Archive for August, 2008

Should I omit the graduation date on my resume?

Saturday, August 9th, 2008

According to a resume “expert” at a career website: “your degree is over 10 years old; time to take out the dates. Junior reviewers will toss your resume and make you a victim of age discrimination.”

Intentionally omitting dates is a colossal mistake, for two reasons: when you withhold information, you invite others to infer your reason for doing so; and, obscuring your years of experience will only cause you to be passed over for the most desirable positions.

In the case of this resume expert, the reason for omitting dates is: “junior reviewers will toss your resume and make you a victim of age discrimination”.

Why would junior reviewers toss the resume? Presumably, this expert believes that “junior” (or younger) resume reviewers discriminate against older job candidates, but reviewers who are not “junior” do not. In other words, this expert has learned that junior reviewers make mistakes in judging resumes that older workers do not.

Now if this expert has learned that older resume reviewers do a better job of judging resumes than younger reviewers, doesn’t it stand to reason that there are many, many hiring managers who appreciate the superior judgment of older workers?

I suspect this resume expert has little or no experience actually screening resumes and hiring people. I say so because, contrary to popular belief, hiring managers do NOT discriminate on the basis of age (or sex, color, race, etc.) as doing so would arbitrarily reduce the number of qualified candidates. It is hard enough to find well-qualified candidates to fill important positions, why make the task even harder by arbitrarily eliminating many of them?

Job seekers often tell me they get more interviews after they remove degree dates and some early jobs from their resume. When I ask if the increased number of interviews resulted in more job offers, the answer is always “no”.

It turns out that employers are actually quite rational. For a job with limited responsibility and requiring only moderate experience, the ideal candidate is one with minimal work experience and willing to work under less than ideal conditions, for low pay, in order to acquire more work experience.

For management positions with significant responsibilities, employers seek candidates with substantial breadth and depth of management and industry experience. For these positions, employers not only prefer older workers, younger workers won’t even be considered.

This is what you accomplish when you omit information in order to obscure your age: 1) more interviews for low-paying positions with negligible responsibility, and 2) fewer interviews for higher-paying positions requiring judgment, experience, industry knowledge, management skill, and wisdom.

Michael G Smith

Tags: , , , , ,
Posted in Job Seeking, Older Worker, Resume writing | 1 Comment »

Why is reference checking more important than interviewing?

Sunday, August 3rd, 2008

Thorough reference checks will almost always prevent your organization from acquiring a problem employee or an employee unqualified to do the job for which they were hired.

There are two ways in which a bad hire can harm the organization: acts of commission and acts of omission. In the former, the employee commits an act that directly threatens the organization, such as theft or inappropriate behavior. In the second, the employee fails to properly perform his or her job. In one case I’m aware of, a company’s controller embezzled a large amount of money; however, it was the controller’s incompetence at managing the firm’s cash flow–not the embezzlement–that caused the business to fail.

When assessing a candidate’s qualifications for employment, one must guard against the temptation to make hiring decisions based on interview performance. Individuals who change jobs frequently may be very skilled at interviewing–they’ve had a lot of practice. Excellent employees, however, have little experience interviewing and may not promote themselves well. Therefore, hiring managers should not judge candidates on interview performance, since the best interviewers may be the worst employees!

More importantly, a candidate’s testimony about work history is self-serving: the better they make themselves look, the more likely they are to receive a job offer. Unprincipled candidates will utilize fabrications, exaggerations, and omissions to manipulate the hiring decision in their favor–particularly with a trusting interviewer. If you accept a candidate’s self-description at face value, you may end up hiring the best fibber rather than the most truly qualified candidate.

The best way to learn about a candidate’s previous responsibilities and how well the candidate performed on the job is to interview those individuals for which the candidate worked (”references”). The comments of these individuals, taken together, provide a realistic picture of the candidate’s experience, abilities, and strengths, as well as weaknesses.

References need not be limited to those provided by the candidate. Prior managers or supervisors can be located by placing a call to employers listed on the candidate’s resume, through Google, LinkedIn and other sources.

Occasionally, a sneaky candidate will provide fake references (don’t believe it? search online for “fake references”). Verify the position and employer of the candidate’s references to make certain the individual who answers the phone is not the candidate’s confederate.

If you check references through people you know “in the business,” be careful that your networking doesn’t tip off the candidate’s current employer, causing embarrassment, or worse.

The longer a candidate has been in the workforce, the more extensive their reference trail. That’s one advantage to hiring experienced workers, you can be more certain they are problem free and well-qualified.

Michael G Smith

Tags: , , ,
Posted in Interviewing candidates, Managing Employees, Recruiting, Reference Checking | No Comments »

Should an older worker list early positions on a resume?

Saturday, August 2nd, 2008

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

Tags: , , , , , ,
Posted in Interviewing, Job Seeking, Older Worker, Resume writing | No Comments »