Buy a personal Contact Manager application - I bought ACT! but there are others - you find them at Best Buy alongside MS Office, etc.
Contact Managers are just that - they manage your contacts. They are used in sales. And since, well, you are trying to sell yourself, this applies.
Input the few folks you know already and might want to network with. Contact them via email or phone or whatever and figure out if and how they can help you - or who they might know who you could talk with on an Informational Interview basis only - networking doesn’t work when you start off by asking for a job; just ask for information.
Depending on what you find out, update that person’s entry in your Contact Manager and add a Task to call that person back in the right timeframe - 3 days if they are getting you timely info, 3 weeks for ongoing contact and 3 months if you are just maintaining the relationship. Also note a sentence or two on what you two spoke about, so you can come back in 3 months and remember.
Get online and use app’s like LinkedIn to search for people doing what you might be interested at companies you might want to work for in geographies you’d consider living in. Add them to your contacts and reach out for informational interviews. Yes, you have to come up with a few questions to be ready to ask them.
Between folks you know, folks you are referred to and folks you find online, sSet a goal for yourself: X contacts a day via email, phone or in person. Everytime you make contact, update your Contact Manager and set up a future Task down the road. Every morning, get up and print off the Task List - within a month or two, if you are making contacts and updating your software, you will have a ready set of contacts to make - it makes it a lot easier to put your head down and get them done.
Remember: Life is Sales and Sales is a Numbers Game. You are going to make calls, you are going to get hung up on or have otherwise no-fun contacts - but you must keep calling. Keep your head down and manage the process - get up the next morning, print off your Task List and get dialing. Oh, and prep a 15-20 second script for leaving voicemails so you can just read it off when you get into their voice mail - nothing sucks worse than getting to “beep” and not having your shpiel down cold when you are really hopeing they’ll call you back…
An interview with only HR present. Or more realistically in this economic climate, a first interview with HR only present. I would probably take a second interview with HR only, but that interview would be strictly a discussion of benefits and company policies.
It’s not an inability to convince the dumbest person. It’s the fact that going to interviews involves my time, which is valuable to me. An HR person won’t be able to tell me about day to day activities in my job, current projects being undertaken by the dept, advancement options, etc. Therefore going to interviews that will not provide any benefit to my search for employment is a waste of my time. Although this is the standpoint of someone with a job who is always looking. If I was not employed, then I probably would not be so picky about interviews.
In my experience, the HR interview is typically a phone screening interview or the first out of an entire day of interviews. Unfortunately it’s part of the job search game. From the hiring side, the company doesn’t want to wast the time of 5 people if the candidate can’t pass the initial screening interview.
From the other side of the country, if you show up without a suit and tie, at least to the first interview, you’re not getting hired. An interview is as formal as a client meeting, and yeah, you need to wear a suit to those too. It’s like being on time, it shows that you understand to formalities, and can be trusted to behave like a normal human being.
As far as networking goes, it’s just talking to people you already know. I know people who’ve gotten jobs, or at least solid leads, from activities ranging from D&D to competitive weightlifting and all kinds of bizarre stuff in between. There’s someone who knows someone else everywhere you go. Just talk to them. Professional organizations and confrences are great, but don’t forget that there a large number of companies where no one in your field goes to them, so don’t make them your only avenue.
I’ve had the job search thing work for me precisely because it is so flawed.
The thing about recruiters is people think they check references. So hirers will assume anyone sent to interview has been vetted.
This allowed me to get interviews even though I’d left my prior position without a reference -to say the least; I was suing my former partner for theft. Not something you want to explain to a new person. But since the recruiter never checked it didn’t come up.
Okay, a few points: “magic words” = keywords= key phrases, etc.
There are many recruiters who are looking to place you in with a client, regardless of your possible happiness in the job. These recruiters generally get a crap reputation over time because the people they place with their clients generally do not last, and it leaves a bad taste for the client and the candidate placed. I actually prefer not to work with the “I’ll take anything I may remotely be qualified for” candidates for this reason. They are going to bail if it is not the right place for them. As in any profession, there are going to be good and bad, and since recruiting is generally full of sales people, new grads, and those who don’t have a niche otherwise, many of them are trying to make a quick buck off fo you. They are also usually on to the next project after the one you were originally contacted about wraps, and in mnay cases, unfortunately, that is the end of their interest in you, unless you fit the bill for the next job.
Recruiters are notoriously bad for making the follow up call saying you are out- it’s not a fun call to make, they usually don’t have the answers to the questions you are going to ask, and they are getting pressured to make another 50 calls to people who can fill the next opening. It’s not necessarily right, but that’s the way it is. Personally, if it is a person I have worked with before, I’ll give them a call, but everyone should at least get an email.
Dress for an interview can definitely change company to company and situation to situation. Chances are the suti and tie will work, but like Voyager mentioned, it is not appropriate for all. Chances are if you are in an industry that is more casual on the whole, you will probably know this coming in to the interview.
You would be surprised how many people admit that by the time an interview and job offer is extended, they will be able to take a drug test, but not before then. It amazes me every time. There are certain companies that will make their candidates sign a form stating that they will have to reimburse the company the cost of the test if they fail, just to give the people lying about this a little more to think about.
I hate reference checking, view it as a complete waste of time. If you are going to list someone as a resume, then they should be able to say something good about you, so what is the use of calling them? Recruiting agencies use them as “value added services” when presenting to possible client companies, but they are generally 5 minute calls to a candidate’s former boss or best buddy at their last job, and those guys are not going to say anything stupid about the candidate in general.
I also hate cover letters, as do most recruiters I know. If you are qualified for a job, this should be evident in your resume. There is also no need for the one page resume anymore, I want to see what you have done.
What do they screen for? Basic knowledge of English? An IQ higher than a turnip? Phone screens are important, but it seems to make sense for people who know something about the job and the field to do it. (Unless the job is in HR. )
I’ve written enough references, for people outside my company, to totally agree. About the only benefit of them it to weed out those who can’t find three people willing to write a letter, are clueless enough to get one from their mothers, or who are socially inept enough to ask for a reference from someone who hates them.
The only references that have ever been helpful to me are from inside my company, on the phone, or from someone I know, like a professor for one of his students. Those have sounded honest - usually. At a place I used to work someone hired a guy from another division after a glowing phone reference. It turned out the glowing reference was to get rid of the loser, and dump him on our center.
As a former hiring manager, I thank you. In fact our internal resume system basically loses the cover letters, and I’ve never felt the lack. I’d rather a candidate highlight the skills that are most important in a paragraph or set of bullets at the top of the resume.
Joel agrees, and he ought to know. And he was talking about programming in general, not just in Silicon Valley, since he’s in NYC. Actually he said only wear a suit if you’re used to wearing suits and look good in one. Not everyone does.
Amen to the “Cover Letters/References Are Pointless” thing!
Especially since no-one is allowed to say anything bad about you in a reference in case you sue them for defamation (seriously), basically all you can do is confirm that John Smith worked for GenericCo in the Buying Department for five years, and since that’s on his resume anyway it’s all a bit pointless, IMHO.
Similarly, I’ve been advised to try and avoid using the pronoun “I” in cover letters. WTF? The whole point of them (as much as I hate them) is to explain to a potential employer why your Leet Skillz are so much Leeter than everyone else’s, and unless you write like a member of the Royal Family and use lots of "one"s and "we"s, you pretty much have to use the personal pronoun throughout.
I learned the most important thing in finding a job is to sex your resume up. I don’t mean have a section named “Chicks I Boned” or anything, but rather to play up what you’ve done around the particular position in question almost beyond the bounds of credibility.
The reason for this is because the mindless HR drones are frequently looking for someone with X, Y and Z, and if your resume says you have a decade of experience something really close to X, Y and Z, but not exactly X, Y or Z. then you’re fucked. This is especially rampant in IT, where the particular technology buzzwords seem to be all-important, even though a good IT professional can pick it up as he goes, much like a soldier can learn a new weapon system.
The goal is to get yourself beyond the mindless HR drone gatekeeper who doesn’t know your qualifications from shinola, and to get yourself in front of someone more knowledgeable who you can defend your assertions in the interview.
I’m not saying lie outright… but like Elwood Blues said, “It wasn’t lies. It was just… bullshit.”
That is an excellent point about the buzzwords bump, and something we run into when dealing with engineers. Just because you feel that your Solidworks experience will enable you to pick up on another design program does not mean that an HR Asst that is screening resumes is going to feel that way too. Chances are there are 5 other people out there in the same market you are in with the exact design package experience they are using, and they do not want to take the time to train you if they do not have to. This goes double if you are working with a recruiter, because their client is not going to be eager to pay for someone that they have to train.
The way to combat this is to put what they are looking for somewhere on your resume, even if you just have mild exposure to it. While it may not fly when you get to the hiring manager, it may get you in past the gatekeeper, and enable you to sell yourself to someone if you get an interview.
This can be a good point, but I think there is an over-reliance on tools and training when recruiting in the software field. Maybe it matters more if the candidate is not very sharp or if they are older and not interested in learning, but I’ve never seen anyone struggle over learning a particular tool. I’ve seen developers struggle with fundamentals, but not with how to use a tool.
I realize that everyone uses buzzwords to filter out the mass of resumes they get for a given position, but I think that fact reinforces the point of the OP.
CaveMike- I don’t disagree with you at all, from many of the people I speak with that have training or experience in multiple but similar packages, it takes minimal time to jump from one to another successfully. However, with the abundance of candidates on the market, companies think that they can get the absolute exact fit instead of having to settle for someone.
I agree with much of the OP as well, the system is seriously flawed, and you have to know how to game it a bit to get what you want out of it. Sometimes it is better not to fight it, but instead take what you can out of it and use it to your advantage.
Here is something idiotic that just occured to me. So I’m having my placement counselor go over my resume (I get 3 months of this executive placement service as part of my severence) and she is suggesting all these bullshit changes. Later she says that it seems particularly focused in the legal technology / computer forensics / consulting work that I do.
Guess what moron. That’s how you know the resume is working. All your formatting and semantic bullshit aside, the one thing you know about me from my resume is that I shit awesomeness in my field. That is what a hiring manager is supposed to think when he reads it.
HR people are mostly qualifed to run a sorority. At least in those organizations, there is no critical need to have any skills other than being a vapid clone of everyone else. That is why you always try to talk to a hiring manager directly.
So many companies make the rule that they can’t give references, good or bad, they can only confirm you worked there. These same companies ask for references! If you’re going to ask for references, the least you can do is give a reference. How am I supposed to get references if none of the companies I work for allow their employees to give them?
I had an interesting reference experience recently (involving a good recruiter story, for once). I was temp at my current job, which I got through a recruiter, who called me specifically for this job. They wanted to hire me - HR required 2 work references. One, an old boss at my first “real” out of college job, came through immediately (love her). The second, my boss at my last job, never returned the calls - despite saying many times how happy he’d be to give a reference, or write a letter of recommendation, etc. :rolleyes: I ended up using my recruiter as a reference (my new boss’ idea, actually), since technically I was her employee for the past 3 months. My recruiter also sent me flowers when I officially started the position
She (owner of good recruiting agency), had actually started a different, larger agency that I had been with before, but left it to her partner basically because it started to suck - as they grew, they started to just throw people at whatever jobs they had to keep the money coming in, stopped calling people back about jobs they said they had, and worked a lot with a company that was always saying they were going to hire people, but never did - just worked temps to death then kicked them out when whatever project was done, and didn’t pay that well, either.
I don’t know what kind of HR people you have had to deal with, but I don’t think that is an accurate representation of HR on the whole. Sure, maybe at the HR assistant or other junior level, the vapid clone act may work, but HR Generalists and higher are generally going to have at least a Bachelor’s degree, and likely SHRM certification. Many of them are not trained interviewers, frankly because that is a small percentage of what most of them do.
Corporate recruiters should be pros at it, and there are not many excuses for them not being to interview, screen, and qualify candidates well.
However, classifying the whole HR field as know-nothings is like classifying anyone in IT as your prototypical computer geek, anyone in engineering as being a know it all with the personality of a patch of concrete, etc. Even if you do think of them as such, then it would be best not to be condescending to them at all, simply because they can ultimately say “that guy/ gal was a real condescending prick who treated me like he/she could not waste their time talking to me, so they are not going to be a good fit for our organizational culture.”
Skill-sets only get you so far, and I have shot down people who have had much better qualifications than the person who eventually got hired because they actually knew how to interact with other people. Why make an enemy with someone who can help you out?
I’ve always wondered how often this happens - managers giving a shitty employee a good reference just to just get rid of them. Judging from the some of the people I’ve had to work with, I’d say it happens with some frequency.
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