Expert Advice
A new cottage industry has arisen: pay-to-play referrals.
Employees are hip to the idea that employers want referred candidates over unsolicited ones, so these entrepreneurial employees have monetized their own referral databases by charging job-seekers for the right to mention them in their applications.
This both underscores the imperative of networking into companies AND gums up the hiring process with less qualified candidates.
What’s that mean for you?
TRANSCRIPT:
OO:01
OK, there’s a new cottage industry that stemmed out of the job search process and out of this like extremely difficult job search market.
00:12
And what’s happening is employees of sought-after companies are now charging job seekers to be their referrer, so to vouch for them as somebody they know when they apply.
00:29
So I have a couple of thoughts on this.
00:30
The 1st is this really does under score the importance or rather imperative of having somebody on the inside when you apply for a job.
00:41
So if there is a job opening, you really have to be able to reference somebody and that is sort of made clear.
00:49
The value of that’s made clear in this new markets that that’s emerged where people are making money for offering that to job seekers.
01:00
The other thought I had is this is further breaking down the system.
01:05
So what’s happening?
01:06
You have these somewhat mercenary employees that are don’t really care who you are as a job seeker.
01:14
You’re a complete stranger, but they’re taking your money.
01:18
Or whatever other favor they’re getting and then dropping your name into a database.
01:24
So you might not be qualified, or this person candidate might not be qualified, but they’re making it into the funnel to get to that hiring manager who will eventually realize, oh, this person’s not qualified.
01:37
Hopefully that happens early in the screening process, but probably not.
01:41
They might get through to interviewing.
01:43
They are a referral after all.
01:46
So that’s going to be a problem because there’s so many factors that are contributing to all of these candidates coming into even small companies, but certainly big ones.
01:56
And now this is one more factor, the fact that employee referrals are getting saturated with spam.
02:07
So what does this mean for you?
02:09
I think it comes back to the same thing and that is.
02:14
Networking in genuinely finding people you know who you trust, who trust you, who will vouch for you.
02:24
High quality referral, super important.
02:30
And if you can, you want to try to find your way into a company before they’re even posting for a job.
02:36
But certainly if there is a job, see if you can find something, some way to get in there.
02:41
It it makes all the difference.
02:44
In the world, All right.
02:45
I’m curious to hear your thoughts on on these ideas and also just hear how the job search is going.
02:53
Good luck out there.
I’m trying to hold up a candle in this time of darkness. You can, indeed, find work, even when there are no jobs in sight, even when no one is hiring, even when you haven’t gotten a response in months…
TRANSCRIPT
All right.
00:02
This is a bit of a follow-up to a post I did, I think last week.
00:06
I was saying how things are really rough.
00:09
In fact, a lot of my posts have been saying that and that is true.
00:12
I’m going to go with a yes and on this one. Continue reading this entry »
Students are doing something, perhaps inadvertently, to thwart the uncertainty that awaits them in the job market. Unfortunately, or perhaps ironically, it’s creating challenges later on down the line in looking for work.
TRANSCRIPT:
Noticing another trend in working with students and recent graduates, I’m seeing that their majors are multifaceted, that they’re double majoring, triple majoring, multiple minors, taking a ton of courses outside the major.
00:49
And at first blush, this is just pretty cool, right?
00:52
Lots of lots of interests that people are following through on, but I think there’s more going on.
00:59
I think people that are studying right now recognize the uncertainty of the future and are hedging their bets as best they can.
01:09
They’re throwing everything they can at the wall cause they don’t know what’s going to stick.
01:15
So I’ll see a chemical engineer that is also taking data science and those two things can go together certainly, but I’m even seeing far reaching things like.
01:27
An economics major coming with like plant science or something.
01:32
So you know, the the students are recognizing we’ve got a I, we don’t know where that’s going.
01:40
We’ve got a political future that regardless of what team you’re on, you can agree we have no idea really what’s going to go on there.
01:51
And then with the job market, it’s very difficult, competitive.
01:55
They know this, there’s climate change and the the younger you are, the more you’re going to care about that, the more that’s going to be looming on the horizon.
02:05
So I just think this, this idea of following multiple interests is pretty strategic, if unconscious, still very strategic, but there is a problem with it.
02:16
That I’m seeing come to fruition, and that’s when it comes time to look for work.
02:23
And this is on the resume.
02:24
This multifaceted aspect doesn’t necessarily work for everyone.
02:29
You can make it work, but for the most part, if somebody realizes I want to go into software engineering, but I have a chemical engineering degree with a minor in software engineering, you become you, you can look scattered.
02:45
And that can be difficult.
02:46
And with a resume, nobody wants to try to figure you out.
02:49
They want you to tell them, you know, who you are and what you can do for them.
02:54
So there’s this schism between like getting all this stuff to try to protect yourself, but then when you look at work, it’s getting in the way.
03:05
So my thought there is certainly I can help with something like that.
03:09
That’s a fun challenge is figuring out how do you steer the resume in One Direction, maybe have a couple of resumes, but I’m just pointing it out.
03:18
It’s I think we’re going to see more of it and I’m glad that this new generation has a lot of things they’re interested in.
03:26
But there is, there is a drawback when it comes to.
03:30
Looking for work, unless you kind of have the touch to figure out how to show a little bit of this and a little bit of that.
03:37
But it’s not easy.
03:39
So anyway, I give a nod to the younger generations.
03:44
Keep your head up.
03:45
Keep working.
03:46
Let me know if you need some help.
03:49
Cheerios.
More bad news: things aren’t looking good. No one’s hiring, no ones getting promotions. And the people who are lucky enough to have jobs right now, are doing the work of 2-3 people. There’s a lot of uncertainty in the air.
Hang in there people.
TRANSCRIPT:
It’s rough out there and that’s an understatement.
00:06
I’m seeing software engineers scramble for the first time ever.
00:13
There’s just not that many jobs out there.
00:16
I mean, it’s not just in tech and engineering, it’s it’s everywhere.
00:21
So if you’re applying to 100 jobs and getting no response.
00:27
That’s kind of how it is right now.
00:29
Take some solace in knowing that’s what’s happening to everybody.
00:34
Everybody I talk to is running into this.
00:37
I’m having interns, excuse me, not interns.
00:41
Students come back to me and tell me they can’t get an internship.
00:47
So it’s hard to get a job working for free right now.
00:52
And that might seem ridiculous, but you have the people who are employed probably doing the work of an intern in addition to their other job and maybe even managing in some regards as well.
01:08
You know, and hiring an intern does take effort and companies don’t feel like they have the bandwidth to manage an internship to manage an intern right now.
01:20
So it is really hard and if you’re looking for work and you can, you might want to take the rest of the year off.
01:29
I don’t think it’s going to speed up.
01:31
I think it’s going to stay this slow, slow as molasses.
01:37
I don’t see much hiring happening at all.
01:39
So if you can take a breather, be with family, get some training.
01:44
If you can’t, the age-old adage.
01:48
Network, network, network.
01:50
That’s the way you’re going to do it.
01:53
And I don’t just mean with the jobs that are posted.
01:56
I mean going after the companies directly, respectfully, but but to go after people in the company, start talking with them, work your network, but reach out and do some cold calls too.
02:09
Applying for listings.
02:12
It’s just not working.
02:14
All right, so people, keep your chin up.
02:17
And also, if you want an ally in this, we certainly can help you figure out a good strategy, get kind of more focused on what you need.
02:28
And of course, we can build a resume that’ll get some attention.
02:32
So think about that.
02:33
All right.
02:34
I wish you all well.
02:36
This is rough.
02:37
Let’s hope next year is better.
How good is an AI-produced resume?
HR and Hiring Managers already know the answer but it seems that jobseekers are still figuring it out.
A lot of folks are grabbing a template from Canva or going “high-end” with Etsy and then asking the robots to do the rest.
How effective are they?
Are AI-generated resumes good enough?
—–
00:01
It’s happening more and more.
00:03
I had yet another client show up and they had an A I generated resume.
00:10
This time it was a guy who was in the analytics industry, so I guess that’s not too surprising.
00:16
He had a resume that he created through an A I program.
00:21
And it wasn’t working.
00:23
He’d been using it for about 3 months and this seems to be a trend I’m seeing now.
00:27
People using a tool, there’s a lot out there building something, putting it to work and getting Zippo response, not including automated messages.
00:40
Of course A I can do a lot of things and perhaps one day it will be able to create.
00:47
A pretty good resume.
00:49
But even then, even when it can gather the most information from the Internet possible, which is already a heck of a lot, and even though it can compose some really good senses, it’s actually quite good at writing, at creating nice long 3-4 line statements.
01:08
But there is one place that a I cannot scavenge for information, and that is.
01:17
Your head A I can’t reach in and pull out what you don’t know, what you’ve overlooked, what you haven’t thought about.
01:26
So unless you’ve been journaling your life for the last 15 years and your career and writing down all your achievements and putting them up on a website, A I can help you with that.
01:39
So just remember, you don’t know what you don’t know.
01:43
And what you’re working with, what you’re giving A I may not be enough to impress people, to really get them to see who you are.
01:51
And that, my friends, is why people show up to me with these beautifully written A I generated resumes.
02:00
Looking for some actual results.
02:03
So we redo the resume and of course that involves talking with them in depth for an hour, even longer, to really help them figure out what they’re all about and what they’ve forgotten.
02:14
Then we build the resume off of that, and that is what makes the difference.
Everybody’s doing it.
Even before COVID-19 struck the world, employers have been relying on virtual interviewing to screen out candidates. It’s inexpensive and way less time-consuming. There are several types of video interviews employers use. Make sure you’re savvy in all 4 of these formats. Continue reading this entry »
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 »
