Memory
You know you’re crazy busy when, not one, but two British career sites (one of which offered to pay me!) send you content to post on your blog and you can’t even take the time to compose a short introductory paragraph to accompany said posts. The good news is that I survived a busy eight weeks of work and school, specifically six papers, six quizzes, three homework assignments, two final exams, and a whole slew of reading – not to mention weekly and sometimes bi-weekly career events on the campus where I work (in between serving an average of 50 students per week), several new clients, and a job club catering to transitioning job seekers. I also barely observed to major Jewish holidays and missed two friends’ 30th birthdays, a baby shower, a wedding shower, and a lot of social gatherings. Needless to say, I am happy to have my life back and happy to be writing to you! Thanks to those of you who kept me in your memory during my hiatus.
Now on to the post…Position Ignition, a U.K.-based career-coaching firm graciously provided the following entry related to resumes and getting yours noticed by an employer’s Applicant Tracking System (ATS). I think you will find that the advice is not all that different from what you might hear on this side of the pond. Speaking of sides of the pond, I am excited that the founders of Position Ignition offered to meet me when I’m in London next month. Career coaches uniting across the globe – how cool!
Post by Nisa Chitakasem of Position Ignition
The way that hiring companies and recruiters are storing, evaluating and shortlisting new graduates’ resumes is already drastically different than to when I was a new graduate. Before, a recruitment agent or an employer’s in-house HR professional would go through a whole pile of resumes that had been submitted to them for just one graduate position. As you can imagine, the individual sorting through these documents only had time to quickly scan each submission for the type of keywords they were looking for. The keywords they were looking for were those words and phrases that indicated a particular candidate was right for the position.
Manually skim-reading each application was never going to be the most scientific or sophisticated way of identifying these all-important keywords, so it’s little wonder that recruiters and employers have embraced new I.T. technology with open arms in order to digitize the process. Nowadays, anyone in the business of hiring and with sufficient resources uses a computerized Applicant Tracking System (ATS) to rank resumes in terms of how pertinent they are to the position they were submitted for. Whilst this is good news for the employer, it’s potentially bad news for you, the graduate job seeker, if you don’t know how to tailor your resume to get you the highest ranking possible. Help is at hand though, with these tips on ensuring your resume impresses any ATS.
- Start your resume with a concise summary that’s rich with keywords pertaining to the job you’re applying to.
- Follow up the summary with short, bulleted points detailing your qualifications and accomplishments, again including keywords that match up with the advertised position.
- If you’re not sure exactly what keywords are relevant to the role on offer, look at the job specification and candidate criteria and identify the words that seem the most integral to the text.
- Be warned that the most advanced ATS technology will take into account the context in which the keywords are used, not merely the actual keywords themselves. Surround keywords with content that actually describes your relevant experience and expertise.
- Don’t misspell words. Misspellings are bad, not because the ATS will pick up on them, but because it won’t. If you misspell a keyword, the ATS won’t notice that word and the word won’t contribute to your resume’s ranking.
- Similarly, it’s wise to avoid using abbreviations, because the ATS may not recognize them. For example, when talking about your degree, type out ‘honors’ instead of using the abbreviation ‘hons.’
- An ATS can also be confused by complicated formatting, so keep the format of your resume as clean and clear as possible.
- Including logos or, in fact, any kind of graphic on the resume is a big no-no for the same reason.
- How you send your resume is almost as important as what you put on it. Before your resume even gets stored on a company’s ATS, it still has to get pass the organization’s email security screening. Attachments may automatically be marked as suspicious so copy and paste the contents of your resume into the body of the email message instead of setting it as an attachment.
- Because of belligerent spam filters, it’s also important to watch what characters and letter-strings you include in the email. Do not, for example, include any exclamation marks or potentially spammy words/letter-strings in either the text of the resume or the rest of the email. For example, if you went to high school in Penistone, England it’s perhaps better to just say that you went to high school near Barnsley in England.
- If you have the option of uploading your resume directly to the company ATS through the employer’s website instead of emailing it, do so.
- Submitting your resume via the website may require you to fill in additional fields as part of the online submission. Fill these fields in even if they are optional. Recruiters often use these optional fields to initially filter out a percentage of the original applications. Make sure you survive this first cut by putting the relevant information into all the fields.
- As the resumes may get sorted out according to these optional fields before they are even opened and read, it’s worth including relevant information in the fields even if you’ve already put it in the actual body of the resume.
So what do you do once you’ve emailed or uploaded your resume to an ATS? Of course, it’s a case of playing the waiting game to some extent but don’t forget to keep an eye on your spam folders when you’re waiting for that email reply to come through. Often, an ATS will automatically generate an email reply to your submission and such an automated email may well end up being recognized by your email filter as spam, even if it’s legit. If you check your spam folder and find that there is indeed an email marked as coming from the organization but you’re not sure if it really has or if it’s a phishing scam, it’s always best to check before opening it. Call up the company to see if its ATS would have started automating replies by now.
Once you receive the email reply, attentively follow any instructions it gives you. If the company wants you to contact it to take your application further, contact the company using the method it has indicated and within the time frame it gives. You will not only be guaranteed a response by doing so; you’ll be guaranteed the fastest possible response.
By following these best practices from start to finish, you have the best chance of negotiating a recruiter’s or employer’s email screening system, spam filters and ATS with optimal success. With the ATS in particular, it’s important for first time job seekers to know that there really is no mystery to it. It’s as simple as giving the ATS what it wants and pushing its buttons—and if you’re applying for jobs you’re actually suited to, pushing all the right buttons is not that difficult at all.
About the author:
Nisa Chitakasem, created Position Ignition to help support professionals through their career challenges. She has co-authored a range of ebooks to help people through various career challenges including: How to Get the Job You Want, How to Ace the Interview, 125 Twitter Job Search Tips, 125 LinkedIn Job Search Tips and 135 Networking Career Tips.
You can also find more career articles from Nisa on their Job Search and Career Advice Blog.
Put me in Coach!
This blog entry is somewhat delayed because my Mac's hard drive crashed on Monday night. Yes, it can happen on a Mac! I had most of the entry written on the plane, and when I got home the blue screen of death was all I got. I know you are thinking to yourself that the blue screen is only reserved for PCs, but I am living proof that one can mourn the death of a Mac just as easily as a PC. I lost 88 days of files because my husband and I were "too busy" to fix the backup program we had downloaded. Please learn from our mistakes - at least until everything is floating in the so-called "cloud". There are just some things too important to ignore...filing your taxes, smelly trash, and now a computer without its files backed up! I appreciate your bearing with me through my moment of technological catharsis. Now on to the actual blog entry...
Coaching has been on my mind lately because I recently received approval to take on an interdisciplinary approach to my MBA via an Executive Coaching Certification Program offered through my university's college of education. To provide a bit of background, I had submitted the petition to have the courses comprising the program count toward my MBA electives several months ago. I sent two exceedingly kind requests for updates on the status of my petition to the program administrator, only to find out from our department chair that she was waiting until the last minute to process my request to prove to me (along with other students waiting for responses) that she had more pressing concerns to attend to. Upon receipt of the department chair's coaching to "remain patient", I only grew more inflamed. I waited until a week ago (two weeks from the college of education's course registration deadline) and then decided to call in a "referee." Shortly thereafter, my petition miraculously made its way across this administrator's desk and within 24 hours it was approved by the department chair and the dean of all three MBA programs! Moral of the Story: If after several coaching attempts you aren't arriving at a desired result, you may need to call in a referee - or therapist!
Here are a few quick tips to coach you through the interview process as it relates to some of my recent experiences and the sports metaphor...For the record, I am lousy at organized sports (I sweat just thinking about athletic competition), however I played one season of softball and my brothers played baseball and umpired for years, so I am declaring myself a pseudo-baseball expert for purposes of this blog entry.
I recently mock interviewed a student who got so nervous in his interview that his confidence and personality completely evaporated - let's call him Jerry. Now, I am not an intimidating interviewer, contrary to what some of my former New York colleagues might have said! I try to set the candidates at ease before I grill them to identify and start probing into the red flags. While debriefing, I asked Jerry about what would make him so excited that he would jump up and down screaming and shouting. He couldn't come up with anything at first, so I went back to his resume and was reminded of his interest in international soccer. "How about if you received an all-expense paid first class trip to London to watch Arsenal play on their home turf?" Well, you'd have thought I told him he was going to get automatic A's that semester based on the size of the smile on his face. "I want you to think about that trip before you go into every interview, okay Jerry?" He nodded happily, and went on his way. Keep your fingers crossed that he clears the bases (i.e. has a few successful interviews)!
These Boots were Made for “Working”
I had a mini-meltdown this week after surrounding myself with a group of mommy-minded girlfriends at dinner. I was so excited to have a night off from studying to get caught up with the ladies, but by the time I got home I was a wreck. Talk of daycare, part-time vs. full-time employment, and limited mobility was making my head spin. I felt like I was Sarah Jessica Parker in that episode of Sex and the City where she lost her Manolo Blahnik’s at a baby shower and was overwhelmed by baby mania (with the exception of the shoe stealing part – please, my friends and I are too practical to wear shoes that expensive!). I’m sure my husband was thrilled that he came home a day early from business travel only to be greeted by a teary-eyed wife up in arms about how to manage life, work, and family in the future.
The exciting silver lining here (well, actually there are several, but since I have been neglecting decision trees and depreciation all day I must attempt to stay focused) is that I received approval this week to engage in an independent study project focused on women's initiatives in the workplace as part of my MBA curriculum and personal mission to arrive at some answers of my own related to work-life balance. [As an aside, my Accounting professor recently emailed me to say, “I enjoyed your blog. You are a very talented writer!” which hopefully gives me some leeway with regard to my lack of quantitative focus in my current state].
Now, back to the project… For now, I’ll refer to my fabulous Organizational Behavior Prof. as “M” since he is unfamiliar with the blogosphere and also my use of his identity. Thanks to M, (who will be mentoring me over the course of the project) we arrived at a hybrid title, i.e. a combo of his structured PhD take and my “why do things move so slowly in this country? take:
Progressive Workplace Practices for Women: a Cross-Cultural Perspective
I had plenty of inspiration for this topic beyond my girlfriends. The fuel for the fire really erupted a few months ago at a low-key bachelorette party. The (now U.K.-based) maid of honor, Rachel, was kind enough to answer all of my questions about what it’s like to reside across the pond…in life, in work, and perhaps most relevant here, in motherhood. I think the other partygoers were really annoyed by my interrogation, but how often does one get the chance to hear about this stuff directly from the expat’s mouth! Rachel enlightened me about the stark differences in flexibility and culture she encountered between her U.S. and U.K. experiences while employed by the same professional services firm.
From that point on, I was hooked on learning more about how women and primary caregivers seem to get a better deal overseas. Although my good friend Frank commented, “I’m not sure you could have selected a city with a more dismal climate and higher cost of living, Joy”, I still stand by my infatuation with all things British. If the opportunity presents itself for me to live there someday, I’ll slap a Union Flag on my suitcase and be on the first flight to Heathrow before you can say “tea and crumpets”.
If You Build It, They Will Come…
Although my deliverable for this project is still undefined, I am hoping to identify organizations abroad that currently offer both top-down and bottom-up programs for women and primary caregivers. I’d like to produce something of a roadmap for organizations to use in order to customize and implement programs like these in the American workplace without incurring a bureaucratic nightmare or a major shift in policy.
We know these programs exist, but we rarely hear about them unless an organization or industry has the resources to employ a massive PR campaign: case in point, Flex Time Flourishes in Accounting Industry, an article, which appeared in the business section of last week’s New York Times. Perhaps I’m a cynical millennial who can’t appreciate the progress of the past twenty years, but I worked for one of those firms and I know the reality. We have a LONG way to go.
Friends, Europeans, Countrymen(and women), Lend me your Contacts!
This is where you as my readers and friends come in. Until I get my head around the women’s initiatives already out there and develop a powerful survey with M, I’d like to start building a network of contacts both here in the U.S. and in Europe who may be able to help me with my research. My focus will be London, since I am headed there in November to conduct live interviews.
If you know anyone in the U.K. [and now I am thinking about a day trip to Paris] who may have a story to tell or know someone with a network of contacts in Europe, please let me know. For example, a number of the students I work with at my university have interned abroad and are connecting me to their former supervisors! I even have a friend who connected me to a rabbi in London – spiritual leaders have HUGE networks. Everyone knows someone over there and those contacts know many others!
Before this turns into a LinkedIn advertisement, I will mention that I’d also appreciate your forwarding my blog entry (or excerpts from it, as this one has become quite long) to anyone you know domestically who has benefitted from a flexibility initiative, or better yet, someone who runs these sorts of programs in his or her workplace. I will take all the contacts I can get, but please remind them that full-time job + part-time MBA student = limited free time for immediate follow up!
Thank you in advance for reading and for your help with my assignment. I look forward to providing you with updates along the way and perhaps arriving at some of my own answers in the process!
London Calling
Ever since my grandparents introduced us to Oliver on VHS, I was enamored with the United Kingdom. This interest only heightened as I learned about the Top Shop, the abundance of Indian cuisine, and the numerous clever expressions common to this far off land (mostly from the chick lit authors I discovered over the years).
I finally took my first trip “across the pond” last November (see obligatory phone booth photo above). Upon our arrival at Heathrow airport, I told my husband “all I want to do is eat Indian food, ride the tube, and listen to people speak with a British accent.” He replied, “Joy, we can probably accomplish those action items in the first 30 minutes.” We did, in fact do all of those things in the first 30 minutes AND we saw Oliver on stage during the trip! Keeping all of this in mind, you can imagine my excitement when a UK-based career coaching firm, Position Ignition, recently emailed me and asked to post a guest entry on Sweats to Suits. London calling, indeed…
Guest Blog Entry from: Position Ignition
Here in London, college graduates and school-leavers are finding the job market to be as tough as it is for all of you across the pond. You know how it is-there’s a higher number of school and college graduates every year, and there’s a backlog of jobless graduates in light of the recent recession and the inevitable high unemployment rates.
Over here in the UK, our welfare system is actually presenting additional challenges in the aftermath of the financial crisis. Changes to the values of state pensions and the Government’s phasing out of our default retirement age means more senior people are staying on in the labour market, making it even more competitive for younger folks.
However, wherever you are in the world, there’s always something you can do to increase your chances of landing a job as a new (or older) graduate. Here are our top 11 tips for school and college leavers:
1. BE HONEST
Be honest with yourself about what you’re great at, and what you’re not so good at. If you get a job that plays to your strengths you will succeed more quickly, earn more money and live a happier, better balanced life.
2. BE CLEAR
You may have completed a school careers test that gave you some ideas about what you should do for a job. Either way, you need to find out where to focus your energies for your job hunt. A scattergun approach will likely miss your target.
3. BE QUICK
Did your parents say annoying things to you like “The early bird catches the worm!?” Well, in this case, your parents were right! You’ll be competing for jobs with oodles of other very organised people and you’ve got to get in there quick. Job applications may only be open for a very short while.
4. BE yoUNIQUE
Try to think about what sort of person you appear to be to someone who doesn’t know you. What is it about you that makes you you? You know you’re unique, now you’ve got to prove you’re unique to interviewers. They won’t want another clone – they’ll want someone who will do things differently, break new ground and new frontiers-show them that that’s you.
5. GET ‘WITH IT’
The world will never stand still, so you can’t either. If somehow your I.T. classes passed you by at school and you’ve found yourself as good on a computer as your mother, it’s time to get up to date. Do a touch-typing course, start tweeting, get a smart phone.
6. CONNECT
Schooling rarely teaches current affairs well but as you enter the job market, you’ll find it essential that you’re up to date with what’s going on in your field of interest. So, whether you’re reading the latest Apple blog, Farming Weekly magazine or The Economist tweets, stay connected with the world that you want to be a part of.
7. GET FEEDBACK
Often it’s hard to be objective and look at yourself and say what’s good about you, but you’ll need to get good at talking and writing about what you’re great at. You may be able to imagine this on your own, if not, ask your friends, teachers, family or other adults to be honest about how you come across. Be brave and ask them all to write down three things you’re great at, and three things you’re not so great at, so you know what needs practice!
8. LEARN TO SELL
You’re going to have to develop that skill because you’ll be selling yourself in interviews and for job promotions for ever more! Even if you decide to set up your own business you’ll be selling your services to your customers – you can’t get out of it, so get into it!
9. SHARE YOUR PLAN
You know how if you secretly make a plan to go for a run, but no-one will know if you don’t, so when it rains it’s an easy decision not to? Don’t let your career planning go un-heard of either. Tell your parents, your friends, or a career guide what your plans are to ensure you’re held accountable and are motivated to achieve your goals.
10. VOLUNTEER
It’s a competitive market so it’s highly likely you’ll have to spend some time working for free in order to gain the experience that lets you stand out from the crowd. So volunteer on a cancer helpline, crew a yacht for someone or do virtual research as a marketing intern. Whatever your target career, give your time for free and it’ll often blossom into opportunity.
11. NETWORK
“It’s not what you know, it’s who you know” rings true now more than ever in a difficult market. Don’t be shy, be brave. Make a list of all the people you know (it’ll be a big list!) and then think about who they might know that might be able to help you get a foot in the door of your chosen career. Maybe your parent’s friend works in a Sea Life centre and you want to be a marine biologist, or your friend’s brother works for a Law firm you’d like to volunteer at? People are usually flattered to be asked and very glad to help.
Nisa Chitakasem -Founder of Position Ignition, a UK-based modern day careers advisory firm for professionals offering help around careers, transition and personal & professional development
How to find Position Ignition:
Website: www.positionignition.com
Blog: www.positionignition.com/blog
Twitter: http://twitter.com/posignition
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/PositionIgnition
Career Blunder for the Week: Nisa’s comments in #1 reminded me of a student (we’ll refer to as Kelly), I met with a while back who seemed to be denying her true passion. Kelly had declared Accounting as her major based on her proficiency with the coursework. Kelly’s resume and portfolio of experiences told a different story. All of her work experience was sales and recruiting-related. She loved to sell people on her campus, her sorority, and on various consumer products and services. Over the course of my career, I have observed many young people turn to careers in professional services because they excelled in their classes or because they heard not-so-subliminal “job security” themed messages from their parents. Many of these young professionals reached out to me for advice upon my move to career counseling because they are exhausted by the data-intensive elements of the job and are starved for more interpersonal interaction. Seeing the proverbial writing on the wall, I encouraged Kelly to pursue two internships, one in recruiting or sales and one in Accounting. Not surprisingly, Kelly enjoyed her internship in sales much more and decided to forego Accounting as a career path and accepted a full-time position in sales. Moral of the Story: “To thine own self be true”