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Alright goons, I am throwing myself upon the mercy of SomethingAwful's career and resume experts. Strap yourselves in because this is gonna get long, but I'll try to keep it as organized as I can. So... I was laid off at the end of February and am still unemployed. Granted, I took a month off to figure out what I wanted to do and then another two months to pursue professional development (SPHR and PMP certifications), but I have been full throttle job hunting for these last three months and have 3 callbacks to show for it, and it's starting to drive me a little nuts. I've rocked every job I've ever held, often outperforming people who'd been doing the same work for much longer, and have plenty of [what I think are] awesome accomplishments to show off, and yet - bupkis, which leads me to concludethat I am not showing on paper what ATS or recruiters want to see. My background in a nutshell: BA in 2005. 2005-2007 - Legal stuff (crushed the LSAT, thought I wanted to be a lawyer, tried it first, nope) 2008-2011 - HR and operations at global education company 2012-2015 - Stay at home dad. 2015-2020 - people and business ops in progressing responsibility at an early stage space startup 2021-2023 - internal consulting on operations to c-suite and spacecraft program management (not what I signed up for, but when you're given that opportunity...) at a sexy growth stage space startup that went public My professional interests in a nutshell: 1. People Operations - I've got all told a decade+ of HR experience and success, but never had a real passion for it until I witnessed my last company gently caress it up so badly that I had to take steps to fix it and found myself thinking, "drat, this is fun and incredibly fulfilling." 2. Business Operations - More like 12+ years for this one. Before the people ops bug bit me, I had targeted an eventual COO or Chief of Staff type position (which is the role I was hired to play at this last place, but company politics constrained it to 'Operations Manager'), and that is still a secondary objective. 3. Program Management - Not something I'd ever considered until my last experience, but it was a lot of fun, and living in the south SF Bay, there are almost as many PM roles as engineering ones, so it's tempting... What I think my problem(s) is(are): - My past experience is not specialized on paper. E.g., I was the HR (and several others) department for a startup that grew from 15 to 50+ under my watch. I'm confident in the HR knowledge gained and the skills deployed, but my titles of 'Operations Manager' don't tell that story at a glance. This is especially a problem when my most recent role is "Program Manager, Spacecraft" but I'm applying for strategic level HR roles. All of the combined and overlapping job duties also make it difficult to extract function-specific accomplishments for my resume. - I am not laser focused in my approach. There isn't one line of work in which I am interested, there are three. This dilutes my applications, complicates resume and cover letter tailoring, and makes coordinating resumes and LinkedIn profile more challenging than it should be. - I have a ~4 year parenting gap that very neatly fits into what currently comprises the 8-12 year block of my employment experience. I'm very comfortable not just speaking to the gap but turning it around to make it a positive professional impact (see resume below). However, again, on paper - not great. On the bright side, I feel that over the last month I've started to figure things out when it comes to my cover letter and resume (last couple of weeks especially). For example, creatively combining the two roles I had with my most recent employer so that 'Program Manager, Spacecraft' isn't the first thing recruiters see when I apply for HR roles. Don't worry - I'm not saying anything that: isn't true, I can't explain, my references won't confirm. Here are two of my heavily redacted resumes (different flavors so you can see how I'm making life hard for myself) and cover letter template (this one tailored for a people role). I've tried many different approaches for both resumes and CLs, and these are the ones I've settled on most recently (in terms of format and how I am using the language). However, I'm open-minded. E.g., I've been considering whether the achievenent-centered format, where the first page is just summary and then all the big relevant accomplishments across my career, and the second page is a listing of work history, might be best for someone in my scenario. Another thing I am wondering is if I should drop the mention of my stay-at-home parenting. I think it's good to address it head on, and I think I address it well...but am I hurting myself by even mentioning it in the first place? People:  Operations:  CL:  Apologies again for all the words, and please advise as you see fit. Thanks!
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Sep 12, 2023 19:35
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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:your cover letter makes me want to vomit. it reads like all of the lovely inbound sales emails i get. so if that's an affect please stop I never got lovely inbound sales emails that looked like this, so unfortunately it's not a connection I made. The clipped language was definitely a deliberate stylistic choice - I've tried throwing a lot of poo poo at this particular wall, believe me - and I've gotten positive comments from recruiters about it even in rejections. But I don't want to look or sound like spam. What in particular is setting off your gag reflex?
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Sep 12, 2023 19:53
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Mind_Taker posted:Other people are more qualified to answer but I'd omit the gap due to parenting, and I certainly wouldn't make a cutesy thing out of it. It's a professional document. At most a single line between Company 3 and Company 4 saying you were a stay at home parent during that gap, but even then I don't think it's necessary. Thanks for this. I think I've been overly nervous about how an unaddressed gap looks and been trying to compensate.
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Sep 12, 2023 19:56
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wash bucket posted:Have you been looking for remote work or local on site work? My applications probably break down pretty evenly between remote, hybrid, and on-site roles. I've been leaning toward on-site and local hybrid roles lately because they're not deluged with hundreds of applications, so it at least feels like I have a fighting chance of being spotted. And I realized I hadn't mentioned networking, but I've explored those avenues thoroughly. It's simply that nothing has come up in my ballpark yet.
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Sep 12, 2023 20:09
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Magnetic North posted:Your certifications: When did you get them? Do they have dates of expiration? Actually, I just looked it up: SPHR and PMP expire in 3 years according to a quick web search. The important thing is: do they matter for your desired gig? If not, get rid of them. These are template resumes, so elements (like certifications) will be adjust depending on relevance. The degree is from 2005 but leaving it off is not an option (unless, as with the preceding, the position doesn't care). Appreciate the advice, but it's industry specific - if I were a software dev, you'd be correct. My profile...I've received so much contradictory advice and it's evolved multiple times. The bit that recently resonated most was that, like the meat of the resume, it should not talk about what you can do, but show it with highlights.  On the bullets: I've tried multiple linguistic styles, including SAR, "accomplished this by doing that," etc... I kinda like this one, but I'm not handcuffed to it. I am intrigued by your advice to just drop everything older than 10 years. First time that has come up... I'm wondering if that is also industry-specific, as most advice I've heard / seen on this topic suggests 2 pages being perfectly acceptable and even necessary if you have over ten years of experience, but as with everything else, I am open to changing stuff up. Problem is, some of the positions I'm applying for ask for 8-10+ years of experience, and chopping off Company4 leaves me with at best 7. :/
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Sep 12, 2023 20:59
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Lockback posted:I wouldn't omit Company 4 either, but you can probably cut down on details there. I'd personally try to expand 1 and 2 since they seem most impactful and keep 3 and 4 limited. Or just combine 2 and 3 since it was part of an acquisition. I had already been thinking about consolidating Company 4 into a single entry, as well as combining 2 and 3. Limiting 3 hurts my heart as my efforts there pretty much directly led to Company 2 deciding to acquire us. quote:The "Chief Stay At Home Parent" thing could go either way but in particular HR-types eat that up. Totally agree on jack-of-too-many trades problem. I had previously been personalizing and tailoring my cover letters far more (and adopting a different tone). It just gets loving exhausting. But you're right that, especially for particularly promising jobs, it would behoove me to spend time to create a connection with the role. KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:Lockback is right as usual, you have a bit of a scattershot resume so you need to write an individualized cover letter for jobs. As with everything else, the cover letter advice I've gotten - from recruiters, hiring managers, HR people, resume writers, etc - has been all over the place and contradictory. Bullets vs paragraphs. Formal vs informal. Showcase personality vs be stoically professional. How long. How short. What to highlight blah blah blah. Everyone agrees that no one reads cover letters but that the worst thing you can do is send a bad one, and everyone has different definitions of what "bad" is. You're almost certainly right that the tone should be more professional. My expectations of others' expectations may have been twisted by my experiences working at cool startups alongside other very cool people. Like me. Seriously, though - I am grateful to all of you for all of your time and assistance. It's been 8 years since I last had to look for a job, and 7 years before that one, so this time out has been quite the learning experience.
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Sep 12, 2023 21:34
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In my experience, that's atypical. One chat with the recruiter and either you talk to the hiring manager next or you don't. Multiple rounds of recruiter talks seems nuts but some companies are just really bad at doing things good (and vice versa).
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Oct 10, 2023 19:49
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MJP posted:Quick revisit on my cover letter questions from earlier. Do they require a cover letter (nonprofits often do) or was it a differentiator for you in getting through to the interview? If the answer is "no," I would just skip it.
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Nov 8, 2023 15:47
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Lockback posted:They do require in this case and you should do one if they ask/recommend, even if its not required. If they don't ask then skip. If they ask/recommend, then from an applicant's perspective it may as well be required.
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Nov 8, 2023 16:59
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Chewbecca posted:Can I ask the wise thread, for those of you searching, how many jobs do you apply for a week and how do you maintain motivation? I aim for 5-10 per day and generally customize my resume for every single one. ChatGPT is helpful in this respect: I prompt it to act like a resume reviewer / recruiter and then ask it to assess and quantify alignment between my resume and the JD, and if I come in under 90 I'll ask it to identify easy areas for improvement. I've entirely stopped sending out cover letters - unless they're requested / required; it has saved me a lot of time and as far as I can tell has not carried any drawbacks. My pace has taken a hit over the last month because, after six months of mostly nothing, having taking some of the advice from this thread in late September and finally letting go of my less central career interests and focusing on a single thing, I've interviewed with 7 different organizations for a total of probably 15-20 actual conversations, with one that ended after the recruiter screening, two that have passed recruiters and are awaiting scheduling with the hiring manager, and four that progressed to the final round - with three strikeouts and one still up in the air and about which I'm expecting to hear back this week. This all has significantly decreased the time and, particularly, energy available to sink into the drudgery of applications and resume tweaking. Not a bad problem to have, but it has impacted my motivation and ability to focus. For example, this is the first week in the last 5 that I haven't come into with interviews already scheduled. Am I using the breathing room productively? No. I'm procrastinating like mad and posting in this thread.
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Nov 14, 2023 18:51
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Chewbecca posted:it's never occurred to me to use chatgpt to see if my cv is aligned with the job description, do you just copy/paste both into the text field? I use google bard occasionally to help me tweak a sentence but I don't find it that useful in all honesty, the sentences come across as robotic in a way. Pretty much, yes. The prompt will go something like: quote:Act as [name], the world's premier resume writer / recruiter / job search consultant / etc. You understand best practices and emerging trends in resume writing and recruitment. You are extra critical to push your clients to be their best. Customize as necessary. I find that Bard sucks. I use it primarily when researching companies I'm interviewing at, because it's much faster at scouring the internet than ChatGPT. But that's about the extent. Bard has trouble even holding a mock interview, defaulting to performing a Q&A with itself if you don't get very specific in your instructions. ChatGPT is not a terrible writer (Bard is), and will occasionally come up with surprising sentence construction and even humor. However, its real value IMO is leveraging its native ability to process massive amounts of text to either generate ideas or, well, process massive amounts of text! quote:LinkedIn applications generate notifications. Once i got an email notification stating "the employer has downloaded your application" followed up by another email notification not even 5 minutes later "thanks for your application, but due to the quality of candidates we won't be proceeding with your application (etc)". That was disheartening to say the least!! Everytime that happens I feel just a bit flatter and smaller. quote:I feel embarrassed too, this is the first time in my career that I've been out of work this long. I've been looking in earnest since September and the bites have been few and far between Habibi fucked around with this message at 20:13 on Nov 14, 2023 |
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Nov 14, 2023 20:07
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i know this question comes up constantly, but what's a rule of thumb on following up with your main contact after an interview? For context, I had my [probably] last round on Friday with the person who has final hiring decision (because I'd be their business partner), but wouldn't be my direct report nor is the internal TA person with whom I've been primarily communicating. I sent a post-interview thank you note to my interviewer later that day, but should I also reach out to the TA person? I'm unusually antsy: of the 4 final round interviews I've had in the last month, this is the one that - while not the best paying or titled - aligns most with what I want to do, how I want to do it, and my schedule / life / constraints. Should I just wait to hear from them, to a reasonable extent, or is it a good idea to ping them? There is a temptation to remind them of my presence, as it were, but I'm pretty sure it'll just come off as needy.Chewbecca posted:I'll def have a look at chatgpt, although I'm a touch concerned at feeding it my entire (adult) life story wholesale. Maybe I should anonymise my cv first I mean, I paste in everything below my name and contact info. But otherwise, nothing there that my LinkedIn doesn't speak to, anyway, so I kinda doubt OpenAI is waiting for me provide them with something publicly available. Insisting on anonymizing it feels a big pain in the rear end to do for every time you want to check alignment or see how much customization you need for a given role. e: while editing this I received an invitation for a first round for a role / org that caught my eye two weeks ago and which I had - as already advised by another poster earlier on this page - immediately forgotten about as soon as I sent my application. So, yay. Habibi fucked around with this message at 21:57 on Nov 14, 2023 |
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Nov 14, 2023 21:53
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Put very reductively, culture in this context refers to the manner in which employees are expected to conduct themselves. Not in terms of following rules or policies, but in terms of how the organization's people operate and interact (as well as the kind of people hired in the first place). Different cultures entail different approaches to getting the work done, so in answering this question think about the environment in which you want to work. It is a very...broad and not useful question to ask, IMO.
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Nov 15, 2023 18:09
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Gonna use this page snipe for selfish purposes: I interviewed on Friday for a role I really want. Final interview (I think) with the person making the hiring decision, but not who would be my hiring manager (i would partner with this person but report to someone else). I haven't heard anything back yet. I sent the interviewer a follow-up thank you note after the interview, but should I follow up at all with the TA person (my primary contact throughout the process) or hiring manager (Head of HR)? If so, is there best practice on when? I guess I want to demonstrate enthusiasm, but I also don't want to look needy (even though I totally am). What's a typical response time from final interview to offer (or declination) and is there usually contact in the interim? All of the other final interviews I've had have been through an external recruiter, so there was a sidebar of communication going the whole time. ultrafilter posted:It makes sense for a fairly senior role but below that level it is a little funky. There are many good culture-related questions one can ask, I just think "what are you looking for in a culture?" is lazy and not constructive. Maybe this is why EtM related it to 'rear end-in-seat' jobs, as it suggests the person just wants you to BS at them for the purpose of moving you along. Chewbecca posted:I've started to track my applications in a spreadsheet, just because the jobs were starting to blur into each other. I note down their status (applied, application in process, rejected), the date they close, contract length etc. It reminds me that I'm working hard on these applications and tickles the part of my brain that likes outcomes. This is good practice - jobs blurring into one another is a real thing. I have a big ol' job hunting spreadsheet that has tabs containing all the variations of all the bullet points I've used to facilitate customization, and one tab is a table of all of my applications, tracked by Org / Role / Application date / Whether it's a role I want to follow up on later if I have the recruiter or hiring manager's info / Result. Because I primarily use LinkedIn, I also link each role to its original posting, so I can easily reference it if I need to brush up before an interview, or see how many applicants it's racked up, etc... Habibi fucked around with this message at 19:11 on Nov 15, 2023 |
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Nov 15, 2023 19:01
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Mustang posted:So I paid about $1000 for a resume rewrite, LinkedIn profile rewrite, and a cover letter package deal. The resume was completed a week or so ago and has immediately produced results and now I have 2 huge tech companies interviewing me for Sr. Program Manager roles. Was not expecting this a mere week after applying for jobs with my new resume Out of curiosity, what were the differences between your original resume and the new one? Would you be willing and able to share redacted/ anonymity versions of them? To your salary question, as already noted, the Negotiation thread is your best resource.
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Nov 29, 2023 20:20
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Chewbecca posted:Goons I gotta tell you, there is nothing more satisfying than cancelling an upcoming interview because you secured the contract for your Many congrats dude! I too hope to someday soon experience the immense relief of getting off the looking-for-work train.
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Dec 6, 2023 18:03
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new job,
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Chewbecca posted:Wait, if you don't use your paid time off it just gets taken off you??? If you're in the US, it depends on the state and then the company. Three states have laws prohibiting use-it-or-lose-it PTO policies (California, Colorado, and one I always forget). Outside those states, it's up to the company. The latest stupid trend is unlimited PTO, which sounds great until you realize it leads to people taking LESS time off and prevents people from banking PTO for payouts when they leave their employer.
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Dec 8, 2023 17:21
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New Leaf posted:What do you guys do for online applications where to ask for your college GPA? I honestly don't know what mine was, I graduated in 2008 and was student teaching at the time. I don't want to make up a number but it seems so irrelevant and it can be left blank most of the time, but I don't know if I'm hurting myself by not entering something. I've never even encountered such a thing, except maybe as an optional field in some poorly configured Workday implementations. Echoing the other poster who said "gently caress those applications."
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Dec 13, 2023 18:47
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Help me get my head on straight. Unemployed since end of February. After looking without luck since May, I overhauled and focused my approach in September (thanks in large part to the fine folks here) and started to gain some real traction. From late Sept through early Dec, I interviewed with 10 different orgs. 3 ended after the initial interview. 2 made it to the hiring manager. 4 or 5 reached the final round (one was ambiguous). So far so good! Of the finalists, 1 wanted to extend an offer but we could not agree on numbers, 1 I came second best to a better candidate, and the 3 others elected not to move on for reasons (or no stated reasons at all). The latest rejection came this week, and I felt it keenly because I thought I had a great shot but, based on the feedback, I think I admitted a weakness of specific experience that sank me (though it was honest, and spoken about in the context of all the work I've done to strengthen it, and I think they are very stupid). On the one hand, I'm thrilled at all of the interviews and that I've made the final round about half the time. On the other hand, I'm batting .000 in those final rounds. gently caress! I've always considered myself a good interviewee. I've always looked forward to them. In my professional history, I've consistently beaten out people with more experience. But I've never had to go through so many interviews before and I'm starting to worry I'm doing it wrong. But with 5 final rounds out of 10 shots, I'm obviously not doing it completely wrong. I keep telling myself that it's a process and that the process is working and to trust the process. Am I crazy? Or are these signs that I should take a hard look at how I'm presenting myself, beyond assessing and reflecting after each interview? Rawr.
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Dec 21, 2023 20:09
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Eric the Mauve posted:You have to remember that... well, for instance, that interview where you didn't have this one piece of very specific experience. It is common for someone to be preselected for a job before it's even posted, and (especially if, as is often the case, that person is a straight white under-50 male) the qualifications list is tailored to his resume. So they can say with a straight face that they hired the best qualified candidate, if they have to. Although I don't think any of the 4 final rounds (not counting where we disagreed on #s) that went nowhere are great candidates for the specific scenario you describe (pre-filled jobs), this is in essence what I have been trying to tell myself. poo poo luck, lots of competition, etc... It just doesn't help that several of those roles are still open and still reposting their ads, suggesting that I didn't lose to a particular candidate but landed somewhere on the hosed it up <---> didn't fit their needs well enough spectrum. It does help to know that I reached at least two of those final rounds over significantly more experienced people, so there are some things that I am doing right. e: part of what is contributing to my anxiety is that, after 2+ months of rarely entering a week without interviews already scheduled, the last two weeks have been very quiet on the interview front (outside of some rejections lol). I attribute this to a combination of end of year + the fact that all of the interviews in Oct/Nov put a big dent in how many apps I was sending out (from 100 in Sept to barely 60 in Nov) and am not getting too hung up on it - yet - but it's a lot easier to maintain a positive interview when you've got other prospects. Habibi fucked around with this message at 20:53 on Dec 21, 2023 |
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Dec 21, 2023 20:48
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Thanks for reaffirming my suspicions and the other advice, y'all. When you're drowning in this poo poo for months on end, it's increasingly easy to lose perspective and increasingly hard to claw it back. On which note, I'm probably going to do a big post about my resume in the coming days, because I'm experiencing a form of semantic satiation - I've made so many of them that they have started to lose all meaning! e: coining it now - application satiation.
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Dec 21, 2023 22:38
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Goons: tell me what I am doing wrong with my resume (again). As noted earlier, I've had a lot of interviews over the past few months after tuning some things up in my resume and job hunt approach. This is great, but my 3% callback rate is, IMO, not. I would like to improve that. To that end, here are 4 resumes and corresponding JDs sampled in chronological order from early October to just last week to give you an idea of what I've been doing. Each was rejected, despite the role seeming like a good fit and having, as far as I could discern, low competition (because, e.g., it's on site). You'll notice I've been tweaking them to condense the content, with the first two being ~1.5 pages long while the latter two are one-pagers (which has been an experiment of the last 3 weeks or so). Please tell me what I'm doing wrong / poorly and could be doing better. Feel free - even encouraged - to be blunt and brutal. I'm open to ideas and rewrites are not an obstacle. Resume / JD #1 Resume / JD #2 Resume / JD #3 Resume / JD #4 Note that the margins look funny because I cropped the content - the actual resume margins are very normal. Thanks! Habibi fucked around with this message at 01:36 on Dec 30, 2023 |
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Dec 30, 2023 01:33
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Thank you everybody for reading my post and offering detailed critiques and suggestions! I really, really, really appreciate it and hopefully one day soon so too will my bank account. Responses and ruminations below - I'm tackling the resume specific stuff first and the process stuff second:CarForumPoster posted:You prob didnt get an immediate reply ITT because your role isnt one of the roles the hiring managers ITT probably have much experience with. I've only hired for a tiny company, so hiring an HR person is out of my wheel house. Grain of salt and what not. Still 10/10 job description and resume post so I wanna reply and help if I can. quote:- I always advise when I cant clearly diagnose: Google your name, does your email seem professional, is there something about the info you're providing that could be misinterpreted if someone went hunting for more info elsewhere. I once googled someone and found out they were the leader of a trump super pac. One which was implied to be a sham by a political blogger and for which the financials and mission didnt reflect well on that candidate. quote:I cannot figure out why that resume gets rejected 97% of the time. I'm really glad you brought this up and it is something that I've been pondering lately. First of all, I do think that I can back those stats up reasonably well, e.g.: retention was a question of losing 40% fewer people over a given set of periods, a matrix re-design directly led to a quantifiable reduced in recorded management overhead hours, productivity is some combo of performance and time savings (for example, reducing how much time people spend in meetings), performance tracks directly to schedule / project deliverables (though sometimes it's fudgy because production actually doubled and part of that was a new performance management approach - but I view that as interview talk), etc... So I do feel that I am not bullshitting - although I am very open to counterarguments; my intent isn't to protect my ego, it's to get hired. HOWEVER, this all said, it has occurred to me that it may look like bullshit. But the thing is...everyone and their mother (even my mother) tells you to quantify as much of your resume as possible, and alas, these are the quantifications I have. My experience of the last decade has been at messy startups (50-200p) whose leadership regarded the idea of metrics not unlike the trad sports community regarded advanced analytics (but this context is also how some of the results were possible - certainly, at a big company, it would be a different story). How would you suggest I tackle this to look less bullshitty? Lockback posted:It might not be obvious your company B was a 5 year stint with promotions instead of a bunch of short jobs. That might be getting your resume auto trashed. How you have the dates makes it seem like you kept leaving at a glance. Interesting observation about the dates and Company B. I've tried different ways of presenting them as far as under one company or under two, hadn't thought too much about the internal divisions. Is it just the fact that the dates stick out obviously on the right and you have to go into more detail to understand that they're not separate jobs? I mean, yeah, that's been hard coming to terms with haha. I've got over ten years of HR experience, but almost 4 of it was from 2008 to 2011, which on the inside I feel is still relevant but as noted above, have already started to realize it does not! Can you tell me more about what gives you the 5+ years feel and the inflated title Spidey sense? They are technically not, though I'll toggle between the HRBP and HR Manager titles for Company C depending on the role (I was the sole HR person until I later trained some help). What about the template is more engineer or technical -geared? And how radical departure would you suggest? I've considered trying the 'highlight' approach, where instead of the profile it's the big accomplishments across all the positions, and then the roles listed afterward. Also - I would love further thoughts on the soft metrics. What makes them soft, what can I try differently? And to the process: Eric the Mauve posted:A 3% call rate on a resume that is not obviously bad can only mean applying for roles that are getting hundreds of applicants (OP: are you applying only to WFH roles?) or it's getting screened out by software before a human ever sees it. What is driving this frustration in large part is the fact that, when it comes to job boards, I have been taking care to apply to largely on-site or local hybrid roles, specifically targeting those on e.g., LinkedIn that show fewer (often significantly) than 100 applicants, in order to improve my odds. As far as software screening it out, I receive a lot of rejection emails, which I have been given to understand indicate that a person has looked at your resume (or else that the role has been filled and all remaining applicants are getting a mass rejection email), which if true suggests I'm beating the software but not the reviewer, which in turn makes me wonder whether I should hew to the JD less than I have been. (more on this below) fawning deference posted:What is your job hunting process? If you are simply scouting job boards and applying to listings that seem doable, you should consider changing your approach. Otherwise, you will always be competing with hundreds or even thousands of other applicants for a position everyone is applying for. Without assuming you're already doing the following things, I have three bits of advice. Cold-calling notwithstanding, yes to all of that. I try to leverage my contacts and network as much as I can, and have planted some seeds in place where immediate opportunities were lacking but future payoff was a possibility. Unfortunately, it has simply been the case that there hasn't been much within my network on the HR side that fits (several roles for the taking if I move to LA or Colorado, but that is not in the cards). 98% of my resumes are tailored to the specific job. I've even been extra tailoring them over the last month or so - like, taking phrasing directly out of the JD and molding my bullet points around them, but I'm not sure that it's worth the extra time and whether it the looks weird to an actual person. Lockback posted:3. You should do a combination of quality and quantity. If your job hunting full time, I usually say find 3-5 jobs a week that you spend time crafting a resume and individualized cover letter for targeting jobs that are dream jobs or very gettable, and the rest you use your stock resume (though you probably want a couple resumes if your targeting similar but different job titles). If you try to tailor every job you'll burn out too fast. Good advice. I've been aiming for 5-10 per weekday, generally, but have written only 3 cover letters since September, all where they were required (or recommended). Your comment about the "stock" resume brings me back to the question of how much I should be tailoring my resume, generally. I've noticed it can take me 30+ minutes to really align my resume with a JD (okay, I use ChatGPT to gauge this), which I have been doing more of lately in an attempt to increase my success rate, which is time I could spend writing a cover letter for the dream / gettable jobs. Should I just...not work extra hard to tailor most resumes and save it for the notable ones? ----- I'd also love some input from people on the following resume elements: Profile statements - for or against, and why? Do the company descriptions, which I have begun to omit (per resume 3 and 4), add anything useful, or is omitting them the right move? What about the subheading role descriptions? I like them for a general overview and for taking less space than a bullet point. What are everyone's thoughts on margins? Mine are just a little taller (.75) and a little narrower (1.1) to facilitate mobile viewing, but I see resume templates that are just .5 all around and poo poo like that, even though consensus seems to be not to reduce margins to cram more stuff. Grateful for your help, goons.
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Jan 2, 2024 21:20
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themaninblack posted:Haven't had a ton of success with this resume, paid the top person on Fiverr to make it (thinking that might have been money wasted). Worried that it is too heavy on buzzwords, too long, etc. Would appreciate any feedback. This is just too much. Too many words, too many education accolades (that are not directly related to what you're applying for), too many volunteer roles (that are not directly related to what you're applying for), too many sections (interests are not necessary, certs can be balled under education, etc), and so on. Too many things that don't need to be there. You just need to pare this down to its essence (of ideally no more than a page, given you have two actual jobs listed). If you really want to show that you volunteer because it'll give you a leg up (else why mention it?), pick two. Is your CPR and Stop-the-Bleed certification relevant to your target role? Probably not - but if it is, the AWS certification almost certainly isn't! Your technical certificates can probably (but maybe not because that's not my department) drop the bullet points. Also, there are formatting inconsistencies. For example, your first and last listed jobs have organization followed by title, but all the ones in the middle have title followed by organization.
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Jan 2, 2024 21:35
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Thanks again for your time, attention, and help! Especially CFP and Lockback. You rock.CarForumPoster posted:Thanks for the detailed reply. My intuition is that to remove the bullshit, your quantities must obviously tie to a business KPI and should be specific (i.e. has common definition) and measurable. In order of how good these metrics are: quote:So "performance" and "team performance" are not specific. How much "performance" do I need to make $100K revenue? That this is your first metric and cited throughout sets and maintains the bullshitty tone.  What do I do with that?And things like engagement / morale are not meaningless in the HR domain. I would also put to you that if you had to attend 4 fewer hours of meetings per week, put up with 2 fewer hours of HR or company bullshit, and spend an hour or two less on training newbies or answering questions, you'd be some amount more productive. quote:With the additional context, it seems like your experience is in helping transition the people processes of a company from a pirate ship to a navy. I think thats a valuable thing to sell to companies of that size, byut that message doesnt come through with faux-metrics soup. Also the buyers of that tend to be founders, and good founders like good metrics. quote:[EDIT] I think its valuable to include metrics relevant to a core job function. It helps people calibrate on where you are, maybe in sum of your career. Lockback posted:"Engagement" is probably an engagement survey which is an HR-domain thing. I'd make sure to add in a little flavor on how it was measured though. It's a good thing if you really increased engagement from the 30s into the 70s though. And yeah, this is what I kinda did with Company D - just the titles / dates. quote:As for format, it's heavy on words and what boxes you check, light on what your bringing to the table and (most importantly) it kinda is daunting to look at at first. For an HR position, a 2 column like this might be more engaging Out of curiosity, does it look as daunting and word heavy when viewed with the margins intact? A two column resume? Intriguing idea. I've stayed the hell away from two column resumes (and other gimmicks) because it seems the consensus view is that they're appropriate for visual design type sectors OR recent grads and not much more. But...I am willing to give it a shot. That said, could you elaborate on my resume being 'light on what I'm bringing to the table?" In what regard? Habibi fucked around with this message at 21:33 on Jan 3, 2024 |
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Jan 3, 2024 21:30
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CarForumPoster posted:Use industry standard terminology, emphasize the schedule savings. Usually a schedule savings is much better than a cost reduction for the reason you pointed out. quote:It sounds like you measured hours saved. Hours saved might be a proxy for productivity, but its not the same thing. If you save 25 people 4 hours per week of meetings 50 weeks per year you save 5000 hours or ~2.5 person-years of work. Its great to save 2.5 person-years of work, but for a myriad of reasons it isnt the same thing as "productivity" by any definition I can contemplate. If my wife feels loved by receiving flowers, and I give her more flowers, I shouldn't then say "I loved my wife 10% more this year". In all seriousness, yes, you are correct in this, but if I can reasonably correlate time savings (or engagement bumps for that matter) with real improvements in KPI, we'd be talking about productivity, no? Maybe I need to be more explicit about that connection? But that ends up being like a 3 line bullet point. Sigh.Lockback posted:I think a basic two column resume isn't a gimmick, and SA tends to lean heavily in IT and engineering which is not a good fit for a 2 column. I'm not saying it's right for everybody, but it's an idea if your finding yourself not getting bites. I feel like your resume is really hard to parse out, which may be why you're seeing such a hard "I don't get it in 30 seconds so I'm trashing it" type of response. quote:What I mean is you are heavy on stuff but I am struggling to understand what you'd bring to my company. CFP and I are giving the same advice from two different angles: Looking at your resume it is hard to understand the story your trying to tell. You are chronicling good things (which is good) but doing so in a way that makes it obvious that you're doing good things but really really hard to understand what you'd do for my company. You need to adjust that dial. CFP is rightly telling you to try to standardize your points to make them more readable, I am trying to tell you to work on your narrative so I can understand why I will make more money hiring you vs not hiring you. You need to do both. As to this: quote:Have two resumes quote:Two+ resumes that are point focused is so much better than 1 that tries to do everything but instead fails at everything. How different are we talking here? I already tailor the resume and language to the JD of the role I'm applying for, but I think you're suggesting a more...thematic difference? Less in terms of words used and more in terms of what I am talking about and how I am talking about it?
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Jan 3, 2024 23:24
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Lockback posted:Looking at this its possible your burning out and over tailoring? Maybe having a couple "stock" resumes that target sectors, and only doing the fine tailoring a handful of times a week. The last time I job hunted seriously I'd spend about an hour 3-4 times a week on 1 job application, and then a bunch of job applications I'd only spend time selecting the right resume template and sending it off. That two tier approach I think makes the most sense, I'm going to spend the time when I want that extra edge but I won't let that stop me from playing the numbers game. Both tiers netted me real bites. quote:To make people feel better about the arbitrary and unfeeling machine You're a monster.
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Jan 3, 2024 23:58
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Magicaljesus posted:My wife and I took a gap year, and now we're preparing to return to the world of the employed. It's been a very long time since I've needed a resume, so I'm pretty much starting from scratch. This never got addressed and ties in with cheese eats mouse's question and something I'm wondering about : while I've been unemployed for going on 11 months now, I've not just been sitting on my rear end and applying to jobs. I've acquired some very relevant certifications, undertaken some other professional development / classes, worked on a couple of books (that are not career related), and have been doing some consulting work with contacts through friends / network (nothing through an agency and half of it unpaid, as I'm trying to build cred and lay groundwork for a client base). To date, I've only talked about this during interviews, but as it's getting to the point where I might be showing a year+ since my last role, I'm wondering if I should devote a brief entry to it on top of my experience section (which is deliberately titled 'relevant experience'), and the best way to do so? Should I simply have a 'Freelancer' entry or something to that effect, or does that look weird?
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Jan 5, 2024 23:35
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cheese eats mouse posted:Someone in my network got me in touch with some career coaches that are also recruiters. Here’s their recommendations Thanks!
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Jan 7, 2024 19:29
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If it helps, it's not so much that Workday is awful as that many HR departments do an rear end job of implementing it. Most of the hoops it forces applicants to jump through can be tweaked or outright disabled.
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Jan 11, 2024 20:39
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No one it saying it isn't lovely. It's just it doesn't necessarily have to be. But by default, it is. Which is lovely.
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Jan 11, 2024 23:08
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Thank you, PIPio! But your job is in another castle!
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Jan 25, 2024 20:16
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fondue posted:Were you interviewing to work at an argument clinic? No, arguments are in room 12A. This was abuse.
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Feb 26, 2024 16:37
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Funnily enough, I just got an invitation to take an assessment for an Amazon role to which I had applied...more than 2 months ago. I guess this is indicative of their process as a whole.
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Feb 28, 2024 22:53
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Mustang posted:Didn't get the job but "they saw Amazonian attributes" in me Ah. Him like snu-snu.
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Mar 1, 2024 20:54
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Mustang posted:lmao I generally keep my negativity and bitching to the internet/SA. You and me both. I'm waiting to hear from a great place where I'm in the final running...for probably the 6th such scenario in the last 5 months. Rain luck!
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Mar 3, 2024 01:20
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Looks like I passed Amazon's 'work simulation' assessment and have a first round interview with a member of the hiring team next week. I'm beyond surprised. Not only was my application a shot in the dark that I expected to go nowhere because all of my experience is small scale (and in HR, it matters), but I had applied for this role back in December, then the req was closed without notice and my application archived in a way that usually means rejection. But a week or so ago, they re-posted a slightly revised version of the same opening and shortly thereafter reached out, so I figure they must have pulled my app from the previous pile. Anyway. I'm keeping my excitement contained and expectations low, but as an HR person, working at Amazon would probably make my career, and allow me to dictate my destination and terms if / when I decided to split. Now, here's a question for y'all who know better: The resume Amazon has is not the resume I am currently using, as I made some revisions back in January that led to substantive improvements (such that I'm scoring follow-ups on 10% of my applications rather than 3%!). Obviously, I have gotten this far on the back of the one I submitted, but was pondering the idea of asking the recruiter to update the one on file. Bad idea? Don't swap horses in mid-stream type thing? Resume probably not super important at this point as long as I can speak intelligently to what it says (tbf, the new one is easier to speak to, but whatevs)?
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Mar 5, 2024 23:35
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Mustang posted:Amazon got back to me, one of my 5 interviewers is interested in me for a role with the same title on the same team, just different work. They say I won't have to do the 5 person loop again, just interview with the manager. He was easily the nicest person I interviewed with, hopefully this one will work out this time. That's awesome! Good luck!
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Mar 8, 2024 04:29
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Sad King Billy posted:Got a rejection letter claiming to offer constructive feedback. This line I found quite interesting. There's gotta be some horseshoe theory poo poo going on when the Andrew Tate guys think you are too arrogant.
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Mar 10, 2024 03:36
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Mustang posted:Have my next interview with Amazon scheduled and I'm not even sure what I can do to prepare. At this point they've already interviewed me for about 6 hours, soon to be 7. What more could they possibly learn? Good luck, goon! Had my Amazon phone screen today. I wish I could say I was confident in my performance...but I can't! Thought I did okay. Looking forward to hearing from the recruiter but kinda girding for disappointment.
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Mar 12, 2024 21:47
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