Expert Advice
I founded my company on the notion that there is a BrightSide to everything.
It’s just how I am. But Jesus, where the hell is the BrightSide in this job market?
Seems like everything great about work is being strangled to death and left on the ground to die.
So, how do I hold the torch of hope?
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This challenging to be a coach, a career coach right now.
00:07
It’s challenging to be anyone right now.
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It’s challenging to be be anybody.
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But being a coach right now is tough.
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And being a career coach of an organization called Brightside.
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Is particularly tough.
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We’re supposed to be holding the torch of hope.
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We’re supposed to be carrying optimism, real optimism, not some BS.
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Everything’s going to be great optimism.
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And sometimes that’s hard.
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Um, I’ve, I’ve not really struggled with that before, but I struggle with it now.
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And there are days where I just want to honestly hang it up and throw it all away and not talk about how hard it is to look for work.
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And how many people are getting laid off and that they’re getting laid off when they’ve been there for 20 years and it doesn’t really matter.
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They have to pack U and leave that minute.
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It’s kind of like it’s like the career coaching is the epicenter for sad stories.
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They’re just kind of coming in and piling on and piling on.
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And I’ve been thinking about like, how do I hold?
01:25
How do I hold the torch?
01:27
How do I hold it up?
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You know, I gotta be authentic.
01:30
I gotta be real about it.
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But I still want to be here for people.
01:35
I still want to be hopeful And I, you know, I, I realize it almost every time I get off the phone because there’s this cycle I go through I.
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Could be kind of down.
01:47
I’m working on something, you know, running a business.
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So there’s always something.
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And then I’ll have a call with a client and going in, I’m a little bit disillusioned.
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But coming out I always feel better and I’ve realized it’s, it’s basic.
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What keeps me going and what I think can keep anyone going And that’s that’s each other.
02:13
That’s you guys.
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That connection, that real connection around how hard this is, that’s making it work for me, that’s making this possible.
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Um, there’s got to be something there.
02:29
We’re all, we’re all in the same.
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Boat almost all of us.
02:35
If you have a job, you’re working your ***** off right now.
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You’re doing 5 people’s jobs.
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And if you don’t have a job, join the freaking club.
02:45
There’s so many people out of work, about to go out of work, worried they’re going to be out of work.
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There’s got to be some power.
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In that common thread that we all have, which sadly is panic, is fear, is worry, but we are in it.
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We’re all here, we’re all going through it and there’s something there.
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So if you’re not reaching out to a career coach, that’s fine, but reach out to somebody, talk to somebody, connect with people.
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Connecting in person is our power.
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If you have to do a Zoom, but God dammit, connecting in person, that’s everything right now.
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And it doesn’t have to be around looking for work.
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It’s just got to be connection.
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You’ve got to feel supported and support other people and just have faith that we’re going to get each other through this.
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I really believe that.
03:44
All right, take care of people.
Looking for work is an ego-destroyer.
We start to question everything: our skills, our worth.
It’s normal. But it feels like sh*t.
So, here are 3 things you can do to combat that awful feeling of loneliness when you’re looking for work.
——
I was just reminded again of how dreadful the job search is talking to a client, how lonely it can be.
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And there are lots of things that you can do to kind of combat that loneliness, but it can be overwhelming, like sort of like, where do I begin?
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So here are three things you can do, anyone can do, and a few might surprise you.
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So the first one, and this was brought to me, suggested by a client.
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And I was like, Oh my God, that’s such a good idea.
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And this client actually found a job, found a job she really liked and a job where she’s not overworked and she’s happy.
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So success story, folks, we need some of those.
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She suggested if you’re feeling drained, if you’re feeling lonely, to go be a mentor for somebody.
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And I thought about this and the reason why this is so important is cause when we’re looking for work, we feel really needy.
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We feel like we’re asking for stuff all the time and we start to feel like we don’t have much to offer.
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I should say we forget we have a lot to offer.
01:10
So go find an organization or just one-on-one, informal, whatever, but take your expertise and feed it to somebody.
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And watch what that does to you, let alone to them.
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It’s so energizing, and it’s a reminder that you do have value.
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You just aren’t using it in the workplace yet.
01:34
So #2 go learn something.
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We always have these things in the back of our brain.
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If I had time, I would.
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You know what I’d really like to do?
01:48
One thing about loneliness.
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Is it means you have time.
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So if you have time, go do a free course.
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Do a Coursera course.
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They’re they’re pretty cheap.
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General Assembly, Udemy, the usual suspects.
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If you want to go deeper, take a long course at a Community College or through another organization.
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But go learn something.
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You have the time.
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Become a better candidate.
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And there’s a bonus if you do, if you if you go out into the world or virtually into the world, you might meet people, you’ll be able to share your story a little bit.
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You’re going to find other people out of work.
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It’s all good.
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So go learn something, whether online or in person.
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You’re going to find a tribe, new people, new connections, and you’re going to feel good about yourself.
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So #3.
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Pick a brain.
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So I think it is kind of strange.
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We’re all sort of feeling isolated when we look for work, but we tend to not reach out except to go, do you have a job?
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Do you have a job?
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Can you get me a job?
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Can you get me an interview?
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And instead of going, and you should do some of that, but instead of only that, pick a friend or someone you know supports you, someone who’s really wants you to win.
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Right.
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And ask them, instead of saying, do you have a job?
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Ask them, how was it when you were out of work and how did you get a job?
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It’s just a interesting story to hear and one to tell.
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They’re going to enjoy doing it and they’ll stop and say, Oh my God, I don’t even remember, but they’ll remember, give them, give them some time.
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And I can almost guarantee it wasn’t through a job board.
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I’ll bet they got the job by talking to people, but that’s beside the point.
03:48
Just listen up, let them, let them talk and hear where you know what worked for them, and maybe you’ll come up with some ideas, which is pretty cool.
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They’re going to gain.
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Empathy for you, because they’re going to remember, we all remember what it’s like to look for work and that feeling of loneliness and despair and sort of like, you know, what if I’m finished?
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They’re going to go back and even if they don’t say it outright, they’re going to go into that space and that’s going to create some empathy where they’re going to want to help you in the future.
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So you’ll have a fruitful conversation, but more than that.
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You’re going to be on their mind and they’re going to care about you, and they’re going to care about you finding your way back to work.
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All right, take those morsels of goodness.
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Go forth.
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Try to be less lonely.
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Keep your chin up.
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Take care.
Yikes!
Things are moving quickly with AI.
Will humans keep their edge over the bots?
Will bots be indistinguishable from humans?
Or better than?
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Have you guys seen lately what AI is up to?
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What’s happening with aI?
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Videos are insanely accurate.
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Incredible.
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Of course, images are beautiful.
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It’s almost more real than real life.
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And the writing’s getting better and better.
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And while I commend the creators, the people who are accelerating this technology, I mean, Bravo, it’s extraordinary.
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I am also and simultaneously terrified with what is to come, mostly because as a tool this powerful gets into the hands of people with the nefarious motives, we have good reason to fear the bad things are going to happen.
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I mean, we’re going to see deep fakes that we don’t know are fakes right now.
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You know, Gen.
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Z pretty talented and spotting a fake, but even they are going to not be able to tell, period.
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That is going to happen.
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And what does that mean?
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We’re all going to be getting duped constantly, over and over again.
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Fake jobs, ads that don’t look like ads.
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I I don’t know.
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You name it.
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What is the future?
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But we’re all going to be getting tricked and tricked and tricked.
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And I only see one way.
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Now that the A I is out of the bag and running, running and sprinting and going faster than humans, there’s only one thing we can do and we can do it.
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And unfortunately it does require making a request to our politicians.
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But bear with me for a SEC.
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I think if we can get in front of this and get some regulation, even just one thing that says.
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When something’s generated by a I, it must be designated as being generated by a I.
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That’s our only chance.
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A symbol, a watermark, a few words, a sound, something.
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Because we’re we’re so close to the point of a I and humans and and human created content being exactly the same that we’re going to hit a point of where no one’s going to know what anything is.
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So we must.
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And if we were to do something like this, there’s accountability as well.
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You can sue somebody, somebody could get arrested for fraud, for a I fraud or whatever we want to call it, but we have to do it.
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So I’m going to encourage you call to action on this, on this one.
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And I don’t normally want to give you more stuff to do.
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We’re all so bogged down with just getting our own stuff done, but make a darn call.
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Call your senator.
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Call people, please.
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Like, get it out there that we need some regulation.
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Politicians completely shit the bed on.
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Can I say that on LinkedIn?
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I don’t know.
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But they completely messed up on the Internet, on social media.
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There’s no regulation.
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There’s nothing.
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We have to do this for artificial intelligence.
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It’s an existential crisis.
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And if you think about it long enough.
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You will agree 100%.
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So let’s let’s get in there and you know, get get in the corner of the humans so we can have a last round knockout, please.
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So, you know, we can be friends with a I, but ultimately we still have to be able to kick A I’s butt as humans.
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All right, cheers, people.
I know what’s on your mind…
I think the same question is lingering in everybody’s head right now.
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A lot of people’s heads.
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Are things really as bad as they seem?
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I’m talking about looking for work in particular.
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There’s a lot of things going on, but I’m talking about looking for work.
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And looking for work, I think we can all agree, is one of the least attractive activities that we ever do in life.
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I wrote a book about just how awful the job search is and how can you make it like a teensy bit better.
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So you’re looking for work and it sucks nowadays.
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It’s taking three months, four months, five months, six months to look for work, and it sucks.
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And it’s lonely and you second-guess yourself.
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A lot.
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That’s kind of a huge part of the job search.
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Am I doing something wrong?
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Is it me?
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Have I lost my juice?
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Am I not good enough anymore?
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Have things changed and passed me by and I missed the boat?
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There’s just all of us.
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I don’t care who you are.
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There’s a tape that just starts running.
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The more silence you have, the more that tape starts running.
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It’s not you.
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It’s the job search.
01:28
But is it extraordinarily bad now?
01:31
Is it really bad right now?
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Well, I could say that as somebody who talks to people looking for work day in and day out, that these stories are piling up of despair.
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And I mean despair from all sides.
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So I talk with the people who get laid off and the people doing the layoffs who maybe then get laid off after that.
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I talk with the people building the A I and the people getting laid off by the A I, and sometimes those people are one in the same.
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It seems like more than ever I’m getting stories of people losing jobs, things going wrong, companies disappearing, consolidation and blah blah blah blah blah.
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So I’m gathering all these stories and I’m realizing.
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I think, like I said at the beginning, we’re all kind of wondering like, is something coming?
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Is there something out there?
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And you know what?
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I think that anxiety of that is individualized right now.
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I think it’s just in each of us.
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I think we’re all feeling it, but I don’t know that we’re.
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Acknowledging it that much or talking about it.
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Nobody wants to kind of show up at the party and be doom and gloom.
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Certainly not the bright side guy, but that seems to be what I’m dishing out these days, the reality of the doom and the gloom.
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And I think one reason why we’re still questioning it is because we’re not voicing it.
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That anxiety is deep in each of us.
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It’s not sort of laid out across platforms.
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It’s not really being talked about at all by politicians, not nearly enough in the media, every side of the media.
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You might have podcasters here and there, but again, that’s kind of fractured.
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So I really just want to acknowledge this.
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I think we all need to start doing that.
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I have this kind of bird’s eye view and I’ve been feeling it from people, people.
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There’s something happening here.
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Something big is going on and a lot, a lot of us are getting impacted by this.
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And I’m talking mostly about artificial intelligence.
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We’ve never seen anything like it, but there’s so much, there’s so much more.
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So just for one thing, the tech industry, I’ve never seen an out-of-work engineer that’s sort of panicking.
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And that’s happening right now.
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That’s just one example, but there are so many.
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So don’t hold this in anymore.
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Don’t hold it to yourself.
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Put this in the conversation.
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Let’s get it out there in the dialogue.
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There is a major problem with looking for work and being employed right now, and it really does center around A I and there’s a lot of uncertainty.
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But there’s also just a huge amount of anxiety, and that anxiety is completely warranted.
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All right, so, so cough it up, throw it up, get it out.
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Share your story.
04:52
Let’s be real about this.
04:54
Something’s coming.
04:55
We got to stick together.
04:57
All right, take care, people.
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.
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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.
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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?
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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 »
