TheLadders Blog

All the employees from TheLadders would like to wish everyone a Happy 2012. Please remember to visit us here at blog.theladders.com to discover the great stories from inside our company. And remember to visit recruitblog.theladders.com for unique content specifically geared for recruiters and HR professionals. We’re prepared to make our 2012 a big year for TheLadders, and we’re ready to help you make 2012 the year of your next great career move.

Let’s just put in out there, the job search isn’t an easy one.

The questions one has during the search are endless. Should my resume be multiple pages long? How soon after applying should I follow up? How do I follow up? How do I go about finding job postings at a particular company? I’m fearful I may price myself right out of the running – how much should I ask for?

So while many of us have personal trainers or financial advisors, we really don’t have a place to turn for expert advice around the job search. That is, until now. TheLadders Signature program is a proven 6-month program that gives you one-to-one advice from one of our certified professional career coaches (CPCC).

I turned to one of the best Career Advisors here at TheLadders, John Scottaline. What qualifies John? Well, in addition to being a certified career professional, John has placed 5 $100K+ job seekers into new roles in the past 5 months (as this is a 6 month program, I would say John is doing extremely well). Here are some of John’s best tips:

Don’t be shy – network.

Networking is one of the BEST ways to find out about jobs. Whether it is through industry and professional events, alumni organizations or your local PTA, there are many contacts to be made. By going to events and meeting people, this gives you the ability to learn about a position not yet posted or ones you may have overlooked. It can also help you get your foot in the door and help you land an interview. So get out there and start filling up your contact list!

Your resume is your first round of interviewing.

John says that there are many common resume mistakes, like including an objective statement rather than an executive summary – not having a title, providing too much information or in some cases not enough. Having a professionally written resume is definitely an avenue to consider.

Some best practices include having a brief description of the each company you’ve worked for with size and scope of the business. Each title should have a few sentences of responsibilities and, after the brief description, it’s best to select the right achievements to add in bullet points.

Salary negotiations – know what your worth!

Many job seekers are afraid their previous or current salary will hurt their current negotiation. John’s advice: “Know what your worth!” Doing a little research on salaries of people with your skillset and experience is the way to start and there are many tools out there to use. Don’t just factor in salary. This should be inclusive of bonus, vacation time, 401K, medical benefits, etc. Then take that knowledge with your compensation goal and do a check to see if they are in line with one another. Finally, you must ask yourself what you are willing to compromise, such as less vacation for a larger base salary.

If you want to learn more about how TheLadders can help you advance your career, visit our Signature site.

Janelle Taylor is Marketing Manager, Consumer Services at TheLadders.com. Her great love for marketing knows no bounds—similar to her love for books and March Madness.

After 25 years with a major retailer, Tommy M. was ready for a change. He had been steadily promoted through application-development and project-management positions based on consistent success, but his resume had rarely been seen outside internal HR. He knew that resume – comprising 40+ bullets scattered across four pages – was not going to cut it, and he wasn’t confident that he had the knowledge to create a resume that could open doors on his own.

“You can’t use an in-house resume – it’s just not going to work,” he says. “And if you’re not familiar with what really works, you won’t find it on your own.”

After some time away from the corporate bustle that left him feeling burnt out, he decided it was time to get serious about his job search in February and came to TheLadders to turn resume development over to the experts. During the initial information-gathering process, he found himself panicked on how to accurately describe his experience. Many of his greatest achievements spanned multiple positions, and he wasn’t sure how to take ownership for them.
“In any long-term position, your whole mentality becomes team based,” he says.

During a long car ride, Tommy discussed the process with a friend. He told stories of projects that ensured the success of larger initiatives and of rising through the ranks from a sales associate during his college years to an influential IT leader, capable of designing sophisticated technology solutions and forging relationships with top executives. That’s when Tommy realized that he had to stop writing about the trees and start writing about the forest.

“Write your story,” he advises others going through the resume process. “Don’t try to pick out bullet points; try to tell the story.”

With a detail-rich work history, a writer can understand a job seeker from a holistic point of view and draft a resume that that captures the client’s unique strengths. Many members I work with struggle to detail the scope of their work or feel unsure about when to take credit for collaborative work. The best way to work with your writer through this challenge is to follow Tommy’s advice. A writer can never have too much information!

For Tommy, the first draft was a major relief. “I read it and thought, ‘This tells the story I wasn’t telling,’ ” he says. “I could quit worrying about getting a job and start getting a job.”

Within a few days of posting his resume and applying for positions, Tommy saw exceptional results with phone contact with several interested employers. Energized and optimistic about new challenges, he feels well prepared for the job search with a document that reflects his driven personality and the impact he’s had on his organization. “The biggest thing that I gleaned from the whole process,” he says, “is that I have value beyond my company.”

Meredith Spencer is Academy Certified Resume Writer and Certified Professional Resume Writer who specializes in technology industry resumes.

“Bragging is not my strong suit.” As a Professional Resume Writer, it’s the most common refrain I hear from members within the first few days of working together. The second is “I’ve never worked with a resume writer before.”

And that’s OK.

Because we’re here to help! A Professional Resume Writer knows how to coax information out of the shyest of members and can sift through pages of work history to find the most valuable points to include for our more loquacious ones. The result is a document that presents members in a whole new light, and often creates a competitive mental edge in the job search as members’ self-perception aligns to match their new resume.

Watching members’ confidence blossom when they get their new resume is my favorite part of the job. Often the physical appearance of the document undergoes the most concrete transformation: slap-dash paragraphs, long lists of bullets, and haphazard spacing are streamlined and organized into visually inviting text with polished verbiage and clean, sophisticated formats. The mental shift it inspires is best described by our own members. A few recent reactions from the Inboxes of the resume team include:

“Very impressive – I wonder who that guy is? Seriously, that looks very good.” – Rick F.

“Wonderful! I just cannot get over how the presentation changes the image of me. Thank you.” – Mary J.

“It’s been refreshing to see how a proper resume and cover letter are composed – I was definitely not with the times.” – Jose D.

“I can’t wait to upload this for the recruiters to see. You really helped me to organize my career in a way that is relevant to my experience.” – Janet T.

“You did an outstanding job. Writing a resume is a unique talent.” – Anonymous

“Thank you for transforming my lackluster resume into a professional and first class document.” – Anonymous

Just like a good haircut can make anyone stand a little taller and smile a little wider, a good resume can give job seekers the confidence boost they need to apply to a job that’s a bit of a “reach” and walk into an interview knowing that they have already put their best foot forward. Through our weekly posts, the Resume Team looks forward to illuminating the resume writing process and sharing more of our members’ success stories.

Meredith Spencer is Academy Certified Resume Writer and Certified Professional Resume Writer who specializes in technology industry resumes.

In April, TheLadders sponsored the annual Career Thought Leaders Conference & Symposium at the beautiful Hyatt Regency Baltimore. The city’s iconic Inner Harbor provided the perfect backdrop for more than 100 of the top minds in resume writing, career coaching, and job-search consulting to share key knowledge about how to help job seekers win by constructing arguably the most critical weapon in their arsenal: the resume.

The funny thing about a resume is that every candidate knows they need one, yet few understand or are willing to acknowledge its tremendous influence. A resume isn’t just a list of your previous employers to be haphazardly submitted to every recruiter and job portal available – it’s a highly sophisticated tool that leverages the power of words to create perception and target you for the perfect opportunity. And it’s not easy to write!

Just like any other aspect of doing business, you get out of your resume only what you invest. The amount of time and (the conference’s attendees would hope) money you spend on your job search directly correlates to your success. We frequently hear elated job seekers on TheLadders gushing about how overjoyed they are with their professionally written resumes. “Who is that person?” and, “I never realized I did all that!” are common refrains that illustrate a newfound confidence. So why do candidates understand the importance of the resume only after having it evaluated and written by a qualified professional? They don’t have the data.

So what can an analytical, numbers-obsessed guy like me do to help a group of card-carrying wordsmiths understand how best to present that value? Share statistics, of course.

I was honored to partner with event co-host Wendy Enelow (a training consultant for all of TheLadders’ Executive Resume Writers who is widely recognized as the national thought leader in resume writing)  to deliver the conference’s keynote address, “The State of the Union: What Recruiters and Hiring Managers Want.” My speech provoked some buzz (and some tweets) thanks to eyebrow-raising stats gathered in a survey of recruiters who use TheLadders to source talent.

According to the data, 43% of recruiters declaring that a weak resume is a job seeker’s biggest mistake, and they know one when they see one – recruiters receive an average of 52 resumes per $100K+ job listing.  That’s 52 resumes from Monster, 52 resumes from Dice, 52 resumes from CareerBuilder, and on down the line, for any one job. I explained that only 21% of all resumes are considered “Very Good” by recruiters, and that those resumes garner 50% more recruiter contacts than their average or below average counterparts.

Of course, recruiters aren’t the only gatekeeper between candidates and their next job. There is now applicant tracking software that scans resumes for keyword matches before they move through the ranks of agency recruiters, corporate recruiters, HR managers, and hiring managers. Those hiring professionals are increasingly selecting candidates based on first impressions, as a remarkable 68% of US companies have no standardized definition of a quality hire.

How do you combat that? With a quality resume. Our analysts at TheLadders have reviewed and critiqued more than 575,000 of executive resumes, and our staff of writers (many of whom were among the thought leaders assembled in Baltimore) has rewritten more than 60,000 of them. Those resumes typically earn a score of around 4 on our 10-point scale before they are rewritten, but leap to an 8 or better after a professional rewrite.

So what does it all mean? Judging by the conference attendees’ frantic note-taking, it means that executive candidates must be reminded that it’s not enough to rely on your ability to sell yourself. A weak resume fails to differentiate you from your equally qualified peers, and simply believing that your resume accurately represents your value doesn’t make it so. Recruiters want those Grade-A resumes that score an 8 or higher, and sure enough, they perform much better. The increased confidence that comes with a professionally written resume is statistically proven to be accompanied by increased performance, and increased engagement from recruiters and hiring managers.

Ware Sykes is Vice President Consumer Services and Head of Resume Services at TheLadders.com