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.