Old school job search advice is the worst. We read and hear it everywhere, yet no one can trace its sources. Who made up the rule that we can't or not supposed to use "I" in a resume, for instance? What's worse is that most traditional job seeking advices doesn't really work.
We've been taught to write a resume like a stiff government document. No one want's to read something like that. "I" is a perfectly word to use when you are talking about yourself. An HR person who writes in his resume summary, "I am passionate about helping employees succeed on the job" is steeping out of the formal protocol in order to tell the employer, "here what kind of HR person I am." That's a big plus, not a minus.
It has been said that the cover letter should be conversational, while the resume should remain formal. Who says it has to be this way? Lots of hiring managers skip the cover letter entirely. Your resume has to make it clear what you're about, so it has to bring with as much of the brand YOU as it possible can. Ditch the results oriented professional for weightier bullets like, "I got x-25 product out the door six months earlier to add $10M in quarterly sales." In other words write a conversational resume summary statement that stay free from boring boilerplate like "strong work ethics."
When you're asked for the salary quote the lowest number you can. That's a horrible advice that will get you a low ball job offer, if you get one at all. When you are confronted with that kind of a question, give a realistic figure that takes into account what other companies are paying people (right now, not three years ago) with your skills. If you don't have the information about the salaries use Payscale.com or Glassdoor.com in order to get the latest data available so you can be prepared.
In a job interview, talk as much of the time as you can. True/False? Here's why you don't want to do this. When you're talking, you're not learning. You goal on a job interview beside getting the job is to learn as much as possibly possible about the business pain behind the job add. The more you learn, the smarter and more targeted your interview responses can be. When you have a chance to ask the interviewer a question, take it.
On a job interview, make sure the interviewer knows you're perfect for the job. You won't know what "perfect for the job really" means to a job interviewer unless you ask thoughtful questions and get the interviewer talking. Saying "I am perfect for the job" is totally pointless as well as annoying until you understand what the problem this new hire is intended to solve. Save the self-praise (I am smart and focused) and use your interview airtime minutes sharing concrete, relevant stories about your accomplishments instead.
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
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Adrian - I agree with mostly everything you say (esp. regarding salary) except for using the word "I" in your resume. Bullet points under each job description should mostly reflect achievements and start with action words (ie: performed, achieved, maintained, etc) - there is no need for the word I. The "Objective" and "skills" portion of the resume is only for recent college grads who don't have enough work experience to cover a full page of their resume. In this case you may be tempted to use the word "I" but I would still refrain from it as it makes the job seeker appear to juvenile.
ReplyDeleteI've been a Recruiting Manager for four years and agree that most of us skip past the cover letter as they are very generic and only work for very specific jobs. But to be honest when a resume isn't in proper format - we throw it in the shredder as there are another 500 resumes where it came from. One such example would be non-bulleted resumes that use the word "I".