Embarrassing Application Mistakes

If you ask a recruiter or a hiring manager about the most awful interview they've ever had, they'll be able to recall the candidate's every flaw, mistake, gaffe, and uncomfortable silence in excruciating detail. Fortunately for the candidate, they don't have physical evidence of this; they're only able pain a word picture.

No so luck with application material. The paper equivalents linger on, often becoming office jokes and can become viral within your potential employers' office. I worked for a company that would request submissions from recruiters, save the especially funny resumes, redact the confidential information and had it as part of the end of the year party.

I recall one resume, in particular that I received, which I passed onto a colleague for a chuckle. It soon got passed to her coworkers and soon several dozen people had an electronic copy.

The resume wasn't that bad. It was fairly straightforward - listed the candidate's brief work experience and was easy to follow, but she, like the rare candidate, foolishly decided to attach a headshot to the top of her resume. By chance, I clicked on the photo and noticed that it seemed to be cropped. When copied and pasted into a new document, a larger image appeared. I've edited out the candidate's head:

Reviewing resumes is pretty boring - especially when you're combing through a hundred or two a day. A surprise like this is a welcomed respite and spreads like wildfire.

Moral of the story: You want to catch the recruiter's attention, but not this way. Do yourself a favor and remove the ridiculousness from your application materials.

She didn't get the job. She didn't get an interview. But thank you, lingerie girl. You've given us some good chuckles.

C'mon Man! Obama and the Vick Comment

Much ado is being made about Obama's comments praising the Eagles organization for giving Michael Vick a second chance.

A couple of thoughts come to mind:

- As a society, we create some very real structural problems for criminals. It becomes difficult to become employed following a conviction. Many experts point to this as a main reason for recidivism.

- I am unaware of any relapse by Michael Vick. He doesn't seem to be drowning, electrocuting, and otherwise torturing dogs. That's probably for the best.

- Society may very well be improved if more ex-cons were able to pursue careers that provide a solid quality of life.

That being said, C'mon man!

NFL is hardly unforgiving in regards to criminal transgressions. Off the top of my head, I can think of the following:

• Donte Stollworth - Former Browns WR, now Baltimore. Served time for Second Degree Manslaughter after boozing it up and running somebody over
• Rey Maualuga - Bengal LB pled guilty for drunk driving
• Larry Johnson - Currently not playing, but this guy has fucked over more Black women than Hurricane Katrina. His felony rap sheet is ridonculous. And while he's not playing right now (or probably won't play moving forward), it certainly doesn't have to do with his criminal record as he was signed by the Redskins and subsequently released.
• Pacman Jones - Not sure I could do this strip club gun incident justice. Bengals player now.
• Plaxico Burress - Will be released from prison soon. It's a foregone conclusion that he'll make a team somewhere, assuming he has stayed conditioned.

(dis)Honorable Mention:

• Ray Lewis - his murder charge got dropped down to a misdemeanor after he testified against two of his buddies.
• Ben Roethlisberger - I'll give a flyer to Ben on this one since there haven't been convictions and the commissioner has taken fairly appropriate measures for what has been just accusations. That being said....c'mon, Ben.

And I don't even follow this kind of stuff. I'm sure I'm missing something.

The NFL is hardly new to giving second, third, fourth, or even fifth chances to their star athletes when they run into legal trouble. And to couch it in terms of giving an ex-con a second chance, as if it's a magnanimous decision to help rehabilitate the criminal is utter lunacy.

Am I glad Vick is playing again? I'm agnostic to this, I suppose. He's fun. He's fast. And even though he just dropped a game to a banged up Vikings team starting their third string quarterback and a JV secondary, I like watching him.

Let's just not fool ourselves. This isn't about a chance at redemption. It's not a kind act by the Eagles. This was a cost-benefit analysis by a profit-seeking entity. They grabbed a premier athlete at basement low prices, much like grabbing BP stock when it was $27/share after the oil spill. It was a risk, but so much upside.

On Phone Interviews

I used to hate phone interviews. I longed for the opportunity to look somebody in the eye, get a feel for how they felt about my candidacy and be able to on-the-spot calibrate my answers to match what vibe I was getting from them. I love 'em now. I hope every interview I ever have is a phone interview. What changed? My comfort with them and perspective on them.

I truly believe that as technology evolves and video-chatting becomes a more ubiquitous technology, phone interviews will fall largely by the wayside within the next 10-20 years. Until then, though, it's important that people develop some level of comfort and expertise in presenting themselves professionally as a strong candidate via a phone interview.

With large companies, often the first interview will be a phone interview with somebody from an HR function. These folks often have a good understanding of the company culture, the general responsibilities, and main competencies for the role in which you're interested. They tend to have varying degrees of expertise and knowledge about the minutiae of the day-to-day responsibilities and often have less of an ability to judge you on the highly technical aspects of your position. Their job is to narrow their large list of on-paper qualified candidates to a small group (often 3-5) of highly qualified candidates to present to the hiring manager. Knowing this goal and what they're looking for will pay huge dividends in preparing your answers.

As a corporate recruiter, I have found that the best candidates follow the following advice:

1. Ask questions - Yes, this is advice applicable to all interviews, but I think it's particularly helpful during the first HR-type interview. I'm continually surprised at how many people leave the interview having not asked any questions. Recruiter opinions on this vary a bit, but for many it demonstrates a lack of interest in the position and company. If the interviewer offers you the chance to ask questions at the beginning of the interview, take it. It's like a teacher asking if you want to know the questions to the test before it's administered. Some of the best candidates I have had have asked me questions similar to "I've researched the position and company and I'm really excited about the opportunity, but to make sure that we're on the same page during this conversation, what would you say are the top 2 - 3 main competencies or skill sets you're looking for in the ideal candidate?" This will a) give you an excellent opportunity to frame your responses, highlighting those specific strengths; b) provide a good idea of what the interviewer's role is and how deep in technical responses to go; and c) differentiates you from the typical candidate. Something to remember: recruiters often do several of these phone interviews a day and anything you can do to keep them engaged is probably a good thing.
2. Display Deep Level of Enthusiasm - Excitement in an opportunity can be presented many ways in an interview - eye contact, posture, smiling, voice modulation and speed, controlled gesticulating. Most of these methods are unavailable in a phone interview. Focus on what you can control and know your tendencies.
3. Be an active participant - You will want to walk the fine line between being an active participant of the interview and taking over the interview. Realize that interviews are a two-way conversation and not just at the end of the interview when they inevitably ask you if you have questions. If you're not sure if a point was made or understood, ask them if your response provided them with the information they needed. Ask them if you provided enough data, or if they need a more technical response.
4. Close the interview - After the interviewer asks if you have any questions and you have gotten all the information you need, I love asking (a variant of) this question to potential employers and being asked it by potential employees: "Now, RECRUITER, that you have had a good chance to get an idea of what kind of skills and experiences I bring to the table, is there any remaining concerns or questions that you have that would prevent you from moving me to the next level?" Most of the time, the recruiter will be non-committal with a response, giving you very little information. Sometimes, however, he/she will identify a concern that you can alleviate. Worst case scenario: they end up not telling you anything valuable and they leave feeling like you can close (important competency in any sales position), have a certain level of ambition, and are really interested in the position.
5. Follow-up - I've become a bigger and bigger fan of LinkedIn as a follow-up mechanism. Whenever I have had a phone interviewed scheduled, I find the interviewer on LinkedIn, add them as a contact, and following the interview, send them a message. It eliminated the awkward request at the interview for their email so you can send them a thank you note. I think this is entirely appropriate for an early phone interview. As a point of comparison, I've probably phone interviewed 3,000 - 4,000 candidates. I've received far less than 100 thank you notes. It's not a requirement, but it sure may differentiate you. And now, if you're linked, follow-up to see your status and send messages of continued interest are much easier.

These tips are no substitute for general interview savvy, but are some good things to keep in mind during your next conversation.

On resumes

I've been a corporate recruiter for several years. During that time, I've seen a bit more than 100,000 unique resumes.

After reviewing all those resumes, one thing has become obvious: almost nobody spends the right amount of time creating them. Some people spend far too much; some spend far too little. Some clearly have agonized over every word, perfecting the right action word (spearheaded instead of led, etc). Some whip something up in 10 minutes in a haphazard, half-hearted application. This claim begs the question - what is the appropriate time to spend on a resume?

Answer: An amount of time that is in relation to the effectiveness and importance of the document.

The resume is probably about the third or fourth most important thing in a job search and should be treated with such respect. If you're relying on your perfect resume to get you the job, you're doing it wrong. This isn't a trusted adage in recruiting, but it should be - posting online with your resume is how people who don't get the job apply.

This isn't to say you shouldn't put time or effort into it. You should spend enough time to accomplish the following goals:

• highlight your relevant experience, focusing on measurable success. When possible try to focus on numbers (rankings, metric impact, anything that is quantifiably tied to the bottom line)
• Don't metaphorically throw up on yourself - Avoid spelling mistakes. Don't put your picture on the top. Don't put emoticons in it.
• Make it follow a clean, consistent format.

I decide if a candidate is worth considering within the first 15 seconds of looking at a resume. If they pass that review, I'll look it over for another 20 seconds. If they still look like a potential candidate, I'll call them and see if they can string together a coherent sentence. That's it. You get about 30 seconds (at best) to get my attention. During that half a minute, I'll check out the following things roughly in this order:

• Your previous job title / briefly scan responsibilities
• Professional awards
• Gaps in employment / Job-hopping tendencies
• Education

Some will argue, then, that even more emphasis should be placed on one's resume. I will disagree, noting that every activity in the job search has an opportunity cost. If you spend 10 hours on your resume when you could have spent 2, you are missing out on 8 hours of networking, which tends to be much more effective at yielding job opportunities. And the difference between an 10-hour resume and a 2-hour resume will probably have negligible effect on whether I'm interested in picking up the phone and speaking with you.

A final thought: Candidates who come to me who have professionally networked their way into being considered for positions represent probably about 50% of the hires I make, but represent about 1-2% of the candidates.