In the midst of a hectic summer, I’ve been thinking about employment a lot. I’ve also realized that in less than a year, it’s more than likely that I will be moving back to Minnesota after completing my Master’s. I think that’s a good thing, but in the meantime, my career consulting brain has immediately jumped to: what will *my* job search be like?!

<< Enter Panic. >>

It has been a long time since I actually had to look for a job. Granted, I’m working two jobs this summer on top of this little resume shindig I have going, and they were the only two jobs I applied for… so I have a good track record. But the question at hand is: what do I want to do?! The problem is, there are too many options for me to feel happy with accepting just one position. Sheesh.

This post is not the post to answer that question. Instead, I’m going to make a plug for a job search site that quelled my fears a little today: Idealist.org.

Idealist is not for everybody, but it is for people who want to help others in creative, exciting ways, and to connect with others in doing so. It’s most useful function is acting as a massive holding space for job postings, but also has a nice blog, a place to put your profile, and, I think, an especially decent podcast.

Check it out and quell those anxieties. If that doesn’t work… go get a margarita and a hammock. Cheers.

…to get the job.

Today’s New York Times features a conversation amongst readers, “It’s No Act, I Need A Job.”  The comments highlight the really smart things people do in the job search, as well as some of the denser things.  Below, some excerpts:

• “Do all the basics of job hunting: design a spell checked/proofed resume and cover letter that speak to the job requirements; dress more conservatively than your interviewers; execute a firm handshake (many don’t) and look the interviewer in the eyes for a half second; ask questions; follow up with a thank you; be persistent; take care of yourself; seek help if you’re floundering.” - Andris Grunde, PA

• “When I go to an interview, I suck up. I laugh at all the right places, I pretend the interviewer — no matter how stupid he or she appears — is the most interesting person I’ve ever met. I make subtle hints that I’m willing to put out to get the job.” - Alex, N

• “When applying for a television production job I included flowers and signed the cover letter ‘not just another cable puller.’ I got the job. When applying for a senior creative position I included a key to a Mercedes-Benz automobile and a note saying ‘Your new car’ was parked outside but this was unrelated to my application. I got the job.” - Gary Milgrom, Atlanta

• “Sent my resume on pink stationary. This only works if the hiring manager is open-minded enough to actually not dismiss you as a nut and actually read your resume after getting beyond the pink stationary. Fortunately some one did and I got the job.” - LY, Boston

My personal favorite?

• “I incorporate the requirements of the job stated in the ad into my resume. It never fails to get me an interview.” - Paul, NJ

]]> http://resumakers.org/2008/05/29/the-things-we-will-do/feed/ Alison Killeen http://resumakers.org/2008/05/06/resume-lessons-from-phoebe/ http://resumakers.org/2008/05/06/resume-lessons-from-phoebe/#comments Tue, 06 May 2008 16:58:51 +0000 Alison http://innovateresume.wordpress.com/?p=26

Let’s all follow Phoebe’s example: Friends don’t let friends lie on their resumes!

(One more week of finals… and then I’m back, full-force! I know you can’t wait.)

Being not only a blogger, resume writer, and career commentator, I am also a full-time graduate student — and an eager, excited one at that. I study ethics — in particular, I study Christian ethics, and I choose to do it in a way that is relevant to the world that we live in. I (very righteously, it sounds like today) comment on women’s rights, I think about racism as it intersects with American religion, I care about the ethics of war, torture, end-of-life experiences, and I try to connect what this fellow named Jesus living and dying in the period of the Roman Empire might have to say about all of us who live and die in this period of the American Empire. I really care about this. I think it matters.

What I do not care about, however, is being bombarded with meaningless papers during finals week that prevent me from thinking, caring, and doing the important things that I love. Today, I’m writing two insignificant papers, and as I do it, I realize that I am just jumping through yet another hoop to get the degree I need to do what I want to do.

This, though is why I love resumes so much. Resumes, my friends, are certainly a hoop, but they are useful, empowering, strong documents that serve a real-world purpose. Resumes are the hoop that will get you somewhere, which teach you something about yourself, and enable you to say, Obama-like, “Yes, I can.” With a resume, you’re responding to something real, and putting yourself in a position of power: you decide who you are on your resume. You take your skills, your passions, your experiences, your work, your education, and arrange it in a way that optimizes YOU.

Ah, the passion and fear emerging from a graduate student at the end of the semester. Nevertheless — I am so thankful for the things in this world we can do out of integrity, self-representation, and excitement. I’m thankful for my education. And weirdly enough? I’m thankful for resumes.

Video resumes are preposterous. Why?

1) There’s a reason we don’t put our pictures on a resume — it makes people focus on your appearance rather than your qualifications. It also unfortunately opens the door for people to discriminate against you based on age, color, gender, attractiveness quotient… whatever. And, it’s just downright tacky. A video resume is all these things and more.

2) I’d venture a guess to say that few of us have the skills to develop an interesting, attractive, and short video resume that actually communicates the information about ourselves we want to get across. Heck — not many of us can write a good traditional resume.

3) Video resumes are BORING! It takes longer to watch a video resume than it does to skim a traditional one. I hardly made it through one of the many I’ve perused on YouTube–the employers are not going to hear the information you want them to know about you. All they’re going to know is that you made a crappy, self-indulgent video.

4) You look a fool. Plain and simple.

Don’t believe me? Then watch this video:

Did YOUR mind wander halfway through this boring video? Mine sure did. And this one was better than half of the others floating around on YouTube! So please, folks: if your voice makes you sound like a pre-teen who would rather be watching Hannah Montana, do yourself a favor and OPT OUT. (Sheesh!)

So, then. My suggestions surrounding a video resume:

• Don’t do one unless you would use those same skills on your job, i.e., you’re into computers, video editing, the web, that kind of stuff.
• Know. How. To. Do. A. Good. Job.
• Wait a few years! There will be better tools and more knowledge in a few years on how to make a GOOD video resume, and how to use it.

Still stuck on it? Then for crying out loud — keep it short, look presentable, be confident, and include a link to your online resume!

It’s pretty great, huh? Many thanks to Zoe Pappenheimer for her hard work.  And for her brilliance.

See more of Zoe’s stuff out at Zoe Design Works.

You’ve been unemployed for a while now, and are starting to feel the burn. Tired of revising the resume, of putting yourself on the line, and of checking f*ing careerbuilder.com one more time, you’re beginning to entertain thoughts of self-sustainable farming, or perhaps nannying other people’s children… anything to get a buck. And more specifically, anything to get out of this hellhole we call… the Job Search.

Luckily, you have me, your friendly blogging friend, to help you out with this latest bout of ennui. And know what I’ve got? Another list for you. Sweet!

This one’s called the “Keeping-Up-Your-Momentum-and-Having-Fun-When-the-Job-Search-Really-Blows” List:

1) Check your attitude. Nothing is more of a downer in an interview than an applicant who is sincerely self-deprecating. Revise the way you look at your situation from having “no” opportunities to having any opportunity you want! It might be hard to remember, but being unemployed is actually a chance to start fresh, to do whatever you want to do, to try something new.

2) Bond. Find a community of other unemployed folks in your area! There actually tend to be a variety of places where you can meet others who are looking for employment, from online at LinkedIn to your local Job Club to Resume or Interviewing Skills Seminars. From there, you can network, share resources, compare skills, or just hang out and blow off some steam.

3) Surf. Reading Job Mob, Laurie Ruettimann, One Louder, or Not Hired, job search/HR blogs that are funny, fresh, and creative, is a great way to improve your job search knowledge, gain some skills, and not feel like you’re working so hard. Hey, maybe you’ll even laugh a little!

4) Get help. The job search is a full-time career, requiring a vast array of skills and knowledge that you may or may not not have in vast quantities. Don’t assume you should be able to do everything! Get a professional to coach you on how best to interview, to advise you on which strategies will get you where you want to go, or to make a simple revision of your resume.

Onwards and upwards!

Yesterday I had an interview for a part time summer job to supplement my income as I try to launch resumakers! ( remember, I’m also a full time grad student, so I’ll take what I can get!).  I was kind of nervous about it since I do tend to call myself… that’s right… a Career Consultant, and therefore should know how to interview.  I am trying to build a career, after all, out of telling other people how to do it!

But today–rather, yesterday–was a Day of Celebration, because within 2 hours after my interview, I was offered the job!  Well done, me.

Here were my tactics:

1) Treat the interviewer like a friend.  Anyone who’s ever hired anyone knows this: we hire people we like.  So do yourself a favor, and be likable.  (And this is key: SMILE!)

2) Tell stories, not pitches.  Sell yourself, not your personality traits.  Forget about listing off all the wonderful qualities you have–instead of talking about how motivated you are, tell a story about what happened on your last job as a result of your self-motivation.  It’s more interesting, and it’s more persuasive.

3) Answer the question. Yeah.  Answer it.  Don’t be a politician, be a person.  You understood the question, so treat the interviewer like a human being and acknowledge the question the asked by actually answering it–even the tough ones.

4) Take notes. Do it both before and during the interview.  Know what you want to say, and have it written in front of you in case you have a mind freeze.  Take notes during the interview, too–it helps later when you write your thank you note.  (Just make sure you’re maintaining eye contact!)

5) Research. If you don’t know about the organization before the interview, you don’t deserve the job.  Period.

A new book by Susan Jacoby, called The Age of American Unreason, talks about the growing trend of ignorance among Americans. Nicholas Kristof, writing for the New York Times, said of the book on March 30,

“’America is now ill with a powerful mutant strain of intertwined ignorance, anti-rationalism, and anti-intellectualism,’… [but Jacoby's] broader point is that we as a nation will have difficulty making crucial decisions if we don’t have an intellectual climate that fosters an informed and reasoned debate.”

Kristof’s article, “With a Few More Brains…”, goes on to lament the effect that such ignorance may have had on American policies, politics, and international relations. Whether or not his claim on the political repercussions of Americans’ purported ignorance is true, Jacoby’s book does make a striking argument on the state of our brains and our intelligence. Sure, one could argue about the intellectual progress of Americans either way: “Look how far we’ve come!” or “Oh my gosh, we’ve regressed so far…”, but what may be even more important are the lessons we can take away from Jacoby’s position: 1) we must always learn from our history, and 2) revise, revise, revise!

We must always learn from our history
Writing a resume is about knowing who you are, what your history is, and therefore, where it is you want to go from there. If Jacoby and Kristof are right that the United States is deteriorating in intelligence, then ideally all we would need to do to get back on track is take a look at our history.

Resumes, especially chronological ones, literally give an employer a snapshot of your work history: they know where you’ve worked, when, for how long, and they kinds of things you did there. If you do a poor job, all you see is the skeleton, with little to accentuate the accomplishments you’ve made over the years. Worse, if you actually have a patchy or a non-existent work history, a resume can be just the tool to show you–and employers–what you need to change.

Luckily, we don’t acquire all of our skills only from work, and resumes can be arranged to reflect that. (Contact Alison for more information). Still, developing a good resume is an excellent place to start in career strategizing–it forces you to see where you’ve been, and helps you to plan for getting where you want to go.

Revise, revise, revise
The hope, of course, in reviewing your work (or other) history, would be to learn what it is you need to revise about yourself! Perhaps if we Americans had been conscious about where we were coming from intellectually, we would have ended up in a better place, and Jacoby wouldn’t have been able to write her book. …of course, life itself rarely turns out the way we plan.

But we have control over our resumes, and making revisions and enforcing constant updates are imperative! You can choose, for example, what it is you want to show on a resume, which skills you want to emphasize, and what jobs you want to downplay. A professional can help you do those things in a responsible and savvy way.

Perhaps Ms. Jacoby would be disappointed to see an response to her book that is utterly devoid of politics. Yet we can take from her a message that is practical and useful to politics, left or right, as well as to our professional and personal lives: we must approach life consciously, constantly considering our history, and revising accordingly.

I’ve been paying attention lately to the thoughts that float around in my head. You know those thoughts — the ones characterized by dreamy, fantastic ideas about how successful we’d be in this career, or how happy we’ll be after that life decision. We think they’re exceptional ideas at 3:00 a.m., but the next day over lunch, we shake our heads in amusement, saying, “That would never work.” Somewhere in between those two moments, the magic of that lightbulb fades, and doubt penetrates its luster.

Why do people talk themselves out of their creativity? Do you talk yourself out of yours?

Earlier this week I had a conversation with a friend about her husband, who I’ve come to think of as an “Ideas Man.” Travis, my friend says with an obvious affection, can’t quite seem to settle on a passion: he’s always having one grand idea after another, but doesn’t always complete his current dream before rushing off towards the next. At first, I chuckled fondly thinking of Travis, as sweet, affable, and as passionate as he is. But then, I caught myself.

Was I writing off Travis’ passion? Shouldn’t I admire it? Certainly life to an extent requires pragmatism, but at the same time, shouldn’t we all live in pursuit of our ideas?

Ultimately, the search for a career can be characterized as a search for one’s self. Americans identify ourselves by what we do: it’s almost always one of the first questions you ask when you meet someone. Taking time to listen to those ideas keeps your career path open to innovation, excitement, and creativity!

So next time you feel your mind wander towards those crazy dreams, don’t be so quick to shoot yourself down. Even if you never change your career, at least you’ll know that you did it with your eyes open.

…from now on, I’m sleeping with a pen and paper on my nightstand.