Your Resume Only Gets 8 Seconds?!

Resume Gets only 8 Seconds

 

8 seconds.  Don’t get the wrong idea now, we aren’t offering advice on the intricacies of professional bull riding.

8 seconds?!  That’s the average time a hiring manager will spend looking at the resume you took days to write, hours and hours more to re-write, and years upon years to build.

8 seconds, max, absolute max. Fear not though, that evasive focused attention that you must figure out how to wrangle out of the recruiter or hiring manager who is the gateway to the job you want is easily within anyone’s grasp and you needn’t be a cowboy to lasso this target.  The following 3-step process works time and time again for those in the know and it’s legal, it’s ethical, it’s moral, and man oh man is it effective…using nothing more than the beautiful power of networking, now easier than ever thanks to the wonders of social media. They say compounding is the 8th wonder of the world, and that may be, but social media driven networking is definitely the 9th. Every gate in your way is now just a few mouse clicks and keyboard strokes away from obliteration. Not only will these steps get your resume seen, but also read, responded to, and a relationship started with just the person you need to know! Here we go…

 

How to Conduct a Job Search:

  1. Source Common Thread
  2. Customize Resume
  3. Direct Follow Up

Alright, I hope that helped, see ya next time…oh, wait, I guess we need to go a little deeper. Okay, okay, a bit more detail:

  1. After seeing the Job Posting that captures your attention, do not pass Go, do not collect $200, and don’t send another email, instead go to LinkedIn or Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc, etc and find the most common connection you can.  A friend.  A friend of a friend.  A friends plumbers nieces boyfriend. Doesn’t matter.  Any name, company, college, past company, that the hiring manager will recognize.  Then use that common thread briefly in the email, voicemail, LinkedIn InMail, Twitter message, etc that you reach out to him with a quick message of interest, letting them know you’ll be following up per the suggested protocol mentioned in the ad.  Example…”Hello Bob, Joe Smith here, Jill Jones over in the Economics Department at the University of Maryland mentioned I should check out Bob’s Widgets, and here I see this Widget Sales Regional Manager role, I’m going to go ahead and put an updated resume together for you guys and shoot it over to the contact name in the ad, looking forward to perhaps meeting you soon!”.  Now don’t go making up stories of course, use tangibly linked and mutually connect-able (fact-check-able, neither party will fact check, but just in case) info that you’ve dug deep for.
  2. You can choose to either be the compliant lamb or the bucking bull, it’s your choice, but do you really want to be the one that goes back in the pen with all the others for the sake of not just doing just a bit of kicking.  Sure, it’s okay to follow their rules and drop your blind resume into their ice cold email box, url link, etc. But hey, do you think your eventual boss wants a sheep anyway, show them u are a go getter, not afraid to buck the trends a little bit, and let’s go a bit further. So in Step #1 you’ve done you research and already started separating yourself from the herd, well done…but don’t pat yourself on the back just yet with a “well, the ball’s in their court now”.  Oh, no.  Now it’s time to get a little more crafty. Don’t you dare send in that generic resume.  Yes, you’ve worked on it for hours, heck maybe even paid someone for it, I’m sorry about that, maybe you can get a refund.  Get that job description in front of you, set aside a half hour, be 100% honest, but rebuild your Objective, and each of your most recent several positions to highlight and elaborate several compelling bullet points that relate directly to the job description at hand.  Don’t be shy about driving their eyeballs with carefully placed Bolds and Underlines.  Now, it’s okay to drop this custom resume into the black hole of an email address or URL they provided. If you don’t actually want the job, or for anyone to ever see your resume for more than 8 seconds, stop right here.
  3. Glad to see you press on…now, within a week of sending that first voicemail, email, InMail, Tweet, Message, or Cliff Claven delivered hand written intro note…circle back around and connect again, this time letting Bob know that you haven’t heard back yet from the generic resume gathering contact/email/URL, and that you are very excited, and just in case here also is that resume that you promised to put together, and that you are looking very forward to talking soon. Most folks are content to spend days, weeks and months blasting out 100’s of nameless resumes.  See if you can put a Vegas bet down on those being the exact same people complaining about “no jobs”, “lousy market”, etc.  Instead, focus on just a handful of your favorite companies and job targets, and put in the research time to uncover and make use of your common connections. Technology may well have ruined the character of many humanizing things like “good old fashioned” networking and handshake built relationships…but please thank it for allowing you to play 6 Degrees of Kevin Bac…er, 6 Degrees of Separation with nearly everyone you’ve ever come into contact with, in seconds. Prove to your prospective new employer that you are crafty enough to solve this problem with an out of the box solution, and watch your resume responses explode.

 

  1. Source Common Thread
  2. Customize Resume
  3. Direct Follow Up

 

Those who land amazing jobs don’t always have the most impressive resume and your Recruiters are not magicians…both have just gotten very good at navigating the electronic gatekeepers…and now you can too!

 

Always feel free to reach out to me anytime at EMAIL or any manner of career advice or start up assistance, more than happy to help anyone who is very serious about bucking the norm!

Brian Connors, Technology Manager, AllSearch Professional Staffing, Inc.

www.allsearchinc.com