Too Big To Care: The Indifference of Big Companies & How Workers Can Protect Themselves From Layoffs

Layoffs & Loyalty

Twitter, Meta, Amazon, Salesforce… titans of Tech, supposedly too big to fail.

But we’re seeing some wavering. And employees are certainly feeling the quake.

Inflation is taking its toll, the global supply chain is still screwy, and consumers are pinching their pennies. As a result, profits are down, even for the big guys, and the #1 strategy of public companies to keep dishing out shareholder dividends is to cut the workforce. And fast.

Tens of thousands of workers are being laid off, in some cases 10%-50% of the workforce.

If you’re not lucky enough to be above the fold, you may find yourself dumping your desk tchotchkes into a cardboard box with an unrequested escort to the front door.

It’s not enough to work hard and be loyal.

When the chips are down, your salary can always be rescinded.

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Part of protecting yourself is knowing this to be true and taking precautions to be ready for when it occurs.

1. Stay to the outside. If you’ve got some tenure under your belt, love what you do, and want to call your own shots, consider shifting to consulting. Self-employment is the only true job security because you, and you alone, are in charge of your paycheck. As long as you keep a balanced portfolio of clients (3 or more clients, 2 or more industries), you will always be safe from being out of work.
2. Sleep with the enemy. Get to know folks in your role at competing companies. Don’t gossip or trade trade secrets, but have lunch every once in a while. Welcome someone from the other side into your life. You’ll be better able to see the industry trends coming around the corner, you’ll have a bigger picture when doing your own work, and you just may have some inroads into a new job, should your company decide to downsize…er, rightsize… no, I mean consolidate… Wait, restructure?
3. Toot your horn. Everyone in a big company knows they have to find ways to add value to survive, but you also have to find ways to prove you’re finding ways to add value. This means, telling your boss your good ideas *and* making sure you get credit for them, volunteering to do “high-visibility” projects, making post-project slide decks that show business impact, and reminding people of your greatness during meetings and reviews. Don’t count on anyone else to advocate for you. It’s not that your colleagues don’t care; they’re just as busy as you are and they can only fit one horn in their mouth.
4. Interview every once in a while. Especially when things are good, dip a toe in the job market. See what’s out there for you. See what salaries look like. Guage the eagerness of another company to snatch you up. This is a good way to make some alliances within other companies and turn enemies into friends, which is always a good business strategy (and life strategy). Interviewing is a skill. And you should always keep your skills polished.
5. Keep your resume sharp. Military veterans and Information Security professionals are great at this. Perhaps it’s because they know bombs can drop at any moment. There is no better way to gain peace of mind in an unstable job situation than to have your resume updated and ‘at the ready.’ At the first explosion, you’re ready to fire back. If you really want an edge, hire a professional resume writer to do the job for you. It can be challenging to get your story down on paper, especially after an involuntary, abrupt ending.

Life is uncertain. Companies have plenty of failsafes in place to protect them from sudden catastrophes.

Do you?

Automated Resume Builders – Who Needs Them?

Robots to the Rescue?

Everything’s automated now. So why not automate the process of building a new resume?

The benefits are obvious: a resume. And fast. You enter a few action verbs and phrases, pick a template, and presto, the resume gods spit out a brand-new resume for you. As a resume writer, I thought about building something like this. I still might but I always come back to the same reasons why I don’t think it’s a good idea.

They can hurt more than help.

Who Needs Them

If you’ve got a linear career path with no job gaps or short-term jobs, and your most recent position and company are directly relevant to the job you are targeting, then a resume builder should be fine for you. You should catch the attention of recruiters and HR folks easily. Well done toeing the line.

Another scenario where resume builders work well is if you’re applying internally. That is, a job opened up at your company, and you need a resume to apply for it. As long as the people doing the hiring know exactly who you are, then it’s not such an imperative that you wow them with words on your resume. A slight caveat, though: you may be surprised how little people know about what you do, including the colleagues you talk to every day.

Who Should Avoid Resume Builders

Resume builders don’t allow you to pick and choose where to put content, such as titles, company names, dates, education, certifications, and skills. You’re stuck with a template. The template decides which foot you put forward first, and that can mean a dangerous step in the wrong direction.

For example, if you have a job gap or a short-term gap, having prominent dates could be a problem. If your job titles don’t match up with the industry, showcasing titles might trip you up. If you just got a groovy new certification, but the template forces you to put it at the bottom of the resume, under your education, then you’re shooting yourself in the foot.

Resume-builders don’t allow you to have subheadings, sidebars, case studies, and other callouts in your Experience section. It’s tricks like these that help to tell an accurate story, visually and literally.

Another big gripe about resume builders: they rarely offer the option of creating a summary section. You’ll usually be allowed to create a massive keyword list, which is critical, but you won’t have a nice juicy intro on your resume saying who you are and what you’re about.

This leads me to the biggest issue with Resume Builders…

The content comes from you.

You’re already struggling with what to say. It’s hard to know what to include and what to leave out, what to infer and what to explicitly state.

No resume builder is going to help you with this.

Alternatives to Resume Builders

There are a few paths you can take to free yourself of the burden of building your own resume (or outsourcing to a bot).

1. Use job listings. Pick out 3 target jobs with the exact same title at different companies and analyze the crap out of them. Highlight common keywords and come up with a short list of the highest priority job duties and qualifications (i.e. whatever they list first). This content should be on your resume. Pro tip: used a word cloud tool to see what keywords and phrases pop up the most.
2. Talk to a hiring manager. They’re the ones who have all the answers. If you don’t already know someone who has hired for your specific position, line up an informational interview. Then ask this person what they’re looking for. Get the answers to the test. Then you’ll know what to say on your resume.
3. Take a course. Consider enrolling in an online class about building resumes. Just make sure there is a part in the course about overcoming specific work-history challenges you may face. For example, if you have a job gap, you’re going to need to figure out how to deal with that on paper.
4. Hire a resume writer. Ever tried to fix your own car or toilet and ended up with a bigger mess than when you started? The same is true with your career. Keep it in good hands, expert hands. With a good resume writer, all you have to do is talk about your jobs; they’ll know what to include and leave out, how to say it so the hiring folks will be pleased, and where to put everything on the page so that the readers’ eye is directed in the appropriate sequence.

Sometimes a robot can’t do a human’s job. When it comes to mapping out your career and telling your life’s story on 1 or 2 pages, resume builders are usually going to come up short. It’s tempting to want to believe you can magically create a winning resume with the click of a button, but…

If your career runs a path that is anything but straight and narrow, think twice before you push that button.

The Difference Between Responsibilities and Accomplishments, and Why You Should Have NEITHER on Your Resume

As a former recruiter and professional resume writer, I’ve looked at a lot of resumes. I can tell you this: people seem to struggle with knowing how, where, and to what extent to include Responsibilities and Accomplishment on their resumes.

Most people have one or the other, the coffee or the cookie. Some have both, a 2-course delivery. Neither of these strategies is optimal.

To show you why Continue reading this entry »

Why Won’t You Just Die?! The Stubborn Immortality of the Resume

What is it about resumes that they’re still around? Aren’t we well past the era of using 1- to 2-page documents to represent ourselves?

I’m a professional resume writer and I’ve been ready for the traditional resume to die for a while now, like a king in his castle looking down onto the battlefield at his battered and bruised knight, so proud but bracing for the inevitable.

But the knight just won’t go down. Despite all the swords blazing and shots being fired, the trusty-rusty resume keeps swinging.

There have been numerous attempts to take down the resume, to relieve it of its decades-long tyranny over the job search, but nothing has been victorious.

Here are some of the more modern sharpshooters that have promised to dethrone the chivalrous resume: Continue reading this entry »

5 Things Your Resume Can Do For You Beyond Just Getting An Interview

There is a common misconception that the only purpose of the resume is to get you an interview. You’re short-changing yourself if you believe this.

I’ve watched resumes do many more things for job seekers, time and time again. Here are some of those things. Continue reading this entry »

How to Keep Your Career Alive Through Coronavirus

Is anyone hiring?

Not really. There are, indeed, industries and companies that are going strong, but they’re not necessarily adding to their headcount right now. Everyone’s in waiting. HR departments are in an Arctic freeze. People with jobs are clinging to them like driftwood in the cold open sea. Unemployment numbers are rising, which means the competition for life rafts is growing.

It’s hard to be cooped up in your house, knowing all of this is going, feeling like you should be “out there” looking for work.

Still, it’s always better to take action during a crisis. Action delivers a sense of progress. It fans the flame of hope in the night while we pray for the sun to come back over the horizon.

Here are some ways to stay productive and generate your own warmth in this time of uncertainty: Continue reading this entry »

HR Directors Speak Out About What They Want

I had the privilege of engaging an HR panel who took the time to share what they wanted to see (and did not want to see) on a job candidate’s resume. Here’s what they had to say: Continue reading this entry »

Resume Tips For Overcoming Recession-Related Challenges

Recessions tend to push hardworking people into two groups. On the one hand, is the layoff survivor handling the load of multiple former employees. On the other is the hyperqualified, abruptly laid-off job seeker who needs to explain the abrupt ending to their tenure. Different destinies but both types tend to struggle with how to present these career changes on their resumes.

Here are some tips: Continue reading this entry »

Cliff & Scott Shafer Talking About Resumes and Hiring on NPR

Had to dig this one out of the archives…

KQED called me up to be the San Francisco Bay Area career hero on the California Report with Scott Shafer. Scott let me use his own career as an example for how to use seemingly irrelevant work experience as an asset, not a liability. We also discussed taking a different approach to networking, and some of the things that employers look for in job candidates.

Check out the podcast; they even included the original take which has plenty more advice for people looking to beat a tough job market. Continue reading this entry »

Resume Advice for Recent Grads

Here’s an interview I did for a blogger, asking me some popular resume questions on behalf of her fellow graduates-to-be.

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Let’s start with the most common Resume question: Continue reading this entry »

Not Going Down Alone

I admit I’ve had a couple of challenging clients recently. It’s easy to write them off but it’s always best to look inward before casting blame.

So, what’s really going on? Continue reading this entry »

Career Advice for Older Workers to Prevent Age Discrimination

As a seasoned professional, you have much to offer but remember to make room for new experiences as well.

An effective resume will balance your strengths (i.e. what you can teach) with your areas for growth (i.e. what you can learn). In regards to the latter, I’m certainly not suggesting you claim ignorance. Rather, consider showing a recently developed interest in a new industry or field.

This is best done by illustrating how you’ve already Continue reading this entry »

Are Job Gaps A Good Thing?

Recently, a resume client of mine forwarded a newsletter article from a job board discussing ways to overcome “job gaps” of 3-6 months.

Here’s a snippet from the article, and my subsequent retort as to why we should redefine the criteria for a job gap: Continue reading this entry »

Let the Government Pay For Your Career Development

One of the best kept secrets in job-hunting: The government has offered to pay part of your expenses!

You read correctly: Career expenses, including fees incurred for career counseling, professional resume writing, and job-search coaching, are tax-deductible for everyone with only a few exceptions: Continue reading this entry »

How Do You Become the World’s Best Resume Writer?

What does one have to do to be deemed the World’s Best Resume Writer? lol

Here’s a press release explaining how Cliff won the title: Continue reading this entry »

3 Reasons to Invest More Than You Think You Should In a Resume Writer

In the past two days, three job seekers have complained to me about their experience with resume writers:

“This resume doesn’t say anything about me.”
“They left out the most important part.”
“They just didn’t get me.”

The common thread? Each of these three people Continue reading this entry »

How to Get Hired After Age 50

I’m getting tons of clients coming to me with this question.

First off, it’s unfair.

Now that that’s out of the way, how can you overcome the stigma?

The key is recognizing and remembering that your work experience Continue reading this entry »

Do I Have to Say When I Graduated?

Is a Graduation Date Necessary on a Resume?

Hiring managers love the math of graduation dates. It’s an easy way to figure out your age.

To be clear, you should never list your graduation date, unless Continue reading this entry »

LinkedIn URLs on a Resume

Assuming your LinkedIn profile is completely error-free, always professional, and in line with your current job pursuits, then I suggest including it on the resume. It shows you’re a proactive job-seeker, you’re technically adept, that you know people, and (if you’ve taken the initiative to get some recommendations) that at least some people like you.

I can think of at least 3 things your LinkedIn website offers that a resume does not: Continue reading this entry »

The Most Common Question About Resumes

1 or 2 pages?

This concern is valid, especially since lengthy resumes can make an applicant appear arrogant, unfocused, anxious, old, or overqualified.

So how do you know when to stop writing? Continue reading this entry »