Tag Archives: Key words

I have all the qualifications, so why am I not being hired?

AP-Photo-Chris-Pizzello

For you, the only thing you want is to get a job. For the hiring manager, making the hire is a priority competing with many others at the same time. So what is going on in the hiring manager’s mind? Most hiring managers take no pleasure in the hiring process. It’s just one more thing they have to take care of, and they often feel insecure in making that final decision, since some of their previous hires proved disappointing.

A hiring manager also knows that making a hiring mistake could potentially ruin his reputation and credibility. While reviewing resumes he is asking himself three questions: Why should he interview you? What can you do for him? And if hired, would you be effective in filling the job duties?

Now, provided that you get invited for an interview, the hiring manager has three more qualifying questions to answer before deciding to hire you: (1) Are you particularly good at what he needs done? He is not hiring just average people. This is your opportunity to recite your accomplishments eloquently and succinctly. Do not repeat what you said in the past. Highlight only your accomplishments and the results. (2) Do you fit into his organization? This is the primary area in which you have to be convincing. You may have all the qualifications, but if the hiring manager cannot see you as part of his organization, then nothing will help you. (3) Are you committed? The hiring manager sees in you an investment—hopefully, a long-term investment. And he wants to make sure it’s a good one. He also wants to make sure you are promotable and have the potential to grow within the organization.

As you can see, the hiring process is complex for both the hiring manager and the candidate. Both sides will share in the potential rewards as well as the associated risks. The question for the candidate remains: how to increase chances of getting hired by outshining the competition? The theoretical answer is to network to the max, because statistics have proved that 60 to 80% of people found their jobs via networking. The practical answer is to mock-practice your interviewing skills. You can do that with friends or your spouse or—best of all—with a qualified career coach. The reason that interviewing skills are vital to acquire is simply that hiring managers make their decisions based on how well you interview and not on your job skills.

Keywords in Résumé Lead to Interviews

Eighty percent of all submitted résumés (and 100 percent of résumés sent to Fortune 1000 companies) get scanned by software commonly known as an applicant-tracking system (ATS), and such scanned résumés are stored on a server in a digitized format. Humans are seeing your résumé only if it resurfaces based on a query. That’s why most job applicants don’t receive responses from companies after submitting résumés. Therefore, in order to increase your résumé’s chances of being at least viewed by a human–even if it’s not thereafter considered suitable–you have to understand the process and beat them at their own game.

Human resources departments that use ATSs base their queries on keywords they lift from job descriptions or receive verbally from hiring managers. Based on that information, the ATS extracts appropriate résumés from the ones on file. The human resources employee’s query may result in just a few résumés or a vast number. The ATS also scores those résumés and sorts and prioritizes them. Then the employee reviews, say, 20 and submits 5 to be interviewed.

Your job is to ensure that you embed sufficient keywords in your résumé. So, what’s the best way to find those magical keywords? It’s a simple, albeit somewhat tedious, exercise.

1. Search the Internet via job boards such as Monster and The Ladders.com to find 5 to 20 job descriptions of jobs advertised in the field you’re interested in.

2. Cut and paste all of the descriptions one after another into a new Word document.

3. Review the document, resetting in boldface what you consider the keywords throughout.

4. Delete everything except the boldface words.

5. Alphabetize the words, and delete duplicates.

6. Copy your résumé into a new Word document, and repeat steps 3, 4, and 5 on that copy.

The two resulting lists will display which keywords from the descriptions are missing from your résumé. And now comes the creative part: you incorporate the missing keywords into your résumé so it seems seamless and a perfect match for the context in which the words are mentioned in the job descriptions.

By doing this admittedly laborious task, you increase manyfold your chances of being picked out from the crowd.

The Psychology of Finding a Job

Photo-by-Mark-Dadswell-Getty-Images.

To start with, I must make an important disclaimer. I am not a psychologist but a career coach. I don’t find it surprising that there is much in common between the two professions, and I have lots of stories to prove it. If you happen to be in transition, you may want to understand the psychology of the decision makers. It would be useful ammo you could deploy in order to promote yourself in landing a job.

Barnes & Noble, and similar stores have shelves and shelves of books on the subject of finding a job. I’m going to spare you from having to read several of those books. I want to focus on your need to start accepting change. It’s a known fact that our comfort zone lies within what we know. People exhibit various degrees of resistance to change. But when you’re in transition, you’d better embrace change, because if you resist, the world will go by and you’ll get left behind.

First, accept the fact that your old résumé that you just updated needs much, much more work. It needs to be revamped for today’s contemporary look and for projection of your accomplishments—not a listing of activities that someone in your position was expected to perform. I read résumés every single day, and the reluctance I see on the part of people who stick to the old style and content is a shame. Hiring managers and human resources people are interested in your accomplishments and what you excelled at and not what kept you busy. Recruiters are even more interested, since they have to sell you to hiring managers.

The next area of resistance I see is among those who stick to their own old ways and don’t jump in with both feet by using social media. They simply underestimate to what extent social media is being used by hiring managers, human resources staffers, and outside recruiters. Those hirers consult those social media for several reasons. The most important one is probably that it’s free versus their having to pay significant amounts of money to Monster, CareerBuilder, and others. In addition, social media enable them to cross-check information about you. People spend an inordinate amount of time and effort to make their résumé just right. But not so with information on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter.

Please understand that when companies hire a job candidate, they’re making a big investment. And so, they must do their due diligence, which is similar to what you do when you’re considering a big investment or a decision. A part of that due diligence involves finding out more information about you than what you intended to provide via your résumé. My advice to people seeking employment is to become knowledgeable about and active with social media and at the same time to be careful of what they post in cyberspace. Whatever it is, make sure you’re consistent. A significant discrepancy between your résumé and your cyber persona could be very detrimental.