for a new job and are fired, I believe being fired while looking for a new job sounds better than leaving a job to devote more time to finding a new job. My grandfather worked for the Nickel Plate Railroad and when I was young it always seemed like he was out on strike. The strike would finally end and he would get $.10 more per hour after being on strike for weeks and it would be years before he would achieve any real benefit from that raise because of all the pay checks lost while he was out on strike. I never understood the economics of leaving a good paying job just to try to make a little more money then, and I certainly don’t now.

One of the most famous lines in modern movies (The Graduate) is when Mr. Robinson takes Dustin Hoffman aside at his college graduation party and offers him some career advice, which was one word, “PLASTICS”. Unfortunately, Dustin Hoffman’s character spent the summer having an affair with Mrs. Robinson so we will never know if he followed Mr. Robinson’s advice and made plastics his career. Plastics is the fourth largest manufacturing industry in the United States and probably China (if anyone has any numbers to prove me right or wrong please email me) but it remains a distant career choice for most people in the United States, including many who have actually entered the plastics industry. In my role as a third party technical recruiter for the plastics industry, most candidates tell me they kind of fell into plastics.

Currently, there are several good colleges for training engineers (and hopefully future managers) to enter the exciting world of plastics manufacturing; Ferris State University, The University of Massachusetts, Lowell, Pittsburg State University, Penn State University, and Ball State University. One advantage of these schools is that the curriculum does not have the entry level emphasis in Mathematics and the Sciences that most of the major universities use to weed out engineering schools. These schools actually want students to graduate and the math and science is included in the plastics curriculum. Not everyone has the math aptitude that engineering schools such as MIT, Purdue, Georgia Tech, The University of Michigan, Stanford or any of the other major engineering schools expect of their entry level engineering students, but most of these students still have exceptional mechanical, and electrical aptitude that is sorely needed in the plastics industry.

Recently I attended the National Plastics Exposition in Chicago in order to stay current on plastics equipment and manufacturing processes. Fortunately, I was able to find (not easy, it was well hidden) and stop by the Ferris State University booth to talk to Robert Speirs who is the Department Chair for the Ferris State Plastics Engineering Technology National Elastomer Center. At a time when many Engineers with IT related degrees cannot find jobs, nearly every graduate from Ferris State receives 3 job offers and companies are very disappointed that they cannot hire more plastics engineers. Many of the engineers I place in the plastics industry come from India and China where they have a strong emphasis on more vocational (less theoretical) engineering training. If you think Ferris State University (located in Michigan) might be for you, you can contact the school at www.Ferris.edu/plastics. Companies that recruit from Ferris State University includes; General Electric, Johnson Controls, Visteon, Parker Hannifin, Delphi, Federal Mogul, etc.

I realize most recent High School Graduates have already chosen their colleges but if things don’t go as well as hoped, or you find that traditional engineering is not really for you, consider plastics engineering. The plastic engineering schools will welcome you with open arms.