Managing Your Brand While Looking For A Job

Posted on May 10, 2013 by Becky Pearce

Executives looking for a job should always be mindful of protecting their career brand.

From the minor errors in the resume or cover letter, to applying for jobs they do not qualify for, or stumbling badly in the interview process, there is ample opportunity for executives to damage their brand in the job search process.

Here are five guide points to help executives navigate these potentially troublesome waters.

1. Do Not Apply For A Job You Do Not Qualify For – If the job advertisement, internet posting or networking email specifically mentions in the first sentence “We are searching for a physician executive” and you are not a doctor, then why waste your time? The mentality that something might work out is not only wrongheaded but it will diminish you in the eyes of recruiters who are overwhelmed with resumes.

Here is an interesting factoid: “Job seekers self-report spending up to 10 minutes viewing a job,” according to a recent study conducted by internet recruiting site, The Ladders. On average they actually spend between 39.7 to 76.7 seconds. So look before you leap. Clicking the “submit resume” button on every ad that contains the words “leadership” or “executive” is a fool’s errand. Slow down and actually read the job requirements. Submitting a resume for a job that you do not qualify for is a red flag: Beware!! This candidate does not pay attention to details.

2. Resumes Are Preferred For Executive Searches – In an executive search, send a resume that chronicles your executive progression and value-based accomplishments, not a curriculum vitae that focuses on endless listings of appointments, committees, research and articles. The only time you use a CV is when you are applying to an academic or affiliated organization, or a research firm. A 46-page history of your research articles with no clear career path is a great way to be excluded in a competitive executive search. The only people who speed read faster than candidates are recruiting researchers who spend, on average, between 20 and 30 seconds reviewing a resume or CV.

3. Do Not Send The Same Resume For Every Job – No two jobs are alike. Pay attention to the client’s selection criteria and preferred characteristics. Use a career summary paragraph at the top of a resume to emphasize your strengths and accomplishments that match the needs of the client. The one-size-fits-all jobs resume is a thing of the past. Target your audience.

4. Proof Your Documents – We all have submitted documents in our career—resumes, letters, proposals, contracts…heck, even blogs, that contain errors. While regrettable, one or two errors will probably not change the rotation of the earth. However, if, over the course of a search, the number of minor errors increases, you are only reaffirming that you do not pay attention to details.

5. Be Prepared, Be Smart – If you have a career glitch – and I am not talking about the candidate with five felonies (that is another story), or if you fall short with one or two elements of the selection criteria, prepare in advance how you will address these issues. Only a foolish candidate will be cocky enough to devise an answer on the fly when asked. Think these issues through. Draft responses. Practice and revise. Then practice in front of a mirror. When asked, smile, and then hit the ball out of the park.

Regardless of the industry, competition for the best jobs will only intensify in this new economy. Faced with an avalanche of resumes, recruiters must eliminate candidates to get the number down to a manageable level.

Do not make it easy for them to eject you from the game.

Common Resume Mistakes Hurt Candidates

Posted on January 30, 2013 by John G. Self

In a tight job market, it is fascinating how many senior level and aspiring executives shoot themselves in the career foot with mediocre or bad resumes, or with a resume that contains major mistakes.

There is no shortage of books, columns and blogs that provide guidance in resume development, outlining the rules of what you should, or should not do. But judging by 200 resumes of executives that I have reviewed over the past three months in connection with research for a career management book I am writing, our advice is being ignored, or that the ample career management knowledge base is one of the best kept secrets in MBA programs.

Some of the errors reflect carelessness. Those are easily fixed. Others are structurally flawed and need to be reworked. But the vast majority of the resumes do not do their intended job, as a first interview, to get the candidate to the next level of the recruitment process.

It has always amazed me how many people just list on their resume the name of their employer, their title and term of employment. They do not explain who the employer is or what services they provide. Finally, the candidates frequently use dot points to explain their scope of responsibility while failing to list any of their accomplishments, or explain the value they could bring to a prospective employer. They wonder why they were eliminated so early in a search.

In competitive senior executive searches, virtually every candidate is qualified. The vast majority has a master’s degree and, in healthcare, increasing numbers hold a Fellowship in the American College of Healthcare Executives, a certification that shows they have the requisite current knowledge. The resume, therefore, should be that part of your personal career brand which helps distinguish you from everyone else. That is why candidates should/must list the significant accomplishments that reflect their success and value contribution. Moreover, as a general rule, recruiters focus on candidates whose resumes clearly demonstrate that they have produced positive results. Candidates should never assume that their advancement to positions of more responsibility is sufficient evidence of success.

Here are a few examples of the most common problems I noticed when reviewing the 200 resumes:

No address. I saw a LinkedIn site where discussion participants argued that address was irrelevant since where the candidate currently lives should not be a factor. It is. Why be hardheaded, or try to make some point, and not be included in future consideration?
Formatting problems. Once you get your resume in perfect shape, convert it from an Apple Pages, Word Perfect or Microsoft Word format to a PDF document. Be sure you do not have blank pages in the middle or tacked on to the end of the resume because you left a pesky page break in the document by mistake. Be sure your name and page number is at the top of each page.

Too much information in too few pages with a typeface that requires a magnifying glass. More than 25 executives with 20+ years of experience tried to cram their professional life and accomplishments into two pages because of some two-page resume rule that does not exist. The length of a resume should be proportional to the length of a candidate’s career and the number and quality of their accomplishments. Early careerists loaded their resumes with extraneous information to make it seem like they were more experienced than they really were. If you have a 2.5 page resume and you are using a 9 or 10 point typeface, you might try increasing it to 12 point so we can actually read what you wrote without blowing up the size of the page by 200 percent.

References were attached. As a common sense rule of career brand management, DO NOT send a recruiter or employer your references until requested to do so unless, of course, you really do not care if someone inadvertently discloses your confidential search.

There are a lot of career management consultants in the market. If you pay someone for advice, and if what they tell you to do doesn’t have that certain ring of common sense, or it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

For a free copy of John Self’s resume guide, click here.

The “Tell” of a Fraud

Posted on October 22, 2012 by John G. Self

There is a great advantage for an executive recruiter to have once worked as a crime writer and investigative reporter.

You are not afraid to ask tough questions, and you can more easily detect the self-serving spin.

In the business of poker, seasoned card players will tell you that every player has a “tell”—that look—a certain facial expression, a nervous habit of playing with a ring, drumming fingers, or how he or she plays with their poker chips. If you can interpret the “tells” you will know when a player is bluffing or when they are holding a hand that is loaded for bear.

In recruiting, candidates also have tells. They are not that hard to pick up. Most executive candidates will slip because they are not prepared for the questions. Sometimes it is not a big issue, you ignore it and move on, unless you establish a pattern of behavior in other answers, or through subsequent research—secondary references and background investigations.

In recruiting, there are answers or comments that candidates make that are deal killers.

I was recently interviewing an executive for the number two role at a major hospital system. He said two things that tripped him up.

When asked to describe a big mistake and lessons learned, he denied that he had ever made any consequential mistakes in his 12 years as a senior operations executive.

I found that hard to believe.

Later in the interview, I asked him to describe his two biggest successes.

I was “I’d” to death—“I turned this or that around and I overhauled systems and processes that led to record profits.” No mention of, or credit for, the support of his management team or the dozens of employees who did the work.

He sensed I was shocked at his answer, and his sudden burst of humility, trying to figure out his mistake, left him, to quote an ESPN sports anchor, “mumbling, fumbling and stumbling” out of further consideration.

It would be like Henry Ford saying he was going to personally build all the cars Ford Motor Company would make in a year. He might build three or four, said Dr. Lawrence Weed in his 1971 Grand Rounds lecture on the importance of medical records, but that would leave another 200,000 or so people without a car, and that is the stuff customer revolts are made of.

A CEO who says something like “I turned that hospital around” and does not share the credit is, plain and simple, a fraud. No one man or woman can turn around a business unless it is a one-person company. Great accomplishments are a team effort. Always.

Improving quality of care, enhancing patient safety and driving innovation that will produce real reductions in the cost of care, can only be accomplished with the support of the team.

Be honest. Embrace and empower your teams. If you have the right people, they will carry you far.

Fraudulent or exaggerated claims, or a convenient memory, is a real “tell” about who you are as a leader.