When I started my career in this industry, the sum total of advice available on the topic of resume construction came down to 2-3 dusty books in the local library. Fast forward to today and we've got the opposite problem. There's way TOO much advice out there -- and every time you turn around there's a website, article, or supposed "expert" telling you to do something differently. The consequence of this shift, I've found, is [...]
Almost without fail, every job hunter who applies to a job of interest today and doesn't hear back ends up wondering: "did I not hear back because my resume isn't 'scannable' by the tools that HR departments are using to screen candidates?" These tools, known as Applicant Tracking Systems, have become a huge topic of discussion in the field of resume effectiveness and (sadly) thousands of fear-mongering companies have sprung up to browbeat people into [...]
As anybody currently searching for work can attest, the process of submitting resumes to published job opportunities can be incredibly frustrating, confusing, and time-consuming. Not only are there fewer openings being listed today given the uncertainty in the economy, but for those roles that DO get posted, the competition is fierce and employers often report getting hundreds and hundreds of resumes sent in within a mere 24 hours after announcing a new hiring need. On [...]
Roughly 20 years ago, I remember holding a conversation about the resume screening process with an HR friend of mine, who remarked: "Honestly, after you sift through 200-300 applications in a row you sort of fall into 'resume stupor' and start to tune out - since they all pretty much start to look the same." Fast-forward to 2024 and I sadly believe this phenomenon has gotten even worse, given the availability of so many generic [...]
When historians look back on this year, in decades hence, I suspect it will come to be viewed as the "dawn of AI" and the first time in history when the average person was exposed to the true potential of artificial intelligence -- and how it could help them, specifically, in their day-to-day pursuits. In light of this development, I've been experimenting heavily as of late with AI sites like ChatGPT and how they can [...]
The job market is a highly competitive place today -- and in most cases, one's resume is generally going to be the very first opportunity you have to make an impression on an employer. Needless to say, craftsmanship counts! Alas, many job seekers looking for help get overwhelmed by the hundreds upon hundreds of resume-writing outfits they come across out there,when conducting web research, and as a result, find it hard to evaluate the quality [...]
Once upon a time, you'd ask a person what they did for a living and they'd likely tell you they were in sales. Or marketing. Or accounting. Or technology. Or one of several other common, easily-identifiable career categories. These days? Well, thanks to the increased "consumerization" of the labor market and the resulting hyper-specialization of most job functions, it's hard to find people who fit these generalized career boxes any longer. And if they do [...]
Risk vs. reward. Alas, whether you're talking about asking somebody out on a date, starting a business, or making a successful financial investment, isn't this always the eternal teeter-totter that so much of life seems to be balanced upon? As for the principle's application in the career marketplace, let's face it, most job hunters are pretty chicken. They tend to play it super, super safe. Whether in their resume presentation or their interviewing banter, they [...]
Happy holidays, all! Hope everybody has some restful, relaxing plans for the season -- and given the time of year we're in, I'm going to follow a tradition I started last December, which is to compile a post featuring all of the tools/sites/resources I intended (but utterly failed) to find time to write about at some point in the previous 12 months. So here you have it. A number of great little links I've collected [...]
The other day, I had an interesting disagreement with a friend of mine. We had gone hiking on a beautiful summer day, and when finished, I pulled out a bottle of water from my car and started to drink it -- at which point my friend yelled at me to put it down, insisting he'd read somewhere that one could get cancer from drinking out of water bottles that had been left in the sun [...]