Webinar: Job Seeking Strategies During COVID-19
Murray Resources has partnered with our sister company, ResumeSpice, to bring you this free webinar on Job Seeking Strategies During COVID-19.
Our panelists will answer the most common job seeker questions we’re getting – plus we’ll answer any questions you have.
Topics / Questions We Will Cover:
- What types of companies are hiring now?
- Is it better to wait the pandemic out or to start a job search now?
- What are some strategies that job seekers can take action on now to help them land a job?
- I was just laid off. How do I explain that in my resume?
- Is networking worth the effort during this time?
- How do I switch industries to one that’s currently hiring? (aka, transferable skills)
- PLUS your questions!
If this event has passed, you can still click here to view the recorded webinar.
View Full Transcript
The following transcript was auto-generated from the video version of the webinar. Please excuse any typos / inaccuracies.
Keith Wolf:
We can’t see or hear anybody except for us. Alright, welcome. We are excited to get started. So welcome to our webinar today. Hopefully you can see us. Okay. I’m Keith Wolf. I’m the managing director of Murray resources. We are a recruiting firm here in Houston, and I’m also the CEO of resume, spice it career coaching and resume writing service. So I am so excited about today’s webinar is we’re gonna address some of the most common questions we’re getting from job seekers in this COVID-19 environment. And we know many of you on this call today are finding yourselves in very difficult situations. Maybe you recently been laid off. Maybe you’re a job searching before COVID-19 even started, or maybe you’re just concerned that your job may be in jeopardy at some point. So what we’re hoping to do on this call is to give you real practical advice that will serve you well, as you navigate your job search. Now, let me just say this. We work with job seekers every day in every type of environment. And they’re often in very difficult situations, even without a pandemic and then they’re searching and they get that job and it all turns around and that’ll happen for you too. So just don’t give up hope and keep on going. Joining me on this webinar are Elizabeth Araya and Jessica Richardson. Now Elizabeth is a search director with Marie resources. She is a superstar recruiter. She’s part of our professional division, where we place candidates and accounting, finance, sales, marketing, HR, customer service, and administrative roles. And we also have a technical light industrial division. And on the resume side by side, we have Jessica Richardson who is a phenomenal career coach and resume writer. And she works with executives at every level, from entry level to the executive level. Now both of these ladies have won the highest honor at our company, which is one of the circle, and they’ve done it multiple times. And to do, to get that honor, you have to do really great work with a lot of job seekers. So you will be in great hands today and we’re lucky to have him. So thank you ladies for being here.
Keith Wolf:
Let me just go over a couple of housekeeping items. So we’re gonna try our best to keep this at 60 minutes, we have a lot of content. If we go past 1:00 PM central, please know you can drop off at any time. That’s okay. We are going to be recording this webinar. So we will send out the recording. And in case you missed anything, you’ll be able to rewatch it and we’re going to be sharing our perspective and what we’re seeing. So we’re all coming to this webinar from different perspectives, different points in our careers, different experiences. And you may disagree with some of our advice and that’s okay. We’re going to give you our thoughts based on what we’re seeing, working with job seekers, hiring managers and HR professionals every day, and this is going to be a Q and a format. So I’m going to do the easy part.
Keith Wolf:
I’m going to ask the questions and Jessica and Elizabeth are going to give their responses from both a recruiter standpoint and a career coach standpoint. And you can submit additional questions during the webinar. We’re going to do our very best to get to as many as we can. We are going to try to answer those that really relate to the most possible people. So the most possible people can benefit from this webinar and all 500 plus people. We have over 500 people on this webinar. Everybody is on mute. So do not worry about sound in the background. We can not hear you. Okay. We just want to make sure we can hear Jessica and Elizabeth responses. And lastly, we will be sharing the slides from this webinar with everyone who registered. So with that, are you ready to go? Elizabeth and Jessica
Jessica Richardson:
We’re ready.
Keith Wolf:
Okay. Well first a little bit of good news. So there’s a lot of news circulating and not all of it has been good. So we just want to give some, some good information, some good positive data that we’re seeing. So this is something that I posted on LinkedIn a few days ago, and you just give people some insight into job orders that we’re seeing from our clients. So the week of March 15th saw a drop pretty much overnight. The 55% in our new job orders for that week, sort of reminded me of nine 11 around that time, or for folks who remember Lehman brothers and bear Stearns, it just seemed like the world was stopping. There was nothing going on and it sort of got worse for a couple of weeks, and I’m sure you all have lived through this. It got as bad for us as April 5th, that week, it was down to 8% of our normal job orders coming in, but then it started to take back ups, April 12th. It was up at 10%, April 19th, a little bit more. And it got up to 30% on April 26. And the good news is so far this week, we’re up further. We’re probably going to end this week 35 to 40% of what a normal job order week would be before the pandemic. And so that’s the good news. It’s not where it’s going to be, but it’s getting there. Okay. So with that, let’s get into the questions and we’re going to start with Jessica on this one.
Keith Wolf:
Actually, we’re gonna start with Elizabeth on this one, the better to wait the pandemic out or to start a job search now. So what’s your perspective, Elizabeth,
Elizabeth Orea:
Definitely start now. You want to start getting your name in front of companies that are hiring or ramping up companies and recruiting firms? Recruiters now more than ever are in a really unique position because like Keith mentioned in the previous slide we had most of our job searches just completely halted. And so now we are pipelining. We’re getting ready for what inevitably is going to come back. We’re going to have a surgeon positions. And so we’re starting to make sure that we’ve got a strong pipeline of all of the candidates that we’re looking for. Administrative human resources sales. So you want to start registering with recruiting firms, getting your name in front of those companies, getting your resume and LinkedIn profile, ready to go, making sure those match up scrubbing your social media. So make sure that anything you wouldn’t want, your grandma’s Odyssey is not in the forefront of your Facebook account. Your Twitter account recruiters are checking social media now employers hiring managers, that’s one of the first things they go to and start reaching out and building relationships. So definitely start that job search now.
Keith Wolf:
All right, great. Okay. So thanks for that, Elizabeth. And let’s get into a little bit more detail from both Elizabeth and Jessica, what folks can do. So what are some strategies that job seekers can take action on right now to help them land a job?
Jessica Richardson:
Well, first of all, you’d be amazed at how many people I work with, who from a job seeker perspective, who haven’t updated their LinkedIn, you know, you go to look at it and obviously is months or years out of date. It may not even include the most recent role. So the first thing you need to do is make sure your resume and your LinkedIn are updated. Really that’s, that’s a great practice anytime, but especially now, because you don’t know when you’re going to get that email. And sometimes we get asked by clients potential clients, hey, can we get something ready for submission tomorrow? And that’s something that needs to be done thoughtfully and weeks in advance. So now is a great time to start on that. Also make sure the titles, the employers and the dates on your LinkedIn and resume match, because a lot of times what happens is completely inadvertent, but when you’re putting all that together and your LinkedIn, you’re just kind of guesstimating, but if your if your dates are off and off significantly, as soon as we see them off by months or even years that can affect your chances of getting an interview because it raises questions and red flags. So you want to avoid that. Also make sure your resume includes the impact of your role, not just why what you do and enabled for the division, the company, the your department, whatever, whatever it is that, that made it better when you left and when you were there leadership examples.
Jessica Richardson:
So that may be how many people you lead and what they did and what their titles were. If you don’t have direct oversight, leadership can be shown by things about leading projects, where you might manage the workflow of a person to make sure it’s delivered correctly. And then also including the specific measures of success, how can you show that it was affected? What percent of improvement per cent of revenue growth, whatever it is that, that, that factually shows, how, what you did had a long lasting contribution then also reach out to those preferred employers. And when we say preferred employers, that would be like, if you have a dream of working for Disney don’t just rely on an applicant tracking system, find somebody at Disney that you’d like to work for, and that type of role the supervisors, the type of role you’d like to work for and reach out to them.
Jessica Richardson:
So these are showing that only about 16% of candidates do that. And it’s highly under utilized because the best way to make sure that hiring manager sees your resume and wants to talk to you is to reach out directly to that hiring manager then apply to roles posted in the last few days, especially now, now that’s kind of a good rule of thumb because the earlier candidates tend to get the best preference or the best chance of actually getting the interviewing, getting the offer. But right now, especially those over overalls, you don’t know if they, they may, they may be the default in some majors may not have taken them down. So the ones that have been posted in the last few days as are the ones that have the best chance of being open and active roles, but don’t feel afraid or scared of, of contacting somebody at the company to make sure the role is active.
Jessica Richardson:
They get those kinds of requests and emails and outreach pretty regularly. And they’re going to be happy to say, Hey, that role is still active and we’re still searching for it, or we’re not currently hiring. And then finally reach out to your network connections and let them know you’re looking. So the first thing that happens a lot of times is we don’t have a job and, or we’re looking for a job and we’ll reach out to recruiters and hiring managers, but we forget to reach out to people that are most invested in our success. And that’s our network that we have built. So tell your friends, tell your colleagues, former colleagues say I’m looking because they may know of an opportunity that you wouldn’t even get to a job board or that didn’t past the initial application stage and straight into an interview stage.
Keith Wolf:
That’s great information. Thanks, Jessica, just to touch on or emphasize one of the points in terms of making an impact and being specific about measures of success. So just think about how have you driven revenue or how have you saved the company money. I mean, those are really the two ways that you can drive that impact to show that on your resume and for some, for some roles in an executive role or a sales role, it’s pretty obvious, but almost any role and I’d argue any role. You’re doing one of those two things. I mean, if you’re an administrative role and you came up with a new filing system and save people time, how much money did that translate into? And so just think a little bit out of the box with your role and try to come up with as many different ways that you say, the company money, or you drove revenue. All right, let’s get a, let’s get, Elizabeth’s take on this.
Elizabeth Orea:
Sure. So very similar to that of Jessica is a couple of the more unique things from the recruiter standpoint, you know, in addition to making sure that your resume and LinkedIn profile are tightened up clear out your voicemail. I know that seems pretty simple, but I have been calling several candidates a day and have been getting your voicemail box is full. I am typically following up with an email and a text message, but you want to make sure that you’re that candidate who has that clear voicemail, clarity, voicemail now more than ever going back to tightening your resume, we’re all able to kind of add remote keywords to, to that resume. So anything that you’re doing remotely now, working from home, you’re running a meeting with 15 people because zoom, you want to add that to your resume? Cause that’s going to start coming into effect.
Elizabeth Orea:
As we start to see more companies kind of shift to working from home, I’m registered with recruiting firms more than one, as much as I wish that my resources had every requisition in Houston, we don’t do you want to make sure that you’ve got lots of eyes and ears looking keeping an eye out for you, make sure to keep in touch with your recruiter email once. Every one to two weeks I check in email is just fine. Hey, Elizabeth just wanted to let you know I’m still on the market. Keep an eye on the website, you know, specifically for us and just keep in touch with your recruiter. Set up a job searching system that is not only efficient, but keeps you, keeps you positive. You know, searching for a job is stressful and it’s hard and add a pandemic to that.
Elizabeth Orea:
It, it just makes sure to give yourself some grace set some daily and weekly goals goals. Those daily goals can be as simple as I’m going to send three resumes today. And as you’re kind of thinking about, you know, being on the job search right now, you really have time for reflection. What kind of company do I want to work for? Think about company type industry culture, you know, the internet now, Glassdoor, it really allows you to kind of go on and see what different companies offer in terms of culture and, and all of that good value. So you definitely want to make sure you’re doing that as well.
Keith Wolf:
Perfect. Okay. Let me, let me ask her just a of quick questions. Those are great responses. Thank you both. We’re just getting a couple questions. I think we can answer pretty quickly. So is it better to include a LinkedIn profile along with your resume when applying for a position? I would say definitely. If you can include that, the more ways that you can get in front of somebody the better. And we also, we’re going to get into resumes specifically in a little bit, but we also recommend you put the LinkedIn profile link on your resume. So put that up top as well. Recruiters love to look at LinkedIn hiring managers. I mean, that’s where they go. Another person asks when registering with recruiting firms, who would we suggest that they register with? You know, what I would do is go to the, I mean, you can just simply put Houston staffing, Houston recruiting or whatever city you’re in, in Google look at who comes up and then look at the kind of jobs that they work on and then go to those recruiters, LinkedIn profiles, and see a lot of times they’ll put on their profile, the types of jobs that they’re specifically working on. So you really want to be targeted. You’re going to get pretty frustrated if you’re really trying to target the wrong recruiting firm or the wrong individuals at the recruiting firm. If you look at our firm ourselves, we’ve got a lot of recruiters and they all have their specialties. So make sure you’re sort of targeting the right person at the right recruiting firm and you’ll have more success.
Elizabeth Orea:
And Keith, I think we have a list on our resume by site of recruiting.
Keith Wolf:
We sure did. So yeah, on the ResumeSpice website, we’ve got a list of recruiting firms by specialty and also by by location throughout the U S so thanks for bringing that up, Jessica. Appreciate it. Alright, so yeah. Elizabeth is networking worth the effort right now.
Elizabeth Orea:
Absolutely. And, and what we’re doing right now is networking as, as a panelist, I can see people introducing themselves to each other. I mean, this is a great way to network. And really even during a non pandemic, networking is always worth it. You know, in a recent market study, 25% of the candidates had personal referrals were their number one source for job hunting. You know, in a conversation I had with Jessica, she mentioned that a lot of her position she’s gotten have been through personal referrals or connections that she’s had. So we’re all kind of going through the shared trauma right now. So really any connection that we make during this time can be especially strong and provide shared value for, you know, the years to come. And you know, now more than ever, we’re really all in this together. I know the three of us on the call and I’m sure many out there have young children that we kind of had to wrangle away for this.
Elizabeth Orea:
And so, you know, we’re all working in schooling from home. And so it, it kind of gives you a chance to network on a more personal level. I had a call with a client a couple of weeks ago, and she was having to apologize every five minutes for her dog and her three year old. And I was like, well, I’ve got my four year old right here. So we’re in this together. And in some way it kinda, you know, opened up that conversation to getting to know each other on a more personal level. So this is really the time to be networking.
Speaker 5:
Great. Thank you.
Keith Wolf:
And is it, this is, this gets a little bit specific, but we have this question come up and I thought it was interesting. Is it better to relocate for position if somebody has that opportunity or should they wait for the lockdown to be over?
Elizabeth Orea:
That’s a really good question. You know, there’s the short answer, is it, it really depends on your situation. My recommendation that I’ve been giving to the job seekers and candidates that I’m talking to is, you know, don’t make this decision based on fear. We’re going to get past this pandemic. It’s going to be tough, but I mean, we’re going to get to the other side of it. So what you really have to think about is can you imagine yourself in this role and that location geographically for the next three to five years you want to make sure that, you know, while recruiters and hiring managers are going to be understanding of tenure during this particular time, you know, March, 2020, so the end of 2020, you still want to think about your resume and what that tenure is going to look like. So it CA I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t move your entire family to go somewhere for a year to then only come back a year later.
Elizabeth Orea:
Remember that recruiters, we tend to favor candidates who live in the area only because a lot of our clients do move very quickly. By the time they’re reaching out to us, it’s because they’re ready to hire. And so we submit a candidate on Monday, I get an email on Tuesday saying, great, can he come in on Thursday? That’s really hard for out-of-state candidates to be able to kind of keep up with that timeline. And so with that being said, use your new location on your resume. A tip that Jessica gave me that I thought was fantastic was, you know, let’s say you want to move closer to, you want to move to Houston because you want to be closer to family. Your mom lives in Houston, put your mom’s address as the resume so that when you’re having to fill out applications, you’ve got a real address that you can put in there. And, you know, whenever possible, when you’re thinking about relocating reach out directly to the hiring manager, because they’ll give you a better idea of timeline and all that good stuff.
Keith Wolf:
Perfect, great info. Thank you. All right. I know people are in this situation. We’re getting this question a lot. I was just laid off. How do I explain that in my resume, Jessica?
Elizabeth Orea:
No. throughout my time with resume spice and working with job seekers, this is one of the biggest concerns that they have. And the interesting thing is it’s one of the things that should be at least at least at least concern because layoffs happen. They happen so quickly, especially here in Houston. They have to pretty regularly with oil and gas cycles because we’re such an oil and gas economy. So they, they just happen. All you have to do is put a a notation on your resume. This is something like roll into due to department or company-wide layoff. Very small. It doesn’t even have to be anything more than a brief mention. And and as you see on there, I had similar to 2001, 2002. So in a one we had post nine 11 and 2018, we had post Harvey, we have the pandemic and post pandemic, and then you have regular companies that, that through no fault of anybody’s, other than, other than it just doesn’t work out, they wound up having to have layoffs. It’s, it’s, it can even happen regularly. I have clients that work in oil and gas that have been laid off three or four times, and they’re still great candidates and they get jobs because what’s important to show is what you’ve done during the time that you were at the company. And if you can show that and you can keep your network strong, then that’s nothing to have to overcome. It’s just a fact of your career. So it’s nothing to be embarrassed about or feel like you need to ever.
Keith Wolf:
Yeah. I mean, in 2020, it’s just going to be one of those years. If it’s on your resume golf, anybody who lived through this will understand it is nothing that I spend a lot of time at all worrying about. All right. So how do I switch industries? It’s one that is hiring right now. Elizabeth, how would you, how would you respond to this?
Elizabeth Orea:
Sure. Switching industries is difficult even during a non pandemic. So the rec the biggest recommendation I would give just when someone is ready to switch industries, make a career transition. They’ve grown their career in one area. It’s just to be open-minded you know, if you’ve grown your career all the way up here, but you’re thinking I’m going to use teaching and HR as an example, I have a lot of educators and teachers that reach out and say, you know, I’ve been teaching for the last 10 years. I’d like to move into HR. The, the conversation I always have to have with them is okay. You know, I know you have those strong transferable skills. You you’ve been with your school for 10 years or 10 years. Fantastic. however, you are going to have to take a step back in terms of position and salary.
Elizabeth Orea:
So you’ve got to be open to being entry-level in the new roller industry. And so, as you’re doing that, maybe seek out companies that have strong training or development programs. And just remember, especially with recruiting firms, as much as, as we want to be able to tell a client, you know, she’s just got great transferable skills. She was with her school for 10 years. When companies reach out to us, they’re giving us, you know, they’re saying we need an HR generalist with five to seven years of experience. And so it’s hard for us to say, well, here, here’s a fantastic teacher. Whereas if you are open to starting somewhere, you know, as an HR coordinator and working your way up then it just kind of opens your chances a little bit more. So just be open minded and flexible when you’re ready to make that sort of career transition.
Keith Wolf:
Got it. Let me, let me answer just a couple of questions. Are we getting here? And we’re getting a lot of questions, so we’re going to try to get as many of these as we can. One question was, how can we tell if listings out there just pipelining or if there’s a valid job that they’re really hiring for right now? So when we say pipeline, we’re, we’re, we’re pipelining for roles that we get a lot that they’re very frequent, right? So we’re, we’re not trying to recruiters, aren’t trying to use their time just interviewing people for the sake of interviewing that. They’re bringing you in. If they’re having an interview in this day and age, if they’re zooming with you, there’s B that’s because there is a role that you are very qualified for that we get a lot of. Right. So think about it that way and honest recruiters, which, you know, most of them are, will tell you that I don’t have a role for you right now, but this is a role that I get a lot of and we will keep you in mind.
Keith Wolf:
And yeah. So just, you know, just keep that in mind, as you’re, as you’re thinking about working with recruiters let me see if I can answer another one real quick. So is social media playing a factor in landing a job we’d be screening candidates socially through social media all the time. I would say your social media, your profile is so important. I mean, LinkedIn is a must have, if you don’t have LinkedIn, if your LinkedIn is not up to date, you’re really doing yourself a disservice. And you know, I, this is one of those points that, you know, it’s tough to tell candidates this, because we’re all human beings and we all live different lives outside of work. And we’re all, a lot of people are on Facebook or whatever your social media may be. However you present yourself on Facebook, just make sure you’re okay with a recruiter or HR manager, seeing that, okay. People get screened out all the time because of some silly thing they did on social media. I think most people know this, that at this point, but I think it’s worth bringing up because we still see it a lot. Alright. So let’s get back to the slides and we’ll come back to some questions in a little bit.
Keith Wolf:
All right. So Jessica, you’re taking the same question. How do I switch industries?
Jessica Richardson:
So this is pretty commonly a common issue faced even, even not during the middle of COVID and in this dynamic, but especially so now, so a lot of times when, when job seekers look out, it’s this wide world of job postings. And so when you’re trying to transition, you’re thinking, Oh my goodness, I don’t even know I don’t. And I hear that all the time. I don’t even know where to start. And the easiest answer is to start close to your wheelhouse, start to where you are. So instead of trying to think, Oh, what could I do think, what do I do? And what have I done? What am I doing on a daily basis that I love to do? And then look for roles that are similar to have similar titles and similar job descriptions even in similar industry.
Jessica Richardson:
So if you’re in, in, in one type of manufacturing, you might can switch to a different industry that has a similar manufacturing process or sales as sales, whether you’re selling, you know technology or whether you’re selling autumn automobiles. Sometimes there’s cross cross between there for the people who sell technology to automotive manufacturers. So look at ways that you could come in with a unique skill set that might not be direct, but it would actually be competitive. And so read the job descriptions, think about how you could add value in that role into those type of organizations, look for your transferable skills. So whether that’s, you know, the relationship development, business development and, and what it would take, what is the gap between immediately hitting the ground, running in those roles and what you would need to do to to ramp up
Elizabeth Orea:
To that type of role. And if it’s, if it’s a low bar for injury, those are the type of roles that you could really pretty easily move into. And then think about what excites you about those opportunities. So if it, if it’s just the fact that there’s a paycheck that affects everybody, we all need to be paid and pay well for what we do. So so that’s not a good reason to apply to a role. I mean, other than just, if you have to put food on your table, you have to put food on your table. But but as far as these are the ideal next roles that you can be in for the next three to five years look for the ones that really interesting did you think, Ooh, this is really close to what I do. I love it.
Elizabeth Orea:
I could do this, you know, tomorrow and really enjoy it for the next few years. And I’m excited about the opportunity to, to transition into this type of role. Those are the ones you want to focus on. And then this is also where a cover letter really comes into play. So you know, a well written cover letter will never hurt you. It can help you. But it can, it can actually mean the difference between getting an interview and not in this type of situation, because you need to explain why you’re a good fit for these roles or why you’re enthusiastic about them. If you can kind of do those couple of things, so the good fit while you’re enthusiastic about them and why, and, and and, and show some of those transferable skills, then you’re much more likely to get an interview. Use LinkedIn, use LinkedIn to find people for this.
Keith Wolf:
And we’re getting some similar themes on the questions. And just to let you know, so that the ATS black hole is one person called us the applicant tracking systems. What we’re going to talk about that in just a minute, as well as if you’re a mature candidate, older candidate, seasoned candidate, all those different terms, some approaches there. So just hang with us, we’re going to get to a lot of these questions throughout the presentation. And here we go, here’s the ETF as getting rejected by those auto resumes, screeners, ATS programs, whatever we want to call them.
Elizabeth Orea:
Yes. ATS applicant, the dreaded applicant tracking system, even for recruiters, because recruiters have to also submit into applicant tracking systems, depending on the company size or the company we’re working with. So they’re not going away. Don’t overthink it. Keywords, keywords, keywords, my biggest recommendation, because those apple to apple matches are the ones that have advantage and keywords really kind of taking up the ATS, just keywords in general, because as a recruiter, when I’m searching, I’m searching keywords. So, you know, I have a client reaches out, they need an office manager to have strong QuickBooks. Great. That’s the first thing I’m going to do. I’m going to look for QuickBooks office manager. And so the ATS is doing the same thing when they’re kind of parsing through the different resumes they’re searching for those keywords technology requirements. So really make sure you’re putting that into your resume.
Elizabeth Orea:
As much as you can try to reach out to a human being, I know that’s difficult. I think this is one place where working with a recruiter really to your advantage. I, the way that I like to describe myself to the candidates I’m working with is I’m your advocate. I am I’m right next to you in this. And you know, the difference between you filling out all of your information on an ATS and me filling out all of your information and ATS is I’ve got more often than not a little blurb section where I can put notes in about your resume. So not only am I submitting your resume, I’m also submitting five to seven bullet points about why I think you fit everything they’re looking for, you know, in terms of experience and what you’ve done, your duties and responsibilities, who you are as a person. And so that’s, I think that’s really when you want to kind of use recruiters to your advantage and, or, you know, go on LinkedIn and you can see a lot of the times the hiring manager is posted there and there are some really great add ons that you can add from Google Chrome to find email addresses, to reach out, to hiring managers directly. So just get creative. The internet really gives you the option to do that now.
Keith Wolf:
Yeah. And just to speak to ATS just for a minute, in terms of it’s not going away. I mean, when, when Marie resources was started, ATSs didn’t exist. I mean, 30 years ago they didn’t exist. And then it was just the large fortune 500 companies and then went downstream to smaller companies. And now companies as small as, you know, five, 10 people could use them. I mean, it’s just the fact of the matter. So don’t, you know, don’t get frustrated by it. There is a, there is a website, if for those of you who don’t know job scan.com, it’s a, they give, I don’t know how many, but maybe five or 10 free matches. So you can put in the job description of the role you’re looking for and your resume and see how closely they match essentially what the software is doing. It’s a little bit more complicated, but they’re just matching keywords. I mean, that’s really what they’re doing, but you do want to be careful. I mean, there’s an, there’s an art to it. You don’t want to, the human being is still gonna look at this document. So you don’t want to keyword stuff to the point that it looks ridiculous, like it was made here. So you do have to balance those two things.
Keith Wolf:
Okay. So with companies shifting to online interviewing this was already happening. I mean, there are plenty of companies that were already using and relying on online interviewing sometimes in place of a phone screen, sometimes in place of a, in person interview, but it’s just grown. But with the pandemic right now, and lots of folks are using zoom and other software. So what are some video interviewing tips that we can give folks Elizabeth?
Elizabeth Orea:
Sure. dress professionally, get ready in the morning or in the afternoon as if though you were going to get in your car to drive to that interview. So you want to, you know, your makeup, your hair, I mean, put cologne on perfume. If it makes you feel good. Cause it’s a confidence booster. Wear pants, not kidding. Don’t do pajama pants. Do you want to just feel like you’re in the interview? Make sure you’re in a room that’s clean, quiet. You’re in a place that there are not a lot of distractions of background. That’s not dark busy. Lighting is key. We had a prep call before this call. I had my blinds open and keep was like, I you’re, you’re bleeding into the sun. So, you know, there’s some adjustment to be done there. So with that being said, we had a prep call before this call to make sure that you guys y’all would be able to see us clearly do that as well.
Elizabeth Orea:
See if your mom can jump on, Hey mom, can you jump on zoom with me really quick on the other side? So you can tell me if I should, you know, situate my iPad this way. How does the lighting look practice there have your resume in front of you have a note pad and a pen in front of you so that you can take notes. If you can join the call early, expect technology issues as great as it is. I’ve had a lot of interviews in the last couple of weeks between clients and candidates where zoom hasn’t worked and you know, those really resourceful candidates have found the phone number of the hiring manager and been able to call and say, you know, where can I work? Can I call you now? Be expressive more expressive than you probably normally would be just because this, this is a different sort of interviewing and you know, they’re not able to kind of read your entire body language. They’ve only got from the neck up. So, you know, show your enthusiasm and just relax, have a conversation about the job. Remember that they’re not your you’re not interviewing them. They’re interviewing you. I mean, it goes both ways. So, you know, you, you want to make sure that they’re the right fit for you too.
Keith Wolf:
That’s great. Those are great tips. I think lighting is just one of the things that people sort of overlook. So just make sure the light is in front of you. In this case, I don’t have much control over it’s behind me, but when you can make sure it’s in front of you I’m going to put you on the spot, Elizabeth here, and we’re getting a question. And it’s, if I’m going to reach out to a recruiter, what is the best way to, to increase my odds of getting a response? I know you get flooded. Your inbox is flooded, text message, your voicemail, you get a lot of calls. You get a lot of applicants. You’re, you’re trying your best to get through everybody. What is the best way somebody can reach out to you at two to optimize their chances of getting a response
Elizabeth Orea:
You know, the voicemail, follow it up with an email. A lot of firms now are our number is connected to texting capabilities, shoot our main line, a text. You know, something that I I appreciate is when I get a I’m checking my voicemails and I see that I get an email pop up. Hi Elizabeth, this is Jessica. I just left you a voicemail. So that follow up really shows me, Oh, this is someone that I want to work with. So, you know, if you’re not hearing back from the initial voicemail, send the followup email. And you know, if you can just highlight it, you know, in the initial email, your background and what you’re looking for. So that if I’m not the right person that you need to be speaking with, this kind of goes back to making sure that you’re reaching out to the proper recruiter. I have a lot of candidates who just look up recruiter. I pop up Marie resources, they’re engineers.
Jessica Richardson:
I don’t work with engineers as much as I wish I did. That’s a way over my head. But if I see they’re in engineering, I’m going to think, Oh, I’m going to send them to Robert who is our fabulous engineering or cruder. And so just make sure you put what sort of job you’re looking for as well. So that it’s either me or I can get you to the right person, but I would say fall follow up. Alright. Perfect. Yeah.
Keith Wolf:
All right. So what are some tips for overcoming the over qualification concern? So we get this a lot. Jessica, what would your advice be?
Jessica Richardson:
Well, I can tell you from from a home industry perspective back when I used to recruit and when I used to hire when, when I’m looking for a job, sometimes it depends on the type of jobs. So some jobs have this nice growth path and you put them in and they’re tracked for this. And then some jobs are just, are just jobs. So there’s some jobs that are, that are entry-level or early level, and they don’t really have this big developed growth path. So when you have, and also when I placed somebody for a job, I want them to stay in it for a while. So while they ask him, where do you see yourself in five years? And things like that as an employer, when I place somebody in a job, I want them to stay in it for the next couple of years, because hiring and recruiting and interviewing takes a lot of time and effort and money.
Jessica Richardson:
So employers are typically concerned if they hire a much, much more qualified candidate than the raw cost for that, they won’t be longterm satisfied and they will leave. And sometimes that’s the case. If you’re trying to get your foot in the room, if you’re a 15 year professional, you’re trying to get your foot in at an entry level role. It’s not a match. I mean, you’re not going to get in through the applicant tracking system that said, there’s some good reasons for that. I’ve worked with with job seekers who have held high level roles, but they’re tired of the stress of it. And they’re tired of the hours of it. And they really just want to take a couple steps back because they like the hands on work and they want to do that for the next 10 years, because sometimes they’re seasoned or they just got in more than they want to do, and their life has changed and they need a different type of role and they’re ready to commit to that type of role.
Jessica Richardson:
So you need to actually reach out to somebody directly and yes, there’s a thing there. And that’s because it really is something that can, that can propel your chances of getting in that interviewing chair. And it’s also where a great cover letter can help. So you know, knowing why you want to stay in the role for the next three years, and if you’d be comfortable staying in that role for the next three years, as you develop and grow within our company is, is something you need to determine before you move, move forward with that to, to overcome the overall application concern. And then don’t feature, you know, if you have these huge, huge level of achievements that aren’t necessarily for that role feature, more of the achievements that would be on par or would show your commitment to working within a company versus leading a company. And, and like I said, reach out directly to somebody about that.
Keith Wolf:
And we, and we had a question come through sort of on this theme of tailoring your resume. So if we’re tailoring our resume for different types of positions, do employers get confused if your LinkedIn profile remains the same? So let me, let me just address that. I mean, it shouldn’t, it shouldn’t look like a different person. It shouldn’t look like a completely different candidate. I don’t think of it as a complete overhaul every time you’re, you’re, you’re tailoring your resume. You’re just switching up some of the accomplishments, some of the key words to that type of role. So, you know, what some candidates do, which I think is great is to have a master resume. And let’s say under a role that you’ve been in for five years, you may have 15 or 20 different things that you’ve done. Well, not all of those. First of all, it’s a lot of information for resumes should all go on your resume and not all those 15 to 20 things apply to every job pick or choose the six to eight things that may, and it’s still the same position. You’re still in the same role, and there’s going to be some overlap there, but it shouldn’t look like a different person and it’s not completely different. It’s just tailored.
Jessica Richardson:
And from a coaching perspective, think about who you are as a professional. If you had to highlight three things where you really add value to a company, whether you’re a problem solver or you are a process improver, or you are a really, really good at getting teams to collaborate towards a common goal, think about the ways that you would position yourself for any job and make you an asset to any job and really highlight those themes throughout your LinkedIn and your resume with some actual examples. And then all of a sudden, no matter what you’re applying for, you’re going to maximize those, those aspects, no matter what you go for. And that way it shows a common thread as you, as you shift towards different roles.
Keith Wolf:
Perfect. Thank you. Alright, so we have received this question. It may be the most common question that we got. I asked folks to submit a question if they wanted to, before they joined, when they’re registering for the, for the webinar, can you offer advice for those who may be somewhat older and in the market looking for a job? So, Jessica, what advice would you give somebody who’s on the more mature side,
Jessica Richardson:
Several things, if you’ve been in the same role, doing the same type of, so you’ve been a process engineer and you’ve been a process engineer or senior process engineer for 20 years. You really only need to feature the past 10 to 15 years of experience. And that’s somewhat that’s standard for resonates than standard for a resume for a very, very long time decades. That’s been the standard. So so that somewhat levels, the playing field right there is that you don’t have to feature 25 years. However, you may want to include that older experience. If you started out it at Dell or IBM or you know, Cargill or one of the really big companies and have a nice progression of growth there those 10 years where you did some amazing things that could position you uniquely for a job where somebody with only 10 years of experience might not be able to contribute at that.
Jessica Richardson:
So the key is to kind of look and determine whether your older experiences relevant and competitive, and if it is absolutely, don’t be afraid to include it. But you don’t want to include it and see if it’s basically the same over and over. And what I’ve seen throughout the game. And I’ve worked with, with executive and, and seasoned professionals from 25 years to 30 years of experience, and more, some of them are still highly competitive and sought after and, and really kind of are almost riding their own ticket. And the reason is they have taken steps throughout their career to maintain relevancy. So that’s continuing training and education. They’ve got multiple certifications and they’re not from 30 years ago, they’re from, you know, the last five years you know, the ones that were in software and did waterfall. And then all of a sudden they saw agile come through.
Jessica Richardson:
They were the first ones to get certified for agile. And when the next one that replaces agile, cause that’ll come, one of these days happens. They’re going to be the first ones to do that. So, so they’re really early adopters of, of these market trends and, and picking ones. Cause I have some where clients will learn to code, but coding it and part of what they need to do, the, the ones that are very relevant to what they want to do longterm and have application to that, to where their, where their role is going in the shifts in the industry, they maintain and grow their networks. They continue reaching out to people on establishing real, genuine connections, where they help others and others help them. And then pursuing opportunities like speaking or writing or, or webinars or whatever it is to establish themselves as a thought leader or subject matter expert that really does help them throughout their career. And they’re, they’re not struggling now. They’re, they’re just determining their next opportunity, not looking for it.
Keith Wolf:
Great. Great. Thank you. Just want to address a couple of questions. This person’s asking about oil and gas and going from that transferring to a different, to a different industry and there’s a significant salary average or a change in salary. And how do they know what that industry salary would be? A salary.com is a great website and you can run. I haven’t run out of searches. You know, I’ve used a lot of different searches in there. They’ve all been free, so you can use that. And then indeed go to indeed. And I believe it’s at the bottom of the website. I don’t have it open right now. There’s also a, a salary salary tool and it will show you what jobs for that type of role are paying. So those are two sources that are free that you can go to and use to get an idea of that.
Keith Wolf:
Another question you’ve only worked at one company for the last 18 years. What do you put on your resume? First of all, congratulations on your tenure. That’s amazing. So 18 years of one company, you know, it depends on the role, depends on what you’ve been doing. But I would say if you’re trying to show progression, then put the different roles that you’ve been in to show that you’ve been in a company for 18 years, but you haven’t been stagnant. You’ve been doing different things. And if you have different titles, put those different titles on your resume and show how you’ve moved up in the company. All right, let’s keep going. We are moving right along. We’ve got 15 minutes. So we’re going to do our best. We may, like I said, we may run over a little bit.
Speaker 5:
Alright. Tips for new grads. So the flip side of that sort of go from older or seasoned to new grads, entry level, job seekers. All right, Jessica, what advice would you have?
Jessica Richardson:
So this is such a tough time. And so it’s an interesting time for graduates. They aren’t even having graduate graduation, ceremonies and internships have them installed. And it’s really, really interesting. I was telling Keith, as we practiced when I started out one of my first jobs was really during the following nine 11. That’s kind of where my career started. And then when I got married and moved to South Carolina, I literally started job hunting right during the great recession. So I, to some extent, know a little bit of what you’re going through. And so will other people who have graduated at different times that people who graduated when Harvey hit or when Sandy hit and New Jersey, whatever, whatever the issue was that we’re all kind of in that same boat. And graduate’s going to face that on and off. So which may take a little longer to find the right time.
Jessica Richardson:
You may have to adjust your expectations and hiring maybe slower, but keep applying consider looking at different alternate ways to get involved. Maybe it’s a sideways job. I wanted to go into communications. So I actually took a job in marketing events and move forward from there. And the communications is I got the relevant experience that I could use to jump and then got a master’s in communications later on down the road when that became economically feasible. So always look for ways that you might can slide sideways into what you want rather than the direct path, if it’s not available consider temporary freelance or relevant volunteer work. And we put relevant there because all volunteer work is worthy. But to really go on a resume and make an impact, you want it to be something that relates to the organization.
Jessica Richardson:
So it may be like if, if the company is really into habitat for humanity, that would make an impact, or if you were doing social media for habitat, for humanity or whatever it is, and you wanted a social media role, then you would have direct experience to maintain skills and growth skills during this time check out sites like virtual vocations that specialize in remote roles, because they’re going to help you find the opportunities to get started right away with, with remote work. And that’s going to be reorganizations that know how to run that because it’s going to be a longterm viable remote job continuing developing your relevant skills. Like I said, I got the masters later down the road, but but you don’t want to go into more debt when everybody knows that, you know, you’ve just gotten through college and don’t necessarily have that monetary output, but things like learning new languages whether that’s a cultural language like Spanish or French or Chinese, or whether that’s you know programming language that would help you for, for for the type of role you’re going for, look at those kinds of opportunities.
Jessica Richardson:
And then there’s also like Coursera and some of those that have minimal cost training programs, and there’s some free certification. Google ad words is a free certification for people who might be interested in marketing, all of those kinds of things. Look at those, those opportunities. And then YouTube, the, the ultimate self tutorial, a website, a YouTube has, has all sorts of things.
Speaker 5:
We just touch on that just real quick. A lot of the software companies now have their own training programs that they put out for free. So whether it’s sales, loft, outreach, Salesforce, I mean, all these companies Google, as you mentioned, I mean, they’re hoping people use their software. You can just go directly to their website and look up how to use it. And it’s all free because they want you to adopt their software. And so you don’t even have to worry about going somewhere to pay. So those are all great skills to have. And employers really want that right now.
Jessica Richardson:
Yep. And we talked about dream employers, our layer that start reaching out to them to introduce yourself. They may not be hiring right now, but because they’re not hiring, they’re not getting a bunch of outreach and they’re not getting a bunch of resumes then. So it’s a really good time if they’re not furloughed. And you can find that by looking them up in the news, to reach out to a hiring manager and say, hi, I just graduated. And this is my skillset. And this is what I’m really passionate about and really would love to learn more and go with, and here’s some activities, you know, just a paragraph that introduces yourself and says, you know, I know you’re not hiring right now, but I’d love to talk to you and have an informational interview when, when you have time and if you, if you don’t hear back, you don’t hear back.
Jessica Richardson:
But what if you do, you know, it’s never going to hurt you. Then brush up, I was interviewing skills. And this is a, this is a tip for her executive job seekers as well. It seems like it’s easy to talk about yourself. This webinar we’ve had three practice runs because we wanted to make sure that we presented this information to you in the most helpful way. And you want to present, present your information to them and the most helpful way this shows how you would be an add to their organization, not just a laundry list of what you’ve done, they could get that from your resume. So if you, if that makes you nervous or you’re not quite sure how to do that, that’s when things like career coaching really come in handy because one or two interviewing sessions can really prepare you to be able to do that. And then finally stay hopeful, keep applying, put one foot in front of the other, you know, these kinds of things will happen. There will be setbacks and roadblocks and stumbling blocks throughout your career. And just when you think everything’s going great, it’s not going to go, right. Cause that’s just the nature of life. And being able to roll with those and come out stronger is going to really benefit you in the longterm with your career.
Speaker 5:
That was great, Jessica though, don’t give away our secrets. We just, we didn’t practice at all. We just rolled out of bed and we started we’re true professionals. Okay. right. How do I overcome gaps in my resume? Elizabeth, if you can take this one.
Jessica Richardson:
Sure. So gaps, gaps, and gaps right now during COVID. You know, I think a lot of hiring
Elizabeth Orea:
Managers are going to be really cognizant of the fact that there are going to be layoffs and it’s going to be tough to get people back to work quickly. So if it’s a gap that’s four months or less, you don’t really need to overcome those. That’s a typical job searching time. But if the gap, if the gap is more than 10 years ago, leave it off the resume. You really only want the past 10 years of your experience and the resume anyway. Otherwise, you know, when you’re in front of your recruiter or the hiring manager address the elephant in the room and on your resume. So this is where a cover letter can really come into play. I have had candidates put in parenthesis, their reasons for leaving or why there is a gap or, you know, took care of family.
Elizabeth Orea:
And, and that’s great too. It, it kind of helps me as a recruiter to see it quickly when I submit so T from a recruiter standpoint, when I submit candidates, I take those reasons off of the resume because I’m able to speak to, in my note that I sent to the client, you know, I’m able to address the gaps directly, but, you know, if I’m just looking at a resume, then you want to kind of have those there. If it’s something that’s not easily explained, this is when you want to call Jessica at resume spice, because she can really kind of help you craft your narrative. You know, cause we all have gaps in our resume and you know, it’s something that we all have to deal with and hiring managers are aware of.
Keith Wolf:
Perfect. Thank you. Alright. I been an only, sorry I’ve been in a couple of jobs for only a short period of time. Do I have to include them in my resume? How would you,
Elizabeth Orea:
Yeah, so this kind of goes back to that four month rule. So if they’re all cover a span of less than four months and they’re surrounding good tenure and it was just, you know, you left a job and then you took a couple of temporary jobs before you jumped back into that, then your next job, probably not, but that’s really where that four month role does come into play. Because if it’s a significant chunk of time, you do want to include it because you’re gonna find yourself having to explain that gap. Or sometimes if I see a gap that’s just, you know, three years I might not even call. So, and, and in those three years you were working for Murray resources and temping here and there because you know, it was during the recession. I always tell my candidates after they’ve worked three or four temporary assignments for us, that they can actually put Marie resources slash contract work.
Elizabeth Orea:
And then you know, that they did administrative receptionist, stuff like that. So it shows that you’ve been keeping busy, you’ve been active on the job market. I mean, that being said, you know, hiring professionals understand that bad experiences happen and they can happen more than once. So this goes back to working with a career coach if you need to, but, but I would, I would definitely it’s, it’s definitely situational. But more often than not, I want to know why there is a gap. And that’s one of the first questions I ask in an and so you want to be ready to address that
Speaker 5:
And that way you can address it with the hiring manager when it comes up and be an advocate. So we’ve got a question around salary questions during interviews, and we’re not going to talk about this. So I thought I would just give my response here. This person had one where they’re asked what they’re making, that they were told that they can opt out of that question. So in certain States, right now, you actually can’t ask candidates. What they currently make. Texas is not one of those States. So hiring managers, recruiters can ask that and recruiters ask it because we’re asked by the hiring managers, by the companies we’re asked that information. So that’s why we’re asking, right? So they want to know, and we’re not here to, on this call to change the world. We’re just here to tell you the reality of what we’re working with.
Speaker 5:
So you can, you can always opt out. I mean, there’s no requirements to tell people what you make. You don’t have to. Like I said, in some States they can’t ask the question, but here they still can. But maybe one way to sort of get around this question or at least to have it to push it back in the process is to say, you know, I’m very interested in this role. I’m sure that whatever salary is offered will be very fair and will line up with the expectations of the role and just leave it, leave it open ended. But at some point you may not be able to get around it, but you can try to push off the question a little bit if you’re concerned about it, anything to add to that Elizabeth or Jessica.
Elizabeth Orea:
No, I, I agree. I agree. You know, I do have some pushback sometimes when I’m asking for salary. So I just remember it is clients wanting to know, you know, if, if, if I’m presenting you at 60, but you last made 40, they’re going to want to know why they’re suddenly this $20,000 difference. And so when, when we ask you it’s really so that we can bet, you know, frame an advocate for you why we should put, you know, maybe you are at that point where you’re in your career, you’re ready for that next five K step up. And so it’s really so that we can kind of help tailor or tailor that response so that we can get you presented at the adequate salary range.
Speaker 5:
Alright, thank you. Okay. How can you tell if a company is truly hiring or not? So many job listings are never applied to, I think maybe that means replied to, but either way, I think we get the gist of it.
Elizabeth Orea:
Okay. Yeah. So really look at the recency of the listing. I, I said that earlier, but if, if, if what happens is when a company does a requisition for a job or they, they put, proposed it up, they get credits for however many months. So it might be up there for 60 days unless somebody actually takes it down. So sometimes you see roles that are over a month old and they just let them naturally expire. It’s not any intent on their part other than just hiring. There’s a lot of different moving parts. And so they’re trying to not have to move every single thing. And they know what’s going to naturally expire at 60 days and it could be something where they have a pipeline where they fill it regularly. So if, if something looks like it’s older, try to try to apply the stuff within the last few days or a week at study show that, like I said earlier candidates that apply.
Elizabeth Orea:
And I think it’s the first three days of the job listing actually are more likely to get the interview and be offered the job because they’re in that first set of resumes pooled. So that’s your best bet. So don’t wait. You’re like I saw a job listing and I want to go and have a resume company, do my resume to apply for a passport. Now we’ll get the resume company to do your, you do your resume for the next job, because right now you want to maximize your time to the best of your ability. If you see an older job that really looks interesting, reach out to somebody, find somebody in the company, call, whatever you need to do to say, Hey, is that job still available? They’ll tell you yes or no. And if they don’t call you back and they’re not available and they’re not easy to get ahold of might not be the best place to work anyway. So so I would just go to the company that I can get ahold of and find out information from. I’ll certainly, like I said, use LinkedIn to track down the company recruiter, the HR representative, or the department the department supervisor to say, Hey, I’m interested in this role and I’d like to apply to it and go ahead and send your materials if it’s a small business go ahead and just send everything to somebody. Cause sometimes you can track down that, that particular email.
Speaker 5:
All right, perfect. Okay. So we technically only have a couple of minutes left. We still got some slides to go through. So most of you are still with us. So as long as people are here, we’re going to keep going. So like I said, feel free to drop off. If you have to, we are going to make this available as a recording, as long as it recorded correctly, which hopefully it does, but we’re going to keep going. Alright. Should job seekers adjust their salary expectations? We’re just talking about salary. So Elizabeth, what’s your take right now?
Elizabeth Orea:
Yes, definitely. More than ever right now, flexibility is really key. Keep in mind, keep in mind that budgets have completely changed. And the companies who still have employees that are working, a lot of those employees have actually had to take 10 to 20% or even greater salary reductions to use a real life example before the pandemic, we were working on a requisition at, you know, a fairly high salary pandemic hit. They asked us to help a search. It just reached out last week and said, we’re ready to go. However, we’re having to pay substantially less. And it’s only because of budget. And so just remember that it’s not that, you know, your, your merit isn’t that it’s not your value. It’s really bottom line. These businesses are now going to have to start running leaner, meaner, and really think about you know, the bottom line. So just focus on getting in the role, demonstrating your value as things to pick back up. They’re really gonna notice those folks that, you know, came in and showed, okay, this is what I can do. So yes, be very flexible right now with salary expectations.
Speaker 5:
Yeah. I mean, that’s not an easy answer, but it’s the truth right now. I mean, most of our clients, the folks who have not been laid off, they’ve taken those salary cuts. So the market has just adjusted and it’ll readjust the other way, but that’s the market we’re in right now. Right. All right. So let’s keep going. Tips on how to network on LinkedIn. So Jessica is a LinkedIn expert. Definitely are. So give us, give us some tips.
Jessica Richardson:
So first of all, networking is something you do now to help you three years from now. So I have people contact me and they say, how can I build my network? And I’m like, well, you can start now, but I can’t give you results. Now your best step right now is to reach out to a human being within the hiring department of the role that you’re interested in and, or, or the recruiter or the HR person for that particular role and get to them. As far as networking with people that is a two way street. So sometimes people think about networking as what I, what can I get from this? And what can I, can I get from it longterm? Think about what can I give long term, if there’s nothing that you could benefit somebody, and you’re just in it to, to take back, you know, benefit.
Jessica Richardson:
That’s the ones that are relationships. So it’s just like a friendship. Your network connection needs to be somebody that you’re willing to help in the long run and they need to be helped, you know, willing to help you. So look for people who are active on the platform, the thing about LinkedIn is there’s a good portion of people who just update a profile and never look at it again. Like I said, it may be even be years out of date. So reaching out to them, people go, Oh, well, I reached out to the home manager on LinkedIn and they never got back to me. Odds are the hiring manager very well could not be even checking their LinkedIn. So I’m because I’ve worked with them, I’ve worked with the executives and they don’t, they don’t always even look at it. So they’ll have like, I can, yeah, if they don’t.
Jessica Richardson:
So, so so what you need to do is when you go into their profile page the ones that make their activity public, so you can see what their activities they’re liking you commenting on posts, if they’re actually posting of their own and writing articles and things like that, and sharing things, those are the people that you want to establish connections with. And they’re also the most likely to be able to willing to connect with people that they don’t necessarily know. So beyond yes, necking with everybody that, you know, within your network that you’d be willing to be a referral for. And that you think might give you a good referral then the other option would be sorry, the Marine or the resume spice right. Line run on me. So so once you reach out to them send a tailored message and let them know Hey, I’m interested in connecting in that way.
Jessica Richardson:
You’re not just out of the blue and tell them why. So once you’ve reviewed their activity, you can say, Hey, I’ve seen, you’ve been posting on process improvement. I’m really interested in that. I think we have some, some shared interests and I’d love to, you know, connect and get to know you further just keep professional and and that that’s all you have to do. And then just like, and comment on their things regularly. That’s how you grow your LinkedIn network. It’s not just having a page, just sitting there that, that only helps when a recruiter wants to connect with you, but there’s some, some research that shows the more active you are on the the platform, the more likely you are to show up in search results for by recruiters because it’s an active page also engage with the people, walking comment on what they say, and when I’m say professionally, that means that’s not the time to disagree, even if you disagree and you can disagree professionally.
Jessica Richardson:
That’s not necessarily a good look when you’re trying to make a connection that can that can help you with your career. So unless you’re qualifying or adding something that would be useful or or finding areas of mutual agreement, that would be what we would consider professional interaction with people that you want to be a network connection. And always, if you do disagree with somebody on the platform, or do you have something like that, you should always be respectful and you should never name call. Unfortunately, we that very regularly on LinkedIn and it can affect whether you get chosen for a job. And then as far as maintaining your network, all you have to do to maintain a network is very, very simple, other than locking the common a, your every once in a while, the five or 10 people that are really you think could be the best resource to you, that, that you could also be a resource for you. Just message them every once in a while. You know, once a month check in, not now would be a good time to check in and see how people are doing. They would appreciate the outreach.
Speaker 5:
That’s great. That’s great. We have another question about LinkedIn. What about recommendations on LinkedIn? Do employers look at them? I say, yes, they do look at them. I can’t recall where there was, there was something else that LinkedIn used to have that wasn’t as helpful, but recommendations are looked at. And I would say if, you know, if you’ve got 5,000 connections and no recommendations, you know, that I’m not saying it’s a red flag, but you know, let’s say you’re in sales. There’s nobody come on LinkedIn and taking the initiative to give you a recommendation that could look it look a little bit strange, and there’s nothing wrong with asking people for recommendations. And you should people that you either currently work with or worked with in the past, you know, ask them to give you a recommendation on LinkedIn. They make it really easy to do that.
Speaker 5:
So I would say yes do that there’s some questions around your viewing tips. I’m just going to put a plugin, I think, use for interview questions, things like that. Resume spice and Murray resources, both have very robust blogs. And we talk about this stuff all the time. So go to Marie resources.com, go to the blog, read those tips, same thing with resume spice. We do interview preparation as part of the service that we offer. So we talk about all the time. There’s lots of free materials on our website, so go check those out if you have a chance. All right. Yeah. So what are some resume? We’ll say one of the most important questions for here. So folks who have hung on this long, and most of you are still there. Jessica, what are some resume tips?
Jessica Richardson:
Sure. So this could be a whole webinar in and of itself, but just kind of a quick and dirty overview. If there’s, you know, you have six seconds and I know you’ve probably heard that, or many probably heard that it is the absolute truth and there is nothing nefarious about it. Cause I think some people think, find that insight that they find that insulting. It’s not that nobody ever reviews your resume carefully. It’s that when, you know, when I, as a hiring manager of a restaurant receiving 50 to a hundred resumes for a job I had to be able to quickly review those recruiters on the other hand, an internal or external, maybe reviewing a thousand. So so they have to be able to quickly scan. So I always laughed. And I said, you know, I had the I had the top part, the top file of resumes, the second style of resumes, which is the okay candidates.
Jessica Richardson:
And I had the random round file. And the real file would be the trash can. So your whole goal is to be in one of those top two piles of candidates. And ideally that first, that first pile. So so in that six seconds, that’s what we’re doing. We’re saying, okay, this is a great candidate. This is an okay candidate. This is not gonna match. This is a great candidate, okay, candidate, great candidate not gonna match. And then those great candidates they get re-read we look at those and we’re like, Ooh, this, this person really does have what we need. And this person really is. And that’s a common Liz. Liz does not listen to you. The same thing. That’s just what high managers, recruiters, and HR people, all of us have to learn to do to be able to quickly parse out who is a good candidate, which is why your resume needs to be less, is more, you don’t ever need a seven to 15 page resume.
Jessica Richardson:
And we see those regularly. And that’s one of the things we work at resume sites. It needs to be a couple of pages, three pages ish, max and, and, and less the younger, the newer candidate, you are, you probably only need one page. So it needs to be clean, clear, simple. The things that the re that, that the job requirement is calling out for, and that, that your, that your type of role calls up for those need to scream off the page with some metrics about how you did them. Well bullet the accomplishments. We went to this really highly stylized resume, like in the early mid two thousands. When, when Microsoft word developed all those templates, ignore every one of the templates, unless it’s a very simple bulleted format, no text boxes, those don’t get imported headers and footers don’t get imported.
Jessica Richardson:
Colored fonts may not get read correctly. I’ve had clients that were submitting things with their, their contact information in the text box, which means it was not even getting reported. So they were just getting things without titles or information on them charts, those kinds of things. We don’t care about talking. We just want to look at what you did, who you did it with and how you did it very well. And during what timeframe, if you’ve got those and in your contact information, you’ve got those on your resume. The content is key. They’re a standard normal sized font. It doesn’t to be 14 point font in, please don’t make it six point font. I’ve had clients try to cram like 15 years of experience onto a page by making it six point font at that one page thing is an arbitrary, well, you don’t have to do that.
Jessica Richardson:
And they were doing themselves a disservice. So it was really nice to be able to help them present their, their, their experience in a much more strong way simply by making it where it was readable. So typical rule of thumb would be 10 to 11 point font cause some bots are naturally bigger than others. So for like a time to enrollment, that would be 11 for an area that would be a 10 a watch your watch your tenses current roles should be in contents. Past walls should be in past tense. A trick that some copies have some candidates and some job seekers is you can mix current and past tense on your, your present role and the way you do that is if you’re presently doing it, or it’s a responsibility that’s ongoing, but you’ll continue to do then you would keep that in the current tense, but if it’s an achievement that has done and over with, then you would put that in the past tense and put the metrics about how it was successful.
Jessica Richardson:
A quick, a quick tip. The past tense of lead is led. So which is led. So a lot of times we see candidates spell led, like they led an initiative as Lea D. And that’s the weight. That’s why you’re weighing something down. So unless you want to intimate that you’re weighing down the efforts of your team then L E D for past tense led and it is a very common error. You strong action verbs, you generated, you grew, you expanded, you leave, you drive, you spearhead, you manage, you oversee, you transform whatever that looks. It’s like the higher level, well that you are, you know, manage. It’s a very hands on function. So you can manage something. That’s when you are our hands on daily in the weeds on, on the managing something, as you move into strategic leadership roles, your resume needs to actually reflect that.
Jessica Richardson:
So it’s more of overseeing and steering and guiding and shaping and transforming. Those are where you see those kinds of changes. So you can very much indicate your level just through the verbs that you use for what you did. As far as the knows that do not dues, no typos. I can tell you if you resume at the time, Oh, you’ll still get the interview. Nine times out of 10, a typo is not going to stop you. I’ve seen high level executive resumes that, that have a typo in I’m in, and they’ve gotten roles with that, that job. But if there’s a, if it’s all throughout and you have multiple typos and really bad ones I’ve seen managers felt manger things like that that will get you excluded because they want somebody that knows how to present themselves professionally fancy fonts.
Jessica Richardson:
I had a client or not. She wasn’t a client. I had it. Hey job seeker contacted me one time for a review and her name was in pirate font. So unless you’re Johnny Depp, your name doesn’t need to be empire on industry standard, professional font, pictures, and address, especially this is a specially directed to our, our our candidates and job seekers from other countries. It’s very common to include things like marital status, full address you know, chair, children religion, birthday and pictures, none of that, you know, in America. And, and, and Canada and it’s, and a lot of the Western hiring environments, but especially the U S no pictures, no no address and none, no personal information. We want to know strictly professional information. And then also things like vague language and jargon can really I’ll be off putting to somebody reviewing your resume.
Jessica Richardson:
So right now I’m actually working with a candidate who’s who’s resume. You couldn’t tell what the person did because it was so vague because they wanted, you know, to be open for multiple types of opportunities. And I think somebody asked that earlier, you know, how do you show your ability to be in multiple types of opportunities? Well, if you take out everything that you do and just talk about it in vague terms, then you’ve wound up in this limbo and nobody knows where to place you when you don’t, if you are out of place, you can’t be, you can’t, you can’t find a home. So so you need to make sure that your resume is specific to what you did. Now. One caveat to that is if you were in food manufacturing and you want to go into, you know, manufacturing a hands on product and you’re going to be overseeing a warehouse.
Jessica Richardson:
You don’t necessarily have to put you on food manufacturing. If you’re trying to go, you know, expand your horizons, because it’s very much a like, versus like environment. So you’re still men managing the health, safety, environmental operations of the factory. And that’s what you want to focus on, but you’re still being very specific in your warehouse, factory management role, you know, leading teams of a hundred to have operational excellence. That that’s how you can be specific without having to pigeonhole yourself in an industry. And then also minimize jargon. You know, keywords are important, but they need to be surrounded by context, which is what you did, how you did it in your particular approach. If you just keyword stuff, it comes across also things like HSSE health, safety in environmental health, safety, and environmental. Those, those might be well known in your field, but if you’re looking outside your field, it may not be well known. So think about your audience and HR person may not know very specific acronyms while a hiring manager may. So I would scrub it of those and spell out anything. That’s not commonly known like ROI for return on investment or a CEO for chief executive officer, those kinds of things that people just just know, those are, those are fun to keep. Wow. This could that,
Speaker 5:
Yeah, that could be a whole webinar, you know, so much on this topic. I’m just gonna address a couple of questions related to the resumes. One person asked, does this mean we have to switch to a functional resume format versus chronological format. I’m going to answer that one because I feel very passionate about this. Do not use a functional resume. You’re not fooling anyone, right? So hiring managers, HR folks, they all look at a functional resume as though somebody is trying to hide some information, high Gates, high cure gaps. It’s not doing you. Whoever came up with this format to try to hide gaps is just doing folks that just service. So please, we have blog posts just on this particular question. So please use a chronological format. It’s better to show a gap and address it than it is to try to hide it.
Speaker 5:
One person asked if we were paid by LinkedIn, because we’re talking about LinkedIn so much. That’s a really easy answer. I wish we were paid by LinkedIn. It’s the opposite. We pay LinkedIn a lot to use their tool as recruiter. So no recruiters and all hiring managers at this point, LinkedIn is just part of, part of our tool. This is one of many tools that we use, but no, we, we it’s the other way around. We pay for the privilege of using LinkedIn. All right. Let’s keep going. We really don’t have time to go into this. Let me just say, resume spice.com. If you want to go and look at samples, this is what a sample resume would look like on our side. So you just go to the resume spice.com website and you’ll look at entry level examples, professional examples, executive examples. We have those laid out. So hopefully that is helpful. This is a real candidate. The, the names change and the companies have changed, but this person, and some information has changed, but this person use our executive resume service and got the role. So should I change my resume for every position that I applied for? Or should it just be one page? We sort of talked about the first part let’s talk about, we actually talked about both of these, but Jessica, if you just want to address these real quick to be careful,
Jessica Richardson:
This is, this is an easy one. Yes, you should take 10 to 15 minutes to tailor. Now, if you find a good, if you’re in sales and you have some very, very specific skills that are going to be used for every single role, you have less tailored to do than if you’re looking for like a role as content manager or a marketing manager, and you have different focuses. So it really just depends, but 10 to 15 minutes is a good role for the roles that you really want to make sure that you’re tailoring for those. As far as the resume link, whoever came up with that one page resume, I think that as much bull, it never existed. And it’s not a thing. You will find a hiring manager here or there. That’s like, Oh, look at it. If it’s more than one page, ignore them.
Jessica Richardson:
You don’t wanna work for them. Anyway. so anyway for new graduates one page that is pretty much a hard and fast rule, you do not have more than a page worth of information, unless you’re just to find stuff. And now you may have done some graduate work and things out of your graduate work, but even then you, they, the, the, the higher managers wanting to a detailed list of everything you did with your graduate work, cause it just shows you can be taught. And if you have a high level of knowledge coming in, they just want to say that you did it. So just include your dissertation or whatever. You don’t have to include every the abstract of the dissertation. Two to five years, one to two pages six to 10 years, two pages over 10 years, two to three pages.
Jessica Richardson:
That is a general rule. I have worked with 25 year executives that had an amazing one page resume because that’s all you needed to show the stuff that they had done. Cause it was just so big. You just put it on a page and said, here here’s your, it is. And and also it was supporting them more than more than getting them in the door. And then again, I’ve worked with five-year technology programmers and things like that that needed a three page resume because of the amount of technical expertise that they had, that we had to put all the certifications and all that you don’t want to cut out experience just to put in certification. So if you need a separate page for those, for certifications, publications, all those things do not. Don’t worry about that. You know, two pages, when we say two pages of experience, two pages for your experience of the additional things, you could have a portfolio and another page, et cetera.
Speaker 5:
All right, let me, let me clear up a question that we had. So somebody’s asking if they’re looking for someone who li, who is near in vicinity, should they not know your address on the resume? They just need to know the city and state, right. And zip zip. So they don’t need to know your actual street address the number. So you don’t need that on, but yes, the city, state and zip and somebody else asks a question. If, if you put somebody else’s address, let’s say you are moving to Austin and you know, you’re moving to Austin and your mom lives in Austin and you put your mom’s address. Well, what do they want to see you? I mean, it should be somewhere. If you’re gonna put an address, it has to be somewhere that you can be very quickly, right? You gotta be able to get to Austin the next day and you are going to move there for sure. We’re not trying to trick anyone that I’m in a, I’m in an area we’re saying I’m in an area when I’m not, I’m only gonna be able to make it there in a couple of weeks, if you’re for sure moving Austin, put the address or put the city, state and zip and then make sure you can get there as soon as possible for the interview, if it’s going to be an in person.
Jessica Richardson:
And I think like people get really nervous when they get the job. Oh my gosh, I have to be immediately available. You can ask for two days. So if it, if they contact you on Thursday is perfectly acceptable to say I’m available to interview on Monday. And then that gives you the weekend. Or if they call you on Monday, it’s available. It’s perfectly acceptable to say I’ll be there on Wednesday. So maybe you have to pay extra for the plane ticket, but you can get in there and have time to get prepared and do what you need to do. Right.
Speaker 5:
Perfect. Okay. Let’s keep going. Okay. Should I use a cover letter? What are some tips that Jessica give us some tips on this? Yes, I, you should always use
Jessica Richardson:
A cover letter. So when they do research a lot of times you hear about is about a 50 50 split. So if you, yeah, so 50% may not read or may not expect it, but 50% who do read it are going to be more swayed by the fact that you have it. Recruiters are less likely to be the people who are, Oh my goodness, I need a cover letter. And that’s really for the hiring manager. So, so make sure that you know, that when you put it together, you need to address the hiring manager’s name. Always not the recruiter, the hiring manager looked on LinkedIn, find out who the hiring manager would be and do that. So what I always say is a well-written cover now is poorly written that don’t, if you need to make sure it’s written well, cause they could keep you from getting interviewed, but a well-written cover letter will never hurt you, but it could help you.
Jessica Richardson:
So you can put hiring managers, nobody’s really, you know, going nuts about whether you have your name on it or not, but it it’s, it’s a nice touch. And for the hiring manager to see their name on it, it’s an immediate boost. It’s about the company. What can you do for the company? So a lot of times I get people that they’ve sent me one that they’ve written and it’s like, I have this and I have that and I’m desk and I’m looking for this. And and that is great. You need to, you have needs that need to be met, but as a hiring manager, they’re reading it exactly like you just wrote it, what I have needs that are made it need to be met. So how can you meet their needs and grow longterm within the company and provide value.
Jessica Richardson:
So think about that, you know, and then the interview is where you start talking about some of the needs that you have and making sure they’re a match for the first. You want to show them what you can add for them, express your excitement and passion and include your con con contact information. And then customized, customized customize. You can have a base cover letter, which is kind of like what we build for clients, if we’re not doing a very specific role and what they can do is go and look at some of the specifics, like the areas of focus or the actual introduction to really tailor it to that accompany. You know, I see that you are expanding to three different States. In my past roles. I’ve really helped with expanding a company presence and market presence. And this is how I did it. A couple of examples. We’d love to talk to you about it. And that transforms a basic cover letter because you’re going to be wanting to do things where you do growth and expansion anyway and to intent, transforms it into a tailored outreach. And then, you know, if you were referred to the role, you can indicate that you refer to the role and that’s going to be something where you attach it to somebody who might, that might be some way to get you into the role. I mean, the interview that,
Speaker 5:
Yeah, I mean, we find that that’s always helpful. I mean, there’s so many in the company who referred you, if you can put their name know, then somebody could walk down the hall or give them a call and talk about you. It’s just a way to separate you. Not everybody’s going to have that, but if you have that, I’m surprised by how many people don’t mention that when they
Jessica Richardson:
Right. Right.
Speaker 5:
Alright. Jessica again, so what are some online resources besides LinkedIn for professors
Jessica Richardson:
Quite literally 800 million of them. I think that was in the last figure. I saw career builder, ladders and deeds that recruiter glass door, monsters, there’s industry specific ones like dyes for it, or AMA job boards for marketing your, your, your professional organizations will have on Sherm for HR. Also a really, really good source is your collegiate alumni job boards. Also you can use Google if you’re not married to one different site. The way that I work when I work with clients to help them narrow down searches is I’ll look in their area just in Google and it aggregates from all the different sites. So sometimes you get some of the stops specific sites like the government sites and things that you wouldn’t necessarily know know to search for on your own, just by searching the type of title. So I might say sales manager, job Houston, and it’ll aggregate, and I can do each job. And then there’s a employer list on the left that I can tailor for location and they posted. And I’ll all of those good filters.
Speaker 5:
So let’s just pull up what you’re talking about on Google. So if you just walk us through this,
Jessica Richardson:
So this is sales job Houston, you could also say sales manager job. The more specific you are, the less results you’ll get, but the more focused results we’ll get. So this is kind of a big compilation to a sales rep. Amazon’s looking for an intercept enterprise sales rep. You’ll see they posted six days ago. So it’s a pretty recent role. Then there’s a virtual sales for what MGM Houston that’s over a month ago. And so that may not be an active role anymore. So I would, I would actually reach out to somebody before I applied, but I would have no hesitation applying to Amazon enterprise sales representative right now, because they’re an essential business and they are absolutely hiring for that role.
Speaker 5:
Yep. And this is where you’re talking about where you could filter up here at category title, location.
Jessica Richardson:
Yep. And then I’ll say you can do the job alerts up at the top so that it Google alert she every day or every week, I think for the
Speaker 5:
Yeah, you can set it up by almost any filters. So if you want to wake up in the morning and get alerts, when certain jobs have posted, you can do that. You don’t have to just manually check through all every day and something else, speaking of Google. So, you know, a lot of us may go to, well, we all go to Google really every day, but you know, you may look at the results and say, well, I never click on the ads. I would look at these ads right now. So let’s just say, you’ve, you’ve punched in, you’re doing a search for Houston sales jobs. Well, let’s cut me right here is paid an ad in this environment right now to find people and there’s LinkedIn, they’re everywhere. And then here’s Wells Fargo. I mean, they are paying to find folks. So, you know, when you’re talking about people who have a job opening right now, they’re not posting, they’re keeping an eye on their ad dollars right now. And if they don’t have an opening right now, they’re not posting these ads. So you will see that just like any other search on Google, go to the top, look at who’s hiring for a certain type of role and apply if it, if it’s a good fit for you. All right. So speaking of companies that are hiring right now, Elizabeth, as a recruiter, what are you saying?
Elizabeth Orea:
We’re seeing a lot of essential employers still hiring that can include, especially in Houston, a lot of oil and gas companies are kind of starting to ramp back up gig and delivery. So favor Uber eats, or, you know, look at that. That’s just kind of in between grocery stores and I’m not just talking grocery stores like checker, but we had a large grocery store distribution. So they’re doing like the picking and the packing because, you know, when we were going through the state home orders specifically here in Houston, it was a lot of curbside pickup. And so they’re having to make sure there were warehouses were stocked technology, utilities, healthcare, and finance. We’re starting to see some of those pick back up as well. And so I think just kind of keeping keeping the news on, that’s really kind of telling us what’s coming through.
Speaker 5:
Yeah. If you want to just look at a list of the types of companies that are hiring, you can Google essential employers, Harris County. They actually put on a list. This is when they were telling companies who can open and who couldn’t. So most companies at this point, most companies are open in some way. They’re either working remotely or folks are in the office and more and more are coming back to the office. But the essential employers are more likely to be those who have to be working. They have essential services, they are hiring. So I don’t have the link handy right now, but if you Google essential employers, Harris County, essential employers, Texas, you will come upon those companies that are doing that.
Speaker 5:
All right. And we’re just about done. So here’s some additional sources. You know, we have some links to our own jobs. So open jobs, jobs dot Murray resources.com. This is all real time. So if we’re working on a job, it is here. So if you call us and ask us what jobs we have, we can tell you over the phone, but you can also just in your, in your pajamas and every day, just check the open jobs there sample resumes. We’ve got to tell, we talked about that. You’ve got our website, resume spice.com. You can check those out tons of free tips on resumes, LinkedIn, cover letters, everything we talked about today, we write a lot of information about, and so you can, you can look at that. And then if you’re the type of person who likes visual information, we’ve actually recorded some videos for, for folks who were kind enough to let us use their resumes as Guinea pigs, you know, they send us their resumes and they said, you can put them up on YouTube and give me feedback to it.
Speaker 5:
And the only criteria for that is that they were okay as far as sharing that with everybody. So this is not a very easy link to follow, but if you go to YouTube and punch in a resume spice, you’ll get to it. All right. So we are going to, we are going to answer it. We’ve got 60 plus questions we’re going to, I mean, there’s no way we can get to all of them. And I can’t do that to Jessica and Elizabeth today, but let’s see how many we can continue to answer here. Let’s see,
Jessica Richardson:
Keith, I seek one on the zip code that I’d like to quickly answer if that’s okay. Okay. So somebody asked Louis asked, why is zip, why put in your zip code? Could you put in greater Houston, Texas, if you live in Katy? The reason they say zip is because the recruiters actually are looking. So if you’re uploaded in the deed or in LinkedIn, what they’re going to do is they’re gonna look for roles within like a 30 mile radius of the zip code of the company, because of just that they won’t candidates live in the area. Typically, so they’ll, they’ll use that zip code. So if you’re looking within your area and within that 30 miles, you can put greater Houston area and then just put your KT zip. That’s fine. That’s the key. And then the other thing is they do want to see where somebody is from. So, so when you start leaving out things, it looks like there’s some intentional reason. You’re just leaving things out. And so they like to have all the information presented to them, just like you would so you can make an informed decision.
Speaker 5:
Perfect. Okay. Thanks for answering that. And we have another question about, I was laid off due to COVID is a best practice to update my status on LinkedIn as looking for opportunities, or does it not, does that look like a negative to potential employers and that I’m not currently employed Jessica? What’s your, what’s your thought on that? And, and Elizabeth, if you want to weigh in as well,
Jessica Richardson:
I don’t like to put currently seeking opportunities. Simply because it’s a vague thing. What I would say is I would, yeah, you can put that the role in it because it did and you can put Y if you want it want to, but I think it’s pretty evident that at this point in time, if anybody who had the role in the last two or three months, we’d mostly, most people will know why. But if you want to put in your summary after your summer, you can put a statement I’m currently seeking roles in this type, these, these two or three titles. Now LinkedIn allows you to do that with the recruiter outreach as well. So you don’t have to make it public if you don’t want to. But it certainly, it doesn’t hurt. You know, to say that you’re, that you’re currently seeking
Speaker 5:
No, look at you, Elizabeth, but on the title itself, if you put seeking opportunities and that is your, that is your title, right? That’s your space to put no, I’m a marketing manager. Right? So just keep that in mind, if that’s what, that’s, what a recruiter is going to see first looking for opportunities, but they have no context of, you know, your industry or your function. So, sorry, Elizabeth,
Jessica Richardson:
It’s kind of just piggyback on what Jessica said, not having it as your title, but there should be a filter in LinkedIn now where you can choose for it to show up in. So I know that
Elizabeth Orea:
I run searches and LinkedIn gives me the option for candidates that have clicked the filter of telling recruiters that I’m looking now. And that does minimize how many responses I get, but I know that those candidates are those that are more than likely going to respond to me. So you want to make sure you have that filter checked off.
Speaker 5:
Perfect. All right. What kind of followup is appropriate if you’re in the middle of the interview process and employer just shut down temporarily how often as a recruiter Elizabeth with, would you say somebody should be reaching out
Elizabeth Orea:
If they’re in the middle of the interview process?
Speaker 5:
I’d just say in general, this is a pretty specific question, but let’s just say they’re in the process with an employer or they’re in the process of the recruiter and they hadn’t heard anything. How often does
Elizabeth Orea:
I think once a week I would maybe start, that could be part of your checklist that you put together that you’re doing every week, once a week, reach out to your recruiter. Hey, this is Elizabeth. Just wanted to check in. I haven’t heard from you on ABC position. I think once a week, you know, and, and remember to also give your recruiter or the hiring manager, some grace and you know, they’re suddenly we find ourselves working from home and being kindergarten, first grade, third grade teachers. And so just the same way, we’re kind of, you know, asking for grace, remember to give that back.
Speaker 5:
Perfect. I think I think we’ve gotten to most of them and there, a lot of these, lot of the questions have been answered and I know folks joined in different periods. So I would go back and just look at the webinar and just, you may have missed it. People are asking about career gaps and if there are more seasoned candidate and those things were addressed frequent job changes. So a lot of that stuff was, was already addressed earlier. And I don’t, I don’t want to repeat that for the folks who have been here. I think let me just answer one more because I see it’s a little bit of a unique question. If they’re coming from another country and somebody has experienced, they’ve only been in this country a couple of years, should they include the experience from their previous country?
Speaker 5:
And I would say yes, right? Otherwise you’re going to look like an entry level. There’s nothing wrong with that, but you’re going to look like an entry level candidate when you’re not you’re, you’re going to have a lot of relevant experience. They just happens to be in a different country. So yes. Do include that. Okay. Well with that our 60 minutes was actually 94 minutes. So for that, I apologize, but I, I huge thank you to Jessica and Elizabeth. I really appreciate them doing this. I asked them to do this for me, and they both agreed to, and then next thing you know, we had 500 people and I think, you know, it was a lot to ask for them. They do a lot of preparation. So both of you. Awesome job really appreciate you. Thank you so much for doing this.
Elizabeth Orea:
Thank you. Thank you.
Speaker 5:
All right. Thank you. Everybody who joined, we will be making the slides available as well as the recording. So hopefully this was helpful and if we get good feedback to it and maybe we’ll do another one, we’ll get specific about resumes or LinkedIn cover letters. We’ll go in a little bit more detailed. So thanks so much. Thanks for being here.
Elizabeth Orea:
Bye.