Scary Things Job Hunters Do: The Halloween Episode
By Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter
From the Archives (2012) Scary Things Job Hunters Do Note: I no longer do recruiting. I’m a coach who helps people with workplace issues–job search, hiring more effectively, management and leading. In addition, any job mentioned in the show was filled years ago. I have no idea whether any advertiser is still in business.
I am Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter, and I am going to do my Bela Lugosi imitation for the moment in honor of Halloween. I come to drink the blood from the neck. Welcome.
On No BS Job Search Advice Radio, I like to give you very straightforward and direct advice because, unlike you, I hear what clients say about job hunters and most of what I tell you is the feedback I get from employers and not just simply my own opinions. So when I talk with you about mistakes that you may be committing as part of your job search, understand, I’m just trying to help you don’t hear it as criticism, hear it as the voice of someone who lives in the trenches with employers and job hunters, who hears about the mistakes that many of you make, and I’m trying to fix it because, frankly, in this economy, despite what you may read about very soon about things picking up, for many of you, it’s real tough out there. For some folks, it’s a lot easier, but if you’ve been out of work for six, nine, 12 months or more, it’s going to be hard to land and you can’t waste any opportunities.
So I want to talk with you today about some of the scary things, the ghoulish things you may be doing that are keeping you from getting interviews, keeping you from getting the results, keeping you from getting the job that you really want. So I’ve got my top six scary things that job hunters do all the time that stand in their way between finding work or continuing to stay out of work. And the first one is one of my pet peeves, and that’s sending out generic resumes.
What do I mean by that? Sending out the same resume over and over again, as though they’re applying for the same job. Now, I don’t know about you, but when I see a job listing, everyone’s a little bit different. When I talk to a recruiter about a job, or when you talk to a recruiter about a job, I should say, and you hear about a position, they’re all a little bit different.
Yet, most of you send out the same resume over and over again. It’s wrong. It’s like the broken watch is right twice a day, and you can’t send out the same resume over and over again.
You’ve got to make alterations, you’ve got to tailor them in order to ensure that what you send to an employer, what you send to a recruiter, demonstrates that you fit the role. So that’s the scary thing, number one, that most people I know do. The second thing that people do that hurts them is they don’t do any interview preparation.
So what sort of preparation am I talking about? Real simple, do you spend any time reviewing the job description? Do you spend any time reviewing how you’ll answer some of the predictable questions that you’re going to be asked on an interview? Do you spend any time doing research into the firm and what its circumstances are? Most people don’t. They arrive at an interview ready to wing it. That is spontaneously asking questions, answering questions without any sort of preparation.
I don’t know about you, but actors and actresses, they rehearse, sports teams, they practice. Why aren’t you? With a little bit of preparation, you can perform so much better because even on a couple of interviews, you can already see the patterns of the questions that they’re asking. So why not rehearse your answers and rehearse them to the point where it doesn’t sound like they’re rehearsed? So here’s the third one.
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By the way, I only have five tips. My apologies. So this is tip number, scary thing number three that many of you do.
You only use job boards. How goofy is that? Job boards statistically fill about 6% of all positions. That’s it.
Now, if you want to include recruiters who ostensibly fill 22% of all positions and say, well, they’re running an ad on a job board, okay, I’m okay with that. So that’s 28% of all jobs are being filled by job boards and recruiters. So what about the other 72%? So focusing purely on job boards, focusing purely on recruiters and not doing networking and reaching out to people and asking for advice and trying to connect with people who know you or are willing to help you is just foolish.
It’s a ridiculous mistake to be making. Here’s the fourth thing, and this is a personal one. I want to admit to that.
This is a personal one. I know employers sometimes complain about it, but this is a personal one for me. It’s the Monday morning at 9 o’clock, 915, 930 phone call that goes, hi, what’s going on? It’s a waste of time.
There’s nothing going on at that time. You know it and I know it. And I know that the strategy is to get yourself into people’s minds, but all you’re doing is annoying them.
They’re trying to connect with their colleagues. They’re trying to get started on their day. For myself, on a typical Monday morning, and understand I often log on over the weekend, but Monday morning, I’m walking into over 100 emails.
I’ve got to respond to a number of them. I’ve got a crisis to deal with. I do my radio show.
So calling me early in the morning to say, hi, what’s going on, is an interruption. And you won’t get through to me. You won’t get through to most recruiters, whether they be third party or corporate recruiters, because they’re just trying to get settled into their day.
So don’t waste the time. Just wait until later because then you can have more of a positive effect. So that’s scary mistake number four people make.
Lastly, and again, this is a personal one from me, but I hear it from others. It’s the idea that many job hunters are really unkind to recruiters or other people that they meet during their job search. Let me give you an example.
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For six years, I commuted by bus to New York, and I was online the entire way doing work, and on occasion, I made a spelling mistake. And you had to read some of the emails that were sent to me for spelling mistakes. Now, I don’t know about you, but putting aside my commute, I sometimes make a mistake.
I suspect that’s true of you, too. Would you really like to get ripped a new asshole for having made a mistake? And I’m not talking about, you know, I do it all the time. It’s an infrequent thing.
Every once in a while, a mistake gets out. I’m rushing. I’m doing a lot of things concurrently.
A mistake occurs. Is that how you want to be treated by your manager? I don’t think so. Why do you think I would want to be treated in that way? Why do you think any recruiter would want to be treated that way? And then you expect us to help you.
So, I’ve got to pause for a second and point out how ridiculous that behavior is and why it hurts you. Because whether you like my work or not, whether you like this particular recruiter’s work or not, they do have access to other opportunities. I so much prefer a polite email that says, Jeff, you had a mistake in here.
Let me just bring it to your attention. So that way, you can fix it before you send the article out to anyone else. I thank those people.
Often, I’ll send them a copy of one of my books just as a way of showing appreciation. I consider that helpful. I don’t consider getting yelled at helpful.
So, those are five scary, ghoulish things that people do when they’re looking for work that stand between them and finding a position. Okay? So, now I’ll drop the Bela Lugosi imitation. And let’s talk about some of the jobs I’m recruiting for around the United States.
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