Re: Advice Provided Job Seekers
I've received and read advice from several recruiters, professional job counselors and HR Consultants.
While I appreciate their sincere advice AND recognize their advice is based on the current hiring practices. These practices are baffling and appear most inefficient. I'll make several points to which I'd invite constructive criticism, illumination or plain correction.
Keyword: I've learned most organizations use the Applicant Tracking System (ATS) to screen applications for position to be filled. I'm told review the job description and ensure you have keywords in your resume. Is there a clue to what the key words should be? Does not the hiring agency build this blueprint outlining what ATS should look for?
Copy, Cut & Paste: I've been told to ensure your resume gets selected, be sure you have phrases from the job description in your resume. I view this as an integrity issue. I do not want to mislead a hiring manager with extracted phrases from the job description that I've not performed, but am capable of performing. I opine, this process is most inept!
Also, if I am switching to a new field, why would my resume have phrases from the job description? Should not my previous accomplishments highlight my abilities and the competencies that will benefit the organization? Seems like company recruiters seek cookie cutter new employees or people who may have worked in a specific position related to the position they seek to fill. Also appears most organizations are lean and do not have an effective internal training program. Are my expectations antiquated?
Branding: Develop your brand. What is your brand? Seems like "brand" is more important today than critical thinking skills. Seems like emphasis is more on the latest keyword than ability to deliver results.
Networking: Find someone at the company you can connect with via alumni or some other connection and ask them to sponsor you with HR. Has this worked for anyone? This is like cold contacting & cold contacting today is not like years past.
Does recruitment for our current workforce not value competencies like: Action Oriented; Demonstrated Business Acumen; Superb Decision Quality; Experience directing others; Capable of Managing Diversity; Expert Problem Solver; Astute Planner; Strategically Agile; Intellectual Horsepower; Innovation; Six Sigma; Potential; Excellent Process Manager; Cross Functional Team Contributor; Effective Leader; Thought Leader...you get the point. Seems like these are not focus items for the ATS.
Stands to reason without highlighting these type skills for hiring, a successful succession plan is not a priority and recruitment and retention of competing talent becomes increasingly more difficult for a company's long range human capital planning.
Another point: Federal Government loves to highlight jobs created per quarter. I believe they are reporting the wrong metric - they should be reporting how many people got hired into those created jobs. And where are these jobs? Who are the companies?
It is disheartening to continuously read and hear metrics being reported that
do not affect real change to improve the quality of life for Americans.
I make this post knowing there are varying opinions shaped by different experiences. My objective is to listen, learn and hear if others believe similarly.
Look forward to your comments/opinions.
True, to be honest the ATS system was simple created to filter candidates and get the strongest out of the bunch. The downfall is a candidate can have a strong resume based off of keywords not in person not the best candidate for the job.
Hi Robert, I'm going to try and answer every question in your post as much as I can. Yes, depending on what organization that you're going into, they have the ATS into what their looking for in a candidate, now these days, there is a growing trend that the ATS is really falling to the curb because it either filters too much, or to little. There's not a defining clue to specific key words are now these days it's more of what you've done and what you're passionate about. The hiring firm doesn't really put the ATS into account since they are working directly with the hiring manager so that's how they are getting their applicants now these days.
For the Cut, Copy and Paste: That is a very big no no.. cutting and pasting the job description is not a good tell sign on how your resume should look like. What most companies are truly looking for are results.. For example, "we had an issue that we were overspending about $250,000 on general labor and materials. After an analysis, we found out that the rates in the database didn't reflect to what our current numbers were generating. After continuous adjustments, we reduced the overspending costs down to $50,000." This is just an example but most recruiters are going to look for things that determine results. If you're going into a new field, you have to reflect your resume to the field. For example, if you're in Engineering and you want to go into sales, you have to provide examples that would constitute what you've done to get the parts for a reduced price. Or if it was visa versa, you have to generate your resume to provide results into the engineering field. Not a "sales" resume for an engineering position. The biggest issue that I've seen is that they try to find people just to serve as a quota rather than an actual person. This got me really annoyed when I was trying to find a job. They would say that they liked my resume and even though they said they would get in touch with the HR manager, they never did so I was sort of left out in the dust. For branding: It's what you're overall emphasis is. For example, I'm a manufacturing engineer, but if you look at my resume, you can see that I've done internships and jobs that were more of a continuous improvement engineer on top to what I am as an manufacturing engineer. The "true" companies will not look for keywords, but things that have proven your results in them. Like the previous example that I said. They're looking for results rather than keywords. Networking: No.. .Just no... if you already know the HR person, than it's alright to contact them and talk with them, but not cold contact them... it's awkward, and sometimes rude to think of. I never done it, because I would rather have the HR person get to connect me first and then go forward with an interview. Let them search for you and not the other way around. Depending on the recruiting firm and the actual person that you're talking to, they value all the competencies that you just said. The ones that don't really value them are firms that look more for satisifying quotas rather than working with people. That's why it's difficult to choose recruiting firms so I tend to choose ones that actually get to know me and my goals so they can see if I can be a good fit. I think overall, out of all the experiences that I've had, it all boils down to what are you passionate about? How does your resume reflect what you are in the workforce. Numbers are numbers if you don't have experience with it. You have to be passionate to what your "brand" is. Are you an engineer that loves to do continuous improvement? or want to go ahead in Six sigma?.. Or are you in sales that has a drive for getting things at the right time so the prices are going to be lower. I've actually talked with multiple recruiters about the ATS and practically all of them say that they started to "let go" of the tracker because the recruiters that they hire provide more info than the ATS has ever done. The one thing the algorithm can't show is drive and passion of the person. I hope this helps, and I hope I answered most of the questions for you.