10.19.2003

I Didn’t Think It Was the Season To Pick Cherries

So, the job market has been experiencing a boomlet of activity. That’s good news for some of us. However, the rising tide still isn't lifting all boats. I've noticed that recruiters are asking for everything but the kitchen sink in the resumes that they're looking for. When job requisitions are posted, they're more insistent on required skills – you see very few bullet points under the category of “nice to have” or “the ideal candidate has”. Employers and recruiters alike know they can ask for the world – and get it.

In fact, one of my friends recently was employed at an engineering company. He is one of the most qualified people I've ever known in his specialty. Apparently, though, his technical qualifications were not what got him hired. Some weeks afterward, he was chatting with his new supervisor. Casually, in the course of the conversation, the boss happened to bring up the other candidates and how they'd had all these really great skills – but they hadn't selected any of them. So he asked why he'd been the one hired, not the others. As it turned out, the boss had plans to implement a completely new program. This guy had a background in exactly the skills that his boss planned to use after the current project was done.

Now the point that I was getting to was that none of these needs or plans were mentioned in the job description, brought up in the interview, or even discussed between the team members that were doing the hiring. This guy’s background in training and experience with the particular skills that the boss wanted, but didn't articulate, were the deciding factor. Yet no one could know that. Not the applicant, not the recruiter who presented his resume to the hiring company, not the team members who interviewed him – only the boss knew. And even in some way, the boss knew, but didn't know either. It was a classic case of “I don't know what I want, but I'll know it when I see it”.

When we were discussing this, he was concerned. How, he wondered, were people going to be hired? If you didn't know what about your skills and background were of such interest to a potential employer, how could you market yourself? How could you know what to emphasize or what not to mention? And I, as a Job Fairy, who is supposed to know a lot of these answers, was stupefied. This basically means that the technique of specifically tailoring a resume to a position is a terrible idea. This completely changes the way everyone has been looking for a job for years!! That at least for now, you need to have a resume with everything in it that you've done for the last ten years. Keywords, duties, accomplishments - you name it - everything but the kitchen sink. And the uneasy realization that being “qualified” for the position is no longer enough. Apparently, it’s cherry picking season. Just make sure you do what it takes to be the ripest, juiciest cherry on the tree.

From asktheheadhunter.com: An article about the latest charges filed against Bernard Haldane Associates regarding their latest employment scam!