Interview This!

List all of your previous positions. As an older employee, extensive experience is your greatest asset, and it is an area in which you have an indisputable competitive advantage over younger workers.

Many job seekers drop from their resume positions held early in their career. When I ask candidates about early jobs, I often find gems that add to the candidate’s qualifications. Sometimes a position the candidate considered irrelevant may be quite relevant, but for reasons not anticipated by the candidate.

For example, a history of several short-tenure jobs will be viewed negatively by prospective employers. Including on the resume early work experience showing long tenure with one or more employers will help counteract the impression of job instability. While the candidate may view the early experience as irrelevant to the type of work they now do, an employer may view it as quite relevant to judging the prospective employee’s overall fitness.

Another example: a senior-level management position is being filled. One applicant omitted his first job in an unrelated field (banking) from his resume. The position is currently held by a highly-regarded individual who, as it turns out, began his career working for a bank—experience which he views as having bolstered his budget management skills. Had the applicant included the banking experience, his resume would likely have been viewed more favorably owing to the similarity with the work history of the current manager.

When listing early career positions, it is not necessary to include the same level of detail as more recent positions. Dates of employment, position held and employer’s name should be adequate. Including outstanding achievements or accomplishments is always a good idea.

Michael G Smith

Work hard, focus on real results that benefit your employer and your employer’s customers, make your boss look good, and uphold the highest level of personal integrity.

Their are no shortcuts or “secrets” to success; just hard work, honesty and getting things done.

Michael G Smith

Download the full text of Justice Scalia writing for the majority and including the minority dissenting opinions right here:

Supreme Court DC v. Heller

Taking a break from work related matters today. Those who prefer less government intrusion and greater individual freedom and responsibility received a long-overdue assist from the Supreme Court. This decision is a fascinating and worthwhile read.

Question: I am older (50+) with a career spanning 30 years, the past 20 years as a self-employed owner/operator of small companies. How do I go about rejoining the workforce in a management position?

Answer: Many believe it is difficult to find a job after a long period of self-employment. Yet, I have reviewed thousands of resumes which often show that individuals find desirable work after a long period of self-employment. Therefore, I have concluded that it’s probably no more difficult for the self-employed to find career opportunities than those who have not been self-employed.

That’s not to say there are no challenges, but 20 years of self-employment confers significant and unique advantages on a job seeker.

First of all, most job seekers today have resumes characterized by job instability: too many jobs that lasted for two years or less, and too few jobs that last for more than four years. Aside from not meeting the position requirements, job instability is the chief reason candidates are rejected, and the more senior the position to be filled, the more heavily it weighs. So twenty years in any job–self-employed or otherwise–is a strong asset.

Next up for consideration is the match between your work experience and the particular position you may be seeking. Every employer has certain qualifications in mind when filling a position and these may be categorized as: 1. industry experience, 2. work experience, and 3. responsibility experience.

Industry experience refers to the knowledge and familiarity with normal expectations one acquires from working in a particular field or industry. I still recall much of what I learned in the first few years I spent in the printing business, but I would be quite lost in a modern graphic arts facility due to technological advance.

Work experience is “on-the-job-training” from which we learn to perform a range of tasks and projects appropriate to a specific job and industry. Up to a point, greater work experience increases efficiency and decreases “spoilage” or bad outcomes.

Responsibility experience refers primarily to experience in management, including the management of staff, budgets, facilities, resources and, in some cases, profit and loss. When filling management positions, employers typically consider both the scope and extent of experience in each of these categories.

Do you see where this is leading? You must inventory your work experience in each of these three areas; list everything, not just the big stuff. For example, experience using Quickbooks accounting software is a marketable skill and should be on your list. Order the list based on the amount and recentness of your experience, since the passage of time depreciates its value, particularly in the case of industry experience.

This list will serve as your guide for three purposes. First, you can use it to brainstorm the types of employers and positions to which your experience and skills may be applicable. Second, it is a checklist of essential assets that should be mentioned on your resume. Third, it will aid in marketing your experience to potential employers.

The first and third points require further explanation. The applicability of your experience to certain fields or types of work will be immediately obvious, but with some reflection and creative insight, you may recognize that your experience is quite applicable to other fields as well. The logic supporting the applicability of your experience to a seemingly unrelated field must be honed and internalized so you can easily demonstrate the connection in a cover letter and interview.

Now you should see that several key factors (job stability; industry, work and responsibility experience; and applicability of experience and skills to the open position) constitute the basis for hiring decisions. These factors have little or nothing to do with whether one is currently self-employed.

If you understand the depth and breadth of your experience, and can quantify and communicate an accurate description to a prospective employer, you are ready to go job hunting. If you pursue jobs that fit your experience, you will actually have a competitive advantage in the job market.

Michael G Smith

The most common mistake, surprisingly, is job seekers don’t anticipate that hiring managers will perform an internet search to find out more about them. This oversight can result in two different problems: 1. negative information that comes to light; and, 2. positive information is available, but not found.

It is always prudent to consider the potential career consequences of our actions, but with an increasing amount of real-time and historical information available on the Web, the likelihood is now much greater that missteps will be discovered by potential employers, even many years after the fact.

Some sources of information are obvious: photo posting sites, forums, blogs, and social networking sites. But less obvious sources are just as important. Google, for example, keeps Web pages cached and available to searchers. So even if a page has been taken down, it will come up in a Google search and can be accessed by clicking on the “Cached” link in Google’s results. ZoomInfo.com permanently stores Web pages that mention individuals by name and can be retrieved from their cache at any time.

In addition to your name, employers will Google your phone number, email address, former employers, and anything else on your resume that might produce a “hit” when combined with your first or last name, city or state. Before you send out a resume, perform each of these searches so you know what potential problems await you.

There are sources other than Google that employers may check; the most intimidating, perhaps, is Lexis-Nexis, which can search and retrieve nearly every newspaper, magazine, radio or TV story from the last twenty years, or more. Though not as extensive as Lexis-Nexis, public and university libraries offer full text access for written and transmitted stories.

Finally, there are many ways in which “legal” records can be retrieved at little or no cost from online databases. If you have a corporation registered in your name, marriage, divorce, bankruptcy, tax delinquency, civil or criminal court proceeding, or any type of state professional license, the records are generally available. Even traffic and parking tickets can sometimes be retrieved.

Information that enhances your reputation will aid your job quest. Attention must be paid, though, to assuring the information will be found. A Google search may miss something if it is associated with a less common variation of your name. I consistently use “Michael G Smith” as my name online, since anything associated with “Mike Smith” or “Michael Smith” will be listed so far down in Google’s results they won’t be seen. It’s important to decide what your name is and then stick with that exact form. “Kate Smith” is not the same, in Google’s eyes, as “Kathleen Smith,” “Bill Board” is not the same as “William Board,” and “James R Towne” is not the same as “James Towne.”

Finally, sites where individuals create and edit their own records are of critical importance. You have no control over much of what comes up in a Google search, but the employer knows you alone control the information at sites such as Linkedin, Facebook, MySpace, Flickr and so on. Content you post can be a liability if it is inconsistent or potentially embarrassing—your resume and your Linkedin work history, for example, had better agree. On the plus side, if you anticipate that potential employers will view your profile, then you can emphasize your accomplishments and achievements in order to make a good impression.

You must decide what your purpose is in having a presence on these sites. Your profile on Linkedin—currently, the most important business networking site—should not feature activities that detract from your “day job,” as that will give the impression your focus is not on work. If you are a fundraising professional and have a political blog that is compatible with the outlook of the organization you work for, that’s fine. But if your profile emphasizes a personal business you operate on the side, a reasonable person will conclude you are stretched too thin and your attention is divided.

Michael G Smith

Unlike career related questions, which tend to be complex, this question is easily answered: No, we cannot save the Earth.

The Earth’s proximity to the Sun is essentially a “good news, bad news” situation; the good news is that our Sun provides light, heat and energy. The bad news is that the Sun will exhaust its hydrogen fuel within the next 5 billion years or so, causing it to grow to 250 times its current size and increase in brightness a thousand times over.

It goes without saying that the Sun’s personality change will render much of our technology obsolete, including sunscreen–regardless of spf rating. The Sun’s life change will produce hot flashes capable of melting any planet foolish enough to loiter closer than the orbit of Mars.

Unless we forestall the Sun’s transformation into a galactic bonfire, the Earth is destined to become an orbital version of a flaming marshmallow, slipping from its axis to be immolated by a morbidly obese Sun. It’s obvious, therefore, that efforts to “save the Earth” or “save the planet” are preempted by nature and our energies will be better spent figuring out how to migrate to a more youthful solar system.

Michael G Smith

The most effective change most resume writers can make is to avoid listing the responsibilities of the position—as if writing a job description—and focus instead on notable successes and contributions achieved in the position. List personal accomplishments, not daily activities, and use specific numbers whenever possible, such as “ranked #2 out of 10″.

Most employers are not really interested in learning the fine details of each of your jobs–they can ask for more details in an interview if necessary. What they really want to know is how well you performed in the position.

List the successes for which you can take full, or at least primary, credit; don’t list trivial items, though, as that will give the appearance you contributed nothing of substance. Obviously, any performance-based award received from your employer should be noted.

Managers face a greater challenge with resume writing, as accomplishments often involve the efforts of many subordinates and the causal chain may not be obvious. For example, an increase in sales achieved by a division may be directly attributable to the efforts of the division’s sales manager, but the cause and effect relationship must be spelled out on the resume or it may appear that the manager was simply in the right place at the right time. A secondary benefit of elaborating on one’s role in effecting change is that the hiring manager sees the method underlying the success, instead of just the before and after.

Michael G Smith

I don’t think there are reliable shortcuts for reviewing resumes. The more time you take with each one, the less likely you are to set aside a viable candidate.

I don’t reject candidates for reasons not relevant to the job; that is, I don’t reject a candidate because the resume has spelling or grammar errors. I have found blunders in the resumes of successful journalists and authors, so unless I’m hiring someone to write resumes, I don’t use resume mistakes as reason to reject candidates.

I feel the same way about interviews; I don’t particularly care how well a candidate interviews, I’m only interested in how qualified the candidate is.

Screening resumes effectively depends on having a very specific list of qualifications required of a candidate in order to perform the job being filled. As a recruiter I have often found that the qualifications provided by the employer are too vague, irrelevant or simply too numerous. It’s best to boil down the qualifications to the two or three truly essential for the job and then reject all candidates lacking them without concern for rejecting a “golden nugget.”

I don’t think it makes sense, for example, to reject a candidate with, say, 10 years of appropriate experience because they don’t have a college degree. Of course I’d prefer the candidate to have a degree, but I’m trying to find the best candidate in a pile of resumes, and since this candidate’s experience demonstrates he or she is qualified, potentially even the best qualified, I’m not going to reject based on a preference for a college degree.

By looking at the last two or three jobs on the resume, I can quickly evaluate the candidate for two key considerations: 1. evidence of job stability; 2. appropriate work experience at the proper level of responsibility. Job stability is the most important consideration as far as I’m concerned; the candidate’s resume should be dominated by positions with at least three, and preferably five, years of tenure. A habit of job-hopping assures the resume will not be read.

Appropriate work experience is clearly a decision factor. If I need candidates with experience in nonprofit fundraising, then either nonprofit fundraising is on the resume or it’s not. I then evaluate the level of responsibility and the years the experience. Typically, I’m filling management positions, so the resume must list managerial experience of the scope, and for the length of time, that I previously determined are required.

If the requirements for the position are not entirely clear, or qualified candidates are likely to be hard to find, then I may decide to sort resumes during my initial review. I label resumes as: “unqualified,” “possibly qualified,” and “qualified.” After I’ve gone through the batch, if I have enough “qualified” resumes, I probably won’t revisit the “possibly qualified” batch. If not, then a more extensive reading of the resumes in the “possibly” batch is warranted, combined with some online research on those candidates.

Aside from job hopping as a reason to reject, any misrepresentation, intentional obfuscation, or lie will cause me to reject a resume without hesitation. If a candidate has no reservations about fibbing on the resume, they will fib on the job.

Michael G Smith

One of the chief reasons recruiters are hired to fill job openings is that the employer lacks the time or manpower to deal with job seekers responding to ads. It makes more sense, for a number of reasons, to outsource that responsibility by hiring a recruiter.

One might assume that providing the employer’s name in a job posting would be fine, so long as interested candidates are instructed to apply through the recruiter rather than the employer. But an astounding number of people think that it is perfectly OK to ignore those instructions and contact the employer anyway. They figure that, by applying to both the recruiter and employer, they increase their odds of getting an interview. Or, if they don’t hear from the recruiter (which only happens if they are unqualified for the job), they then contact the employer directly, figuring they have nothing to lose at that point.

The large number of utterly unqualified individuals who respond to a job posting is a sight to behold. Then there are those who feel the need to apply two, three or even four times. In fact, these two categories constitute the majority of responses to most postings.

Unlike most employers—especially those lacking a human resource department—I deal with this every day; I know what to expect and have put in place automated systems to handle the avalanche of responses. From the employer’s perspective, I reduce the workload arising from job postings in two ways: pre-screening qualified candidates, and insulating the employer from unnecessary outside contacts.

Michael G Smith

Question: “I recently left a full-time job to start my own consulting business and wonder what effect this change might have on my career? What downside risk is there in quiting work to go back to school, making a lateral move or staying in a dead end job?”

What are the career consequences if your attempt at self-employment fails and you decide to go back to work? I don’t think you have much to fear. Your career will suffer nothing more than a delay; employers will not hold your entrepreneurial effort against you when considering you for a job. Of course, going back to your former career becomes more difficult with the passage of time as your career skills and knowledge of developments in the field become rusty.

As for the other items on your list: going back to college is not a risk, as you are improving your value as an employee, but only if you acquire technical knowledge you can use on the job–electrical engineering, for example–or general business knowledge, as with an MBA. Otherwise the value gained may be less than what is lost by taking the time off from your career. The one exception is when you become qualified in an unrelated, but intersecting area. An engineer, for example, who earns a degree in law can move to the firm’s legal department and likely secure a substantial increase in compensation.

Changing careers is clearly a risk vs. reward proposition with outcomes ranging from completely unknown to relatively foreseeable. If the field in which you work is in decline (say, film-based photography), the lowest risk option is to leverage your existing skills to enter another field that has long-term growth potential, even if you must take a short term cut in pay.

When changing careers, the least risky move is one that takes advantage of your most valuable knowledge and skills. As a business consultant, are speaking and writing–the skills you now sell–your strongest and most valuable skills? Is knowledge of corporate behavior your strongest area of expertise? Will businesses or consumers be willing to pay more for your expertise and knowledge in these areas than any of your other skills or abilities? If the answer is “no,” then you have taken on more risk than necessary and your willingness to do so is strictly a personal decision. However, you mitigate the extent of your career risk by having a fallback option whereby you can seek employment in the field where your skills and experience are most highly valued.

Staying in a dead end job is like keeping your money in a safe deposit box–there is little risk of theft, but your asset loses value every day compared with money deposited in an interest bearing account. Ideally, one avoids becoming employed in a dead end job in the first place, but for younger workers, a dead end job may be the best job option available at the time a choice must be made. Most people solve the dead end job problem by moving on after several years when future advancement in income and responsibility become less likely.

Making a lateral move is not as much of an issue as the other four concerns you list. If there is no increase in pay or responsibility in the new job, one might still be better off doing the same work for the same pay at a company whose future prospects are brighter, or where advancement opportunities are more plentiful.

Michael G Smith

A recent article in the Wall Street Journal appears to endorse the idea that those who work for nonprofits, particularly libertarian advocacy organizations, earn less than those who “sell out” and work for “corporate America.” In “The Tragic Irony of Beltway Libertarianism” (May 21, 2008) Thomas Frank maintains that individuals can either work for an ideologically compatible, but low-paying, nonprofit, or “forsake, say, the Cato Institute and instead help ExxonMobil pile up the pelf”.

Frank appears to be making the claim that what might (or might not) be true of a sector of the economy (e.g. nonprofit organizations pay less than corporations) is also true for each employee within it. He also points out that, from time to time, individuals leave the nonprofit sector to earn a larger paycheck in the private sector. While true, this implies nothing about the relative pay in either sector, especially considering counter-examples where a private sector job is left for a higher-paying position at a nonprofit.

All employees have preferences about the type of employer they will work for, where they wish to live, length of commute, willingness to travel, and openness to relocation. Exercising any of these preferences potentially impacts income by reducing the number of acceptable employers. An engineer, for example, who prefers to design automobiles, will likely earn less than an engineer who has no preference and is free to take whatever job pays the most. Does this imply that automobile engineers earn less than non-automotive engineers? No. It implies only that those who have few, or no, work preferences have more positions to choose from and sacrifice nothing by taking the most lucrative job.

Generalizations about what “someone” might make at a nonprofit compared to what they might make in the private sector are meaningless. Nonprofits, like any employer, require workers with certain skills and abilities; they pay whatever it takes to get them (or get by without employees). Characteristics such as leadership ability, self-motivation, and critical thinking skills are sought by these organizations, while corporations often seek just the opposite in their employees. A self-motivated leader with critical thinking skills might very well earn much more working for a nonprofit than working in the private sector.

Over time, the likely result of sorting employees in the marketplace according to the skills required by employers is that each worker ends up in the field that most highly values that particular worker’s innate skills, and each worker has maximized income, within the confines of their personal preferences.

Another consideration is that, for the most part, nonprofits of the libertarian type Mr. Frank discusses, are tiny compared with the average business. The Cato Institute—with annual revenue of less than $25 million—is the “ExxonMobil” of the libertarian movement; by comparison, ExxonMobil’s annual revenue exceeds $400 Billion.

There are many types of skills and employee characteristics that may be more highly compensated in one sector of the economy or another, but the private sector, since it is so much larger and complex than the nonprofit sector, simply has more different types of jobs and, therefore, more opportunities for high income. But it is a mistake to average out the incomes from each sector, compare the average, and then conclude that each individual employee earns less in one sector than another. It’s entirely possible for the nonprofit sector to have lower average wages than the private sector, yet each employee in the nonprofit sector is earning more than if they worked for “corporate America.”

Michael G Smith