How NOT to Post Your Resume on Craigslist
I was searching through the resumes posted on Craigslist today to find candidates for a sales position we have available. I found some pretty pathetic attempts from job seekers looking for jobs, so I thought I’d share in the hopes that you won’t make the same mistakes these people are making, just in the headlines alone!
Some of the top resume mistakes are covered in my free report and in my book.
Bad headline #1: “Seeking Work”
Similar bad headlines: “Looking for employment / career”, “Seeking immediate employment”, “seeking a job”, and any number of variations.
Key mistake made: Stating the obvious. Why else would someone post their resume online? Of course they are all seeking work.
My suggestion: Be specific about what type of work you are seeking and clearly state it in your headline. Most employers aren’t looking for someone who just wants a job, they are looking for people who want (and can do) the type of job they have available.
Bad headline #2: “Prof. seeks immediate employment”
Key mistake made: Ambiguous abbreviation. I thought “Prof.” meant “Professor”. The resume poster used it for “Professional.” Many, if not most, of the hiring managers she was trying to attract likely thought the same as I did and simply went on to the next headline that more clearly matched what they were looking for.
My suggestion: Don’t abbreviate when it doesn’t help. Just like with any headline, your goal is to catch the reader’s attention so that they will read what you have to say. A resume headline follows the same rules.
Bad headline #3: “Your next employee”
Key mistake made: This is yet another vague headline with almost nothing to attract an employer or a recruiter. While this person might get a point or two by being a little clever with her headline, those who do click to see her resume will more likely than not find that the job seeker doesn’t fit their needs.
My suggestion: “Your next client relations manager” or “Your next Customer Service Tech Support Representative” would still have that touch of being clever but would get MUCH more targeted interest. Recruiters looking for that type of skill set would be able to see from the headline that the resume would warrant a closer look for them. Recruiters looking for any other skill set could move on to the next one that does fit their needs.
Bad headline #4: “I.m looking for work”
Key mistake made: Technical foul: punctuation. This person either doesn’t know the difference between a period and an apostrophe, or isn’t detail-focused enough to care about the difference.
My suggestion: At the VERY LEAST, make sure that your spelling and grammar are correct in everything you use as part of your job search. Some people rationalize this by thinking “no one cares if I make a tiny mistake” but the reality is that employers DO notice, and with mistakes as simple as this, prospective employers will think that you are sloppy, mistake-prone, inattentive, and have low standards. None of those are a good thing.
Bad headline #5: “I NEED A JOB! I’ll literally do anything!”
Key mistake made: In addition to being vague as to the type of job wanted, this one absolutely REEKS of desperation – even worse than the would-be pickup artist wearing too much Drakkar Noir at last call on a Saturday night… one to be avoided at all costs.
My suggestion: Don’t come across as a desperate job seeker. While you may be desperate, it doesn’t help to look desperate. If you have multiple skills, it’s OK to post multiple variations of your resume, focusing on each skill set with a different ad and different headline. Of course you shouldn’t post the exact same thing twice, but similar posts with slightly different targets can increase your chances of getting that job you want.
Bad headline #6: “(school name) grad need job, any job…now!!”
Key mistake made: More desperation, more vagueness, and so on. Name-dropping the school can be good, particularly if it’s a well-known, reputable school, but the rest of the headline turns me off. Bad grammar doesn’t help either.
My suggestion: Something like “(school name) BBA – Marketing with Online Marketing focus seeks to grow your company’s market share” or “(School name) BBA – Marketing seeks market analysis opportunity to help you find new markets”
Bad headline #7: Looking for a job in (City 1), (City 2), (City 3)
Key mistake made: While this person knows where they want to work, they don’t seem to know what job they can do.
My suggestion: Be specific about what type of job you want. At least this person knows where they want to work, geographically speaking, but the headline basically says that location is more important than responsibility.
To your success,
David B. Wright
Author, Get A Job! Your Guide to Making Successful Career Moves
www.thegetajobbook.com
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Where are the Recruiter jobs?
I get phonecalls (a lot of calls and tweets, but mostly emails) from Recruiters looking for opportunities. As everyone knows, its not too pretty out there. Well, I wanted to give an assist where I can so I decided to do a bit of research. This is by NO MEANS a scientific survey, just a bit of a glance at the Recruiting job market. All my data comes from one of my favorite websites – Indeed.com. (Maybe after reading this post you will see why.)
The first thing I wanted to do was confirm the obvious, so I did a search on Job Trends and searched the word “Recruiter.” Indeed gave me a nice graph that I could share on my blog. (see below)
Okay, no surprises here, the graph is showing me that now is not the best time to be a Recruiter… or is it? (Insert dramatic music here)
I did a search for Recruiter jobs and glanced at the results. My aim was to find Recruiter jobs that were similar (for example, Healthcare Recruiter and Physician Recruiter), bunch them together and discern the top 3 types of Recruiter jobs. The results?
Top 3 in-demand Recruiters are:
Again, this is not wholly scientific, but (to some degree) it is interesting; especially since Indeed aggregates jobs from so many other job boards. Such being the case, I thought it was a good sampling of data. Alright, so where was I? Umm… Oh!
So after I figured out what the top 3 Recruiter jobs are, I wanted to know what were the most popular cities for those jobs. So I looked that up to.
- If you are a Technical Recruiter looking for work, chances are that it will come from CA, NY or MA. (Again, no surprises for those already in that field.) The overall majority of those jobs are full-time and (mostly) promoted by companies, although jobs posted by 3rd party recruiters were pretty close to making it 50/50.
- If you are an Executive Recruiter looking for work, the best cities for you are pretty much everywhere. No clear market leaders that I could see. The overall majority of the jobs were full-time and posted by search firms. (Yeah, no surpises there either, right?)
- If you are a Healthcare Recruiter looking for work, the best cities for you are… Pretty much everywhere. I did not see where one city was a clear leader with a need for Healthcare Recruiters. I also noticed that about half of the jobs posted were from Searchfirms. The overall majority of jobs were full-time positions.
Who was making the most money of the three? Indeed gave me some insight there as well. Does the graph below take into account commissions? I’m pretty sure it doesn’t, so take that into account as well.
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"Technical Recruiter" $68,000 |
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"executive recruiter" $86,000 |
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Healthcare Recruiter" $60,000 |
Again, all of the above was done via a glance at Indeed.com. If anyone reading this has a link to more scientific data, by all means please leave it in the comments section below. The purpose of this post was merely to share some insight into data I gathered rather quickly. (full disclosure)
Thoughts?
Understanding Cultural Dynamics and Cross-Cultural Communication
Introduction
We each belong to an entire collection of cultures, which includes, national cultures, subcultures (based on regions, tribes etc), organizational or corporate cultures, industry cultures, professional or functional cultures. For that reason, culture can be defined as a shared system of values, beliefs, and attitudes. It affects our own actions and the way we distinguish the actions of others. Culture is not a product of a single individual’s personality, nor does it usually change significantly from one generation to the next.
Various descriptions have been used to portray the process of understanding various layers of culture:
1) Culture is an iceberg, of which we see only the visible tip, also called as explicit culture. Explicit culture represented by artifacts and products, such as language, food, artistic expression, behavior and lifestyle (pace, public display of emotions, noise, physical contact, work ethics etc).
2) Culture is an onion, with layers that must be peeled away to reach the core of implicit culture, the universal truths of the culture.
3) Culture is a mirror image, in which the values (what we would like to do, how we would prefer to see ourselves) and norms (what we know we should do) are not same but are transposed and sometimes opposite.
To be successful within an organization and in all societies in which the global organization operates HR professionals must understand the complication of culture and the probable effect of cultural forces on the execution of global strategies and the development of local tactical HR practices. Being global requires an act of imagination – being able to see the view from inside another person’s culture and using that consciousness to create solutions and bridges.
There may be multiple types of culture in a global organization and the distances between these cultures can create conflicts that will impede with the organization’s ability to execute its global strategic plan. In this write-up we will try to understand various types of culture, analyze the research work done in this domain and effect of various cultures within team.
Complexities involved in Cross-Cultural Communication
The main and most important key to effectual cross-cultural communication is knowledge. It is extremely essential that people understand the probable problems of cross-cultural communication, and makes a huge cognizant effort to overcome these problems. Also, it is important to assume that one’s efforts will not always be successful, and adjust one’s behavior aptly.
A lot of people always assume that there is a momentous possibility that cultural differences are the cause of communication problems. They should always be willing to be tolerant and pardoning, rather than intimidating and hostile, if problems develop. One should respond bit by bit and cautiously in cross-cultural exchanges, not jumping to the conclusion that you know what is being thought and said.
William Ury in his paper advised that in case of any heated divergence one should stop, listen, and think, or as he puts it “go to the balcony” when the situation gets stressed. By this he means to withdraw from the situation, step back, and reflect on what is going on before you act. This helps in cross cultural communication as well. When things seem to be going faultily, stop or slow down and think. What could be going on here? Is it possible I misinterpreted what they said, or they misinterpreted me? Often delusion is the source of the crisis.
Reflective Listening is one of the key ingredients in cross-cultural communication. Reflective Listening is used a lot to check out the meaning of what someone says – by repeating back what you think you have heard. You are then able to substantiate that you understand what has been said accurately. This is as helpful as many times words and even gestures are used differently between languages or cultural groups.
Often mediators who are familiar with both cultures can be cooperative in cross-cultural communication situations. They can help in translating both the matter and the way of what is said. For instance, they can tone down strong statements that would be considered unsuitable in one culture but not in another, before they are shared with people from a culture that does not talk together in such a strong way. They can also correct the timing of what is said and what does it implies. Some cultures move quickly to the reference or direct to the subject; others talk about other things long enough to set up rapport or a relationship with the other person. If discussion on the principal topic begins too soon, the group that needs a “warm up” first will feel uncomfortable. A mediator or intermediary who understands this can give details about problem, and make apt procedural adjustments.
Sometimes mediators can also make the communication a bit more difficult. If a mediator is the same culture or nationality as one of the disputants, but not the other, this gives the facade of prejudice, even when none exists. Even when prejudice is not intended, it is common for mediators to be more sympathetic or more understanding of the person who is of his or her own culture, simply because they understand them better. Yet when the mediator is of a third cultural group, the prospective for cross-cultural misunderstandings increases further. In such cases engaging in extra discussions about the process and the manner of carrying out the discussions is appropriate, as is extra time for confirming and re-confirming understandings at every step in the conversation or negotiation process.
Conclusion
Understanding cultural differences is critical for the success of an organization in global arena because there are roles played by culture that influences talent management strategies and practices at workplace. In this write-up we have examined several important dimensions of various cultures for gaining insights and understanding the cultures of employees that staff our organizations domestically and overseas. We hope that this write-up will be of some use to HR professionals that are managing and developing talents at global stage.
Thanks and Regards,
Sanjeev Himachali
Emails: sanjeev.himachali@gmail.com; ss_himachali@yahoo.com
BLOGS: http://sanjeevhimachali.blogspot.com/ and http://sanjeevhimachali.multiply.com/
How to find a job overseas with Google
If you are open to expanding your job search to other countries, I highly suggest that you take advantage of Google’s translation services; even if you are fluent in another language. Why? Well, if you are an employer in say… Mexico. You might post your jobs in English, but more often than not they will be posted in the dominant language of your country – Spanish. That being the case, logic dictates that there will be jobs posted in spanish that are not neccessarily posted in English. Make sense?
To search for jobs posted in Spanish (or any other language for that matter), go to Google Translate. (A screenshot of the homepage is below.)
In the search slot, add “sales and marketing jobs,” as I did; if that is not your skillset, type in something else.
Once you have your keywords typed in, Google translates them into a different language. For the purposes of this demo, I chose the language – Spanish. (Of course)
Beneath the search box on the left side of the screen are the (1) translated search results in English. On the right side of the page, are (2) the original search results in Spanish.
Now that you have found jobs posted in Spanish, you can (of course) apply. Sound simple? It is. Does it work? Not entirely sure to be honest, but the logic seems sound. I have not had the unction to work overseas, so I have not had the chance to try this out. I would be interested to hear from others who have tried this technique. If you would, leave me a comment below? Thanks!
-Jim
How important is your professionalism?
How important is your professionalism? If a customer is rude to you, how much do you allow before severing client relations? Consider the video below, how would you have handled situation?
