The last few weeks I’ve spent hours painting.  I painted one wall a dark red, which complements a dark tan and a mustard yellow.  I didn’t think it would look good but they all look very nice together.

A fresh coat of paint has made a huge difference in the presentation of our house.

Have you ever seen that?  Compare the difference between an old worn-out barn with peeling paint to the barns famous in New England that are pristine…

Think about your resume.  I’ll admit I’m not a resume expert, but it seems to me you have two significant factors in the success of your resume:

The Presentation - this is how it looks.  From the font, to the paper, from the placement of things to how much white space is on your resume, the presentation is critical.  As a hiring manager I remember discarding resumes just because they looked off.  They were weird… I couldn’t imagine that someone who didn’t take enough time to at least get the easy part of their resume done right would take the time to do the job right, if I were to hire them.  They failed before they even had a chance to interview.

The Substance - I’ll talk more about this later in the week, but basically this is whether you have the credibility and credentials to do the job.  More later…

Back to the resume presentation… is this important?  Is it wrong for me, as a hiring manager, to discard a resume simply because the presentation is not what I’m expecting?  Whether it’s right or wrong for me to do that, I know it happens.  And if it happens, and you can avoid it, you should do what you can.  Here are some tips on resume presentation:

• White space. How much?  A lot.  If I pick up a resume that has so much text I know I’m going to need to spend more time on it, I might put it in a “check this out later” pile.  Understand that I wasn’t seeing HUNDREDS of resumes a day, and I’m guessing that HR and recruiters who see something with too much text will have a different tactic (garbage?).
• Font. Don’t put anything in font that’s too big, and please don’t get too small.  I’m in my 30s but my eyes aren’t so great, and staring at a monitor all day makes them tired.
• Folds. I think it’s hilarious to send a resume in an envelope… folded.  Please don’t fold your resume.  If you do, and I like it, I’ll likely have to make a photo copy so I can keep it with all the other resumes I like.
• Margins. You *can* change the margins in your document, right?  Cool … but *can* doesn’t mean *should* … be careful to not change something that will give me printer problems (like, making the margins too small!).
• Graphics and photos. Unless you are in design or need to exemplify your creativity, be cautious about using graphics.  I’ve found many people don’t know how to make their graphics small, so a document that could be 100kb becomes 2,000kb, and I don’t like getting 2mb files in my email!  Aside from file size, the graphics could be a distraction, off-brand, or cause funky formatting on my computer (so I don’t see it the way you see it).
• Proper use of bullets. What icons do you use for the bullets?  Are bullets properly indented, etc?  Bullets are cool to help format your resume, but if you do it wrong it will look like you used a typewriter or very old word processing system.  Yuck.
• File compatibility. When you mail me a document and I can’t open it, we have a problem.  If you use Word 2007, for example, make sure the document you send me is in the 1997 - 2003 format… make it easy for me to open it with one click!

For some examples in presentation, check out the resume samples page.  What do you think is important in the resume presentation?

As I read through the past posts on this blog from Allen Voivod, I realize I have really big shoes to fill. And even though I’ve been blogging for over two years, and running four blogs, I feel like this is my dreaded “first post.”  

What do I say?

Let me start off by answering two questions: Who am I, and why and I blogging here?

Who is Jason Alba

I’m an IT professional who was laid off and proved that I was not a good job seeker (read: I couldn’t get a job).  In fact, my problem was my resume.  I wrote it on my own, and it didn’t really get me any interviews.  I had no idea what I was doing, and seemed to do all the wrong things in my job search.

Within a few weeks, the excel spreadsheet I created to track my job search was crumbling, and I longed for a real piece of software to manage my job search.  I designed JibberJobber.com, and decided I was going to get into the career industry.  I’ve loved it since the beginning.

Why am I blogging here?

Peter Newfield asked me if I was interested in writing for his blog a few weeks ago.  Initially my response was… no way!  Peter has a great name, is well respected, and I admire his company.  But I knew Allen Voivod had done a spectacular job with the content of his posts, and I wasn’t sure I had the mental bandwidth to keep it up.

I’m actually honored to have been asked to blog here.  After taking all of the factors into consideration, I accepted the role.  

Over the next few months, and perhaps years, I’ll be sharing job search and career management ideas, tactics, techniques, philosophies, and knowledge, and hope that you can weigh in in the comments area to share your knowledge with me and the other readers.

Let’s get started!

As job seekers and resume writers, sometimes it’s easy to get caught up in the details of job postings: responsibilities, job descriptions, and education levels. After all, your resume has to reflect how you’d rise to the occasion, if you land the job.

Here’s a reality check: When you’re looking for a new job, it’s not just about how you’ll fit the position. It’s also about how the company will fit you.

For example, Massachusetts is now considering a bill that would require all companies, regardless of size, to offer 12 weeks of medical or family leave as one of their standard benefits.

A company’s policy on medical and family leave may be important to you for a number of reasons. If you’re thinking about a career change, consider this: What could reasonably happen in your family during the next five years? Ten years?

Stop to think about some of the major life issues. Do you have an elderly parent who could require additional care? Are you thinking about having or adopting a child? Have you had a history of physical or mental health issues that might affect your future ability to work?

If any of these factors could come into play, you should narrow your job search criteria to companies with favorable family and medical leave policies. In fact, depending on the state in which you live or want to work, you might have to knock smaller businesses off your list of options.

Small businesses take a big hit when one of their workers goes on leave. So not only are they cautious about hiring someone who may have a family or medical leave situation, the potential for friction and stress is much higher. And the medical or family leave situation is bound to be stressful enough as it is.

Take some time out of your job hunting to decide for yourself what you’ll need out of a company - not just for your quality of life, but the quality of your future. It’s one more key to a happy and successful career transition.

You’re in the middle of a job you like - or at least you don’t hate it. You don’t have plans to jump ship anytime soon, and there’s no rumor around the company about layoffs coming down the road.

Now’s the perfect time to update your resume.

For those of you who might be shaking your heads in disbelief, there are a number of great reasons to have your resume in place before you ever need it.

• Clarity. Have you ever written a resume after a number of years in a job, only to struggle to remember your achievements? Keeping your resume updated regularly guarantees that you’ll be able to put your most powerful achievements on display.

But just because profit margins on Project A exceeded those of Project B, don’t delete the info on Project B forever - keep a separate list of achievements to pull from, should you need to tailor your resume for a specific position. (Which you almost always will!)

• Negotiation. It’s performance review time. Are you required to start with a self-assessment of your annual or semi-annual contributions to your department or company? Good thing you’ve been keeping up your resume. You’ve got a clean and highly complimentary record of your performance at hand.

And if your review comes in an interview format, you’ve got your talking points all mapped out, in a smoothly summarized fashion. That’s the evidence you need to secure the highest possible raise - or to be ready to start looking elsewhere if the review doesn’t go the way you expect it to.

• Timelines. If you work on multiple longer-term projects (ones that don’t show meaningful results for six months or more) incremental updates to your resume can help you track your performance on those longer projects.

A 50% increase in revenue over six months is definitely good - capture that on your resume update. You won’t know whether it’ll be up to a 500% increase in a year, or a 500% decrease - but at least you’ve captured the positive data when it was available.

As for how often to update your resume, every three to six months is a good yardstick, but why wait? If you’ve hit one out of the park at work, celebrate with a concise bullet point write-up in your resume. If not now, then soon, or you’ll be struggling to remember the details later.

If I said that depression is often predicated by job loss and long-term unemployment, most of you would say, “Well, DUH!” It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to connect the dots on that assumption. What many people don’t realize is that depression actually makes it harder to gain reemployment, thus creating a cyclical spiral-down effect. Often, clients who seem to have the most difficulty finding new jobs have been struggling with depression resulting from their job loss and subsequent unemployment period.

In a 2002 study published in the Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, psychologists Richard Price, Jin Nam Choi and Amiram Vinokur of the University of Michigan detail the results of a study they conducted of 756 recently unemployed individuals. Their study seemed to indicate that secondary stressors of job loss such as financial strain and loss of personal control are the true culprits that lead to depression. The study also found that elevated levels of depression “may reduce the likelihood of reemployment.”

So what is depression? Depression is defined as “a psychoneurotic or psychotic disorder marked esp. by sadness, inactivity, difficulty in thinking and concentration, a significant increase or decrease in appetite and time spent sleeping, feelings of dejection and hopelessness, and sometimes suicidal tendencies.” In general, depression is diagnosed in two different senses – one is situation depression or depression that is caused by an event such as a death of a loved one, a divorce, medicinal side effects, or a job loss. The second is clinical depression, a condition that is caused by a chemical imbalance in the brain. Clinical depression may be worsened by events such as a job loss but usually antedates the event. Depression is NOT a character defect! It is as real an illness as diabetes or heart disease and affects 18.8 million US adults (that’s 9.5% of the population) at some point in their lifetime.

Unemployment produces profound changes in the lives of adults. When laid off, workers experience loss of structured time, valued relationships, status and identity, and loss of goals. Add to these losses the loss of income and increasing financial pressures and you have a prescription for depression in even the strongest, type A personalities.

If you are dealing with depression as a result of a significant event such as a job loss, here are a few things to remember:

- One out of every five or six workers is unemployed at some time during each year (source: Bureau of Labor Statistics).

- There is no such thing as a career with one company for your entire life anymore so adjust your mental thought processes. If you have been laid off, it’s not unusual.

- The worst thing you can do is nothing. Be diligent in your job hunting but also use the windfall of time to get out and help others. Volunteer your time instead of sitting in front of the television. Not only will volunteering help you avoid depression, it will give you a purpose and help extend your network.

- Talk to someone. Keeping things all bottled up is the equivalent of mental constipation. It will make you sick eventually. Talk to your family, your spouse, your friends, or your pastor. If you feel you would be more comfortable, talk to a therapist. It is NOT a character flaw to seek a shoulder to vent upon.

- Seek help. There are people who are ready to listen and to help.

I read an article recently that concerned the marketability of knowing a second language and the benefits that knowledge can bring to a candidate’s job search. The article noted that recruiters are hot on the trails of executives and middle managers who not only can speak Spanish but are familiar with the Hispanic culture and can, therefore, provide guidance to companies in dealing with this growing market segment.

Most of the time, when I see a resume of someone who is bilingual, they insert that piece of information at the very end of the resume – the most unread section of the entire document. If you have the benefit of speaking a second or even a third language, you should always mention that in the summary because it is an extremely marketable piece of information. Even if the job itself does not require you to use a language other than English, the knowledge you may have of the other language and its associated culture could be quite valuable to the company.

Be careful what you claim, however. If you claim fluency in Spanish but you really only know enough to get you around Tijuana in a taxi, you might find yourself in a sticky situation in an interview. The interviewer might be fluent in the language you claim and test out your knowledge of the language during the interview. If you only know how to ask to be taken to the horse track or ask for a beer, it would not only be embarrassing but sink your candidacy.

In recent years, when we think of using a second language in a job, we tend to think of call center rep who handles Spanish-only calls or perhaps social workers who work with those needing government services. Such an assumption is quite inaccurate. Higher salaried individuals with dual language capabilities are required for international business, market development, and global expansion. Make sure you highlight your bilingualism in your resume, even if you are an executive. It might very well be the one thing that tips the scale in your favor.

One of the most common resume problems we see in self-written resumes is having too much information in the content. There is a fine balance that must be found between being too wordy and not providing enough information for the reader to grasp your value.

The result can be too much information or not enough.

Many job seekers have trouble defining the focus in their job searches. The typical job seeker looks at his career history and thinks “I’ve done so many things and I want to convey that versatility.” As a result, the resume ends up being too long, too wordy, and has not selling focus. Employers don’t look for candidates who are broad generalists. They are seeking candidates to fill a specific need. When a job seeker uses a broad resume that has little focus, he is assuming the employer will be able to recognize the particular bits that apply. The problem is that rarely happens.

Let’s look at a job description that is typical of a resume that has too much information. The following was a job description written by a job seeker who was seeking a principal job in a school system.

·                     Curriculum development/program planning and implementation
·                     Development of District Prekindergarten Scope and Sequence
·                     Staff supervision (hiring recommendations, observations and evaluations, facilitation of regular staff meetings, staff support)
·                     Facilitated staff professional development 
·                     CPSE and 504 coordination
·                     Orchestrated classroom team meetings for student intervention
·                     Budget development, management and purchasing
·                     Grant Writing (please refer to page 3 of this resume)
·                     Parent communications, referrals and support
·                     On-going articulation with elementary principals
·                     Assessment of program effectiveness/development of relevant strategies (i.e., developed absentee policy and revised report card)
·                     Attended State Prekindergarten Administrators’ Association Board of Directors meetings, representing the ABC Prekindergarten programs
·                     Participated in community Advisory Boards and Committees
·                     Facilitated Building Level Safety Team Meetings and Improvement Team Meetings
·                     Executed all building level safety drills
·                     Police Department liaison
 

This is a great example of a shotgun approach. First of all, the list format does not help convey meaning and describe the scope of the position. It is not clear what this person did exactly and where he fit into the scheme of things. The bullets are vague and scattered in their approach. There is low-level information included such as the last two and “on-going articulation with elementary principals”. (The word “articulation” is also misused in the statement.) The job seeker simply sat down and listed everything he could think of that he did in the job without thought to importance, clarity, level of responsibility or detail. The result is a very poor presentation that does not sell the candidate.

Once upon a time (I’ve always wanted to start a blog with that) – there was a high school senior who was filling out a college application for her number one pick in universities. When she came to the question “Would you characterize yourself as a good leader?” she cringed. She thought about her answer for a considerable length of time and decided to go with the “honesty is the best policy” position and answer “No”. She had been in several extra curricular activities, clubs, and initiatives over the years but she had really had no desire to be a leader. She was a good worker. She teamed well and was always the person who could be counted on in the clutch.

A few weeks after sending in her application, she received her reply from the prestigious school. The opening sentence read “Dear Miss Smith. We have accepted 1,143 students for this school year at XYZ University. We have included you in that number because we feel the 1,142 student leaders who have been accepted need at least one student to follow them.”

It seems like everyone today wants to be or claims to be a leader. “Proven leadership abilities” is one of the most common phrases we see in resumes these days. It’s what HR people and recruiters want to see, right? Maybe not.

A good leader is only as good as the team that he leads. A great leader cannot lead a poor team to success. A great team can achieve some success while being led by a crappy leader. What doesn’t work is a room full of leaders and no worker bees. Our society needs to come to terms with the fact that everyone is not and should not be a leader. We need people to execute the ideas and initiatives that leaders come up with.

I knew a gentleman once who kept turning down a promotion to a director level job from a supervisory role. The promotion would have meant a significant increase in pay but also a wide range of new responsibilities. The company couldn’t figure out why he kept turning down the job. Finally, when asked, the man said, “Because I love what I do now. I have the perfect amount of responsibility and I really like the people with whom I work. I would not do well in the director role.” That admission took a lot of wisdom and a lot of guts. More people would be happier in their jobs if they took a long, hard look at the way they work, the talents they have, and the environment in which they work and stopped striving for what the world expected. Strive for what makes YOU happy.

This morning I was perusing the online media. Some people read print newspapers; I read the online versions while I sip my coffee. I came across an article with the headline “Unemployment in N. Israel Up 12%”.  My first reaction was “ONLY 12%?” and then I started thinking “Why is someone even measuring such a thing at this time? They are in the middle of a war!” Tracking such statistics during a time of national crisis is very strange to me. I guess it’s done – there is someone, somewhere whose job it is to track such things – but I never thought about it.

The article started me thinking about how national crises affect our lives here in the US. We are so insulated. September 11 was a large bump in the road that had some economic effects on us but for the majority of our citizens, it was more emotional than something that actually disrupted our entire lives. We didn’t all start living in bomb shelters.

Katrina was a big hit that affected the daily lives of more people than 9/11. People are still displaced. The national economy remained sound, though, and employment was not rocked unless you were in the effected areas.

Something that I see as a looming specter for employment and the economy as a whole is gas prices. With the oil fields of Prudhoe Bay closing, the conflict in the Middle East, and that nut job in Venezuela, we might all start looking at bicycles as a reasonable means of transportation. Bring back passenger trains. Horse and buggies are cheap, too. When fuel prices rise, everything goes up and when expenses go up, companies start looking at budgets. What’s the first thing they cut? Payroll.

As a job seeker, if you are set up to telecommute with a fully equipped home office, you should pitch that as an advantage to prospective employers. Employers will be looking at ways to save on payroll and if you can offer a cost-saving benefit, you might gain an edge over other candidates, especially if you have successfully worked in a telecommute situation before.

Our local and state elections are tomorrow and, of course, the mid-term Congressional elections are coming up in November. I’m already tired of the backbiting and political ads. As I was watching the news coverage of the candidates’ slog through the state shaking hands and kissing babies, it occurred to me that campaigning is a tough way to get a job. Is the investment worth it?