Job Hunting Zen Thought of the Week – July 24, 2015

Here is your Job Hunting Zen Thought of the Week!

We are all taught at an early age to be ambitious and to please others. This serves us well in growing ourselves and building our careers.

Sometimes, too much is too much, and an obstacle may simply be too large to overcome.

For example, you've been approached about a job that sounds perfect for you. The job itself is great, and the salary is out of this world.

But the commute would involve traveling 90 minutes each way, for a total of three hours a day.

You're not afraid of hard work, or commuting to a job.

However, you will find the stress in your life - and time away from your family - increased substantially.

We don't always have the luxury of turning down a job opportunity. But make sure to evaluate all the factors that matter to you in your quality of life.

Scott Singer is the President and Founder of Insider Career Strategies Resume Writing & Career Coaching, a firm dedicated to guiding job seekers and companies through the job search and hiring process. He is a Human Resources professional and staffing expert with almost two decades of in-house corporate HR and staffing firm experience, and is a Certified Professional Resume Writer (CPRW) and Certified Professional Career Coach (CPCC).

Insider Career Strategies provides resume writing, LinkedIn profile development, and career coaching services, including a free resume review. You can email Scott Singer at scott.singer@insidercs.com, or via the website, www.insidercs.com.

Do I Really Need to Fill in ALL Those D@$* Boxes When I Apply Online For a Job?

Applying to jobs online is a chore.

First, you upload your resume. Then, there's about three million boxes to fill in asking minute details from your job history, to your favorite color, to which Marvel superhero you'd like to be. Its no exaggeration that filling out an online application can take 30 minutes to an hour. Or longer.

You would think that just uploading your resume would be enough. Couldn't you just type into the boxes on the online application, "See resume?"

You could. But you might really be hurting your chances at snagging the job, or even at getting a second look.

Here's why:

1. Yes, your formatted resume is part of the package. But for the recruiters to do their searches, it helps when you fill in all the boxes, as you might add additional detail. In addition, recruiters might search by a specific field. For example, they might search the job history box for "Motorola" to see who worked there. If you just typed in "See resume," you won't come up on the search. There are a million ways to slice and dice your data, and you need to have your information in the right place to be seen. The good news is you can cut and past from your resume for many of these.
2. It's a test. And the first thing a company will want to see is that you can follow instructions. If you don't enter in the boxes what they're asking for, you don't pass the first test.

Banal? Yep.

Boring? Absolutely.

Necessary? Probably.

Try to remember that job hunting can be a full time job. And some of that time is spent playing the game - which, in this case, means filling in a bunch of little boxes.

Scott Singer is the President and Founder of Insider Career Strategies Resume Writing & Career Coaching, a firm dedicated to guiding job seekers and companies through the job search and hiring process. He is a Human Resources professional and staffing expert with almost two decades of in-house corporate HR and staffing firm experience, and is a Certified Professional Resume Writer (CPRW) and Certified Professional Career Coach (CPCC).

Insider Career Strategies provides resume writing, LinkedIn profile development, and career coaching services, including a free resume review. You can email Scott Singer at scott.singer@insidercs.com, or via the website, www.insidercs.com.

Job Interview Horror Stores - July 21, 2015

Sometimes, interviews just go off the rails. Please enjoy today's edition of Job Interview Horror Stories!  Thank you to everybody who submitted their story.

Names and details have been omitted to protect the innocent.

•  "My favorite story is of a [job] candidate who accepted an offer, never showed up, and then a week later asked to be reconsidered. Of course he didn't get the job, and he wrote a b.s Glassdoor review which I was able to remove by showing them what he did." - Recruitment manager, manufacturing company.
• "I had one [job candidate] come in on Monday morning to interview for a software developer position.  What I noticed on her face and hair was a lot of white “specs”.  I asked her what she did over the weekend.  She responded by telling me she painted her apartment this weekend, but neglected to wash the paint off her face and hair! – (she still got the job)." - Recruitment manager, consulting/finance firm.
• "I had fired [a job candidate] from one company being presented to me by a recruiter for a position in another company.  The recruiter wasn’t aware that the candidate had ever worked for our firm - it wasn’t on his resume." - Senior executive, insurance industry.

Please feel free to share your interview horror stories for future inclusion in this column!

Scott Singer is the President and Founder of Insider Career Strategies Resume Writing & Career Coaching, a firm dedicated to guiding job seekers and companies through the job search and hiring process. He is a Human Resources professional and staffing expert with almost two decades of in-house corporate HR and staffing firm experience, and is a Certified Professional Resume Writer (CPRW) and Certified Professional Career Coach (CPCC).

Insider Career Strategies provides resume writing, LinkedIn profile development, and career coaching services, including a free resume review. You can email Scott Singer at scott.singer@insidercs.com, or via the website, www.insidercs.com.