It never ceases to amaze Jaq just how many people don’t know that rule. It’s simple, it’s been around for ages, and it works just about everywhere except in plumbing, or when designers want to be sneaky.
It’s a good excuse as any to inaugurate a new feature. The practical tip du jour.
Today’s tip is about resumes and the job interview. Jaq did someone a favor and conducted a crapload of interviews in the last couple of days. Jaq is thinking of starting a whole sideline of doing these kind of interviews, because finding good people is very hard, especially when a prospective employer can’t figure out from a resume who is a good employee.
But the people who really need the help, but aren’t willing to pay for it, are the prospective employees. And man do they need help!
The tip is in several parts.
Part 1. Write your own damn resume.
Jaq is astonished how many supposedly seasoned professionals don’t write their own resumes. Some recruiters give advice on how to alter a resume. Other recruiters just write it for buzzword compliance.
Jaq can’t figure out this practice. This works on the front end, when you have drones from the department of “Human Racehorses” who don’t know how to read a resume. Not their fault, it’s not in their training. However, Jaq has spoken with many of these folks and they honestly think they can evaluate a good candidate for a job with the basis of no experience with the actual subject whatsoever. It’s not about what you know, or what you can do, or even who you know, but about “what you’ve got”. They say, “Do you have xxxx?” Their little world begins and ends with the resume.
This works on the backend too, when meeting with executive types, who just want to get to know you personally. There’s something to be said for good chemistry, but the very best, brightest, and most capable need to be kept happy in their little rubber rooms. In standard hiring practices, they get hired only by accidentally missing meeting with the Veeps.
Where it fails is in the middle, when the candidate is going to get interrogated by the cranky SOB who doesn’t have time to do another interview. For this individual, a resume is as a red sheet waved in front of a bull. What’s between the ears? The interviewer comes to the interview completely unprepared — they were busy working up until five minutes before the big event, at which point they go, “Aww shit, I’d better print this out and get ready.” The result is, no questions are ever really prepared beforehand, and to hide their unpreparedness, the interviewer is going to be staring at that resume a lot and going “Hmmmm….” in an ominous tone of voice. This person is preparing to ask you questions about your past, because that resume is the only thing giving clues on what to do.
Which brings us to the second point.
Part 2. If you absolutely can’t write your own resume, at least read it!
Today’s shortest interview lasted four minutes. It was Jaq’s lifetime record, and the impetus for this rant.
Acceptible answers to questions off items on your resume (especially items in the first three bullet points) should not include the following:
- Huh?
- What do you mean?
- That doesn’t ring any bells.
- Does it really say that on my resume?
Jaq is not making any of these up.
It’s like this. If you advertise that you know some technology or have some skill at some nontechnology thing, be prepared to answer basic questions about it. And if you don’t know the answer, just admit it — don’t try to dazzle the interviewer with bullshit. Even if they don’t know the answer personally, there are many sample interview questions one may choose from available anywhere Google goes, and answer keys are provided.
If you put a company you worked at on your resume, be prepared to talk about what they do. Be prepared to talk about what you did, in itself and even more importantly, in terms of what that company does.
Part 3. Communicate skillfully.
Jaq cannot remember the last time “excellent communications skills” was not written on any resume to cross Jaq’s desk. For once, Jaq would like to see something that actually exemplifies that, like saying, “Scintillating verbal skills — Able to stop speeding bullets with naught but charm and persuasion.” But no, everyone must have “excellent communications skills” or else it cannot really be a resume.
Instead of just that crappy throwaway line, you must be prepared to demonstrate it. If you’re in a phone interview, do not take other calls and place your interviewer on hold. Do-not-speak-in-a-monotone. Particularly do not speak in a monotone if you only speak in sentences longer than the most rickety run-on ever constructed by Nathaniel Hawthorne. Do not use the word “and” more than fourteen times in a single sentence, because if you do, your interviewer is no longer listening.
When you are asked, “Tell me a little about yourself,” do not respond, “What do you want to know for?”
To the same question, don’t respond by giving a long and storied history of your education, which you end with “and then I went into industry and did stuff for six years.” What this tells the interviewer that you have been an absolute catastrophe in the real world, post academia. If you truly have those “6+ years of strong experience” doing whatever, be most prepared to talk about the last couple of these — not what you did at school a decade ago. The one person who made it past Jaq’s patented gauntlet interview process did so mainly because they were able to speak coherently about their latest couple of posts.
Don’t interrupt. Don’t keep interrupting. Really, shut up so you can hear the followup question. What, do you just like to hear yourself talk?
Don’t call the interviewer back to harrass them. Really, it takes longer than twenty minutes after the interview to find out if you got the job. If you’ve really been an industry professional for years, surely you would know this by now?
Particularly over the phone, don’t mumble. Speak clearly and Enunciate. Your. Words.
Part 4. Remember what you’re doing at the interview.
You’re trying to get hired, dummy! This means that you need to convince the interviewer that you’re not a flake, and that you meet or exceed the expectations set in the resume. Your primary job in the interview, the first job you will have, and the one you will need to return to your whole life is that of a salesperson.
What are you selling?
You.
No, that’s not quite right. The idea that you’re “selling yourself” belongs to the realm of “Human Racehorces.” The idea of persons as inventoriable, commoditized resources creeps Jaq out. It doesn’t have to be that way.
You are selling the benefits that the hiring entity would garner with you as a member of the team. Your resume is your one and only billboard. A billboard must be good enough to interest your prospect in giving you a call.
But picture this. Have you ever been in driving down the road after a long day’s journey, looking for a place to stay? You find your night’s lodging with a billboard.
And then you drive up to find a crumbling, roach infested structure with rust-colored water coming from the tap? What do you do? You get back in the car and drive another couple of miles, that’s what. Your resume will likewise not get you hired any more than that billboard will incent you to stay.
As a collorary, be prepared to articulate what it is you’re looking for in an employer. The street goes both ways. Are they good enough for you?
Part 5. Ditch the professional headhunting agency. Employers, you too!
Professional headhunting agencies are there to match up emnployees with employers. No one ever said they had to do a good job. They aren’t really incented to do a good job, just a fast one. Employers keep coming back because they have nowhere else to go.
Prospective employees, these headhunters will really screw up your income potential, by taking a sizeable fraction of what the employer would be paying you, and paying them instead. If you learn to network, and market your own services yourself, you can cut out the middleman.
Employers, it’s not an absolute rule, but these headhunters mainly place people who can’t take charge of their own careers. Do you want to hire these kinds of people? Jaq has certainly known exceptions from this rule but not many.
Headhunters are people who throw large stacks of resumes at the wall, hoping one will stick. Someday, technology will improve to the point where we can all print our resumes on the same material as the Wacky Wall Walker. Until that time, this strategy serves only to waste your time.
Don’t let HR prepare the job description either. Strangely, it is Jaq’s experience that this eviscerates the pool of good candidates.
6. Stop thinking like a Human Resource
If you don’t like being treated like a small cog in a great unwieldy machine, don’t act like one. When you follow the script prepared by corporate HR and the headhunters, you accept their rules and end up imprisoning yourself. It took Jaq a very long time to finally learn this lesson.
Free your mind, and get hired!
