Handout sent! Good luck to you!
I haven’t hired anyone in years - but my suggestion regarding resumes is to make sure there are tangible results included. So don’t just list a skill - include how that skill improved the company’s bottom line. So if you were a manager - try to quantify how you might have improved efficiencies (e.g. reduced turnaround time by 17%). If you were in sales, something about increased repeat business by x%, or increased first-time customers by y%. If you’re in quality, try to quantify the % reduction in rework, or reduced complaints, or whatever. I’m sure you get the idea. Anyone can put generic comments / skills on a resume - quantifying the impact to a potential employer is hugely beneficial.
This can be tricky - it can be tempting to think that there are no metrics to measure your work performance. But be creative - I’m sure there are numbers you can come up with to help highlight your skills.
Good luck.
The coach said that too…“Performed X, which resulted in Y.”
Got it, thank you! And good luck to you as well!
So two things that I have noticed that are a huge difference between my highly successful extrovert husband and myself - who is more introverted.
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He doesn’t feel at all guilty about bugging people and collects connections. If people aren’t getting back to you, take them out for coffee and have them sit down with you and give you what you need over a $5 latte. And here is the other part of the deal, he gets called off to these sorts of things all the time in return. Its a system…I scratch your back, you scratch mine. Don’t be afraid to say “hey, I’ll write a linked in recommendation for you, if you write one for me.” Heck, don’t be afraid to say “if you don’t have time to write that recommendation, I can draft something for you.” (Something I discovered in my daughter’s college application coaching - when asking for a letter of recommendation, remind them of what you want them to say.)
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I am far more likely to downplay my accomplishments. I’m far more likely to grant credit to others. He’s a great manager in when he is managing the team gets credit…but job hunting is not about the team. When job hunting - HE did it - unless the point he is trying to make is that he successfully managed them. And he treats the glass as half full - without disclaimers - when talking about his accomplishments.
I have decided that part of this is extrovert, and part of this is that he has the confidence of a mediocre white male (and the abilities of a pretty exceptional one). So start channeling your mediocre white male.
I’m an introvert also, but I can play the role of an extrovert when I’m doing an interview or when I interview people I want to hire.
Interviewing is just like acting. You should take on the role of the candidate you want to be, even if you aren’t quite that person. That means confident and high energy, even if you feel you are neither. To paraphrase George Burns of maybe someone else, sincerity is the most important thing in interviewing. Fake that and you’ve got it made.
Of course you shouldn’t work hard to get a job you don’t want.
I learned this from my daughter who did more interviews, or rather auditions, in fourth grade than I’ve done my entire life. And she did them well also. 25 years later she still interviews really well, based on the number of offers she gets when looking.
And don’t worry about being exposed as a fraud - employers hardly ever remember the interview, and once they hire you they have a stake in believing you are great, since otherwise they were dumb to give you an offer.
Apparently one of the new tricks is to sprinkle keywords from the job description in your resume in white text, so they’ll get through ATS but a human won’t see them. To me that seems dishonest. On the other hand, I met with an experienced HR lady who said she’s gotten great hires by going through the ATS reject pile.
First off, go to Ask a Manager and read everything about resumes.
This sounds like a very backwards way of doing things. There’s no reason to expect someone else to know what you did better than you. You know what you did on a daily basis and you know what your projects were, so there’s no need to ask others for their input.
I get that it is hard for introverts to advertise themselves. I grew up with the idea that humility and modesty were virtues, and people who boasted about themselves were braggarts and fools. The unfortunate reality is that this just isn’t how the world works. Your resume is intended to be a list of reasons why you are awesome and why you are the answer to someone’s problems. It is an advertisement, so you need to act as if you are the Dos Equis guy and sell someone else on the idea that you are the Most Interesting Person.
If you did X, Y, and Z, then your resume should say, “Did X, Y, and Z.” Those should be simple, factual things like, “Developed X Product,” or “Inspected Y Widgets.” If you are looking for “accomplishments” like “Increased morale by streamlining group synergy initiatives,” you are doing it wrong. That’s meaningless fluff.
No one is more interested in your career than you are.
Yeah, that’s pretty much the point of LinkedIn. It’s in our nature to be distrustful and reluctant to spend energy on people we don’t know. I know I keep a pretty small circle on my Facebook and typically limit my audience to the people I know IRL. The problem is that this is the exact opposite of how LinkedIn is supposed to work. The whole point is to grow your network so that your resume gets in front of people you otherwise would not have met. Everyone I’ve talked to says you should be spamming LinkedIn whether you know the people or not.
Imagine you open a pizza shop. Your goal is to sell pizza. You meet someone on the street who says they love pizza. “Well,” you say, “That’s very nice.” And then you go about your day. Because why should you, as a pizza-monger, connect with someone who wants to eat pizza?
If that’s hurtful or abrasive I apologize, but that’s kind of what this sounds like. Employment is a marketplace. Those HR reps are using LinkedIn specifically because they want to hire people. They are trying to buy something, and that something is labor. You are trying to sell your labor. When buyer meets seller, the Great Material Continuum is complete. You aren’t asking permission to join their private club. You are selling them a solution to their problems. And even if they don’t need your solution right now, they might need it in the future… For the same reason I keep the pizza number on my fridge even on the nights I don’t want pizza.
And if a connection turns out to be improbable or fruitless, it’s not like you invested much time or money into forming that relationship, right?
Thanks, JB99. I love the analogy about the pizza. I will disagree with you on your first point. Of course I know about my accomplishments, and they are listed (my resume margins are getting increasingly thinner to keep the page break where it needs to be.) But having insight from others on how you affected them can also be helpful. And not only do I have to list that I did X, I also have to include that it resulted in Y for the company.
Funny enough, I have three networking meetings between now and Tuesday. Has anyone heard of a networking brief? I doubt I’ll have it ready by my lunch with my friend tomorrow, but since I’m just picking her brain about her industry to see if it’s something I want to get into I don’t think I’ll need it.