In the past 4 years, we've done most of our
new hires using Craigslist. The position we've hired the most for is Data Control Analyst and each time as the economy worsened, the response rate went up. Here's how each hiring round went:
2006Job ad posted: 2
Responses: 40 (20/ad)
2008
Job ad posted: 3
Responses: 90 (30/ad)
2009
Job ad posted: 1
Responses: 103 (103/ad)
As you can see, when times get tough, the competition gets tougher. This is one of these corollaries in life -- good times never seem to end but when it rains, it pours. It's bad enough to lose a job but then to have to compete with a gaggle of candidates with the dagger of foreclosure or eviction hanging over your head -- it's a veritable country song waiting to happen.
From the employer's view, it takes a lot of work to read resumes, evaluate and screen applicants, reply to them, do phone screenings and then finally bring them in for face-to-face interviews. Obviously, the stakes are often even higher for the job hunter, Hence, it is in both side's best interest for the applicant to bring something extra to the table to make a resume rise to the top of the pile. And the one thing that I find consistently missing from the hundreds of job applications we've received (not just for these positions but many others) is work examples.
Back in the days when I was a job hunter, I prepared beforehand for my interviews by putting together a portfolio. Ordinarily, when you hear portfolio, you think of artists bringing along a big pouch showing off their past work for prospective clients. Well I decided to use a similar tactic. For all my major projects -- work, academic and personal -- I either included the documentation I wrote for those projects or wrote a new summary specifically for the purpose of job hunting. Then put together nicely in a binder with table of contents, summaries and separators as if I was making a full-blown presentation asking for venture capital money.
So when it came time for an in-person interview and we started talking about about my past experience, I handed over my 500-page portfolio and matched up physical evidence to what was on my resume. The interviewers did not have to dwelve into every job to make sure the claims I was making on my resume were true. In addition, I got an extra chance to show off writing skills and thinking out of the box (using an art world practice in the white collar world). Suffice it to say, I batted 1.000 on job offers each time I had the chance to use this tactic.
I still had to get by the resume filtering though. Since resumes should never be more than 2 pages maximum, I saw no way I could show off my portfolio before the in-person interview stage. Hence, there were many jobs I did not get a callback from because somebody made a decision that the 50 words on somebody else's resume were better than the 50 words on mine. In today's Internet world though, it's trivial to include a detailed portfolio with your resume. Put your work online -- whether demo website, documentation, photos, screenshots or writeups -- and include the URL with your resume. I would no longer bring the 500-page monster anymore either. Instead, I'd have single page summaries (with the URL pointing to the full details) for each project where it would be possible hand out copies to each interviewer.
I can tell you from experience screening job applicants that this can be a huge edge because out of the hundreds of resume -- many for technical positions -- a grand total of
ONE applicant listed a URL that showed off his prior work. I'm pretty sure he went to the top of many resume lists because he turned us down before we even got to the interview stage.
(Filed in hiring, job skills)
Maximizing job hunting returns
Posted by Mossy
April 18, 2010 10:47 AM
2006
Job ad posted: 2
Responses: 40 (20/ad)
2008
Job ad posted: 3
Responses: 90 (30/ad)
2009
Job ad posted: 1
Responses: 103 (103/ad)
As you can see, when times get tough, the competition gets tougher. This is one of these corollaries in life -- good times never seem to end but when it rains, it pours. It's bad enough to lose a job but then to have to compete with a gaggle of candidates with the dagger of foreclosure or eviction hanging over your head -- it's a veritable country song waiting to happen.
From the employer's view, it takes a lot of work to read resumes, evaluate and screen applicants, reply to them, do phone screenings and then finally bring them in for face-to-face interviews. Obviously, the stakes are often even higher for the job hunter, Hence, it is in both side's best interest for the applicant to bring something extra to the table to make a resume rise to the top of the pile. And the one thing that I find consistently missing from the hundreds of job applications we've received (not just for these positions but many others) is work examples.
So when it came time for an in-person interview and we started talking about about my past experience, I handed over my 500-page portfolio and matched up physical evidence to what was on my resume. The interviewers did not have to dwelve into every job to make sure the claims I was making on my resume were true. In addition, I got an extra chance to show off writing skills and thinking out of the box (using an art world practice in the white collar world). Suffice it to say, I batted 1.000 on job offers each time I had the chance to use this tactic.
I still had to get by the resume filtering though. Since resumes should never be more than 2 pages maximum, I saw no way I could show off my portfolio before the in-person interview stage. Hence, there were many jobs I did not get a callback from because somebody made a decision that the 50 words on somebody else's resume were better than the 50 words on mine. In today's Internet world though, it's trivial to include a detailed portfolio with your resume. Put your work online -- whether demo website, documentation, photos, screenshots or writeups -- and include the URL with your resume. I would no longer bring the 500-page monster anymore either. Instead, I'd have single page summaries (with the URL pointing to the full details) for each project where it would be possible hand out copies to each interviewer.
I can tell you from experience screening job applicants that this can be a huge edge because out of the hundreds of resume -- many for technical positions -- a grand total of ONE applicant listed a URL that showed off his prior work. I'm pretty sure he went to the top of many resume lists because he turned us down before we even got to the interview stage.
(Filed in hiring, job skills)
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