Applying for Multiple Positions at the Same Company: It Will Hurt You!

I've been a bad blogger the last 2 weeks. Instead of paying attention to my interweb hobby I have been off in the mountains of sunny Colorado and not-so-sunny Alberta Canada on the SKI slopes! If you have never skied, I must say it is quite the wonderful sport, IF you get a lesson first. Yeeesh. Here are two pics where I am not rolling face-first down a mountain.....

Top, with our pals in Steamboat Springs. Bottom, me in Nakiska just outside Calgary, Alberta

Moving on. I'm back in the groove now, which means back to the world of reviewing applications of the many job hunters out and about these days. My favorite thing to see though (insert sarcasm here) are applications where one individual has submitted a resume (the same one) for 6 positions, all of which have skill sets from opposite ends of the spectrum. Yes, I am CERTAIN you are qualified for ALL of them. NO.

Here are the reasons why this is pure agony for us hiring folk, and why you will get 6 subsequent rejection letters in your inbox if you do this. As a reminder, these are just my humble opinions. Maybe there is some psycho recruiter/HR person out there that doesn't see this as a negative, but I am not one of them. Let's go.

1. Companies want to hire experts of their (ONE) field. A good example of this is a position as a trainer. Lots of job seekers think they can be masterful trainers because in each of their 4 last jobs they spent 3 hours letting a new hire or intern shadow them. NO! True trainers are people who develop training material, spend days/weeks with company new hires, re-certify people for any job-related skills they need, and spend a lot of their time in front of a classroom full of people who only care about when the class breaks for lunch. So if your resume is a mixture of retail management, customer service, and banking, don't get hissy when you're not the first call-back for a job as a full-time trainer. Make sense? Just because you have spent a fraction of your time on any certain job duty in your past doesn't mean you're ready to make a full-time career out of it.

2. You look like an arrogant arse. Applying for 4 different positions (even internally with your own company!) makes you look like you think you can do everything and makes you look like you don't have respect for the skills it really takes to do certain jobs. This automatically turns employers off to you, whether you're legitimately qualified or not, because they think your attitude sucks (and it probably does). Don't become the running joke of your future or current employer's HR department - every time they post a position they'll start a pool to see how long it takes before you submit your resume for literally ANY position they post. Stick to what you're qualified for. If you're seriously interested in changing fields completely (think of someone who works in accounting deciding they want to work in sales), know two things: one, you WILL have to start from ground zero in your newly chosen field, and two, your previous experience means ZILCH from now on. A good use of your time would be to take courses in the field you think you want to pursue, or look for a mentor that can help you get your foot in the door. This will help your resume show to employers that you are serious about your career path and that you've done some homework to back it up.

3. You may or may not be a total flake. I see this one a lot where people apply for the same position but in multiple locations. While I appreciate a person's willingness to be mobile, it also sends up a big red risk flag to me. What if we hire you, send you to Minnesota, and you like the job but you totally hate it there?? Huge waste of our time. You're better off picking one or two places you're REALLY interested in living and wait it out for the right jobs to come along there. What you may not see is - when you apply to the same position in different locations, I still see ALL OF THEM. There may be recruiters at said company in all 50 states, but they're all using the same system to track applicants, and guess what, any recruiter can see any application (in most places). Same goes for applying for multiple positions at the same office. What if we go out on a limb, hire you as an event coordinator, and 3 weeks later you decide that's "not for you" and that you want to work in the payroll office.....? KILL ME. Applying for that many positions automatically puts that thought in my recruiter head, and if there's another applicant out there who's not so (apparently) flaky, you're out of the game.

Remember people, this is all about perception, and you DO NOT want to be the one who looks like they don't know what they're doing, thinks they know everything, or hasn't found their niche in the career world. It's OK if those things do apply to you, you just can't let it show in such an obvious way. 

Happy Job Hunting!

Shorten Your Resume - I Promise You Need To

Recently I came across the resume of a gent who is over business development for the  US in one of the biggest oilfield service companies in the world (that's over 50k employees, 20 billion dollar company, you get the idea). Dude had been in progressive roles within the industry for the last THIRTY FIVE YEARS, most of which was in sales, but he got his start out of college as an engineer. He holds active memberships in two industry associations and he's got a degree in Petroleum Engineering. In short, he is/was exactly what I needed for the role I was trying to fill. 

WHY AM I TELLING YOU ALL THIS??????

Because I got ALL this info in ONE PAGE. ONE PAGE?!?! No, not front and back. One page!!

 I was astounded. Even with all I (think) I know about hiring, I figured someone with this kind of background would surely need at least two good pages to get enough out there to really spark my interest. 

That got me thinking, are all our resumes too long?? Are we saying too much?? I have decided the answer is YES. We need to be the IKEA of resume-making---build it as simply as possible and flat-pack it with a cool Swedish name. Something like that.

So before you start spring cleaning your house with every organizational tip you see on Pinterest, do a little shop-sweeping on your resume. Even if you're not on the job market right now, it's always a good idea to keep it up to snuff. It'll make it easier to apply for jobs once you do finally get fed up with having to keep inventory on how many paperclips you get from the supply closet........

Office Space

Here are a few easy ways to fit all your awesome-ness on one page. If a senior executive of a $20B company can do it, so can you!

1. Make your header one line. All it needs to have is your name, ONE (primary) phone number, email, and the city/state you live in (no, not your whole address. No one is going to snail mail you anything.) If your name/info take up lots of letters, shrink the font. Like this:

2. Limit your bullet points.  Every time my friends call me for help with their resumes this is the FIRST thing I axe from their novels. They ALWAYS flip out and think that losing the bullet point about how they "use excellent time management to ensure all tasks are completed effectively" is going to cost them the interview. Leaving it in there will most likely make the person reviewing it barf, and so therefore I believe taking it (and the others similar to it) out will better your chances.

I suggest using one (or two if you MUST) sentences, not bullets, to tell WHAT YOU DO, and then up to four bullet points for significant accomplishments on the job. For me that looks something like this:

Y'all I KNOW this is hard. I do. I myself wanted to put like 17 bullet points just under my current job because we all feel like we do SO MUCH, and that three measly little points won't do us justice. Remember though, this resume is just a first date. The person looking at it will skim it in less than 30 seconds and decide whether to push it through or not. Now is not the time to showcase everything. You can do that in the first interview. 

3. Take at least one line out of whatever you have in your past positions. Your past life really does NOT matter that much. I promise, my recruiter eyes spend the majority of the 30 seconds I give you on what you're doing now, and if the rest of the stuff I see (skim) is relevant, that's enough for me. Stick to the same format with one sentence about what you did, and list two, maybe three, accomplishments.

4. Leave the BS out of your "education."  That was a pun, did you get it?? .....OK. A lot of 20-somethings especially have trouble with this. You did a lot of stuff in college (student government, 3 internships, sorority girl, international exchange, orientation leader, peer mentor, and you were Homecoming Queen, with a 3.8 GPA) to help set you apart from the "regular" college kids, and it breaks your heart not to leave all that in your resume....even though you're now 27. Tough. Take it out. The education section should list the degree you got, and where you got it. If you got a minor you can list that too. Do not list the date, courses you took, extracurriculars, or your GPA. None of that stuff matters unless you've graduated from college in the last two years.

Friends, I am sure you are exhausted by now just from reading this. Imagine how you'll feel when you're fighting over what cuts to make from your resu-novel. I think I'll make this a two-part post and share some more on shorter resumes next time. If you're in a funk with yours, reach out! I'm happy to share a set of eyes and always thrilled to share my unwarranted opinions. 

Happy job hunting to you!

Recruiter Pet Peeves: Why You Need to Know Them



annetaintor.com

Happy Tuesday to you in the Blogosphere! Today I heard, for probably the thousandth time in the last 30 days, from an applicant wanting to "check the status of an application." These are literally THE most annoying 6 words in my recruiter vocabulary. I am now to the point with this person that I wouldn't hire him if he fit the qualifications to a T, simply because he is such a nuisance. That got me thinking about all the other small turn-offs that job seekers probably don't think are anything unusual, but in reality send their resumes to the bottom of the pile in a flash. I will share them with you now, and I will pray for all who see this to never commit any of these deadlies.

1. Don't call us, we'll call you. You've heard this your whole life, and I'm telling you there's a good reason why. There is only one scenario I can think of where it is acceptable to make a follow up call to a recruiter, and that is if the position you are applying for requires some sort of additional documentation. For example, if you're in marketing or graphic design and you want to submit a portfolio along with your application, I think it's perfectly fine to call and ask what method is preferred to submit it (unless the job posting specifies instructions). Other than that, leave it alone. If we need something from you or want to talk to you further about your skills, we've got your number.

2. I will not be your facebook friend. This happens so much more often than you would think! A recruiter interviews a candidate, and 30 minutes later gets a facebook friend request. WHY?? We are not friends! The one caveat to this is Linkedin. If you've completed an interview with a company, I think it's fine to connect with the hiring manager on Linkedin. That's what the site is for.

3. Extreme Earliness. I get that every article you've ever read about job-seeking tells you to be early to the interview, but when I have a 1:00 and the receptionist calls me at 12:35 (as I am scarfing down lunch at my desk) to tell me my candidate is here, it takes everything in me not to run down the stairs and throw the red onions I picked off my salad into the applicant's face! NEVER be more than 10 minutes early. Period. It does nothing for you except give you 25 extra minutes to get yourself even more nervous than you already are.

Pretty simple. I wouldn't say that not doing these things will get you the job, but avoiding a recruiter's pet peeves will at least keep your resume from being trashed due to you being annoying.

Happy job hunting!

Blackberry Pineapple Crumble

I am always a sucker for recipes that are so simple you don't even have to write them down. And when they turn out to be UTTERLY FANTASTIC, well that is just the perfect alignment of the moons and stars of the Calorie Galaxy! THIS....is one of those recipes.

Got it from my not-my-aunt-but-I-call-her-Aunt Sandy. She made this over Christmas and when I asked her for the recipe, she was able to tell it to me (and I was able to remember) with no movement of the pen. GLORY BE!

To add to the glory, there is a lower-cal alternative, which is the version I went with. I'll detail both.

Scroll down for full recipe or stay tuned for the play-by-play.

First, the ingredients. All that are mandatory are vanilla cake mix, crushed pineapple, and a bag of frozen blackberries (oh and butter)...I also added cinnamon and pecans to mine (more on that later).

Start by thawing your blackberries and draining your crushed pineapple as much as you can. Then drain just a bit of the juice off your blackberries. Doesn't matter how much, just depends on how juicy you like your crumble to be.

Stir your pineapple and blackberries together just until combined, in a 9x9 baking dish. For the lower calorie version, sprinkle about half your cake mix over the fruit.

Cut your butter (about half a stick) in small slices and lay on top of the cake mix. I have seen recipes like this that use melted butter, but slicing it like this is WAY BETTER. You must trust me on this.

At this point if you want to add cinammon or pecans (like me), this is the time. I added about half a cup of chopped pecans and about 2 tablespoons of cinnamon. Just sprinkle both on top.

Bake the whole she-bang for 40-50 min at 350 degrees. (Honestly what I do is bake for 30 minutes and then just watch until it is as brown as I like it to be).

ENJOY YOUR SIMPLE MASTERPIECE. Your friends will think this is very complicated and that you spent legitimate time on it. Score!

Blackberry Pineapple Crumble

1 15 oz can crushed pineapple in juice (not syrup)
1 bag frozen blackberries
1 box vanilla cake mix
1 stick of butter
3/4 cup chopped pecans
3 tbsp cinnamon

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Drain pineapple and blackberries, and mix together in 9x13 baking dish.

Sprinkle entire cake mix over fruit.
Cut butter in small slices and lay on top of cake mix.

Sprinkle nuts and cinnamon on top of butter.

Bake at 350 for 40-50 minutes or until golden brown.

Serve warm. (with ice cream!)

Lower-calorie alternative: use same amounts of fruit but use half cake mix and half stick of butter, and 1/2 cup of pecans. Better in 9x9 baking dish this way.