How Not to Blow a Phone Interview...Part One!

This article first published as How Not to Blow a Phone Interview...Part One on Technorati.

 I'll confess to a love/hate relationship with phone screens.  As a recruiter, I want to push the interview process along quickly and get to an offer stage (or not) quickly.  I typically try to put people together face to face as soon as there’s mutual interest.  As a candidate, I enjoy connecting with new people and believe that comes across when I meet them, so I’m more compelling in person. Experts say nearly 90% of human communication is nonverbal, so the phone isn’t the best showcase for your charisma, confidence and body language to shine.  It’s tougher as a candidate to read the cues from the interviewer over the phone than in a face-to-face meeting, so making adjustments along the way is trickier.  Also, odds are good that someone will be on a cell phone.  This can be fraught with issues including dropped calls, bad signal strength, poor network quality (which makes you sound as if you’re slurring, or even drunk!), background noise, or the dreaded delay.   On the other hand, as a busy candidate, I’ve found that a phone interview is a great use of my time and an easy way to determine quickly if an opportunity is right for me.  As a recruiter, I encourage a hiring manager to conduct a phone interview if they’re on the fence about someone, to get a quick gauge of their suitability for the role.

However, phone interviews are here to stay.  Companies have distributed work teams.  Telecommuting is growing so team members may not even be on site to conduct an interview.  Also, it can be a good use of both the candidate’s and the employer’s time.  There’s no need to fight traffic, park and spend an hour getting your hair perfect, and the hiring manager doesn’t have to clean up their office!  For out-of-towner’s, both parties benefit from a quick conversation to ensure there’s a baseline fit, before investing in travel time and expenses. So, how can you, the candidate, turn the phone interview into a clear advantage for yourself?  How can you minimize the inherent problems associated with this forum and stand out?  Here are a few things that can make a BIG difference and ensure you don’t blow it! I’ll share several tips, broken into 3 posts so you can quickly read and digest each one without getting overwhelmed.

1)     Be a Landlubber!  Mobile devices are awesome, but unpredictable. It’s totally old school, but if you have a landline, it’s just better. Disable call waiting.  If you must use a cell, be sure you pick a quiet place to conduct the call and check your signal strength, so there will be no surprises.  Stay away from using a Bluetooth, as that can compromise call quality too.

2)      No Pajamas!  Comfort is good. I’m not suggesting that you put on your best suit for a phone interview, but if you’re overly casual in your posture, attire, or environment, your voice will reflect it.  Sit up straight at a desk or table with your feet on the floor, and have on business casual/work clothes.  You’ll feel professional and it will come through in your voice.  You can even stand up and walk around the room a bit and use hand gestures, if you typically would in live conversation.  You’ll sound more animated and probably more interested. If you’re a natural skeptic (like me!), try this experiment.  Put on comfy pants, lay down on the couch with your feet up, and record yourself on your cell answering this question, “where do you see yourself in 5 years?”  Now, wear standard business attire and sit up at a table or desk with your feet in front of you.  Record yourself again answering the same question.  Finally, stand up, stretch, shake your arms and legs out a bit, have some water and record the same thing again.  Listen to all three recordings back to back.  Which one gives the listener the best version of you?

3)      Power Down! Turn off your computer, radio, TV, etc…and unless you’re on your cell phone, turn that off too.  You don’t need any distractions.  You want to focus on the call and nothing else.  This is not the time for your potential boss to hear your new ringtone chiming in as background noise.  Don’t IM, check email, tweet, or read texts – it can wait.  The phone interview typically won’t last long, and you should afford the interviewer the same courtesies you would in a face-to-face meeting.  

Stay tuned for my next post with tips 4-6.Also, if you’d like some more tips from the hiring manager’s perspective, check here: http://www.job-search-steps.com/phone-interview.html. Most importantly, let your personality shine and just be the best version of yourself. That’s always my #1 tip!

        

Power Up Your Resume!

So first the good news: we’ve now seen 10 consecutive months of U.S. private sector employment gains.  College hiring is reportedly up 3% over prior year statistics, and according to the latest Manpower Annual Employment Outlook Survey, corporate America is “reporting the most optimistic hiring expectations in more than two years… The adjusted Outlook for Quarter 1 2011 is +9%, up from +5% during the same period last year and +5% during Quarter 4 2010. “ Sounds rosy, right?  If so, consider this; while some regions and individual sectors are showing signs of robust hiring agendas, many economists agree that the increase in newly created corporate roles does not yet outpace the amount of unemployed individuals actively seeking jobs.  Moreover, a more active hiring market will engage discouraged workers who had abandoned their job search, to again seek employment.  What does this mean to you if you are an active job seeker, or even an employed individual, considering a potential move?  It means that the job market is still uber-competitive and is likely to remain so for the foreseeable future.  You will clearly need to find a way to differentiate yourself from the pack if you want to land a great job in your chosen field.  You’ll need to build a strong personal brand and go to market with excellent marketing collateral…in the form of a Powered Up 21^st century resume.

I’ve been in Staffing, Human Capital Management and Consulting Management for more than 17 years and have reviewed literally tens of thousands of resumes.  I’ve hired hundreds of people myself, and placed thousands more with clients.  Frequently, people come to me for advice on their resumes and the number one suggestion I have is “Toot your own horn!” Seriously, a resume is NOT the place for humility or shyness.  You absolutely need to be your own champion, highlight all of your significant accomplishments, and make it very simple for the folks reading your resume (or software programs parsing it) to quickly see how you stand out in a crowd. You need to be honest in self-representation, but don’t be afraid to sing your praises from the mountaintops!  There is plenty of time for modesty and a low profile once you get the job (or even in the interview!).

In my last blog entry, I offered tips on writing a resume that incorporated enough job description key words to be successfully recognized by Applicant Tracking Software.  By the way, if you somehow missed this extraordinarily witty, insightful and helpful read, please feel free to check it out here:  http://wotherspoonswords.blogspot.com/2011/01/creating-winning-resume-in-era-of.html

      

You should absolutely heed this advice and use the keywords you find time and again in job descriptions for your particular area of specialty throughout your resume.  You should also craft a credible, targeted career objective to open the resume – consider it your elevator pitch.  It is the first thing someone will read when they receive your resume so it should state who you are, why you are right for that particular job, and what you bring to the table that is unique to you.  However, beyond peppering your resume with job description key words and writing a great opening statement, there is a lot more to creating an engaging resume that will grab peoples’ attention, help them connect the dots on why you’ll help them accomplish their objectives in hiring for this role, and get you an interview.  So, here it is…

Tip #2: Power Up your resume!

Take a look at your current resume.  What does it say about you? Does it capture what you’ve really accomplished over the course of your career?  Does it speak clearly to your sense of pride and what you’ve done to drive positive and measurable business outcomes for your employer?    If it is just a ho-hum re-wording of your job description, technical skills, work history, blah blah blah…I assure you it will not get you noticed.  You must be accurate and honest about what you did, and its imperative to clearly demonstrate your key tasks and responsibilities, but that alone won’t get you noticed in today’s job safari. Following are some examples of how you can Power Up your resume in a few easy steps.

First remove all personal pronouns and identifiers from your resume; those are for amateurs.  You’re not writing an article about yourself in the society pages! Next, add a relevant level of detail to your key tasks and responsibilities that will really help employers understand how you spent your time and what your full range of competencies are.  As an example, instead of “I led a team of sales personnel”, consider “Selected, trained, mentored and managed the daily activities and ongoing metrics of a high performance sales team”.    Rather than, “I was responsible for keeping all accounting records”, try the Powered Up version:  “Managed and maintained a portfolio of 500+ accounts payable and receivable records and ensured fiscal reconciliation in support of corporate objectives”.

Think about each line on your resume as a chance to tell your story, to make the most of what you specifically did to benefit your employer, and to best highlight what skills and experience you bring to the party.  As you do this, consider not only the job that you had, but also the role to which you aspire.  Perhaps you are a successful sales professional applying for sales management roles.  You’d want to specifically highlight what you have done in your role as a superstar individual producer to select, train, mentor, and/or assist others on the sales team. If you are a software tester and are going for QA Manager roles, be sure to highlight your experience as a test lead, or even informal leadership tasks that you completed in your prior roles.   

Another key way to Power Up your resume is to quantify your results!  Everyone is interested in measurable business benefit and what you’ll be able to do for the organization if they hire you. So, instead of the ho-hum  “executed process improvements”, Power It Up!  Go with, “identified and implemented a major process improvement project increasing the firm’s targetable account base by 150,000 customers with expected annual value of $40M”. Rather than “opened new accounts and sold into an existing customer base”, how about “Developed a new business target pipeline of $3M in revenue and secured 8 new clients.  Managed a high value legacy customer and increased sales and margin by 25% in year over year performance. ”  Power Up the boring “oversaw collections and aging reports” and change it to “managed an aging portfolio of nearly 250 individual clients and reduced bad debt reserves by 75% while improving DSO metrics from average of Net 65 days to Net 40, improving corporate cash flow dramatically.” No matter what your role or industry, there are clear ways for you to spell out exactly what you set out to do, what you accomplished, and how your employer benefited from these accomplishments. 

These are just a few examples of how to Power Up your resume using action words and results-focused content that WILL get you noticed.  Take the time to really work on the resume and have someone you trust review it and provide candid feedback.  You’ll be glad that you did!  Resume writing is like almost everything else in life, the more you put into it, the more you’ll get out of it! Uh oh, I sound like my mother hauling out that old adage, but maybe that’s not such a bad thing after all, right?  Now, get to work and start job hunting the smart way! And, don’t forget to check out my next blog; I’ll share some wisdom on how to use your network effectively to find the best jobs out there…stay tuned!!

Daphne Wotherspoon is an expert at getting the right people hired into the right jobs.  She has nearly 20 years of experience in the staffing, consulting, recruiting, and human capital management industries.  An industry leading sales professional, entrepreneur, general manager, and recruiter, Daphne has hired and placed more than 2000 job seekers at Fortune 500 and mid-market companies, not for profit institutions, and government agencies.  Currently, Daphne is a founding partner of Aligned360, a Talent on Demand Solutions firm located in Northern Virginia.  She is also a mother of two, an avid blogger, social media enthusiast, and an aspiring TV chef.  She has been featured in Staffing Industry Review, and the Washington Business Journal, and in 2009, she was selected to be a contestant on Who Wants To Be a Millionaire, a nationally-televised game show (which did not unfortunately result in millionaire status!).  For more information and helpful suggestions, tips and notations on business trends, follow Daphne on Twitter @dspoon1 or check out Aligned360 on Facebook.

Creating a Winning Resume in the Era of Automated Applicant Tracking

The U.S. Commerce Department reported today that Gross Domestic Product, the broadest measure of economic activity, rose at a 3.2 percent annual rate in the October through December 2010 quarter, representing a potential shift in the dynamics of the job market. Many sectors have already recovered and have a robust hiring agenda for 2011. This means that if your career was hi-jacked by the recent economic downturn and you are either unemployed, or unhappy in your current role, the next few months are a great time for you to evaluate new opportunities. So, is it time to dust off that 4-year old resume and add your latest and greatest job title, accomplishments and tweaks to your objective? Not so fast! To get noticed in today’s hiring climate, you need to embrace some updated resume writing and job seeking strategies that capitalize on key business trends.

I’ve been in Staffing, Human Capital Management and Consulting Management for more than 17 years and have seen many changes to the business process utilized by recruiters. When I started in this business, we all had 1-2 page resumes painstakingly typed out on our IBM Selectrics. We then waited for the Sunday classifieds to come out so that we could write a detailed cover letter, mail that together with our resume in an envelope, (or if we were lucky, and really cutting edge fax it over!) to hiring managers who then individually reviewed each resume and selected the best candidates for interview. Things have changed a bit I’d say! I’ve never seen a bigger shift in how things get done than over the last decade as the internet, online job boards, social media, and the prevalence of Applicant Tracking Systems have come to dominate the hiring process. This blog entry and those that follow will help you better understand how to write a resume in the 2^nd decade of the 21^st century, what happens to it once you apply for a job, and how to better control your own destiny throughout the application, interview and selection process. Whether you are actively looking for a job, or considering a career change in the next 18 months, keeping these tips in mind can make you more productive and help you to better achieve your career goals.

An overarching change in the employment world is the wide-ranging use of automated Applicant Tracking Systems to drive talent acquisition. Nearly all of the Fortune 500 have ATS’ in place, as do nearly every staffing company, consulting firm, and direct placement agency. The Software as a Service model that now predominates the ATS market, means that even mid-market and smaller firms can adopt ATS at a fairly low cost of entry. What does this mean for you, the job seeker? It means that in all likelihood, unless your resume has a 90% match to the stated job criteria, no human being will physically touch nor directly view your resume if you apply via the web, which is the leading point of entry for today’s job applicants. Ouch, right? This is the infamous black hole we’re all too familiar with. The good news is that knowing that ATS’ are in place and how they work can help you with a keen advantage as you embark on your own job safari.

Today’s Tip: Keywords – Learn to recognize and use them!

Almost every job description or online posting you see will have keywords embedded throughout the narrative. You need to learn to recognize those terms used often in your career field or desired role and pepper them throughout your resume. Moreover, placing as many of these keywords as possible near the top of your resume will improve your match criteria (or, how the ATS sees you as matching up to the job). Think of the ATS as an online matchmaker! In fact, the technology that drives these systems is very similar to how many online dating services select potential mates for their members. It is also what drives many SEO (Search Engine Optimization) tools and techiques. It’s all about speaking the same language!

Check out the following excerpt from a current online job posting for a Project Manager with a leading healthcare provider; what keywords do you see?

Essential Functions:


- Deliver on-time, on-budget projects to meet or exceed customer expectations.

- Manage supply and demand to ensure adequate resources are available and delivery commitments are met.


- Act as the primary interface to the business partners and interface with the IT Business Segment Partners for issue resolution and project initiation.


- Manage project financials, estimates, timelines, status reports, issue logs and remediation plans.




Basic Qualifications:


- Minimum of 6 years experience managing IT projects including creating and maintaining project budgets along with cost accounting of resources.


- Minimum of 4 years experience as the primary project manager on highly complex and large scale IT Development projects.


- Experience driving projects with a strong customer focus



- Proven expertise to build, track and monitor project plan(s) using either MS Project or Clarity Resource Management to ensure that the project remains on track with regard to schedule and budget

While there are many possibilities in this excerpt for keywords that the recruiter or hiring manager may select to use in their search criteria, here are a few definite words and phrases likely to be a part of the search string:

“IT Development Projects”, “Project Management”, “Manage Project Financials”, “MS Project or Clarity”, “Project Budgets”

Take the time to browse several job openings for your particular desired job and take note of the keywords that come up repeatedly. You can do this easily on www.monster.com by searching on your desired job title, or on an aggregation site like www.indeed.com, which pulls open jobs in a defined regional area based on your own keyword searches. I’ll give you a hint – you are going to see a LOT of the same words used repeatedly. We recruiters are NOT that always that creative by nature and we sometimes use cut and paste or boiler plate descriptions quite a bit! What you’ll notice is several keywords that pop up in almost every job opening for your skill set, which you can incorporate liberally into your own resume template. Then, you can further customize each individual resume you send out to reflect keywords for more specific selection criteria associated with that particular job. Back to our prior example, here is a further excerpt from the Healthcare IT Project Manager job description above:

Preferred Qualifications:


- Healthcare experience either in health plan operations or care delivery


- Technical background is highly preferred as projects are geared towards technical integration and the building of SOA services.

Spot any keywords? How about “Healthcare” or “health plan operations” or “SOA”? If in fact you have this experience, definitely incorporate it into your resume in a very visible and targeted manner, ideally in the career objective or summary of qualifications at the top of the document to improve your odds of becoming a “searchable match” for the job. Obviously, if you do not have these preferred qualifications, you cannot and should not fabricate them, but don’t miss the chance to really highlight these skills if you do possess them. Maybe you have SOA experience, but you’ve called it “Service Oriented Architecture”? If so, change your term (or add it parenthetically) to match their term, “SOA”. Perhaps you are not a Healthcare PM, but you are an IT PM with good integration experience and operations experience. Use all of these words frequently to improve your match criteria and increase your chances of getting selected for review. Maybe you have been a consultant and worked across multiple industries, if healthcare was one of them, by all means, make that clear. Even if you do not have healthcare experience adding your desire to move into that high growth field in your career objective will dramatically improve your match results. Here is some sample verbiage to incorporate into an “ATS-optimized career summary” for a Project Manager applying for the above role:

“Customer-focused Project Manager seeking new opportunities in the growing Healthcare IT field, leveraging ten years of experience successfully delivering high value software development, integration, and technology infrastructure projects, on time and on budget, while exceeding client expectations. Specific expertise includes leading a collaborative team of IT peers and business partners to drive a high visibility SOA Services implementation project for a major financial institution.”

With this career objective alone, you’ve now successfully matched many of the keywords and critical job criteria, which will enhance your chances of getting your resume seen by an actual human! You’ve also made it very easy for that individual to quickly determine why you are a fit for their opening – BINGO!

The truth is that you have to do a lot of work up front to ensure your resume gets seen in the age of automation, but doing so has a huge payoff and is ultimately much less time-consuming than spending weeks or months sending resumes into the infamous black hole, with no response. Now, get to work and start job hunting the smart way! And, don’t forget to check out my next blog; I’ll share more tips on resume content that will get you noticed….stay tuned!!

Daphne Wotherspoon is an expert at getting the right people hired into the right jobs. She has nearly 20 years of experience in the staffing, consulting, recruiting, and human capital management industries. An industry leading sales professional, entrepreneur, general manager, and recruiter, Daphne has hired and placed more than 2000 job seekers at Fortune 500 and mid-market companies, not for profit institutions, and government agencies. Currently, Daphne is a founding partner of Aligned360, a Talent on Demand Solutions firm located in Northern Virginia. She is also a mother of two, an avid blogger, social media enthusiast, and an aspiring TV chef. She has been featured in Staffing Industry Review, and the Washington Business Journal, and in 2009, she was selected to be a contestant on Who Wants To Be a Millionaire, a nationally-televised game show (which did not unfortunately result in millionaire status!). For more information and helpful suggestions, tips and notations on business trends, follow Daphne on Twitter @dspoon1 or check out Aligned360 on Facebook.