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.

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.