Applicant Tracking Systems

Happy New Year everyone! To kick off 2016, I’m starting off with some important info about an obstacle many of us will face in our search for a new job: the Applicant Tracking System.

Before your resume is ever seen by human eyes, it will very likely be screened by one of the many ATS programs available today. It’s worth noting that unless you are an employer or recruiter, you will probably never see an ATS at work. These aren’t the annoying robots on job websites that take the info from your resume and throw it haphazardly into a profile.

ATS are software programs that are created to screen applicant information, searching for key words and phrases that the employer has told it to recognize. For example, if you’re applying for a customer service position, you better have words like “satisfaction” and “service” in your resume. Choosing the buzz words is the easy part. The two best methods in my experience are two pull key words directly from the description for the job you’re applying for, or do a Google search for common words associated with the kind of job you want. Usually they are very obvious, like “management” for a manager position.

The tricky part comes with the way you include those words in your resume, and even more fundamentally in the way your resume is constructed. If a resume has too many graphics or tables, or if it’s a PDF file, it’s very possible that an ATS will not be able to read the information. There are some experts who say that the programs are more advanced than they once were and more capable of reading documents, but it’s still a good idea to avoid the flashier formats. Infographic resumes might look cool, but it’s better to use a resume with a smaller file size and less graphics when submitting to an online application. Save the fancy one for interviews, or uploading directly to websites like Monster.com, where they can be viewed by recruiters.

Another trap applicants fall into is something called “keyword stuffing”.  Similar to the early theory behind SEO (Search Engine Optimization) for websites, it was once believed that by shoving as many keywords as possible into your resume, you would heighten your chances of getting through the ATS. Some applicants would even list off keywords in white text, so they would be invisible to human eyes but still read by the software. This may be tempting but DON’T DO IT. ATS programs today screen not just for key words, but for their context. Writing something like “qualified manager with 10 years of management experience who efficiently manages managers in the business management field,” not only will trip the ATS software’s BS alarm, it will make you look pretty dumb if by some miracle your resume gets past the robot sentinel.

Ultimately the best method, as mentioned earlier, is to review the description for the kind of job you want, and make sure your resume includes the most obvious key words and phrases in that description. Don’t over do it. Make sure your buzz words are present, but never to the detriment of readability or clarity. As with most things, balance is key.

Happy job hunting!

 

 

 

2016…What Next?

Well, it’s that time again. The final month, the last weeks of 2015. As we scramble around to manage last minute plans with friends and family, and splurge on holiday gifts for loved ones (or ourselves, admit it!), it’s easy to lose sight on the goals we’ve had for the past year. But once all the festivities are over and January 1st dawns, we will step into the new year with a list of hopeful resolutions–and for many of us, at the top of that list is the goal of landing a new and better job.

As 2016 approaches, I find myself in the same boat as many of my clients: ready for a change. I love helping people pursue their dreams and probably won’t be stopping any time soon, but even so, the question of “what happens next” is looming over my head.

Going after a new job is frankly terrifying, especially when you’re not even sure what you want to do. Like my fellow millennials, the future of my career is murky at best. With the job market constantly changing, the path of the professional writer is in constant flux. Where once it was possible to gain permanent employment with publishing houses or newspapers or marketing firms, now much of the work has shifted to the competitive realm of freelance. In some ways it’s ideal–freelance work allows you to set your own pace, choose your own projects, and of course as everyone loves to point out when they hear what I do for a living: spend all day in your pajamas. But it’s not all rainbows and comfy flannel.

Between getting passed over for jobs due to lack of experience, and facing the overwhelming burden of self-employment tax, being a full time freelancer has some major downsides. The independence is wonderful, especially for those who dislike being forced into a schedule. But when the work is slow and the options limited (who really wants to spend their time writing technical manuals or developing advertising copy for athletic equipment?) the world of stable employment starts looking real nice.

Thus far I’ve primarily received offers from insurance companies to become a sales person, and encouraged to purchase a resume makeover from the very same company I’ve worked with for nearly three years.

But I’m not giving up hope.

Somewhere out there is the perfect opportunity for an eccentric English major who loves kids’ cartoons, Swedish mystery books, and coffee.

Probably.

So as we step blindly into the new year, clutching tight to our list of resolutions we probably won’t keep, and trying not to think too hard about the moths flying out of our empty wallets, let’s think positively. After all, anything can happen. Just like every year, 2016 will no doubt bring as many challenges and tragedies as it will bring opportunities and accomplishments.

What’s most important, is that we own every minute of it. Instead of setting unattainable goals, focus on the idea of self-empowerment. Find your confidence, ignore the critics, and acknowledge your personal triumphs, no matter how big or small. Embrace your inner badass–the rest will follow.

5 Pieces of Advice for Starting Your Job Search in the New Year.

We’ve survived our first week into the New Year. Some of us are already back to the grindstone. Some of us may still be enjoying our visits with family. Some—like me—are desperately trying to fit in as much fun as possible before returning to the snowpocalyptic world that is Chicago.

But some of us are already working hard on fulfilling our New Year’s resolutions–and a big one for many of you will be the search for your dream job. As you get ready to engage in the year’s most busiest employment-seeking season, here are a few things to keep in mind:

1. New jobs mean sacrifice—but don’t sacrifice your own happiness.

Whether you’re looking to leave a bad job, or trying to escape the cycle of unemployment, you might be tempted to make some sacrifices in order to get that coveted new job. When you’re ready for a change, things like lower pay, a field you hate (*cough* retail *cough), or a hard to get to place of work may seem small concessions. But don’t fall into the trap of thinking in the short-term. It’s better to hold out for a job you like—or can at least tolerate—than to jump into something that will make you miserable.

2. A lot of stuff happened last year—update your resume and online profiles.

Even a resume writer like myself sometimes brings up their resume only to find old information, wording you once thought was clever (but isn’t), or new things you’ve forgotten to include. Set aside some time to look over everything—resumes, Linkedin or Monster profiles, personal websites—and make sure everything is correct and up to date. Chances are you’ll find things that need attention.

3.New Year, clean slate—toss out everything you don’t need.

A cluttered house is a cluttered mind. The old paperwork and junk you collected around the house last year (we all have that drawer in our house), and the emails that have been clogging your inboxes have got to go. Now is the time to move forward, unburdened by the past. Do yourself a favor and throw out all that stuff that’s getting in your way of moving on. You may even find a few things you lost last year!

4. Be good to yourself—don’t get lost in the chaos of job searching.

January and February are two of the busiest months for hiring. The opportunities are abundant, but the competition and pressure are steep. Take time to breathe in between applications and interviews. This will help you avoid burning out and giving up. When you get a rejection letter, have a party. After an interview, buy yourself a coffee. Job searching is tough, but don’t let it get in the way of enjoying life.

5. It’s never too late to learn—take some classes and educate yourself.
You may not have the job, but you can still gain the skills. There are thousands of educational opportunities out there. You can audit classes at a university, become certified in a new trade, or enroll in free classes online through Coursera, Harvard, MIT, Oxford, and more. If you’re unemployed or lack the skills for the job you’re seeking, show your potential employer that you are proactive and motivated.

Finally, when you get stuck or need support, there are hundreds of helpful job sites out there that can offer advice, job searches, and online communities to make the process easier. Check out my list of resources for some of the leading job assistance websites.

And as always, if you have any questions, or are interested in purchasing my writing services, you can contact me at clarerushing@gmail.com. I’d love to hear from you.

Happy hunting!

New Year’s Resolution: Get A Job

Midst holiday preparations and expectations of fun, food, and family, you’re probably feeling the burden of something else–an empty wallet. Dead end jobs, immanent New Year’s layoffs, promotions just out of reach, and unemployment can be a real drag on the holiday spirit.

Thousands of people will soon be going full-force with their job search, so in support of those of you who are anxious to get off to a good start this New Year, I’m reducing my prices for December.

Prices through January 1st will include:

Resume Critiques—$15

Makeovers—$25
Resume/Cover Letter Package—$35

Additional services will also be discounted by around 50%.

According to Monster.com, two of the biggest months for hiring are January and February. So give yourself or your job-seeking loved one an advantage against the competition in 2015!

All gifts will include a personalized note to give the recipient, explaining the service they’ll be receiving.

Email me for more information at clarerushing@gmail.com.
Happy Holidays!

The “D” Word

In a few lines, I’m going to tell you a word. And when you hear this word, I want you to sit and think about it for a moment, read this blog entry, and then banish it from your vocabulary.

Get ready.

Dynamic.

“What?” You say. This word is fine. It’s not a swear word. It’s fun, it sounds like dynamite, it calls to mind enthusiasm and energy and everything a good employee should be. Right?

Wrong.

In fact, CareerBuilder.com lists “dynamic” as number 13 on their list of “The Worst Resume Terms”, alongside other no-no’s like “best of breed”, “synergy”, “bottom-line”, and “go-to person”.

Now, people who use this word (you know who you are) do have the right idea. You understand that any good employee should be “vigorously active” and “energetic”. Maybe you’ve even been told to use “action” words in your resume and thought, “what word is more action-y than this?”

Think about it this way.

A dynamic painting has a lot of movement and energy and action. But if you want to give someone a clear idea of a painting, you don’t give them a generic umbrella term. You tell them how beautiful the colors are, what medium the artist used, whether it’s an abstract painting or a portrait or a landscape or still life. You describe the painting to the person so that they can “see” it in their mind.

Your resume works the same way. The employer can’t see you or hear you or talk to you. All he or she has to go on to form an opinion of you is a piece of paper.

Using the word “dynamic” to describe yourself basically just means you are, in fact, alive and capable of moving on your own. It says nothing about who you are as an employee—especially when half of the applicants before you have used the exact same word to describe themselves.

When you’re an employer sifting through potential candidates, and every other resume describes the applicant as a “dynamic professional” who influences “dynamic results”, the word loses all meaning.

Have you ever said a word so many times it doesn’t sound like anything anymore? 

Wherever you are right now, I want you to say the word “dynamic” out loud until it’s just a bunch of letters and syllables with no purpose. If you’re around other people, all the better. Maybe you’ll annoy them enough that they’ll never want to use the word again either.

Now, when you’re finished, pat yourself on the back, because according to CareerBuilder, you just gave yourself a 12% increased advantage over other job seekers (the ones who use the D word).

You’re one step closer to a perfect resume and your dream job.

Did You See That Guy’s Resume?

“Did you see that guy’s resume? It was so cool!”

Words everyone would like to hear.

Not long ago Business Insider posted a great article about 10 resumes that went “viral” on the internet, meaning basically everyone saw them, including websites like Yahoo Finance and Reddit.

While turning your resume into a chocolate bar or an Amazon product page may not be practical, all of these resumes have two critical things in common: creativity, and enthusiasm.

Having completed hundreds of (more traditional) resumes, I can tell you right now that these guys are nothing special in terms of experience or talent. What they are, is creative. Understanding how competitive their fields are, they found unique ways to stand out. Don’t get me wrong—their skills are vitally important. But what won them the attention of millions of internet viewers wasn’t a Bachelor’s Degree or strong attention to detail. It was the amount of effort they put into inventing a new way of representing those skills.

These ingenious job seekers didn’t just build their resumes and hope people might notice them. They actively sent out their finished product to major companies.

If you’ve done any amount of job hunting you know that most job descriptions are pretty boring. A summary of the company and the role plus a basic list of qualifications. The average job seeker submits an equally boring resume, including their objective or career summary, list of skills, and the things they’ve done. What sets you apart from the Average Joe applicant is your creativity.

I’m not telling you to go out right now and spend the next week figuring out how to turn your resume into a Coke can (though that would be pretty cool). While these job seekers managed to have just the right recipe for getting noticed, most of us don’t, and plenty of employers wouldn’t get the humor or ingenuity of a 3D-Printed head being sent to their office anyway.

But you can still set yourself apart as a creative thinker, while staying within the general rules of the standard resume. A visually appealing, “pretty” format, clarity, uncluttered content, and elegant wording will give you an instant advantage over your competition.

Once you realize that the majority of resumes are basically plain (and often jumbled) lists of skills, it’s easy to understand that a dash of creativity is a breath of fresh air to a bored hiring manager.

I’ve read plenty of resumes that were dull as dish-water. While some people do just have a hard time marketing themselves, it’s important to understand that a dull resume is going to make you look dull as a person. If I don’t know you, all I have is the information you’ve given me to go on. So if that resume is unformatted and sounds like you copy and pasted generic, job descriptions from the internet, I’m going to assume you’re a) not creative, and b) don’t care about getting the job.

Applying for a job is a competition. You can’t just assume that you’ll win based on your experience alone—no matter how impressive it is. If I have two resumes with the exact same skills and accomplishments, but one of them is plain and boring, and the other is beautiful to look at and interesting to read, who do you think I’m going to pick?

If you’ve seen another “viral resume” out there on the web, or have other ideas about creative job-hunting, leave a comment or email me at clarerushing@gmail.com

What’s in a Name?

Unfortunately, even today with progress made all over the country for racial and cultural equality, there are still some deep rooted biases that work against people with names that do not sound traditionally “American”.

This does not necessarily pertain only to people of non-Western European descent. For example, Antje and Gerlof have a lesser chance of getting an interview than Andy and Gerald.

So why the racial and cultural discrimination, when many employers claim to support minorities and diversity?

A few possibilities—

Profiling. In some cases, it is a simple matter of prejudice and bigotry. In this scenario, you’re better off missing out on a job rather than dealing with a racist boss.

Social Anxiety. It may sound silly, but some hiring managers would rather pick a less qualified candidate whose name they can pronounce, than deal with the embarrassment of mispronouncing a candidate’s name on the phone or in person.

Unconscious Bias. While a hiring manager may be forward thinking and accepting of all cultures, internalized prejudice does still exist. It’s worth noting that this is not an intentional form of racism, and the manager is likely unaware of their bias. 

So how do you avoid being racially or culturally profiled by your potential boss?

Here’s how Jose Zamora handled it:

The idea that you’d have to change your name to get a job is not only degrading—it goes against decades of movement towards racial and cultural equality and acceptance.

But today, working with the system is sometimes the only way to beat the system. Altering your name is a small price to pay for getting that job you’ve always wanted.

Above all else, remember this:

Changing your name on paper, does not change who you are. Nobody can force you to give up your culture—and if they try, they’re not worth working for anyways.

Check out these articles for more information on name profiling:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/careers/how-an-ethnic-sounding-name-may-affect-the-job-hunt/article555082/

http://www.nbcnews.com/id/34063244/ns/business-careers/t/it-or-not-name-can-impact-your-career/

http://www.chicagobooth.edu/capideas/spring03/racialbias.html

 

If you’d like to learn more tricks to getting a job, or want to share your opinion on racial profiling in the workforce, leave a comment here, or drop me a line at clarerushing@gmail.com.

 

How to get a job, without knowing how to get a job.

“Back in the day”, or so my parents tell me, job searching basically meant submitting a resume and hoping you didn’t have lettuce in your teeth when you went for an interview.

Today, with all of the online applications and job sites and resume styles and cover letters—applying to just one job is a daunting task. And unfortunately, in our current economy, often times you have to apply to 10, 20, 30 or even more jobs before you can even snag an interview.

As a bright eyed and bushy tailed young Liberal Arts student, I was committed to the idea of being a starving artist for a few years and then finding that awesome dream job. I didn’t want to “sell out to the man”, I didn’t want a job in retail (who does?), and I definitely didn’t want a desk job.

Come to find out, I didn’t really know what “starving artist” felt like. It was unpleasant, embarrassing, and definitely NOT what I wanted to be doing for any prolonged period of time.

I knew more or less how you were supposed to job search. I knew what the requirements of my profession were. And pretty soon, I figured out what a lot of young artists and writers find out. I was severely underqualified for pretty much everything.  I’d discovered the dreaded cycle of “need experience to get experience, but can’t get a job without the experience”.

It seemed wholly unfair.

But I was determined. By a stroke of sheer luck I had the opportunity to move to Chicago and by my third day there I had a job—as an over-night grocery store price clerk. But heck. I was out of my mom’s living room, and into my own apartment.

It lasted about 7 months. Retail really, really does suck the life out of you. I had had enough of it, and so one fateful weekend I submitted somewhere around 40 applications. I perused Craigslist, various jobsites, some of the freelance websites I was a member of.

Within two weeks I was getting paid  to write. The irony of it? My new job was helping desperate people get a job.

It was scary at first, because while I was a great writer, I was still kind of clueless about the whole job thing. But after a few months, something changed. I began getting more and more emails from clients thanking me for my services. Telling me that they now felt confident enough to go after that job they’d been coveting.

Somehow, miraculously, I’d found a job that simultaneously taught me about my industry, the business of finding a job, and gave me the opportunity to help people who, like me, were struggling in their search.

Now, 500+ resumes and cover letters later, I’m kind of an expert, according to my clients. And while this is by no means the end game—I have my own goals, just like all of the talented people I work with every day—I am thoroughly and totally committed to helping other people overcome that same feeling of desperation and intimidation that I felt in my search.