Indeed. All that follows if very much my opinion, take it for what it’s worth.
Never lie on your resume about a skill that you don’t have, i.e. PageMaker. However if you have a skill, or are sure you could do a particular task, but just don’t have much experience in it then inflating that experience isn’t too much of an issue.
It’s easy to be caught out if you say you know X and are asked about it, but you’re less likely to be caught out if you’re ‘enhancing’ your experience in X.
The HR people at my present company used to distibute piles of resumes to the various engineers here to screen. Basically you read it and made a Yes and a No pile. When I did this I got the feeling that some of the of people in the No pile were probably quite good but had put their case poorly on their resume and I had people for the Yes pile that may have just indicated their assests better.
If you feel you have a ‘greater asset’ then your resume needs to indicate that, this may take some creative work but it should be possible. Of course the fact you are getting interviews indicates that you probably have done that.
I just get the feeling that you’re expecting employers to do all the work. They have a lot of candidates to go through and they don’t want to do the legwork. You have to sell yourself.
Like I said, that’s just my opinion. And, on preview, what andymurph64 said.
I have done that lately. I try to tell them what type of worker I am as well as what I know. I run into a lot of companies that want something for nothing. Worse yet are companies who think you are overqualified and won’t hire you because they think you’ll get bored quickly and leave. While this is true a lot of the time, you never know when someone is looking for a change of pace and could just be the person you’ve been looking for.
“I’ve looked at the other companies and it’s YOUR company that I really want to work for.”
“I’ve worked with jerks and always found a way to work productively with them, for example…”
“Submitting to your arbitrary demands to work on weekends is fine with me, in fact I thrive on it!”
Dogzilla, you are using a rational hiring process. Good for you. Many employers do not even know what skills or resources are required to succeed in the position they seeking to fill.
Before I was a manager, they were hiring someone to fill a position in the company. The company liked to interview people to death and then sit around for hours trying to decide who to hire (for a near entry level position…)
I usually made my opinion known then mentally dozed for the hours. I snapped to because they were discarding someone for contention (my personal favorite) because she didn’t know…
wait for it…
Windows 95! (this was in 1996)
Shocked, I asked what their concern was. Well, she won’t know how to use her computer, they said. I said that I asked her about computer skills and they were more than enough. Note that the only Windows 95 skills she would need to know were opening and saving files.
But she’s never used Windows 95, they wail! My God, people, give me 2 minutes and she’ll be an expert fer heavens sake!
Unbelievable. If I hadn’t been there, someone would not have gotten a job because they had never opened and saved files in Windows 95 (though she had used windows 3.x??) even though she was the best qualified.
FranticMad has it right in many cases. They have no clue.
Now, if you interview with someone who will be your boss and he/she does what you will be doing (though maybe at a higher level) they will know. If not, these people do more harm then good.
Why, thank you, Frantic. I greatly appreciate that. While my process may be rational, it is very time consuming and makes me miserable. However, having to do the graphic artist job, plus my job too, would make me even more miserable. So I try hard to screen for the skills I need to keep my team balanced and productive. It helps when the manager has had to actually do the job for which she/he is hiring. (And yes, I have, in the past, done every single job in my department that I supervise, when short-handed. Sometimes when not short-handed, but just when deadlines are tight.)
Just wanted to clarify my statement above, “Kudos to you for lying and scheming…” I meant that as an extremely tongue in cheek statement. I’m all about being up front and honest on a resume, because, as andymurph pointed out, sometimes you have to take the crappy job, pay your dues and find the “real” job once you’ve gotten a chair to sit in, inside the company’s building. I know many people at this company who started in the mail room and have worked their way up to team leaders (supervisors).
Finally, a point on the overqualified people: I have hired a few. Invariably they leave within 90 days because they are being paid shit and they go for some other well-paying opportunity. (This is the Pit, right? I can say “shit” here!) I can’t afford to re-interview and re-train because somebody who really wanted a $40K/year job but took my $25K/year job because they thought “a change of pace might be nice”. That takes too much time, money and then there’s that cumbersome process that makes me so miserable…
Hell, I’ve tried to apply for jobs where the HR people didn’t understand what the terms they were using meant. I mean basic help wanted section terms. I once applied for a job and got a call from HR. After a few minutes we determined that I was not a candidate since I didn’t have 2-5 years experience. I wouldn’t have applied but the advert said it was an “Entry level” position. So naturally I asked why they called it that when it required experience and they actually told me it was “For entry into the company”:smack:
Gee, I guess every job listed in the Boston Sunday Globe is entry level, guess they don’t have to use that term any more. (Oh well, could be worse. I just have to wonder how screwed up they are if their HR department is like that.)
Yep, good point. I won’t advise you to lie, but at the very least, put a positive spin on everything. There are ways to make your resume look better by getting creative, but still stopping short of perjury. Sometimes, pure attitude can get you there, too. I had a string of unsuccessful job interviews before I finally realized that what people were looking for was not so much honesty, but attitude. So finally, I had an interview where they asked me if I knew such-and-such computer program. I could tell from the interviewer’s description that it was some pretty basic thing, and I knew I could figure it out in a couple of days if I needed to. So I just told the guy: “If you are trying to find someone who knows all the exact software you use, then I admit there might be some things I don’t know. But if you’re looking for someone who knows how to figure things out, then I’m your man.” And I made sure I spread on the “can-do” attitude real thick like. I got the job.
This puzzled me at first also. Most ‘entry-level’ positions require some experience and if you ask them why they require experience they will shrug and not know.
It wasn’t until I became a manager that it clicked what it meant. It’s actually quite simple…here you go:
It means that the job isn’t entry level, but the pay is…
Employers put it on so that people know that the position doesn’t pay well, even though they want experience. It’s a way to weed out people who will demand a ‘real’ salary. I do believe most people do not even know why they put ‘entry level…x years experience required’ but subconciously that is why.
Well, I just want to chime in on this for Mr. Blue Sky from a fellow Savannian who has a spouse that is currently navigating the sea of unemployment in this town.
Mr. Blue Sky, your thread your should be called, “No connections, no job”! lol!
The job market here stinks, and it is more political than a Young Republican Rally. You don’t get in anywhere unless you are friends with the boss or you have some connection to old money or an old Savannah name.
If you have both, well consider your self a lottery winner because you have hit the jack pot! They’ll hire you to teach physics with a second grade education. They want to pay people with Bachelor’s degrees eight bucks an hour.
My husband is a computer networker. He has a degree. He is also willing to get his hands dirty. His resume reads like a patch work quilt, because he has done a little of everything before he finished his degree.
He has very little experience in his field, so he has to enhance what experience he does have.
I guess the thing that exasperates me is that Savannah is such a low-tech town. Very few businesses have true IT departments. The rest all have cousin Bubba “running our computers” because “he knows how to buy stuff off ebay”.
I shit you not.
Oh, and good luck with the hospital thing, but if it is the one I think it is, don’t get your hopes up. We tried that, too.
I have a sorta connection at the hospital, but, unfortunately, he isn’t high enough in the food chain to be of more help than to get me the interview. Not his fault, he IS trying to help me. The “recruiter” (man, I hate modern terminolgy) didn’t seem to be too impressed with my qualifications, or lack thereof. The head of the department where I would be working was, but that doesn’t help me.
The thing that sucks the most is that in every job I’ve ever had, I started out with NO experience and the employers took a chance on me and everything worked out just fine. Times have changed much to my chagrin.
In all my jobs I have ended up being the “go to” guy because I take enough pride in my work ethic to actually learn the job AND retain that information. How to put that on a resume AND make potential employers understand it is beyond me.
I like my current job. I just want to do it somewhere else. The working atmosphere sucks long and hard.