5 Pieces of Advice for Overcoming the Pain of the Job Hunt

iStockphoto.com | Nattakorn Maneerat

Searching for a job is both difficult and painful.

You’re not crazy to feel like your chances of actually snagging an offer may be pretty slim. Just take a look at a sample job application process:

·       You apply online to a specific job, spending an hour filling out the dozens of fields on the job application that the employer's applicant tracking system (ATS) should be capable of parsing from your resume.

·       The recruiter filters through thousands of applications received for the position. It's impossible to say whether your resume will get reviewed by a human being, since the recruiter is also working to fill 30 other open positions. Their focus is on gathering a stack of resumes to review with the hiring manager as quickly as possible.

·       Your resume is selected for further review! The recruiter sends you a brief questionnaire asking about your salary requirements, technical skills, and various other mishigas.

·       The recruiter schedules a phone screen. They ask you (again) about your salary requirements, technical skills, and various other mishigas.

·       You're invited for an in-person interview. Your agenda includes meetings with the recruiter, the hiring manager, and six other interviewers. You take the day off from work to accommodate the interview, and good thing – the entire day has been swallowed by it.

·       You did well on the first in-person interview, and now the company wants you to come back for another round to meet with the executive team.

·       Great news, they liked you! The built consensus around you as potential employee and they've extended you an offer! Now you need to negotiate the salary on the offer, which for some reason is lower than your current salary.

·       Okay, you've come to terms on the salary. Now they're running the background check and drug test. You hope that time you were arrested (but not convicted) for streaking across the quad in college doesn't show up on the check.

·       Hired!

By my count, that's eight major hurdles you have to pass to get from go to actually walking through the door as employee #628177. A misstep, misunderstanding, or miscalculation on any of these can derail your chances.

Feeling disheartened? That's normal. Applying for jobs at most companies follows this general template, which is both atrocious and painful, and is not getting any better. It's no wonder that it's far easier to make a misstep in your job search than to move forward.

But there’s a lot you can do to stack the odds in your favor. There's no shortage of professional job hunting and career development advice out there, including on our blog, so I'm not going to get into the mechanics of the job search here. But there are five pieces of advice to keep in mind.

1. Bad systems can defeat good people – don't let them defeat you. My work with diverse clients on their job searches and career development strategies has proven to me that just about each and every person has value and brings something to the table professionally. Don't let a rejection letter from a potential employer undermine your own perception of your value in the market. This doesn't mean there aren't areas for personal or professional development – we all have behaviors or skills we can (and should) work on that may be undermining our ability to get a job.
    

2. Job hunting is a learned skill. You will get better at it with practice. Nobody is born knowing how to tear down and rebuild an engine. But, through study, practice, and time, a good mechanic learns both the individual tasks and the broader perspective necessary to get a broken engine up and running. The job hunt is no different in this regard. It's not rocket science, but it is highly detailed, and you can improve your success rate through preparation and study. Invest yourself in resume design, online applications, your elevator pitch presentation, behavioral interviewing practice, salary negotiation, and the other individual components of the search. You'll see dividends.
    

3. Be clear in telling employers what job you want to perform. Your skills, experience, and interests probably lend themselves to a variety of tasks and jobs. But employers don't typically approach the hiring process from the perspective of "What can you do, and where can we place you?" The majority of employers have a specific job they need to fill that requires a defined set of skills and experiences, so to the recruiter will screen candidates and only pass along resumes to the hiring manager that look like they most closely match the job description. Make sure the resume you submit and any subsequent conversations with the company very clearly articulate that you want this job because this is what you love to do, and you do it well.
    

4. Be prepared for possible objections with practiced answers. An employer might have concerns about your age (questions about your ability to keep up with the pace or technology), military reserve status (possible absences for military leaves), returning back to work after spending five years as a full-time parent (lack of recent work experience), job hopping (concern about whether you'll leave in six months for a better offer), a criminal offense in your background (issues of trust), or other matters. Whether voicing these concerns is legal or not, you need to prepare to address them. You can move the conversation past objections and into the meat of what you can contribute to the company with well-reasoned answers to such questions. In some cases, you may even benefit from proactively raising the topic with with an explanation of what happened and how you've learned not to let such factors negatively impact your work.
    

5. Stay positive. This is easier said than done, but essential, nonetheless. Positive energy is the fuel that will motivate you to persist through the job search. And it's infectious - employers like a positive attitude and may be more willing to give an opportunity to a candidate with a sparkle in his or her eye.

---

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. 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.

What Does It Mean When An Employer Says I'm "Not a Cultural Fit?"

iStockphoto.com | mucella

You interviewed for a job and know you can do it well. Damn well. It's a cakewalk.

Then the recruiter calls you to tell you didn't get the job. The reason? You're "not a fit for the job."

Something you said or did gave the interviewers pause.

Your technical background and work history contain everything the employer asked for. But there's more to being a fit for a job than just having the right skill set. It may be a matter of whether the company feels you can thrive in their environment.

"Applicants can come to the table with a record of past successes but the company culture needs to be compatible with what the candidate values as the way they are comfortable getting things done in an organization," says an SVP of HR I spoke with on the topic.

In other words, it's just as often not about what you get done, but how you get it done.

Imagine you are selecting a new employee to join what has been, to date, a high performing team. Your staffing decision comes down to two candidates:

Employee 1: Meets most of his/her productivity goals. Is described by his/her peers in references as, "a team player, a pleasure to work with. Understands what it means to work well with others."

Employee 2: Exceeds all of his/her productivity goals - in fact, was a top producer for their company last year. In reference checks is described as, "a real Machiavelli type. Will step on anybody to get what they need. Two team members cited this employee in their exit interviews as a major reason they left the company."

Who would you choose?

Employee 2 could make a tremendous financial impact to your team. But is he/she worth the amount of time it would take to referee disputes on the team, or to replace the other employees who leave because of this single hire?

Other potential factors which play into a candidate's "cultural fit" can include energy level, teamwork abilities, or work ethic.

The work environment itself can be a key determinant. Certain individuals might fit better into a slower-paced, more established company, while others may better adapt on an ongoing basis to a fast-paced, constantly changing environment.

"I evaluate fit by understanding when a candidate has been happy and most engaged in a past job/company and when a candidate has been most frustrated or felt least successful," says the SVP quoted earlier. "Identifying the environment of both scenarios will help both parties realize best culture fit."

It's often incumbent upon job seekers to find the best fit for themselves. Not every company is a fit for their own personality and values. Ask interviewers how they would describe the culture in their organization, and take a look at the commonalities between the employer's perspective and your own.

---

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. 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.

A Hodge-Podge Of 5 FAQs For Your Job Hunt

iStockphoto.com | MonkeyBusinessImages

As a resume writer and a career coach I get a lot of questions about a variety of job-related topics, but they're not necessarily so detailed that they require a full-length article to answer them. Here's some of my favorite job hunting FAQs. Enjoy!

Question: How do I reject an internship offer?
Answer: Turn it down with absolute grace and gratitude. The company who offered you the internship may be a potential employer in the future. Call the person (as in pick up the phone and make a call, not email, not text) who extended you the offer. Express to them that you very much appreciate the offer, and loved the experience with their organization, but you have selected at this time to pursue another internship which is a better fit for reason X (location, alignment with career path, whatever, so long as you don’t make it about the compensation). And thank them very much for the consideration. Then stick the recruiter’s contact information in your files. You never know what the future may hold...

Question: Should I include self-study on my resume? How do I do so?
Answer: If you’ve studied topics which are directly relevant to your employability, you should indeed add them. Online classes or correspondence courses (does anyone still use this term?) should go under “Training & Education”. List the provider and the subject matter. Self-guided reading, such as a book, can go under another section that you add under something called “Self Study” or “Advanced Independent Studies.” In any case, if you put it on the resume, it’s fair game for an interviewer to ask you detailed questions about it. Prepare accordingly.

Question: What's a complete deal-breaker on a resume?
Answer: That’s an interesting question. There’s no single, consistent deal breaker when it comes to the resume. I’ve seen hiring managers toss resumes aside for grammatical and spelling errors, job-hopping, unappealing past or current employers, lack of required skills, or some other vaguely articulated attributes. That said, the hiring manager’s decision is usually about filling a need. If you’ve got a really unique skill (for example, you know a required programming language or software package that’s not widely adopted yet) and they need your skill badly enough, they may be willing to overlook all the other stuff in order to stem the bleeding. It happens – but don’t count on that. You can optimize your resume by minimizing errors and enhancing your accomplishments. And it’s a lot easier to get a hiring manager to say “no” than “yes.”

Question: Should I try to bypass the recruiter and apply for a job directly?
Answer: There are actually two questions here:

1. Should I go around an agency (ie, outside) recruiter who presents me the job? No. That’s a violation of trust, since they found you and introduced you to the role, and by going around them you’re taking money out of their pocket while putting the hiring company in the uncomfortable position of having to arbitrate how, exactly, they received your resume.
2. Should I go around the corporate (i.e., in-house) recruiter? Yes. The hiring manager and the recruiter are all on the same side here. Apply online first. Then send a note through LinkedIn or email to the hiring manager letting them know that you’ve applied and have the skills they’re looking for. You could be presenting the solution to their staffing issue.

Question: What is an acceptable time frame to request of an employer for responding to an offer?
Answer: There’s no single answer to this. The “standard norm” is two weeks, but there’s no hard and fast number of days. Be smart about this. If you’re serious about the job offer, and you have nothing else on the table, asking for a couple weeks looks really iffy to an employer and they may pull the offer based on your lack of interest. If you know you want the job, and you are clearly communicating that you want the job, then ask for a couple days to talk it over with your better half so that you don’t look desperate. But a quick “yes” will build goodwill for you upon entry. If you have other parts in motion - other employers you’re waiting to hear from, for example - try to be up front with the offering company in such a way that you will not burn any bridges. Say something like, “I have a lot of irons in the fire right now, and I’m very, very interested in this offer. But I do have some other considerations - can I have until x date to provide you an answer?” And if you don’t feel like explaining yourself, go ahead and ask for the two weeks to think about it. The company will tell you if that’s acceptable.

*All of these responses by the author previously appeared on Quora.com under his own responses.

---

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. 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.