Economic insecurity will continue

Many employees feel less secure than they did 3-10 years ago. While the end of the Recession will reduce the level of panic, longer-term trends will continue to reshape the relationship between employee and employer. Companies are being squeezed by globalization and competitive pressures caused by technological advances. Companies need to be increasingly nimble to survive. The ramifications of this to you as the employee?

• 1 in 2 employees has been with their employer less than 5 years *
• The average job tenure is 2-3 years
• The top 10 jobs in demand in 2010 did not exist in 2004 *
• The US Dept of Labor estimates that today’s students will have 10-14 jobs by the age 38

Strategies to gain control

To thrive in this climate, you need to be flexible to the company’s current crisis and simultaneously work harder to maintain alignment for your long-term goals. Establish yourself as the preferred resource by studying the voice of the customer (the employer in this case.) Anticipate what the employer might need in 6 months by carefully monitoring the industry. Network across the company and industry so you are always top of mind. Place the team’s goals over yours.

Does this remind you of anything? The most successful employees look very much like a vendor. If you consider the actual duration of today’s permanent jobs, we are all in contractor-like relationships now. Behaving more like a contractor or vendor in the future is the key to increased success and security.

I didn’t invent this concept, Lance Morrow first wrote about it in 1993:

“America has entered the age of the contingent or temporary worker, of the consultant and subcontractor, of the just-in-time work force – fluid, flexible, disposable. This is the future. Its message is this: You are on your own. For good (sometimes) and ill (often), the workers of the future will constantly have to sell their skills, invent new relationships with employers who must, themselves, change and adapt constantly in order to survive in a ruthless global market.” Lance Morrow, “The Temping of America,” Time, March 29, 1993

I am concerned that 17 years later we have not listened to prophets like him. We still act as if the world of the 1950s and happy-ending Jimmy Stewart movies is going to return “when the recession is over.”

What to do if in transition

1. Understand that any role you target today will likely morph considerably over the next 2 years. Don’t limit your pitch to so narrow a target role that a hiring manager cannot see other ways to use you as a department evolves. It is true a hiring manager prefers a perfect fit for the short term but most good hiring managers also consider the long term – or consider their staff easily replaceable.
2. Know enough about yourself to know where you are really most marketable and develop the pitch to demonstrate it. You need to show flexibility but not suggest you are a commodity. Instead, present yourself as a very precious, high potential asset to employers where that is realistic. If you are an intrapreneur, flaunt the added revenue you can generate.
3. Have a long-term goal that is flexible enough to accommodate short-term realities (no more specific than “Be one of the best salespeople in this industry.”)
4. Develop and sell your soft skills. Network constantly. Not only are 70-80% of hires are made through networking and referrals in the “Hidden Job Market” but soft skills are valued more in the hiring process than technical as long as minimums for technical skills are met.
5. Create buzz to support your exceptional expertise versus other available resources. (I have done this successfully with a number of clients, and a lovely example is the case study for Sylvia. She had even been out of the industry 3 years and rejoined it at a considerable increase in pay!)
6. Be open to contract. Employers do not see much difference between the two and contract is easier to get approved.

If currently employed

1. If you are already actively working, focus on the projects where you will be valued more, where your skills are most unique and mission critical. Have the courage to move away from a project or job you don’t love. If you don’t love a role, the employer probably will not consider you “first string” if the company reorganizes.
2. Concentrate on what is best for the project and company, even if it requires short-term personal sacrifice. Reach outside of your job description, contributing ideas and offering assistance to the larger team. This may challenge the current reporting structure and job definitions of others (like your boss) but encourage them to join you.
3. Expand your networking and reinforce your brand value across the organization. Maintaining influence over the larger organization makes it easier to get things done and be a change agent. It may provide security in a re-organization.
4. None of us know what role we will be in tomorrow. “Be prepared.”

If you want to read more on this subject, try William Bridges, Job Shift: How to Prosper in a Workplace Without Jobs, 1994, Perseus Books

* http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UIDLIwlzkgY&feature=player_embedded

Bad news folks! This kind of resume doesn’t work when there are many job applicants to choose from unless you have a very strong recommendation from someone the hiring manager trusts. The result is a generic or commodity pitch that gets lost in a tall pile of applications. Without a strong recommendation the job seeker may, at best, receive a phone screening from HR, which has a low probability of maturing to a deeper discussion.

Many of these phrases are more job description than superlative. I estimate that 70% of the sales resumes I see have the phrase “relationship builder” which renders the phrase useless. Consider that the Hiring Manager of Sales may receive several thousand resumes a year with “relationship builder.” The typical resume includes one phrase on communication and one on team building. Again, the frequency and sameness of these phrases neutralizes them.

What do you do about it?

• Spend more time thinking about how you are different or better than job seekers with the same title and then demonstrate it with a more differentiated collection of key words. Include accomplishments and case histories.
• While it is good to announce that your efforts increased sales or reduced customer complaints, the people who demonstrate additionally how they increased sales or whatever are more credible and will be valued more at the negotiation table. The people who show how they successfully applied the technology and how well they know it are valued more than the people who just offer a long list of technologies. In order to “own” your successes you need to show your impact on the process. Don’t just claim the results many people in the group influenced.
• When you understand your differences, think through for which clients those differences are advantages, and concentrate your efforts on the clients with the most pain for your skill set. If you have done this with enough scrutiny, you probably have only 10-25 companies on your list.

It is easiest to establish yourself as a must-hire resource with an audience for whom that skill provides the greatest ROI (return on investment.) You need to show them you can apply industry/technical knowledge more effectively than anyone else.

1. In the Twin Cities Metro there are 4K LinkedIn listings with “marketing communications” mentioned, 59K with “sales,” and 31K with “engineer.” 65% social media participants users use to stay in touch with friends, 47% use social media “for work” and but only 26-28% use it for “career search.” # That means you need to develop strategies to be appealing to all kinds of networkers who will find you there and you need a very well written profile and customized communications to rise above the clutter.
2. The average reader spends 8-10 seconds with a profile. Your full resume does NOT belong in LinkedIn. The correct profile is closer to an executive bio in a corporate website.
3. LinkedIn should not be viewed as a stand-alone tool especially by those of you who are uncomfortable pairing LinkedIn activities with networking done in-person or by phone. Using LinkedIn exclusively can actually damage your professional image if your best means of reaching out to someone is the pre-written and highly superficial messages available by default in the system. Aim for a small, high quality network of people you can vouch for and whom you can trust to recommend you effectively. Consider that you will be judged by the quality of relationships you exhibit there. When you suddenly need a strong recommendation, a large quantity of poor quality contacts in your network will dilute the credibility of someone who really has considerable knowledge of you, especially if they use the standard messaging and tools to recommend you.
4. Hide your contacts. You want to manage how, why, and when others are reaching out to your best contacts and clients. The social media are mechanical software tools that encourage use without much thought which may be good as a strategy for the company LinkedIn, but bad as yours. Approximately 1/3 of the requests I receive through electronic social media I consider inappropriate to someone else in the relationship. The sender did not think hard before sending the request because it was easy to do so. If they had to make the same request in person they would have thought about it a lot more carefully. I think it is also happening more because people are in a panic over job security.
5. Hiring managers prefer people who are currently employed and can buy access to all 40 million names. There are many ways to reach potential hirees without buying a job ad in LinkedIn and most hiring managers are not bothering to. Ads on the 2 big job boards declined 5-44% last year depending on industry.
6. You are judged in LinkedIn as much by your EQ as by your IQ. An ExecuNet study (12/08) showed:
   • 86% exec recruiters search online for information beyond resume
   • 70% say their opinion of job seeker improves if find positive info on internet
7. We know that being active and engaged in LinkedIn activities improves your rank in LinkedIn searches:
   • Include a picture
   • Participate in discussion groups and Q+A with others
   • Answer InMail queries from others and pass profiles onwards if and only if you can vouch for the recommendation
   • Give and get recommendations
   • Name corporate, academic awards, boards, associations, biz charities
8. Remember that what you post in social media is VERY public and available to be scrutinized and commented on by many critics. A recent survey by Career Builder and highlighted in the Wall St Journal stated that 35% of employers report they found content on social media sites that caused them not to hire a candidate. ##
   • Candidate showed poor communication skills – 29%
   • Candidate lied about qualifications – 24 %
   • Candidate shared confidential information from previous employer – 20 %
9. If you think about the experience of the person searching for a resource in LinkedIn, he/she is confronted with 100-500 profiles (depending on subscription level) with similar titles or search criteria. The first profile the seeker will reach out to will demonstrate:
   • Better accomplishments than their peers
   • Good communication skills, and transparency of skills
   • Candor, warmth, accessibility, and ethics
   • NO Political, racial, religious, marital status, or sexual preference mentions because Hiring Managers will avoid downloading it for fear of an EEO lawsuit

So, invest some time and effort into your LinkedIn strategies. Don’t use the software as your only means of networking. Don’t settle for its default messages. Think about the paradigm of the other people in the LinkedIn network and what they might want from you when they are looking at your profile. LinkedIn has huge potential but can be more damaging than helpful to your career image if used too casually.

#   http://www.pewinternet.org/pdfs/PIP_Adult_social_networking_data_memo_FINAL.pdf
## http://online.wsj.com/article/PR-CO-20090819-902554.html

Here are important tips for a successful relationship with a recruiter, when you are the candidate.

• Interview the recruiting firm. A firm may cover many roles, such as Sales, Marketing, IT, Engineering, Senior Finance and Accounting, Training, Organizational Development, Human Resources. Individual recruiters have industry specialties like medical device, durable goods, etc… The recruiter needs to assess whether one of the recruiters in the group is likely to have jobs that fit you. Most great recruiters have hands on experience in the field they cover. For instance, I have 10+ years as a VP of Marketing and I recruit marketers and others. A good finance recruiter might have a CPA and experience in one of the Big 4 accounting firms.
• Understand the recruiter’s world. The recruiter’s time is driven by clients who contract with the recruiting firm to find many different kinds of candidates. For this reason, recruiters do not know which searches they will work on next week or if they will have jobs that fit your background in the near future. However, when recruiters do fill job in your area during the course of a typical year, the recruiter definitely wants you to be in the candidate database. Then the recruiter can call you when those jobs show up and see if the time is right for you and if you are interested in the particular job the recruiter describes. Importantly, your resume and name are not shared with any hiring manager unless you say you would like to it be submitted to that client and that job. A great recruiter takes that very seriously, because a recruting firm with several recruiters and an excellent reputaton  has far more to lose than gain by violating that policy.
• Optimize your communication with your recruiter. Be smart. This is a free service to you, so you are expected to follow a particular etiquette.
  • Be available for questions.
  • Answer all questions honestly.

  If a recruiter is not getting cooperation during the process, the recruiter will gravitate to another candidate. Note that many hiring managers have also worked with the same great recruiting firm as candidates, so great recruiters are very used to keeping those relationships straight and your information confidential. Recruiter income depends on maintaining positive relationships both on the candidate and client side.

• Choose a great recruiter and feel honored when you get homework. A great firm has more connections, locally and nationally, and a more rigorous process for getting to know you. It costs the clients more and they get what they pay for. This means a great recruiter will spend a little more time with you than other firms demand. This means when your great recruiter introduces you to a client, it is more likely be a good fit for both of you.
• Be ready when your recruiter interviews you in person. The process of talking to a great recruiter usually starts with an email or phone call and a discussion of your resume and marketability to the firm’s clients. When your great recruiter has a job that he/she thinks fits you, your recruiter will ask you to visit in person. A great recruiting firm’s clients expect them to deliver the best culture/personality match as well as a skill set match.
• Trust your great recruiter to negotiate for you. Once your recruiter has shown your information to a client, the next step is to arrange the interviews and negotiate dollars on your behalf. Since your recruiter negotiates dollars on the behalf of candidates many times a week and recruiting fees are based on a percentage of your expected compensation, your great recruiter is interested in obtaining a high but reasonable salary for you and can usually negotiate a higher offer for you than you can on your own. The client expects a great recruiting firm to manage the salary and interview process.
• Wait for the call. When you are active in the candidate database, you do not have to call once a week to check in. Because a great recruiter will not send your information anywhere without asking you first, you will get a call with a position description when your recruiter has a job open that fits you.
• Stay active in the database. Send an email 1-2 times/month. It keeps you top of mind if you send an email to your recruiter every 2-4 weeks. This information and all of the notes on you are stored in a database for the entire team of great recruiters to see. In each email, be sure to mention:
  • you are still available
  • where you have been interviewing so the recruiter can expand on your own efforts
• It matters where you’ve been. Sharing where you have been interviewing is important because a great recruiter cannot show you to a client where you have already been submitted in the last 6-12 months (depending on how long a client keeps resumes.) The list also helps the great recruiting firm understand what kinds of roles and companies appeal to you and how flexible you are. Telling your recruiter what went well and badly in the interview (even if your recruiter’s firm did not arrange the meeting) helps your recruiter understand where you will be most salable. It makes all the recruiters at a great recruiting firm more willing to go out of their way for you.
• Support your recruiter’s reputation and you support yourself. Share your whole network. Contribute to everyone’s success. Recruiters find candidates names through a variety of sources. Most placements come from candidates recommended to the recruiters personally. Great recruiters pride themselves on knowing people who are very good at what they are doing whether that person is looking for an opportunity or not. Clients expect great recruiters to provide the candidates who are great. The client not only does not care if that candidate is looking, they also want the recruiters to find the people they can’t on their own. So clients do not want recruiters to provide people who are in databases like Monster.com. They expect the recruiter provide an added value not found in those public sources. That means your great recruiter will ask you who you know who is great at what they do, whether that person is looking or not. Even if your friend is not looking they may lead your recruiter to a very good candidate who is. (Eagles hang out with eagles.) This networking is one of the courtesies a great recruiter expects of you in exchange for looking for opportunities for your career for no money fee. This networking process is how the great recruiter gets leads to jobs to fill, so it may lead to uncovering a job you can fill. And when you help your recruiter to be better connected, your recruiter has an easier time attracting the kinds of clients you want hire you.
• Ask about how the recruiting process works. The better educated you are, the more effectively you can negotiate the process to your advantage. The better educated you are, the easier for your great recruiter to place you. Please ask questions!

In many of my blogs I have advised you to concentrate your efforts on the 15-25 corporations for which you are likely to be the preferred job seeker. So what if you want to move to another industry or role? What if you have not yet had a job offer in your preferred target group and need to expand your efforts?

Who needs you most?

The process is the same. You need to identify corporations that will value some part of your background – perhaps a different or very narrow aspect of your skills – and concentrate there with a pitch that showcases the relevant skills. And because you may be missing a portion of experience that client was hoping for, it is very important that you include case histories and metrics of success.

Delivering bad news gracefully

Here is an example: I was working with a customer service manager from a hospital who delivered scary or bad news to patients about tests they had recently completed. He was gifted at delivering bad news gracefully but after a while it got to him and he wanted out of critical health care. So we identified other industries that would appreciate his gift of delivering awkward or complicated or bad news. He applied to mortgage companies where he could tell consumers about loan alternatives if they did not qualify for their preferred loan terms (this was before “sub-prime” was a dirty word.) Another obvious industry was student loan providers, where he could coach people on additional loans to apply for.

Cows for warlords

Another of my favorite examples is a woman who worked as a Product Manager for a high end clothing manufacturer in Europe, then went to a humanitarian non-profit in Africa during a political crisis as Marketing Director. Then she was recruited to a security company in France which protected multimillion dollar executives. On the surface those companies and jobs had nothing in common. But I showed her that they had a lot in common:

• The need to access and manipulate international resources.
• Project management in a hostile or highly competitive environment.
• Very short time frames in which success had to be achieved.
• The need to deliver out-of-the-box solutions in ambiguous environments. For instance, for the clothing manufacturer she had models in evening gowns jump out of helicopters into movie debuts instead of running newspaper ads. In Africa she solicited aid from neighboring governments with gifts of cows. In France she could be negotiating with groups who were also friends with the terrorists on some level.

How to apply to Minnesota

So how did she job hunt in Minnesota? We decided the corporations where she would be most valued would:

• Do business in many countries on a very sophisticated level.
• Want her for her ability to run teams that protected executives worth $15-30 million in compensation.
• Or want her for her ability to evaluate business partners in foreign countries. Can this manufacturing rep team in country X deliver a 15% sales increase in sales in the next 12 months? Is that potential manufacturing partner in country Z able to deliver 3 million cases of widgets in 8 weeks?

There are several processes that can be used to identify options like these whether you are intuitive or deductive in your processing of information. But the key is to look for corporations and roles where your past successes will be highly valued by the target audience. Have fun exploring!

I am in my 50s. Yes, age bias exists and, yes, it is illegal. You won’t always be able to avoid it. But age bias is sometimes not really about your actual age, it is about certain soft skills and attitudes that employers desire but older employees are less likely to value. And if you learn to address those issues, you can make concerns about age go away.

Attitude

First of all, if you think the world is against you, I will bet it shows in your interviews. You need to peel back the layers on your emotions. Do you think society has fouled up again? That young managers don’t know what they are doing? Or is it that you don’t know how/where to sell yourself at this stage of your career and are afraid?

Your focus should be to find the companies for which you are a highly desirable applicant just as you are and to present yourself to those companies in a manner that makes you one of the first applicants to be selected for an interview. While this may require a stronger sell than was necessary a few years ago, it is not at all impossible. It just requires some additional strategic layers and may indicate a different kind of company than the one you left. For instance, a smaller company or start-up may prefer a more experienced candidate to obtain a greater depth of industry knowledge with a smaller staff count. Or target your skills in business development (well-documented with case histories) to a company who has been struggling with the issue for some time.

If you are significantly overqualified for a job description as written, don’t spend a lot of time applying for it. The company will be concerned that you will leave as soon as you find a job for which you are better suited. You could offer to sign a contract promising that you will stay at least 2 years, but they will still be concerned that you will become crabby in the role because you are being under-utilized and that you will be disruptive to the balance of the team structure.

Trends in age of employees

• 2000-2003
  • The number of workers under the age of 45 was constant.
  • The number of workers over 45 increased 86%.
• 2005
  • 45% of workers are over the age of 45.
• 2010 projected
  • Labor shortage due as baby boomers retire
  • Most boomers plan to work full-time or part-time after retiring.

How older workers are perceived

• More expensive than younger employees doing the same work (usually true).
• Difficult to supervise, they think they know more than team mates. Poor or selective follow-up.
• Inflexible, grumpy, frumpy, more likely to argue. Poor communication skills. Less political.
• Hard to train, don’t know new technology.
• Disconnected from company vision and younger team-mates. Prefer to be sole contributors.
• Get sick more often (false).
• Low and declining energy. Resist overtime.

Market demand for new hires

• As the pace of corporate innovation increases, the duration of the average permanent job decreases because company priorities change more rapidly, and your seniority or longevity may be irrelevant. The career track you were on for the last ___ years doesn’t matter. The employer wants to know if you can hit the ground running for today’s needs.
• 2 out of 100 resumes result in a job offer.
• A resume needs to be better written to be effective because employers have access to more resumes through websites and job databases. Is your resume well-written enough that you will be one of the interviewees chosen from 20 resumes? 100?

Strategies to try

So what am I saying? Learn and emphasize what a company values in today’s market. Make sure you know how to sell yourself. Focus on the benefits of your depth of knowledge, but make sure you also counter the expected negative attitudes associated with older workers. Note the ways attitude as well as knowledge is being addressed in the bullets below:

• “I really enjoy being on teams which solve problems and grow business.” Don’t just say “I have lots of experience” which would emphasize the gap in age but not the quality of experience and your willingness to be a team member.
• “I have the contacts to drive growth.”
• “I thrive in fast-paced environments.”
• To an insurance or medical company with older customers: “I may understand your customer better than a younger applicant.”
• “Yes, I supervised many people. Learned how to work with lots of different kinds of people. Can we take a tour of the company? I would like to see how you do it.“
• “I can start as a part-time consultant to let you evaluate what I offer at a small cost.”
• “I just attended a conference on that new technology and was a panelist.”

Your “Board of Directors” should include:

• People from industries similar to the ones you have been in and they have been in a role that would have at least interfaced with you so they can give informed, intelligent advice.
• People senior enough that they will not be afraid to disagree with you or tell you that you are missing a point and they are also senior enough that they are credible to you and offer wisdom you may not yet have had the chance to learn.
• No one on your board should be family, spouse, or significant other although these people will offer some insight about how you fit in a company culturally based on what you bitch about when you get home at night.
• A former customer.
• A former direct supervisor or someone who is truly senior to you on the same path you are considering and has been very successful at it. Ideally they should have evolved to a larger, more impressive company or role since they worked with you on a daily basis.
• A former direct report whose opinion you respect. Be brave enough to pick someone who has hop-scotched past your title and is now senior to you.
• One should have had your exact title, and similar business challenges. For instance, if you are currently a Product Manager focused on New Product Development, you want someone like that advising you.
• One should be a good general purpose business person with a broad understanding of company strategies you may not have yet been exposed to. If you are a Product Manager, look for someone who is a General Manager. If you are a Marketing Communications Specialist, pick someone who has risen to be Director or VP of Marketing. You want someone 2-3 steps above you in the pecking order.

See the pattern?

They need to be people who can show you how to get 33% ahead in your career. They need to know enough about what you do that you will actually listen because they are giving real, credible advice that is practical on an every day basis as well as in the long term.

Here is how you use them:

• You meet maybe 3-4 times a year in a location where you can talk about company issues and politics without being overheard.
• Meet with them as a group, not individually. The synergy that comes from group think will make the advice richer and keep it focused on you instead of drifting to the personal experiences of your advisors. They will be more willing to discuss some awkward issues as a group versus when they are talking to you as a friend one-on-one because they are confirming each other’s views. The group setting makes it easier to deliver those topics in a nurturing way that keeps friendships intact.
• If you assemble the board you need to be ready to listen. If you don’t listen, the process may have backfire and you could lose credibility with some of your strongest references.
• Tell the board you intend to change or rotate members over time to gain fresh perspective on personal issues or industry trends.
• Lastly, offer to be on the Board of Directors for your advisors as needed. You will build a business intimacy that will benefit you both over your lifetimes. This is networking at its best.

The simple answer? Don’t do it.

• I have seen national studies that claimed about 70% of resumes have “mistruths” in them.
• Other studies state 25-50% of resumes have “embellishments” (an exaggeration but not lie.)

The most common lies:

• Length of employment gaps
• Titles
• Degrees completed
• Salary
• Reason for leaving
• Not mentioning a job from which you were fired
• Taking credit for an idea developed by the team
• When career started (age)
• Size of business or projects managed
• Rank as a sales person or total revenue you represented
• Claiming to be “Consulting” when you were billing zero hours

I could quote more studies, but the point is: Recruiters and Hiring Managers EXPECT there to be many lies in resumes and in the interviews we have with applicants so we look and listen for them.

Easiest to detect

The one I hear most frequently is about salary/bonus. I ask people their current salary and bonus in a very deliberate way and listen to how they handle it. I can hear the long, pregnant pauses while the speaker is trying to figure out how much they can increase the answer since I gave them a chance to. The process varies if I called them versus when they called me. Rarely does the speaker need the same length of time to answer other questions. It is one of the lies that are easiest for the listener to detect. And it is a very good indicator of whether I should trust the other answers I hear will hear from the same source.

Legal penalties

I called a lawyer I know who specializes in employment law for his knowledge of possible consequences. There are apparently no formal legal penalties in Minnesota for lying in the job application process, but lying on a job application certainly is a ground for immediate termination (not that the employer necessarily needs grounds under the employment-at-will doctrine). Call me (anonymously if you wish) for a referral to him.

Situational stress

We also know that lying increases:

• In a recession as the stress of finding a job increases
• As age of the applicant increases because the stress of finding a job increases
• If an applicant was a poor fit for a job and it ended very badly
• If the applicant is not good at articulating their value to their past employers

So what do you do if you are tempted to lie? Don’t. Instead, take a few steps back in your process and analyze which hiring manager SHOULD want to hire you and why. Have you done enough homework about the companies you are targeting? Do you know for which roles you are most marketable? Have you done enough selling to show the hiring manager why you are a must-meet-applicant? Instead of applying to 200 companies, figure out the 15-20 companies for which you will be one of the most desirable applicants and tailor your pitch to discuss why you are indeed worth knowing for that role.

Illness

A woman who just finished with a long illness called me today and asked for advice on how to handle the gap in her resume. Illnesses and disabilities are complicated and deserve their own very long article but don’t hide the gap or offer a lie. On the other hand, don’t volunteer more information than is necessary, especially if disabled. Talk to a certified disability job counselor for advice if that applies to you.

In the case of the woman who had been ill but was not now disabled, I told her to simply say she had been on sabbatical for an undefined personal issue but was now ready and able to work 40 hours a week without distraction. She needs to carefully research the clients who would be thrilled to have her for what she does know and have a very polished selling statement ready to offset fears related to the unexplained gap. She should have strong testimonials ready. If necessary, she could offer to work for them on a contract-to-hire basis or discounted pay scale until she establishes her value in the present time-frame. She still may have trouble “getting back in” but she shouldn’t compound doubt about her reputation/ability with a lie. If there is no fear the illness may return, you could offer a doctor’s note to show you are fully recovered.

Fast facts:

1. 70-80% of jobs are filled through referrals and networking where the client is familiar with the reputation of the job applicant before receiving the actual resume. Those resumes are read very differently than the resumes of total strangers. (Read my blog posting The “Hidden Job Market.”)
2. When a hiring manager reviews resumes for people he (or she) has not had referred to him, he reads them looking for cues that will maximize his ROI (return on investment) for the available budget. Therefore, the first applicants to be called for an interview will be closest to an ideal fit. If and only if one of these candidates does not work, will the hiring manager widen the search to applicants who offer a less perfect fit.
3. Hiring managers don’t always put everything they are looking for in the job ad, just the “minimums.” And they usually make the ads broader than the ideal to widen the net and catch more fish in case the ideal candidate does NOT show up in the narrow definition of the specs.
4. A job ad for a JAVA programmer when posted in a big database like www.monster.com will generate 300-400 applicant resumes after about a week. A job ad for a Director of Marketing will generate 25-75 applicants.
5. At least 50% of the people who send a resume to any job posted in a public place will not actually be qualified for the role. Responding to ads for which you are not a close fit is a poor use of your job hunting efforts. It also may annoy a hiring manger who has limited time available.

Are you the best candidate?

You should do homework on what might be important to the client beyond what the job ad says. You can research this through:

• Annual reports
• Informational interviews
• Former employees of that company
• Trade press
• Internet
• Networking
• Reading other jobs ad from the company

If your homework reveals you are a strong candidate, make sure you add content to your resume to demonstrate you are an excellent risk. Instead of applying to 100 companies for which you are a long shot, send tailored resumes to the 15-20 clients where you are most likely to be the preferred candidate.

How to show you are the best applicant

This is done through case histories, testimonials, and details in the resume that show your strategic leadership. If possible, you should show you made the company money, saved the company money, or made it more efficient.

The introduction

70% of hiring managers don’t read beyond the first half of the first page of the resume or spend more than 30 seconds reading before they decide whether or not to opt out. This means that you need a powerful introduction to your resume that makes builds the reader’s expectation that you are a relevant and exciting candidate. This will keep him reading longer so he is more likely to be sold on you.

Beyond the resume

If you think about it, you need to be ready to use similar strategies in networking, cover letters, interviews, in every contact with a potential hiring manager. Your objective is to reinforce repeatedly that you are the best of possible candidates for the job.

Fact: 70% of executives who accept a counteroffer are gone from that employer within 6 months.

Fact: 85% of executives who accept are gone within 18 months.

A counteroffer is an offer made by an employer in order to keep you on after you have given notice.
The most frequent counteroffers strategies include:

1. a promise of a promotion and/or a raise (most frequent response)
2. telling you are a traitor to the team or to your boss
3. confiding to you that the company you are considering is not that well thought of

Let’s examine some of them in more detail:

We had this raise in the budget for you

You need to think about your previous relationship with the company. Why did you have to threaten to leave to be put on the list of people who are scheduled for a raise or promotion or job you wanted? Did they really have the money set aside for you? Or did they have a limited contingency budget to be released only for the few folks who threatened to leave but not to be spent if they did not have to? Have you just used up your future raise early so the next one will be delayed?

Don’t be ungrateful to the team that embraced you

This kind of psychological argument makes you feel bad and it costs the company nothing. “You wrecked the morale of the team.” “You will keep everyone from being able to take their vacations.” Your boss may tell you he will look bad if you leave (and perhaps he should.) “After all we have done for you…”

Importantly, as you have just placed your own goals above the goals of the team and/or management, won’t they be reluctant to trust you again on the same level? When raises next come up for review will you be less likely to be given with one of the key player awards? In order to protect their own interests, won’t the team be looking for alternatives to replace you in case you try to leave again? Aren’t you now higher on the list of people to be cut in a RIF (Reduction In Force?)

You are leaving to work for THEM?

The potential employer is usually criticized as a poor business risk. Your present employer will probably avoid a discussion of how the potential future employer treats staff in order to avoid a discussion of how you were treated.

The power of psychological warfare

One ad agency here in town kept an account executive, who had just accepted a job through me, incommunicado in a hotel for three days under the influence of several senior executives. Not even letting him call his wife, he finally capitulated in tears and said he would stay on. It bought the agency a couple of months more with a key client before he left the firm.

The economy

The frequency of counteroffers is increasing because pressures on company profits are increasing. This is due to a combination of factors:

• the speed of competitive innovation is increasing
• we have been in several soft economies since 9/11/01
• automatic cost of living increases and raises are disappearing
• rewards in many companies are shifting to very senior employees at the expense of the rank and file

While a good manager understands that the counteroffer is a short term solution, expect this trend to continue to accelerate in the future as the counteroffer buys the company time to figure out how to replace you more gracefully (for them) and at the least expense and risk.

How to resist a counteroffer discussion

Here is how to avoid even having the discussion of a counteroffer come up.

1. Resign by written note and don’t hand it into management in person. Email it in and don’t be in your office when they come looking for you. Mail it at 5 pm or on a Friday so it is harder for the recipient to organize a full frontal attack. (Remember the account exec and the hotel.)
2. Don’t be ambivalent about your leaving in your verbiage. Include phrases like “I will be leaving on this date” as opposed to “on a date to be determined.” (The normal business courtesy expected from you is 2 weeks. Don’t skimp on the length of notice as it sends a bad message to your new employer if you are willing to shortchange your old employer.)
3. Don’t use phrases like “I am sorry to leave“ and “thank you for all you have done for me” as it sends a signal they may be able to make you feel bad. The briefer your note is, the fewer levers you hand them to come after you with.
4. Avoid discussions with bosses and team members about your motives for leaving. You can thank them several weeks from now.
5. Meet as many of the people you will be working with at the new company, your new team, before you give notice. Introduce your significant other to them. It will remind you there can be more than one team in life and that the new team is very excited about having you join them.