For Job Seekers

Smart Quotes and Dumb Typos

Remember Clippy, the annoying animated icon from past versions of MS Office who would pop up and say things like "it appears you are writing a letter. Can I help?"

The spirit of Clippy lives on in MS products, which of course have become pretty ubiquitous. The spirit of Clippy is evident in features like "smart quotes."

Here's the deal. If you look at something professionally typeset (even a newspaper) and find something in quotation marks, and you look closely, you'll see that the opening and closing quotation marks are not the same – the opening quotation mark and the closing one are mirror images. If you can find an old typewritten document, in contrast, you'll see that the quotation marks are all identical.

Clippy, I mean MS Word, "helps" make your documents more professional by automatically inserting the typographically correct symbols. It isn't just quotation marks. It's apostrophes. It's ellipses (those three little dots that are used to ... uh ... you know). Clippy is busy, converting hyphens to dashes, emoticons to dingbats, inserting bullets, spiffing up fractions, etc.

Here's the problem. Have you ever seen an email message or web page where there are suddenly a few bizarre symbols intermixed with the text? If you looked carefully, you may have even noticed that they occurred where a quotation mark should be. Or an apostrophe. Or a bullet. Or an ellipse. Etc. (See graphic) 

Problems happen when your document ends up on a different computer — such as one that has different fonts installed, different character sets for different languages. Problems tend to occur when you copy & paste text from Word into a text-based field — such as when you apply online and you paste your resume into a form field in your browser. Documents that get converted (such as Word to PDF, or web page to email, or Mac to PC) tend to be especially prone to problems. These are exactly the sorts of documents/activities common to the job hunting process!

It's not a big deal. Most recruiters and employers have seen it before, recognize it as a technical bug and gloss right over it. But as someone once said, "a good impression is made up of a thousand details," and this is the type of detail that detracts from a good impression.

Here's the solution. Spend some time in Word's help file (hint: the "autocorrect" feature is the one that's causing all the problems). Figure out how to prevent Word from changing letters, symbols or punctuation marks. (I wouldn't turn off the feature altogether. It fixes typos on the fly quite nicely.)

Bottom line, take control of MS Word. Don't let Clippy mess up your resume!

Really Bad Cover Letters

If you've ever been guilty of a typo on a resume or a similar gaffe, perhaps this collection of really bad cover letters will cheer you up, by putting your mistakes in perspective. Unless you're the author of one of them, in which case you may be mortified that your private correspondence is being served up for public consumption!

Cover Letters: You can quote me on this

By Wendy Terwelp, Career Coach & Personal Branding Strategist

Sick of writing the same old cover letter? "I saw your ad...." Yeah, you and 100,000 other people. So, how do you stand out from the crowd?

Try using some quotes that support the qualifications requested in the ad. They're looking for a top-producing sales rep? Why, your last boss dubbed you "The Cold Call King." Use it -- and attribute it.

They need a PR whiz fully committed to nonprofit? Your coworkers call you "The PR Martyr." Use it. And provide an example. "I'm committed to nonprofit. So committed, I once brought in a cot so we could make the media deadline -- and get the press coverage we needed. Ever since then, my coworkers call me, 'The PR Martyr.' I can make this same commitment to your organization." What's your brand? Name it. Market it.

Resume Squirrel Is Not Your Friend!

There's a few services out that there that will blast your resume to a wide variety of job boards, even recruiters and direct employers. One of these services is especially popular. Let's call it Resume Squirrel.

Resume Squirrel seems like an awesome idea. If sending your resume to 50 recipients sounds like a good idea (it isn't actually), wouldn't it be better -- 10 times better -- to send it to 500?

No. Here's three good reasons why you should avoid Resume Squirrel, or anything like it:

1. You will completely lose control of your resume. It will end up in databases, on web sites, on hard drives, on servers, etc. And it will take on a life of its own. Five years from now, your qualifications may have changed (your work history certainly will have), you may have switched fields, you may be happily employed -- and you will potentially still be getting responses based on the resume you "blasted" today.
2. If you have any concerns over personal privacy (or spam, for that matter) stop right now! For all the reasons listed in the preceding item, you do not want to indiscriminately blast your resume around the world. Resume Squirrel is not your friend!
3. As mentioned parenthetically in the second paragraph, blasting your resume around isn't actually a good tactic under any circumstances. Carefully targetting employers (plus trying to reach them through networking and using customized cover letters) is far more effective than a shotgun approach. One job seeker recently told me (proudly) that thanks to the internet, he had blasted his resume to over 1500 employers. I asked him how many responded ... none. Maybe I'm focusing on the negative here, but I don't think this is a good thing.

Ignored? Don’t Take It Personally

I recently read a career advice column featuring a job seeker who wrote in to complain about employers who didn’t respond when she applied. Anyone who is currently job hunting may be able to relate, as this has become a common occurrence. Without defending this discourtesy, the following insights may help you understand why it occurs. And the more you understand about what’s happening on the employer’s side of the fence, the better you can adapt your job hunting strategies.

Why do candidates (even those who have interviewed) and resumes often get ignored?

1. Today’s job market is flooded with candidates, and the web makes it so easy to apply for jobs, quickly and in large quantities. Candidates “mass market” themselves. Back when employers got a dozen applications for an opening, it was feasible to respond personally to each. Now that employers often receive hundreds of applications for any position they post online, that is no longer true. You wouldn’t believe how often candidates give inaccurate or confusing contact information! Some examples… The resume and cover letter list different phones numbers. Or, a call to a phone number listed on a resume leads to a voice mail under a different name. Another common occurrence is that a call to the candidate is answered by an uncooperative roommate. Then the real topper — candidates who provide their phone number at their current job, even though their job hunting is secret. When called, they can only talk at a whisper, or they panic altogether. As far as other methods of contact, such as email and postal addresses, many online submissions lack the necessary info, or it’s wrong. This is what employers are up against. So, they get a little callous about following up and responding to every applicant.
2. Many employers have developed special internal processes to accommodate the flood of applications they usually get when they post a job. These processes aren’t designed to provide good communication with candidates, and they don’t. Rather, they create a one way flow of resumes through an initial screener to the executives who make specific hires. This means there is no single individual responsible for follow-up. Once the “screener” approves a candidate and passes a given resume along, he or she doesn’t know what occurs after that. And the executives who receive the pre-screened resumes have no relationship to the candidates (after all, they haven’t yet met them) so they have no sense of ownership or obligation to follow up with candidates.
3. Many employers have no set timeline for hiring, at least with regards to some openings. Even with the semi-promising candidates they interview, they never really decide not to hire them. Instead, they just never actually decide to hire them. It’s like window shopping: you may see many things you tentatively consider buying. In many cases, you never get around to making the purchase, even though you never actually decide “no, I’m not going to buy that.”

I’m not justifying the practice of leaving candidates in the dark — just explaining why and how it happens. This article hopefully sheds some light on what’s happening inside the “black box” of the employers you apply to or interview with. Hopefully, knowing this will help alleviate any hurt feelings over being ignored. It’s unlikely anyone specifically decided that you weren’t worth responding to.

So don’t take it personally. Just keep plugging away.

Spelling Is Fundamental

Did you know that it's very important to spell everything right on your resume? And in your cover letters?

I think this pretty well known, but (at the risk of sounding patronizing) here's an insight from someone who reads resumes daily: at least 80% of them contain typos.

Simple way to stand out, then: make sure everything you submit to a prospective employer is spelled right. Resumes and cover letters, but also the parts of an online application that you do in real time, like answering questions. The devil is in the detials.

Cover Letters

A never-ending debates rages among career coaches and employers as to whether cover letters are important. Without going into the specifics of this debate, what you dear job seeker should know is simply this: some of the people you will submit a resume/application to consider cover letters essential. Case closed. Use cover letters no matter how you learn about a job opening.

There are some great books out there that go into a lot of detail. (See the recommended books in the left column for specific recommendations.) Let me just share this one quick suggestion as to the basic purpose of your cover letter. Your resumes establishes your bona fides. Your cover letter builds a bridge between your credentials and the specific job you are applying for.

Perhaps you think the employer or recruiter should be responsible for discerning how you are the perfect candidate. And maybe they should, maybe they even will. But like the rest of us, they are overworked and not always completely attentive, and they may fail to recognize why you are the perfect answer to all their problems. Do the work for them.

Two final thoughts. If you consider my suggestion, you will quickly recognize that canned cover letters don't work. Each cover letter you write should reflect some research and analysis in to that specific company and position. In fact, these are a couple of the main criteria that employers will (or should, anyway) use to evaluate your cover letter.

Second, sadly, some employers or recruiters won't even read your cover letter. Still, failure to provide one sends a clear message -- you just couldn't be bothered. Not the message you want to send!

Maybe She Should Get Her Own Phone

I just reviewed a resume for a candidate who looked pretty good. Called her to arrange a phone interview. I asked for her by name and whoever answered the phone said "the b**** owes me money" and hung up. (I double checked the number ... I had indeed dialed the number on her resume.)

Obviously this job seeker has a promising job search ahead of her!

An Inside Tip

As you put the finishing touches on your resume, you probably envision an employer reading it carefully. But this is exactly the opposite of what employers will typically be doing the first time they review your resume. Rather, the first time they look at your resume or application, they will be looking desperately for a reason to hit "delete." They have too many resumes to review, you see, and they want to reduce the "stack" to a manageable number as quickly as possible. Any number of things might lead your resume/application to hit the cutting room floor with no further ado, but here are a few examples:

• Typos
• Grammatical errors
• Lack of qualifications
• Job date issues
• Anything that smacks of inaccuracy or misrepresentation

Only the resumes/applications that don't trip the average employer's "hair trigger" and get deleted will be carefully read. Edit yours accordingly!

An Easy Way To Get Your Resume Discarded

In this era of free email addresses, one of the stupidest ways you can derail your job search is by using an inappropriate email address. Imagine: a great resume, impeccable references, a new suit for interviewing, and you apply for a job using "tokerdude@aol.com" or "partychick@gmail.com." You wouldn't believe how often employers see this. It's not necessarily a deal breaker, but it sure makes the wrong impression on a potential employer. Something like "jsmith437@hotmail.com"
may not impress friends or dates, but it's one more away to avoid having your application culled.