Hi, I’ve recently started a comprehensive job search of major companies in my area.
Unfortunately, I have been unable to establish any sort of rapport with hiring managers, and any inquiries I make get me pushing off to the HR Dept of each company.
Don’t get me wrong, I love the idea of my resume being entered into the circular file, or worst of all, the dreaded electronic resume database I fear my companies use.
I always seem to run up against the “submit resume for our review”. I know that the HR Dept. is made up of professionals who keep the company’s best interest in mind when advising hiring managers of who’s best for the job, etc. But sometimes I get the feeling that an HR Dept. is nothing but a gatekeeper…
One major problem I have is that I don’t have a ton of experience.
The experience I do have is great, but many jobs are in the 5+ years experience range, and I can’t touch that.
Anyway, here’s my question: How can I use an HR Dept. to my advantage when applying for a job - or are they simply gatekeepers? I’d especially like to hear from any HR pros out there for an answer.
All of the hiring done at my company is routed through the HR department. Obviously, the decisions are made by the departments and managers doing the hiring. But typically HR acts as the point of contact between the hiring department and the potential candidates. They schedule the interviews, do the background checks, receive resumes, place the ads, talk to the recruiters, etc.
Basically, the manager hiring talks to the HR guy and says “I want a candidate with X,Y,Z”. The HR guy then places the ad/talks to the recruiters, and gathers resumes that indicate X,Y and Z to give to the manager.
They are much more than gatekeepers. They do a lot of the organizational stuff that your scientists, engineers, finance people, whoever, don’t have time to do as part of their normal jobs.
Unfortunately, it’s an employer’s market these days, there’s a lot less you can do to overcome that first hurdle.
I went through this a while ago and FINALLY got some calls and eventually got a job. It sounds obvious, but make your resume stand out. I just did some little layout changes with mine and it made some difference. I’ve found that putting a little bulleted list on the left side with all of your skills helps. Most of the people who read your resume initially are just looking for buzzwords, and it helps if you make it easy for them to find if they’re looking at a formatted copy of your resume.
Of course, that doesn’t help a great deal if you’re just going into an electronic database. Just make sure your resume has all the buzzwords in it somewhere. But if your resume is actually being looked at by human beings, it’s good to make it look a little different than everyone else’s.
There’s not a great deal you can do about the experience problem without lying. Just play up the experience you do have as much as you can, in my experience the people making the hiring decisions will make exceptions for their “5+ years” experience requirement if your resume catches their eye.
And it doesn’t hurt to follow up, but don’t be annoying about it. It doesn’t hurt to jog people’s memories or make sure that they remember your name. If a hiring manager goes to HR looking for resumes, it wouldn’t hurt if your name was fresh in their memory.
First off, don’t generalize. Some HR departments are, indeed, gatekeepers. Others perform a very necessary screening process. There’s no magic formula for getting your resume read and considered… except for being well-qualified for the positions they have open.
I think they both amount to the same thing, but it does sound nicer when you put it the second way.
Acco40, I’m not in HR, but I can’t think of a way to get someone in HR to favor you over a similarly-qualified candidate, unless you happen to know one of them personally. But from your post it sounds like you might be calling companies and asking about openings before you’ve even sent them your resume. Unless the company is really desperate, all they’re going to do is hand you off to HR. I’ll pass on something that a manager-level father of a friend told me about getting your foot in the door. I have not tried this myself because it requires a small amount of deceit and I don’t hate my current job enough for that. Yet.
Call the company’s main number and ask the operator for the name of the director of X department (where X is your area). If the operator asks why you want it (here comes the deceitful part), tell him you’re a sales rep for a company that sells some product that a manager of an X department might be interested in, and you would like to mail that manager some materials. You don’t want to talk to the director yet. Once you have the name, mail the person your resume and state in your cover letter that you will call him Sometime during the morning of Someday the Somethingth. Give it several days depending on the speed of mail in your town.
When that day comes, call the company and ask the operator to connect you to Director X. If the operator asks the reason for your call, give him your name and say Director X is expecting your call. Since you gave advance notice in your cover letter, your call is not a cold call. When you talk to Director X, apologize for taking up his time, but you just need to talk to him for a few minutes about how jazzed you would be if you could only come work for him and be a valuable asset to the company.
If all goes well, you will have gotten your resume past HR and into the hands of Director X, and he will have read it, and he will take a few minutes to talk when you call him. At worst, you will only get as far as Director X’s secretary :smack: executive assistant, but that’s still closer than HR.
I am in the same boat right now. As Dex said, it really varies from company to company. I’ve seen HR depts that are very powerful and pretty much run who gets interviewed, promoted, etc. and I’ve seen HR departments that are treated as gofers. When it comes down to it though, when an HR dept is tasked to hire someone, their job is to weed out as many candidates as they can.
In this market, it’s very important to get some help from the inside. Do you know anyone in the field or company you are trying to get in? Do you know anyone who knows anyone? Scout made an important point in that HR depts usually don’t look for candidates unless they are tasked to by the person or persons hiring. It is critically important to find out who these people are. Go to meetings and social events that attract these people. If they are indicating that they are not hiring, ask them for an informational interview. Most people love to talk about themselves and their jobs and will oblige. Once they warm up to you, they will often give you leads on what they plan on hiring or which colleagues may be looking.
Have you considered interning, even for no pay? This is a great way to get experience and contacts (this is what I’m doing now, and my intern boss has got me an appointment to meet 3 VP’s at a company that wouldn’t even acknowledge my resume when I went at it the traditional way).
You need good experience, education, and work history, of course along with a well-wrtiten resume. You also need creativity and initiative to get in front of the people that are actually requesting the hires as well.
The single best method you can use for landing a job is networking. What you need is an advocate in the company who can bring attention to your resume. I found my MBA program alumni network database to be very helpful for landing interviews. Of course, nothing will help of the company isn’t hiring (as seems to be the case with most investment banks and consulting firms). Sending a resume directly to HR is about as effective as putting it in a bottle and tossing it in the Hudson River.