The MicroTrain Blog

Late fall and early winter are bad for job seekers.  Employees, recruiters, and hiring managers are going on vacation and/or gearing up for the holidays.  As a job seeker, you’ll want to skip to the next season.  At the very least, you’ll want to skip November and December and get right to January, when hiring typically picks up again.  Unfortunately, you’re not a time traveler, so how do you cope during these rough few months known for their statistical lack of hiring?

Armed with stats, a winter coat, and a grim outlook, many job seekers feel the urge to freeze pause their job search during these months (I refuse to subject you to wintery puns).  Don’t sleigh your search.  Keep your momentum as much as you can.  It’s important to remember that companies are still hiring; they’re just not hiring as much as they were in September and October.  Keep looking and applying.  If you get less callbacks than before, don’t take it personally.  You might need to wait until January before the phone starts to ring-a-ling again.  Submitting fewer applications than normal is fine, because there will be fewer open positions that match, but don’t stop applying altogether. 

Here are some other things you can do to keep your job chestnuts roasting on an open… employment…fire?  I dunno.  Sorry, that one was terrible.

1. Volunteer and freelance work, projects, etc. 

Let’s say you’re in the IT industry, and you’re looking for a desktop support job.  Right now would be a perfect time for you to go around to local schools and libraries and volunteer to cover for any desktop support people who are going on vacation.  No one’s going on vacation?  Volunteer anyway.  This broadens your network and gives you a great plug for the resume gap that’s slowly growing during your job search.  It shows that you’re proactive, and that you’re passionate about your chosen profession.  Make sure you update all of your marketing materials (LinkedIn, resume, handbill, etc.) to include your volunteer work.  Do away with anyone who tells you not to list relevant volunteer work on your resume.  They’ll be getting coal for Christmas through their car window from me.

2. Update your skills

Are you currently in training?  Good.  Not only are relevant certifications another good resume gap plug, but they make you more marketable.  Take this time to study for your exams.  Don’t forget to pass them.  Just taking the class usually isn’t enough.  If you failed your PMP, welcome to a growing club of frustrated swearing professionals.  Join a study group.  Study again, take it again.  Don’t cast it off.  

3. Prepare for the big hiring months (January and February)

Athletes still train during the summer.  Michael Jordan never started the season with a beer belly and ketchup stains on his jersey.  Actually, he probably did when he played for the Wizards, but that whole debacle is best left forgotten.  The point is that once companies start hiring again in January, you should be ready to go.  Your resume and LinkedIn page should be up-to-date, your interviewing skills should be sharp, your elevator pitch should be strong, and your non-ketchup-stained clothes should be ironed.  Make sure you’re researching keywords for your marketing materials, because a job search nowadays is all about keywords.  Make sure your resume and LinkedIn profile are using the right ones.

November and December are also a good time to make a list of your desired companies.  Research every company on the list.  Set up a Google alert for any company that you apply to so that you’ll get an e-mail whenever that company is in the news.  Do some LinkedIn stalking and figure out who the hiring managers are.  See if you have any networking contacts between you.

4. Digitally position yourself as an expert in your field

I mentioned them already, so I’ll only reference keywords one more time during this post.  Keywords.  Utilize them.  If you need help, go to www.onetonline.org, or copy and paste job descriptions into www.wordle.net or www.tagcrowd.com to get a visual of which words to use on your resume and LinkedIn profile.  Okay, I won’t mention keywords anymore.

Aside from keywords (oops), you can position yourself as an expert in your field by writing blog posts, articles, and status updates pertaining to your profession.  Get creative.  Be digitally visible.  I’ve seen people post videos on YouTube and link them to their LinkedIn profile to great effect.  Add to discussions in LinkedIn groups that you’ve joined.  Always be positive and/or constructive when posting anything on LinkedIn!  If you post troll comments, it will hurt your chances at employment and make you seem like a disagreeable scallywag.  

5. Be non-digitally visible too

Go to networking events, job fairs, industry meetings, etc.  If you can’t find any, look in relevant LinkedIn groups that are active.  Do a Google search for events in your area.  Be sure to know the websites that are dedicated to the networking events around you (e.g., www.1871.com for the Chicago area).  I always hear people say that they don’t like to go to these because they’re uncomfortable, boring, useless, unproductive time-wasters.  I won’t disagree.  A good handful of the ones I went to during my job search were just PR stunts put on by politicians who left immediately after their picture was taken.  However, they can still be beneficial.  Even if 39 consecutive networking events don’t provide results, the 40^th one might.  You might meet some networking contact or recruiter who is going to be your key to success.  Just today I received an e-mail from a client who got hired by a contact she met at a networking event two weeks ago.  It happens.

6. Get an informational interview

About a year ago, Forbes posted an excellent article defining what the informational interview is, and how to ace it.  I’m not going to pretend I’m a better writer than the people at Forbes, so here’s a link to that article: 

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jacquelynsmith/2013/12/11/how-to-land-and-ace-an-informational-interview/

During my job search, I went on three informational interviews and they were all instrumental to my job search.  There’s a kind of mentorship aspect to informational interviews that you can’t get from networking events and 1^st tier contacts (to use LinkedIn’s wordage), and they can give you an alternate perspective on how to research industries, companies, and jobs.  These meetings are particularly helpful for those of you who feel your search has become stale or stagnant. 

7. Stay healthy physically

Staying physically healthy is harder than it sounds throughout unemployment.  During my search, I bought a few boxes of Kraft Macaroni and Cheese because they were cheap.  After choking down 5 boxes of that stuff, I’ll never eat macaroni and cheese again.  Humorously, it probably would have been cheaper to buy fruits and vegetables, which would’ve helped my physical and mental state exponentially more than processed shoe cheese.  Anyway, do all the normal healthy stuff that people tell you to do.  Exercise, take breaks, stay on a good sleep/work schedule, don’t put in more than 40 hours, and eat right.  The physical aspect of unemployment healthiness is pretty straightforward, even though it’s easier said than done.

8. Stay healthy emotionally

Conversely, I don’t think I’ve ever read a really good article about how to stay emotionally stable during a job search.  Some articles can be summed as, “Hey, choose to be happy.  C’mon.”  I’m not going to tell you to just “be happy”, because that’s too simplistic for a human being, which I’m assuming you are.  Additionally, most of the other unemployment mental health articles only contain activities and mental exercises that work solely for the author.  These articles frequently ignore the fact that everyone is different, and what calms your nerves and relieves your stress is going to be different from everyone else.  During my job search, I watched movies to relax, but Buster Keaton movies aren’t for everyone (which is a sentence that physically hurts me to type).  Find something that calms your mind and puts you at ease, unless it’s something super expensive like yachting, in which case stop yachting.  Stay away from anything mentally or physically destructive.  Stick with wholesome things.  Blogging, knitting, exercising, baking, thumb wrestling, playing fetch with your dog, painting, cycling, yoga, movies, board games, etc.  Whatever it is that you like to do, do it.  This is particularly important during the cold, dark, gloomy winter months when depression tends to spike.

The other big key to staying mentally fit is talking to people who make you feel better.  There’s a qualifier in the previous sentence that is really important.  You need to stop talking to people who make you feel worse about your situation.  Sometimes a close family member or friend has a natural disposition toward pessimism, so cut them off.  Anyone who says things like, “I don’t understand why you don’t have a job.  Just walk into a company and hand them a resume.  That’s what I did.” or “Yeah, I mean, the economy is so bad, I don’t know if getting a job is even realistic for anyone right now.”  People who say these kinds of things probably feel like they’re helping you out by grounding you a little, when in reality they’re kicking someone who’s already in the pits.  Out with ‘em.  Don’t talk to them anymore.

“TL;DR.  Wrap it up, Jeff”

Here comes the Shyamalan twist ending:  Truthfully, you should be doing all of these things during any month of your job search, not just in the upcoming hiring drought months.  The time of the year doesn’t really matter that much in terms of how proactive you are.  It’s a slightly different state of mind that you need to get into, but not radically different.  For example, the percentage of time you spend doing online applications will be reduced during off-season months, but your overall output should be constant.

(I guess that wasn’t much of a twist ending.  Still, it was better than The Happening.)

Whatever you do to modify your job search for the winter, make sure that you’re still active.  Be creatively proactive now so that you can come out swinging in January.

Anyone who has received job search advice from multiple sources knows about the perils and frustrations of subjectivity.  One resume expert will tell you one thing, and another resume expert will tell you the opposite.  You’ll spend hours customizing your resume based on the suggestions of a career expert, only to hear another career expert tell you that you’re doing everything wrong.  Frustrations are inevitable.

Recently, I’ve heard a people mention bad career advice that they’ve heard from other sources (networking events, job fairs, support groups, etc.).  In most cases, the reason why the advice is bad is simply because it’s antiquated.  At some point in recent history, these suggestions were once considered excellent.  Unfortunately, mullets were also considered good advice once.  Time has a way of changing things from good to bad and vice versa.  My aim with this article is to shave your metaphorical job search mullet, and obliterate some of the antiquated advice that is still inexplicably circling the aforementioned networking events and job fairs.

1. The white-font-keyword strategy

“If you put a slew of keywords in small white font all over your resume, you’ll have a much better chance at beating an applicant tracking system.”

I probably hear this advice about once per week.  It’s a very clever idea, and it sounds like a great cheat code to get passed the ever-frustrating applicant tracking systems that hound all job seekers.  This advice worked really well about ten years ago, but applicant tracking systems got wise, and this trick no longer works.  Not only that, but using this trick nowadays will make your resume look like a jumbled mess after it’s submitted.  This is because applicant tracking systems automatically turn all fonts black when you submit your resume, so your keywords will go from hidden secret to illegible muck. 

2. The professional resume writer

“I paid a guy $100 to write my resume for me.  I barely had to do anything, and now I have a terrific resume that makes me look great.”

This one isn’t necessarily a bad idea all the time.  There are many variations of this, but it’s usually the same concept:  I want someone else to write my resume.  Writing a resume is a pain, and I understand that, but having someone else write a document that chronicles your professional life might not yield the best results.  No one knows you better than you.  Professional resume writers tend to stuff resumes full of fluffy and nondescript vagueries, which will only do you a disservice.  I’m not saying that you shouldn’t use career counselors and employment specialists.  On the contrary, I think you should use these professionals as much as you possibly can.  However, don’t blindly rely on a career specialist to write your resume for you.  Who says the career specialist is any better at writing than you are?  After all, writing sloppily about yourself is much easier to polish than writing vaguely about someone else.  I see the merit in having a qualified professional write your resume, but use caution.  Whatever you decide to do, don’t spend your own money on revamping your resume if money is tight.  There are tons of free services that will help you craft your resume. 

3. Fancy graphics, lines, boxes, etc.

“I differentiate myself from the pack by have a flashy resume.  It grabs the reader’s attention and forces their interest.”

I actually don’t have a problem with this method as long as two conditions are fulfilled:

A)   A)   This is a resume that is intended to be used in person and not online

B)   B)   It’s not over-the-top with fancy graphics, etc. 

Fancy lines, graphics, tables, t-charts, and logos will confuse an applicant tracking system, which will result in your resume getting binned before a human can look at it.  Optimistically, certain applicant tracking systems will automatically strip out any fanciness before pushing your resume to the hiring manager.  That neon blue font will be turned black.  That pie graph will be removed.  Your previous company’s logo will be deleted.  If you spend three weeks bedazzling your resume, there’s a good chance an applicant tracking system will instantly turn it back into a normal readable document.  If you insist on bedazzling your resume for job fairs, networking events, and interviews, make sure you don’t over-do it.  Otherwise, your resume will seem too desperate in its attempt to shout, “Please look at me!”

4. Using anything other than .doc, .docx, and .rtf formats

“In order for your resume to retain its intended format, make it a PDF document before you submit it online.  This way nothing will mess it up when you upload it.”

Anyone who has attended my Resume/Interview Workshop knows my story about PDF files.  Submitting PDF files instead of .doc or .rft used to be terrific advice.  Nowadays, PDFs only trip up the applicant tracking systems.  The reasoning behind this is quite boring (before, the systems decoded the PDF resume and turned the letters into text, but now the systems only look for text, which PDF doesn’t use), so just remember to use .rtf, .doc, or .docx.  

5. References upon request

“Instead of putting your references on your resume, just write ‘references available on request’ at the bottom.  This way, you’ll save that resume real estate for more important information.”

This is great advice, so much so that resume trends have taken it a step further.  Don’t even write “references upon request” on your resume.  Leave any reference to references off you resume completely.  When hiring managers see this on a resume, they instantly know the applicant hasn’t kept up with resume trends over the last decade.  It’s only a small leap in logic for a hiring manager to then think, “This person just doesn’t keep up.  Period.”

6. Functional resumes

“If you have a gap in your employment, just use a functional resume instead of a chronological one.  Instead of showing your skills by date, this will highlight your relevant experience.”

The problem with functional resumes is that they raise a red flag.  Since the financial crisis happened, many applicants have started using functional resumes to gloss over employment gaps.  It’s become so prevalent that many hiring managers now equate functional resumes with unemployed applicants, which is bad news.  Another issue is that applicant tracking systems normally ask you to fill out your information in chronological order anyway, forcing you to organize your resume in the format that most people use.  Basically, if you’re applying for jobs online, you’ll need to have some kind of chronological format for your work history.  The big benefit of functional resumes is that they highlight relevant work experience and professional highlights, but this can be accomplished on a good chronological resume by having a solid summary, details, and core competencies.

7. Objectives vs. Summaries

“Your resume should start with an objective.  What are you looking for?  What’s your goal?”

This worked wonders in the employee’s market of the 90s.  However, the employee’s market of the 90s followed MC Hammer into oblivion, leaving us with the employer’s market of today.  What this means is that most employers don’t care much about your goals.  They care about their goals and objectives, and a solid summary of your skills and experience will explain how you can help them save time and/or money.

Conclusion

There’s a lot of misinformation out there.  Most people at job fairs and networking events are trying to help you, but they might be giving you advice that’s outdated.  If you hear job search advice that sounds too good to be true, you should research it.  Look it up on Google, ask a career specialist, and do whatever else you can to verify that the new resume trick you heard is valid.  Otherwise you may end up hurting your job search.