Age In The Job Market – It’s All In Your Mind

There’s your physical age and you CAN’T DO ANYTHING ABOUT IT!  Right?  Technically, yes,  when you start networking for a job, sending your resume, and interviewing – you can’t change what age you are.   You can, however, change people’s perceptions about your age or make age a non-factor based on your attitude and how you present yourself.

Saying that you can’t do anything about your physical age isn’t entirely true.  You will feel younger, appear younger and act younger as you enter the job market if you’ve done everything in your lifestyle to preserve your youth or make the best of your biological  age.    A healthy diet and exercise will have a positive impact on the appearance of your body and face.  You will feel healthier and that means you will feel younger and more energetic.  This will come across in your interviews and networking and cause people to not notice or care about your age.

Equally incumbent on the older person in the job market to keep their appearance young and feeling young is to try to either avoid stress or find those healthy activities or strategies that help you to control stress.   If you want to appear young – exercise to reduce stress, not smoke, drink, or take prescription medications that you can avoid.   Job hunting, for many people, is stressful enough – especially if you’re currently facing unemployment.  If you don’t want that stress to play out in making you look old and tired, then combat that stress by being extremely active with family, active in your job hunt, and active with your health.  Seek extra support if you need it  – there are many groups like Businesspersons Between Jobs (BBJ) or groups at your local church that help its’ members maintain balance while looking for a job.

The older person in the job market also must  keep their mind exercised.  How sharp you are in an interview or networking conversation will depend a lot on what you’ve done to keep your mind young.  Physical health certainly has its’  impact on the capabilities of the mind, as does mental health.  How sharp you are in an interview or networking conversation will depend a lot on what you’ve done to keep your mind young.    Read instead of watching TV, stay up on current events, volunteer at your local school – do things that keep you thinking. 

Keep your mind up with the times!  Nothing will “show your age” as much as not keeping current with the trends of your industry.  If you’re a software engineer and haven’t learned the programming languages being used today, then you’ll be seen as an “old programmer”.  If you keep yourself moving with the times, take classes, get certified in demand technologies,  read trade publications, join internet discussion groups, join your local user group, and polish your skills at home, then you will help keep your skills up-to-date, cause you to feel current and confident, and thus validate your worth to those considering you for a position.

Information Technology professionals can not only keep up with most up-to-date technologies to keep their skills and mind young – but they should also learn to leverage the latest technologies to promote their capabilities for networking and to legitimize their reputation in their market specialty or industry.   Blog, tweet, network on LinkedIn, collaborate on open systems technology,  join on-line discussion forums and groups – legitimize your skills in the eyes of peers and potential employers but participating in the market, showing expertise, leaving an on-line or public “footprint”.  Keeping up with the times in this way will make you feel like your with the times, not like it’s passed you by and those most likely to hire you will be able to see evidence of how involved you are. 

Repeatedly when I have listened to someone that feels like the job market has been discriminating against them for their age, I can review their job history and their skills and I will see someone that gave up on moving forward a decade or more ago and has taken no initiative to be current.  Their skills are old, they’ve given up, it’s no wonder that employers aren’t enthused to hire them.   I’m even surprised sometimes when if I find out their real age, that I’ve often guessed that they were actually older than they really were.  Staying still just lets the years’ pile on. 

 I have also met individuals who are biologically old – that act and feel young.  They fit in with their peers of all ages and are confident in themselves as well as their skills.  When they are interviewed  – age isn’t an issue.   Even if your resume “gives away” your age – you’ll still get interviews if you’ve been using the technologies that companies are looking for.  I’m not saying their isn’t age bias – but it’s up to you to make it their loss to not consider you and to prove any stereotypes they might have as wrong.  Most often – they’ll look right through the issue altogether. 

Great luck with your job hunt and please add your suggestions or comments on this issue as a comment to this blog.

Reality Show – Recruiters Work for … Themselves

Pick your Reality Show: 

1. “Recruiters I talk to are not positive and don’t call me back with any jobs.  They seem too busy to talk with me.  They don’t follow-up.  I’ll never find a job working through them.”
2. “Recruiters won’t leave me alone!  I always am getting messages and e-mails from recruiters.  Whether I’m looking for another job or not, I can always count on be approached for this opportunity or that.” 

Why these two different realities?  Did # 2 just find the golden ticket?

 The reality is that both are true – depending on what your skills and capabilities are.  Recruiters, whether they are staffing for direct-hire positions, contracting / consulting positions, or a combination of the two, contract-to-hire, are paid for and driven by the demands of their clients.   Of course some will find their experience somewhere in-between. 

 Facts are that:  Clients pay the fees… clients pay the bill rates…  recruiters cost the clients money…  clients  aren’t going to pay extra money to find skills they can easily find themselves, are common, or are outdated.  The reality is, recruiters need to find the most in-demand skills held by the professionals whom are in the shortest supply to be able to justify the value of their services to their client. 

 On top of that, most recruiters are only paid if they actually get someone hired, so they have to work a lot of different positions at a number of different clients to set up as many good matches as they can with the outcome of filling some of those jobs with some of those candidates.  There is absolutely no way they will get everyone placed that they work with or fill every job they work on.  It’s unrealistic to expect one recruiter to find a job in the short run, unless your skills are very high demand and the recruiter has a solid book of related business ready-to-go. 

 The reality is that even the best recruiters realistically have to spend their time with people they are going to have the best chance of placing. 

 The best recruiters are still sensitive to the entire market in which they serve and frequently can be a helpful resource, even for those they can’t place.  The best recruiters are conscientious of their public image and reputation and will provide help to the degree it’s practical, but just like any other professional – their business depends on working smart and there’s only so much they can be expected to do for someone that they are highly unlikely to place.   Remember, they aren’t hired to find you a job (those are called employment agencies) they are hired by companies to find talent.  

 If you’re looking to move up in any field, have employment security, and have the “headhunters” and the opportunities looking for you – then do everything you can to keep your skills up to where they will be the most in-demand.  If you’re in the technology field – don’t make the mistake of sticking with outdated  technology because you’re comfortable – if you get laid off, you’ll find job hunting hard.  Choose opportunities and learning situations that will keep you ahead of the field – you can be 25 or 55 and still be working with new technologies.

 If you have any suggestions or comments to add to this topic, please add the comments below.

Keep Job Hunting During the Holidays

It is a common assumption that companies aren’t hiring over the winter holidays and many job hunters slow down their networking and searching activities during this time of year with the intent of looking again in January when things pick up. I guess that’s OK if you don’t really need a job. It’s the same as not showing up to play in the football game – certainly don’t expect to be in the end zone.

Several things should be considered about job hunting in December.

1) Some companies are hiring now because they want someone on -board and ready -to-go on the first Monday in January.
2) Because so many job seekers are busy with other distractions like shopping and holiday parties, there are fewer competitors on the market, increasing your likelihood of an interview and a job offer.
3) If a company is actively looking this time of year, the manager is generally very serious about hiring and is likely to make decisions more quickly.
4) Some managers have budget s that open up a new space on their team for the New Year and they want to get the help as soon as possible, or they have budget or a requisition that will expire at the first of the year and needs to be used.
5) If you need to put your career on a better track, then sitting out the holidays isn’t something your career can afford.
6) Even if there are more openings in January, there will also be a LOT more people looking. In the IT world especially, it’s common for consultants to have been rolled off at year end and the market is generally heavier on available talent than available requirements.

So what is the best holiday hunting strategy? Work harder, operate with a great sense of urgency, chase down more leads, answer more postings, upgrade your postings on job boards and social network sites, such as LinkedIn, and generally do more of what you normally do to job hunt – not less.

Do not let yourself even think that the manager might not want to interview because it’s January 19th and Christmas is coming up – let them figure the schedule. People interview and get job offers on December 24th and December 26th – companies usually close for December 25th and January 1, and they may well be hiring on other days.

Happy holiday job hunting! Please feel free to post questions or comments to this blog.

Job Boards for IT Professionals – Worth it or Worthless?

Monster.com, Dice.com, ComputerJobs.com, HotJobs.com, and many other job boards promise and promote their abilities to hook technical professionals up with that ideal job. Do they? Well yes, sometimes. Sometimes you get a job through a recruiter or consulting company, sometimes a friend hooks you up, a few people are even finding jobs now through social networking (LinkedIn, Facebook etc…), but job boards remain the quickest click to many technical positions and is very likely to generate phone calls your direction if you post your resume and contact information.

In fact, odds are best that a job board posted resume will draw the attention of a recruiter more so than an end employer. In the case of Dice.com, which is very popular with the consulting marketplace, a posted resume there is very likely to draw response from contracting firm recruiters.

How many jobs you find on the job boards and how many phone calls you receive will be in direct proportion to the demand for your skills in the marketplace. If you’ve let your skills stagnant on older technology that the marketplace has left behind, then job boards aren’t going to present a panacea, however if you have skills that are marketable, then the results can be effective.

Be very cautious about posting your resume on-line if you are currently employed. Your employer may do searches for employees of the company to see who’s looking – you might find yourself on the layoff short list as a result. On most boards you can post your resume as “confidential”, but be careful to remove as much unique information as possible that might identify you. This includes current and past employers, schools attended, and particular project descriptions. It probably makes the most sense to create a skills overview to use in place of your resume for these purposes. If you post as “confidential” and then leave your resume with your name, current employer and other identifiable details, then you might as well not bother with it being “confidential”. Resumes posted as “Confidential”, however, will not draw the same number of responses as those with names and contact information. If your skills are definitely marketable and the risk of your employer finding out you’re on the market isn’t going to put your livelihood in jeopardy, then it may be worthwhile to take the risk of a “named” posting.

Whether posting publically or confidentially, fill out summary information as thoroughly as possible. Much of the screening done by employers is based on searches in which they examine summary pages of dozens or even hundreds of candidates. The more complete the information that is entered on your qualifications and particular skill levels, desired position(s), desired locations, earnings requirements, etc… the more likely it is that your information will be noticed by someone with a matching position. Also, while not underselling your skills, make sure they are not overstated as well. Particularly in technical positions, if you list a language or tool that you’ve only familiar with, why include it in on your resume to have a potential employer question it and discover you’re really not experienced in using it. If they find one thing not to believe, odds are they won’t believe a lot of the other information either.

If you are actively needing to find other work, then it is probably best to make the investment in a cell phone, so that you don’t miss the call of potential employers or are at least able to retrieve messages and return them during business hours on the same day. In a competitive marketplace, not being available can cost you the job. It isn’t unusual for the client to have surfaced enough candidates that they cut-off looking at new prospects. The sooner you connect, the better potential that you’ll have.
When answering job postings, carefully look them over to ensure that you meet the minimum requirements. It’s OK to stretch a little and apply for positions that you don’t have 100% of the skills for, but you’re wasting your time to submit your resume for positions that you are totally unqualified for. If a company spends hundreds of dollars on a job post, it’s because they want someone that matches their needs better then the guy walking down the street. If necessary, provide additional information with your ad response to explain how your skills match up to the position requirements.

So are job boards worth it or worthless? If you make sure to make a good on-line presentation and have skills that the market is looking for, then job boards can be a real asset. It is important to scrutinize who calls you and what they are presenting to you – as you are on the open market, you have to set the standards and use good sense with whom you share personal information and the types of organizations and people that you get involved with.
Happy job hunting!

If you have any questions or insights on this subject, please add them as COMMENTS on this blog.

“What Salary Are You Looking For?” – Your Answer Can Be Very Costly!

“What Salary Are You Looking For?” the interviewer asks.

“$80 to 85 thousand”, you reply. The offer comes in at $80 thousand, after-all, you told them that number was OK. Why pay you $85 thousand? Perhaps their range on the position would have allowed them to go to $90 thousand in their offer to you, but you’ll never know.

“80 to 85 thousand”, you reply. No offer is made. You didn’t know that the salary range is only up to $70 thousand for this position. You probably would’ve accepted $70 thousand because you really liked, and needed, the job, but you were trying to not undercut your salary by naming too low a number. They chose not to offer you the lower number as they felt you might be insulted or disgruntled in the future because you accepted less money than you were really looking for.

“$80 to 85 thousand”, you reply. No offer is made. This is a higher level position and since you have some good experience, they assumed you were making at least $100 thousand, as were some of the other candidates they were looking at. Because you were 20% less in your expectations than other candidates, they presume that your lack of expectations or past earnings power might be an indicator of less potential than they may have thought. They hire the higher salary person, figuring that their expectations more closely match the demands of the position.

You’re getting the idea – naming expected salary numbers is a sure-fire way to “shoot yourself in the foot” and can possibly cost you thousands or a job offer. Depending on the personality of the hiring authority, you might be forced into giving them a monetary answer – but if you can avoid it by pursuing more strategic answers to the question, do so!

“The most important thing to me is finding the right company to work for, long-term. If you feel I’m the right person for this position, which I hope that you do, then I would want you to offer a salary that you feel is fair for the market and what I’m bringing into your company?” With this response, you challenge the employer to evaluate your value and make you a fair offer. If you name the first number – you’re most likely locked-in. If they name the first number, you might be able to negotiate it to the range you need to be in. If you can’t negotiate it higher, odds are that you were out of the range from the start.

“I am very open to considering an offer that you feel is competitive to the market and fair for my skills”. Similar to the previous answer, just abbreviated.

You can also answer their question with a question. “Is there a range for the position that you have in mind” or “Given the skills that I’m bringing into your company, what salary do you see as being a potential?” This again puts them in the position of showing their cards first. You can reply to their answer with an indication that you’d certainly consider an offer, if made, while still not committing to the exact numbers. If they state a range and it’s a very acceptable range for you, then you could answer that and offer at the higher end of the range would certainly be given serious consideration. If they state numbers that are clearly under your acceptable range, you could reply that you would appreciate their offer, but your expectation ultimately might be above that range.
No matter what you answer, it is always possible that the interviewer will say, “That’s all well and good, but I really need to know a salary that you would accept for the position”. In this case, I would recommend that you side-step again and ask if you can follow-up with them the next day with an answer to that. Ask them if they can give you benefit information and any other incentives to weigh into coming up with an appropriate salary proposal. If they are serious about wanting to offer you the position, then they will gladly give you the requested information and understand that it is better for you to answer the question after having had an opportunity to reflect.
When you call them the next day, be prepared to tell them what you like about the position, what you feel like you’re bringing to the position and name one number that you feel is fair and that you will be happy with. Let them know that if they make you that offer, then you’re prepared to accept the position. Don’t undersell yourself and don’t push for out of a competitive range, but propose what would be on the higher end of a your range.
If you have other ideas of how to respond to the salary expectations question, please add your ideas as COMMENTS to this blog. I’m also glad to answer any questions about this subject that you add as COMMENTS too. Good luck in your next interview and in getting the salary offer you’re looking for!

Interview Preparation and Presentation – Covering Your Strengths

Interviewer: “What are your strengths?”
Interviewee: “Well, um… I… I… I am uh… well… ”
OK, maybe you can wing it a little better than that – but when asked a predictable interview question that would seem to be critical to any hiring decision, you need to be ready with an intelligent and SUPPORTED response that comes off better than the response from a glazed over beauty contestant in the question portion of a pageant.

By preparing properly for this question, you will enhance your presentation on the interview, whether you are asked this question explicitly or not.

Several days before interviewing, open a blank document and write down what you feel are your three greatest strengths that have some relationship to the position that you are interviewing for. You need to keep it relevant without so tailoring the strength that it appears insincere. For example, if you’re interviewing for a Java Developer position, the strength of “Expert Snowboarder” might be hard to connect to the job while “Java Expert” might be a little too customized. Instead, “Learn Technology Quickly” or “Strong Software Development Skills” might be preferable.

For each strength that you put down, come up with two examples, on-the-job, that support that particular strength. The examples could be description of particular project accomplishments, citing what your supervisor or peer said about you, award or recognition that you received, quantified deliverable, or anything else that you can think of that supports your claim that you have the mentioned strength. By preparing in this way, you are able to not only recite your strengths in the course of the interview, but also supply a brief explanation as to why you think this is your strength. When evidence backs up your claim, the interviewer is going to feel that you have that strength and remember it.

Example: Interviewer: “What do you feel are your strengths?”
Interviewee: “Being reliable in meeting deadlines that I commit to is one of my strengths. For example, last spring I was on a project to develop a new data structure for an Oracle DataWarehouse and I was to have the project completed in one week but the user community came in with a number of changes in the requirements at the last minute. Rather than miss the deadline, I made a commitment to put in the extra time to get the project finished. The manager of the user department told my manager that he hadn’t expected the deadline to be met and was impressed by how committed I was to the project.”

If the interviewee had just said, “I am reliable at meeting deadlines” and hadn’t said why, then it would probably not be retained by the interviewer – but with the supporting evidence, the interviewer believes this candidate is reliable. Come up with two examples for each of the strengths – arming you with three strengths and at least six examples as you walk into the interview.

But what if they don’t ask what your strengths are? You wasted all that time? No! The interview is going to definitely come across points that parallel the strengths that you’ve thought of and the examples you’ve prepared and you can take that opportunity to volunteer your own strengths.

Example: Interviewee: “In mentioning that there would be several new business areas that I’ve not been exposed to before that I would need to learn coming into this job, I do think that learning new business processes and understanding the ‘big picture’ of business is a particular strength of mine. In fact, at my last company, we acquired a new company in Mexico that manufactured blow-molded plastics which has is a whole different process than the molded plastics that we’d worked with to that point. After spending five days on-site at the new facility, I was able to grasp the requirements and make the necessary recommendations for modifications to our ERP system to successfully adapt their processes with our present system. Our division head complimented me and put into my annual review that my efforts led to one of the smoothest integrations of acquired plants that we’d experienced”.

The interviewer may not have asked you for your strengths, but if you’ve done something similar to the above in the course of your interview – then you’re taking control of the interview and making sure that the information that is going to sell the company on you has come out. Maybe you don’t get to mention all your strengths or use all of your examples, but it’s never a problem to be over-prepared and you may get additional opportunity in subsequent interviews with the same corporation.

Good luck on your interview! Show them your Strengths. Please feel free to add your ideas or ask questions as COMMENTS to this blog.

Job Security For The Technology Professional

How big is the company?  How many years have they been in business?  Have they ever had layoffs?  What are their financials like?  Will answering these questions lead to more JOB SECURITY?  Maybe not.

For more than a decade I placed people at one of St. Louis’ premier employers – hundreds of people.  They hadn’t layed-off anyone in their over 100 year history, had excellent earnings, and were in the top five companies in their industry.  Secure, right?  I sure thought so – except for the fact that the company has now changed hands several times and had layoffs every year in the past eight.  Professionals that worked for them for 10 or 20 years are now facing the job market.  You might guess who this company is – doesn’t matter though.  The point: No company or organization, no matter how much you research them and how secure they appear, should be counted on to provide you long term employment.  Your best career strategy is to assume that you will be let go at anytime and always have your resume and YOUR SKILLS ready for the market. 

Even in the slowest of economies, there are technology professionals that readily find new work when they need it.  While some professionals can’t get an interview, there are others that have multiple offers.  The difference is, offers are going to be more plentiful for those that have the lastest, most in-demand, technical skills and the training and certifications to support that knowledge. 

All you have to do is scan through the popular job boards for technical professionals, Dice.com, Monster.com, HotJobs.com etc… and see what skills are being looked for in posting after posting.  You won’t find much Cobol listed, or RPG, but instead you’ll see the latest Microsoft tools, like Sharepoint and BizTalk, or Java related tools like Spring and Hibernate.  Demands are out there for DataWarehouse and Business Intelligence, ECM (Enterprise Content Management) and many other areas. 

If you’re not working with these “in demand” skill sets, then you need to get moving in the right direction.  Explore opportunities for working with newer technologies at your current employer, talk to your friends about positions at the companies that they work for, apply for some positions, talk to some recruiters – but realize that moving from the 1980s or 1990s technology to 2009 isn’t necessarily easy.  You might need to seek skill-improvment independently, through university coursework or training and certification coursework.  Taking a class or earning a certification won’t necessarily swing the doors wide open, but it could give you a slight edge that you’ll need when your current employer or employer-prospect is deciding between you and another person to offer a more cutting-edge position to.   You might even consider a step back in salary or seniority, in order to get better skill set experience and be able to move further in the future.

The best position to be in, and something you really need to work towards, is the security that comes from a strong, leading-edge, skill set that gives you the confidence to know that even in a poorer economy, there are employers that want your skill set and you can count on being employed easily.  That’s security – you’ll get several offers when you need them and then you can ask…  How big is the company?  How many years have they been in business?…

Making Your Resume “Computer Friendly”

The days of hiring authorities sitting with a stack of paper resumes, reading and evaluating them, are long gone.  Almost all employers at least use the computer to distribute electronic resumes within their company and many import, categorize, and track candidates with sophisticated employment management software.  No longer do you have to be concerned with fancy, high bond, stationary with just the right color and matching envelopes.   Resumes are e-mailed or uploaded and the first “reading” of your resume is usually by a computer program. 

Employer’s systems populate their databases with information “parsed”, or read, from your resume.   Having “trapped” your name, address, phone and e-mail information from the resume, many systems go on to capture keywords, look for titles, or education.   The more you structure your resume in a simple way, the more likely it is that the employers system is going to be able capture the information they need for future successful “human” evaluations of the resume. 

Important consideration for electronic resumes:

• The top of your resume should contain (in this order) Name, Address (use two letter state code), Phone, and e-mail. 

             Example:                  

             William H. Smith

             9268 Cypress Lane

             St. Louis, MO 63129

             Home:    314-456-7890

             Cell:         636-636-6363

            E-Mail:    whsmith314@ gmail.com

• If your official job titles listed on your resume, don’t necessarily state your functional job, then be sure to include a funtional title in one of two ways.

            Example 1:   List functional title with official title

            Acme Corporation, St. Louis, MO                                   3/2005-5/2008

            Lead Systems Adminstrator (Unix Administration Team Leader) 

            Example 2:   List functional title with position highlights

           Acme Corporation, St. Louis, MO                                    3/2005-5/2008

           Lead Systems Administrator

           – Functional Team Leader for Unix Administration group

           -Supported and Configured Sun Solaris…… (etc…)

• Include all appropriate keywords.  Be careful to follow the accepted name for technologies so that your resume is more easily captured in searches conducted the the employer’s hiring authorities.   In many cases it’s a good idea to try to work in both the common acronym  for a technology as well as the proper name.  For example:

             – Business Objects (BOXI)

              or

            – WAS (WebSphere Application Services)

By using both the accepted acronym and formal name, you’ll get more responses and           attention to your resume.

• Do NOT list technologies that you have very limited experience with.  You should be able to discuss intelligently and be able to explain how you have either used the technology in your position or on a project, or why you have unique knowledge of the product beyond casual exposure.  If your name comes up on a search because you’ve listed technologies that you don’t have experience with that you can explain to an employer, then not only will you not be considered for the position at hand, but you’ve now “red flagged” your resume as embellished and unlikely to be considered for more appropriate positions with that employer.

 

• Keep the rest of your formatting simple.  Complicated formatting, no matter how much more creative it may appear in your draft, will have difficulty being imported and “parsed” properly and may not be searchable. 

            – Stick to Word, HTML or RTF document formats.   Preferably MS Word.

            – Do not use PDF format as many systems will not be able to extract the keywords from it

            – Stay with single columns.  Though side columns look nice in a printed resume, they often are harder for electronic systems to read and display in their employment management system.

• Lastly, always presume that the “human” reader of your resume will not make it all the way through your resume.  At some point, be it 10 lines in our 2 pages in, they will quit reading and either rule you “in” or “out”.   Be sure to always structure those things that they HAVE to see to judge you toward the top fo the resume. 

             –  If you have an impressive educational experience, then “EDUCATION” should be near the top of your resume.  If you have uncompleted degrees or unrelated fields of study to your career choice, then “EDUCATION” belongs towards the end of your resume.

            –  If you have a number of  relevent certifications, these too should go to the top of your resume. 

            –  If your current position is not as closely related to what you want to be doing as your previous position(s), then keep the information on your current position very brief so that the “reader” can quickly move on to what you’re most interested.  Remember, it’s one click to move on to another resume, you have to keep them looking at your best content. 

Happy hunting!

Making Job Changes Look Better On Your Resume

The average tenure of a technology professional at one company is getting shorter all the time.  Between consulting “gigs” and direct-hire jobs that don’t pan out, many technology professional’s last seven years of job history can include ten different jobs.  Human resources  and hiring authorities scan down the list of 6 months here and 3 months there and whether each change in position has a good explanation or not, they see a red flag of a “job hopper” and relegate the resume to the “file” pile. 

Even career consultants, whom you’d expect to change positions more often, can spark negative impressions of their career if their contract engagements sometimes went for 6 or 9 months rather than 2 or 3 years. 

There are two good strategies to combat this stigma:

1) Structure all of your accomplishments near the top of your resume, prioritizing accomplishments that include the skills that you feel are the most marketable and most targeted to the position(s) that you’re seeking.   Using a header like “Career Highlights” or “Significant Accomplishments”, you can list 10-15 bullet points that really summarize the most important things you’ve done in your career, not by company or project and not chronologically, but in order of importance to your resume. 

Then towards the bottom of your resume, after the “Career Highlights” and after your “Skills Summary” (the requisite technology “laundry list” of technologies employed), you can list your “Employment History” and list dates (in reverse chronological order), Companies, City and State, and Title(s).  

The presumption is that you’ve captured the resume reader with your accomplishments and skills before they are “hit” with the job changes, and that any stigma that they may attach to those job changes might be “watered down” by coming after positive impressions have already been made. 

2)  Even if you don’t take the above approach and list your positions bundlesd with requisite accomplishments, you can still lessen the impact of more frequent job changes by lumping multiple consulting projects under one “position” as Consultant, for Example:

TECHNOLOGY CONSULTANT                               5/2002 – 8/2007

     ABC Telecomm, Chicago, IL             5/2007 – 8/2007

         .NET Developer  (project through XYZ Consulting)

             *  Designed, developed, implemented….  (etc)

    DEF Industries, Milwaukee, WI   5/2006 – 5/2007

             Sharepoint Developer  (project through UVW Technologies)

            *  Developed MOSS….  (etc)

…AND SO ON, THROUGH ALL OF YOUR PROJECTS.   This approach gives more the impression of consulting being a continuous position with continuity rather than hopping from one job to another. 

Good luck in trying these approaches.

Finding a job is a full-time occupation

I know that a lot of technology professionals are laid-off right now, and there has always been an assumption that work will find you, based on the strength of the technology market of the last 20 years.  This downturn in the hiring marketplace, running on 6+ months, in my estimation, is more severe than I’ve seen before.  If you’re laid-off, look at finding a job as a full-time occupation.   Here are some suggestions:

-Get it up early and get ready for work

-Spend your day, less lunch hour and a few short breaks, on activities designed to connect you with hiring authorities and get you in front of networking contacts

-Being laid-off is not vacation time, not time to clean the basement or garden; the longer that you are off work, the less desirable you might appear to a potential employer and the weaker your negotiating hand.   As soon as you’re laid-off, jump right into a “full court press” hunting mode. 

-Don’t wait for jobs to find you, pick up the phone and call everyone you know that can help you, ask them to suggest companies, ask them to put you in touch with anyone they know that might be of assistance.  Meet people at Starbucks – ask them for advice.

-Research.  The Internet is a tremendous tool for investigating companies in your area, job boards, and reconnecting with old contacts

-Develop a strong resume AND make sure to have several reliable contacts proofread it for you.  Don’t just trust spell-check, you have to make sure there are NO mistakes on your resume

-Set up a LinkedIn account and start a network with as many contacts as possible.   Post very detailed information on your LinkedIn page and make it clear you are looking for work and make it clear as to how you can be reached. 

I will be adding more job hunting tips to this blog – but the main point to get things rolling is that you are the one in control of your destiny, don’t rely on recruiters, outplacement services, or any one avenue, like job boards, but use all of these resources and as many more as you can think of.  Keep working it and working it.   If you lay back, someone else who is taking it more seriously will get the job!  Good Luck!