"La Pièce de Persistence"

If I emailed you 2 times, sent you a message via a connection of a connection on a social networking site, and then emailed you again what would you call that? Annoying? Fanatic? Creepily e-stalker-ish? Perhaps. And yet, there ARE results to be had from this kind of repeated communication. It's called RESPONSE!

The very first position I found and applied for after I was laid off was for a Training Specialist at a company called Odysseyware which provides online curriculum and e-learning tools for 3rd-12th grade students, and is based in Chandler, AZ. Here's what struck me straight off the bat about the company and the position:

• It's an education-based company. Winning!
• They focus heavily on the tools and methods to teach digital natives (people who've been raised with technology) and students who have difficulty with traditional classroom instruction (the way I did). Winning!
• They have a great looking website www.odysseyware.com. This may sound funny but their presentation is sharp and something you'd expect from a company that is in the business of using technology to educate. Winning!
• The training specialist position works directly with educators and trains them how to use and implement the company's programs. This was one of my primary roles in my previous position, and it's the part of that job I loved doing the very most! In my professional career I've worked with small business owners, financial planners, working moms, and educators. By far, educators have been my favorite people to work with (next to working moms). They have such a dedication to helping people become better. Winning!

So when I found this position I researched the company and quickly applied. That was on Feb 17th, the day I was formally laid off.

On March 1st, I had not heard back. I did some further research and found that the recruiter at Odysseyware was a connection of a connection of my mother-in-law's on LinkedIn. Since the recruiter was not part of my "primary" network on LinkedIn, I sent her a message using the "get introduced through a connection" tool. This sent my personalized message to my mother-in-law, asking her to forward my personalized message to the connection to forward on to their connection, the recruiter.

That same day, I Googled the recruiter's name, position, and company and buried in the 2nd page of search results I found her direct email address. Winning! I then emailed her a personal cover letter, including my resume.

Fast forward to yesterday, Friday, March 11th. I had not heard from Odysseyware and was beginning to think I probably wouldn't. On the networking front, I had not met or learned of anyone I knew who had any connection to they company. I couldn't find the job posting on any of the job sites where I had found it before so I feared the position had been filled. It was still posted on the company's careers page so that gave me a glimmer of hope.

I thought, "Well, I have an updated resume and nothing to lose" so I decided to email the recruiter again. In my research I noticed that one of Odysseyware's clients was a school district that I had worked with in my previous position so I name-dropped them in the email. I also included my updated and enhanced resume and then clicked send, marking my 4th official contact. In case you're curious, you can read that email here. There are a few simple tactics I used including the name dropping I mentioned previously and the use of the powerful PS so check those out.

Within 10 minutes, the recruiter called me back. She told me she'd been meaning to call and that she had my resume in front of her. We had a GREAT chat for the next 25-30 minutes. At the end, she said she would get my resume over to the hiring manager and that she'd be in contact soon. Winning!

I am highly optimistic about this position and hope the fit is right. Whether it ends up being so or not, I have learned that persistence is EFFECTIVE! My guess is that had I simply applied and waited . . . . . . . . . . . . I'd probably still be waiting.

Keep Moving Forward!

Un-punch to the Gut = New Resume . . . or Résumé!

As I mentioned in a previous post, I had an experience which brought about an epiphany about the effectiveness of my resume*: that it was not effective.

Resumes are funny because you don't get a job because of a resume but you absolutely need a resume in order to get a job.

The resume's job is to make the potential employer like you enough on paper to actually call you in for an interview in person. So you must have a good, strong resume that touts your qualifications and accomplishments.

Upon a thorough review, aided by sharp criticisms from Jessica C at Jobfox.com, I realized that my resume lacked something vitally important: clout. Your resume should basically be your own personal paper cheerleader, getting an employer psyched about a potential star player. And the name of the game is not modesty. That was my biggest problem. I was being way too conservative and modest about some really great things that I've done in past career positions.

I participated in a resume workshop yesterday morning that gave me some great insight on to improve my resume. As a result I've completely enhanced and upgraded mine including:

• Keywords - These are words such as "Trainer", "Customer Service", "Manager", etc. These are used for specific keyword searches employers do to filter the hundreds of resumes they receive and have scanned into their resume database
• Quantified Accomplishments - I had good information before but now I've added numbers to back my accomplishments. An example is "Oversaw program implementation of 90+ client accounts resulting in 95% retention" What I did resulted in this
• Visual Facelift - Using recommendations I got at the resume workshop, I made changes to font sizes, margins, bullets, and text placement to improve the readability and appeal of my resume. Admittedly, I don't think it looks as snazzy as it used to but it has the information it needs to have to pique interest which is infinitely more important than the color of a bullet point.

I'm pleased with the result. You can see it by clicking here. I'm very open to impressions, critiques, and really great job offers!

Keep Moving Forward!

* I've opted for the fully Americanized version of the word "résumé" so as not to come across as a snot-nosed French speaking grammar Nazi. That said, I really do prefer "résumé" because it's French.

The Screening Interview

I had my first interview yesterday for a training position at WageWorks. In doing research on the company I found it to be a strong, well-respected company and a highly favorable one to work for. This first interview was a screening interview done on the phone. It took about 35 minutes and consisted of a lot of "Tell me about a time when you . . ." questions. These are typical questions screeners use to find out (in my opinion) 2 main things: Your preparation and your ability to think quickly.

To prepare for this phone interview, I researched the company on the web by visiting their website. This was a good place to start but a company website will ALWAYS favor the positive so to really learn more about WageWorks, I looked at other Google search results and found that the company was referred to and quoted by organizations like the LA Times and a US Congress related blog called "The Hill". I was unable to find anything negative about them at all, which is a great sign, especially considering WageWorks is a national company with offices in several states.

I also prepared by anticipating the types of questions the screener would ask. Back to those "Tell me about. . ." questions. I considered key situations from my past positions that would demonstrate my abilities to train individuals, work with difficult situations/people, and anything else that I've done that might be considered innovative or interesting.

As I mentioned above, screeners also want to see how quickly you can think. This is obvious because they don't send you the scripted questions they are going to ask you ahead of time. They want to keep you on your toes. I've conducted screening interviews before and asking these questions made it very easy to determine who had prepared and who had not. In one particular interview, I asked "What would be your ideal work environment?" The person on the phone paused a long time, which would not have necessarily been a bad thing except for the response that followed the pause: "Uhhhhh, well. I don't really think. . .uhhhh, I guess I don't know really." My response, "Ok, thank you for your time. Click!"

I'm happy to report that the interview went very well as far as I can tell. At the end of the interview, the screener gave me the opportunity to ask questions. I've learned in the past that you should ALWAYS take advantage of this time. You are interviewing the employer as much as they are interviewing you. By asking questions you demonstrate initiative and genuine dedication to the process. The following are the questions I asked:

1. When do you plan to fill this position? I asked this to understand what the next steps would be and how much time I can anticipate the process to take. He told me the hiring manager would be coming to AZ in the next 2-3 weeks and that the next step would be to schedule a panel interview.
2. How long have you worked at WageWorks and what has your experience been like so far? I asked this because I feel certain most interviewees don't ask it and it allowed me to get a non scripted, honest answer from the interviewer. He said he'd been there a month and had really enjoyed working with the people on his team. He felt the company was strong because it had grown even in the worst part of the recession, and that there was an overall good feeling at the company. Sounds positive to me.

It's a good start and whether it materializes into anything or not, I'm glad I had the opportunity. It was good practice and it was also very motivating. Nice to talk about work related things again.

Keep Moving Forward!

Three Milestones and a Punch to the Gut

Three important milestones happened today:

1. Today is my 1st son's 4th birthday. Happy Birthday Linc!
2. Today marks exactly 2 weeks of unemployment.
3. Today marks the date of the first sign of life from a potential employer. Apparently, they really are out there.

Milestones shared. Let's talk about that gut punch I mentioned in the blog title.

A little background first. I've spent the past two weeks of unemployment deeply evaluating my knowledge, skills, recommendations, and other assets and crafting what I felt was a pretty darn good resume. I always got A grades on my resumes in college business and writing classes. I have helped several friends, and even my wife build resumes based on that knowledge. So I've have generally felt fairly confident in my resume writing skills. All that said, up until this morning at about 8:47am, I felt like my own resume was in good order; that it concisely presented my strengths, my accomplishments, and the overall benefit I could be to an organization.

8:47am however is when I opened an email that contained a built-in gut punch from Jessica C. Jessica C. is a resume reviewer at Jobfox.com, one of the "fastest growing" job search companies on the web that help you with a "smarter approach" to interviewing, landing your ideal career, etc. In my preparations last week, I received a "free" offer from Jobfox to review my resume. I decided to accept that offer and agreed knowing full well that the report I would receive would basically be a customized sales brochure touting the reasons why my resume was horrible and how it absolutely needed Jobfox's resume writers to revamp it. Yet, I'm all about constructive criticism so I accepted . . . and was pleasantly surprised!

I expected my free analysis to be a simple form letter with less than helpful resume writing tips straight out of a high school English textbook. However, this really was a thorough review of my actual resume in which Jessica C expertly critiqued each section and offered valuable advice.

She started with one or two points about the strength of my qualifications and assets. Specifically, she said: "My first impression of you is that you have an impressive array of skills and experiences. You're a qualified Training and Professional Development Specialist with a lot to offer an employer."

That was nice to hear from a complete stranger and objective reviewer of my resume. Of course, she was also going to try to sell me something in a minute so it could just have been a bit of sweet talk.

Jessica C then went over some of the less effective points of my resume, which, apparently, were many. Now, to be absolutely fair to Jessica C, she was clear at the beginning of her report that her style was "direct and to the point" and to not be offended by her analysis. Point taken; see my previous comment about constructive criticism.

Ok, ready for the gut punch? Jessica C's overall analysis of my resume was: "Your resume is effectively sabotaging your job search. . .selling you short"

She outlined approximately 7 major problems with my resume related to the visual presentation and content. As expected, Jessica C's next action was to "recommend" that I purchase Jobfox.com resume re-writing services for $500. If I act now though, I can get 30% off and make payments over 6 months, blah blah blah.

While it was a punch to the gut of my writing ego, I'm glad I signed up for my free resume analysis from Jobfox.com and commend Jessica C for her professional advice. Upon review of her comments, I now see some blaring issues with how I have presented myself to potential employers now have concrete ideas about how to make my resume better. I'm not ready to spend 500 bucks just yet.

So the lesson learned here is that no matter how good a writer you think you are, someone else's constructive critique is ALWAYS a good idea.

What I will do is take part in a 2-hour resume workshop tomorrow morning at the LDS Employment Services Center here in Mesa. The LDS ESC has also partnered with a professional resume writing service called Optimal Resume. The services are highly recommended so I'll start there and report on it later.

And finally back to milestone #3. All this being said about my resume, I was contacted today by a company regarding a training and development specialist position I applied to last week. I have have an initial phone screening interview tomorrow. Hoo rah!

And onward I go!