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It has been busy last few weeks. I have wanted to continue on with my networking series of posts, but have not had the time to get back to it. There are several reasons for this. It is the beginning of the Holiday season so going through Thanksgiving took some time away from my normal activities. I also pushed to get the remodel to the point that the sheet rocker can come in. All the cabling and electrical work in the walls is complete.
But the larger reason is two fold. The first is that I think companies are more interested in hiring people, maybe it is a end of the year push or a beginning of the year push, but it has seemed to change in the last couple of months. Companies who are hunkering down to weather bad times, tend not to hire people like me that help with improving their efficiency and productivity. They need people that can keep the factory up and running and not much else. Now people are looking at capturing efficiencies so that they don’t overhire people and so that they can work on the backlog of improvements and changes that have piled up over the last couple years.
The second area that I think has changed is the way that I am applying for jobs. I think I may have finally cracked the code on getting my resume to be seen by people.
I have had many more opportunities to interview over the last two months than I had in the proceeding 5 months. And I’m starting to get referrals from my resume. This is where I have applied for one job and then get asked to consider another job. I had this happen after a interview for a job at UW. I didn’t make the cut from the original job, but was asked to apply for a second position that it was thought that I would be competitive. This also occurred in a job that I was turned down for an interview, but was given a phone interview for a second position. These can only be happening if people are spending the time to fully read and understand my resume.
The change has been from the way that I an am writing or should I say rewriting my resume for the application. Mostly, it was giving up what I thought was a good way to find a job. I spent a lot of time creating the “perfect” resume, this is something that still has to be done today. The problem I had was from clinging to this resume. At first I would spent a lot of time writing a highly targeted cover letter and then would send in my stock resume. Later I would make a few changes, like changing the order of the paragraphs of my resume or changing the job title in the objective section of the resume.
Now, I am doing major changes each time I enter my resume. I am finding and using the words in the Job requisition that match my experience. I deleting parts of my resume that do not link up with the job requisition. I am changing my “perfect” sentences to use their words where possible.
In the process of making these changes I am starting to see that I have many more talents and skills than I ever could have put in the “perfect” resume. And this is opening up how I compete for getting my resume seen.
First step is to get through the computer screening. This is where using the words in the Job requisition is so important. The computer grades your application based on the hits for words and phrases. Second step is to get by the HR representative that applies the 7 second rule to your resume. They average 7 seconds looking at each resume. This give enough time to look at a little less than 1/2 a page of your resume to determine if you are viable for the position. If you make it through these first two steps, then your resume has the chance to be completely read by the person with some authority to hire. This is the point that I think I am getting to now where I haven’t often in the past.
Hearing the need to rewrite my resume for each application from many sources, . I still resisted this. Part of this is because it takes a lot of time. I am spending two to three hours per application. I also feared making mistakes and having my resume thrown out because of a missing period or something. And these problems are still hard to deal with, but I think the outcome is worth it.
As I become better and get more experience on how to rewrite the resume, it is becoming easier. I am finding that the more I can cut and paste directly out of the job requisition the better, being careful not to put anything in that I do not possess the skills and experience to back up. This is where is nice to be able to pull on over 20 years of experience.
I have to give a shout out to the Prolanga classes that I took. I had heard this all before, but either I wasn’t in the frame of mind to understand it or I was just resistant, in either case I didn’t do it. It wasn’t driven home until I took the introductory class from Prolanga (See Day 153 below for more information).
Now, I can see that I am starting to understand and master the interviewing process. I’m not there yet, but I am close. It has helped to do a few phone interviews where I could record the interview and then listen to my answers later. This has help me make some basic changes on points that I didn’t realize that I was doing.
Hopefully it won’t be long now. I have several companies that seem to be interested in my talents. And the positions that they have available seem suited to my talents and seem like they would be interesting and growth producing jobs.
- Day 153 - Good Courses to Take (other-dribblings.blogspot.com)
sounds like you're getting there.. good luck!:) hopefully by the New Year will have an offer or two.
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