life@work

How to Explain a Resume Gap During an Interview

We all have a few questions we hope an interviewer doesn't ask. One of the most common such scenarios is when we have a gap in employment.

It's easy to feel unsure and on the defensive when we anticipate being asked, "So, what was happening from May 2004 through July 2005?"

The Pongo Blog features a post written by Rick Saia on this topic. It's as good advice as I've seen on how to explain a gap in your resume.

In a nutshell he advises to keep your explanation brief and factual, highlight the positives, and bring the conversation back to your qualifications and interest in the job for which you are interviewing.

Rick also describes whether and when you should disclose all of the jobs that you have held.

I've worked with people who have felt not only unsure but plagued by the gap in their resume. If after reading Rick's post you still aren't sure how to explain your resume gap, try these steps:

1. Explain to someone (or yourself in the mirror) in very blunt terms why there is a gap. Don't sugarcoat and don't put a spin on it - just be brutally honest.

In this way you get your baggage out of your head and onto "the table" where you can see it.

Examples of baggage could include:

• I did a really bad job of looking for work after I was laid off, so it took a while.
• My boss didn't like me, I was fired, and it has taken a really long time to find a new job. I feel like a loser.
• I quit without any other job in hand and regret my rashness. It took a long time to find work and I think that looks bad.
• I was trying to make a career change, but was unsuccessful. Now I feel I need to get back to my old career, and I'm not happy about it.
• I was depressed and unable to work. Now I'm much better but I don't want to tell anyone I was depressed. It isn't their business, anyway. But what do I say?

2. Differentiate between the facts of your situation and the negative emotional judgments you're making. You might want to ask a friend or a coach to help you make the distinctions.

3. Put away the negative emotional judgments for the rest of this exercise.

4. Working with the facts of the resume gap, craft a 2-3 sentence response to an anticipated inquiry. The response needs to be truthful, yet it does not need to include all of the details or the background story.

5. Make a plan for what you will do with the negative emotional judgments, so they don't take over your job search experience or show up inappropriately during an interview.

It's much easier to decide how to describe a resume gap in an interview after you've had the chance to fully explore the facts and your feelings about it on your own.

Too often we grip our "baggage" tightly, never putting it down and definitely never talking about it. But when we do this, we lose perspective about its significance and what to do about it.

It's possible that the situation you're worried about or embarrassed about might not be difficult to explain at all. Share your baggage with someone else to get an objective take on it and what your options are.

Heather Mundell
Dream Big Coaching Services
www.dreambigcoaching.com
heather@dreambigcoaching.com

cross-posted at Career Hub

Quintessential Careers is a Resource for Job Seekers

If you're conducting a job search and aren't familiar with Quintessential Careers, check it out.

Randall Hansen, a career coach and marketing professor, founded this site a dozen years ago, and it is full of solid career advice, contributed by many well-respected career professionals, and links to job sites.

Quintessential Careers publishes a monthly newsletter called QuintZine, which periodically features a Q&A interview with a career expert. This month it's me!

It's easy to get overwhelmed as a job seeker when you are gathering information online. Have a goal before you enter this content and link-rich site.

Heather Mundell
Dream Big Coaching Services
www.dreambigcoaching.com
heather@dreambigcoaching.com

JibberJobber Helps You Manage Your Career Contacts

I can't believe that I haven't already written about JibberJobber, which is a great tool for both career managers (i.e., all of us, right?) and job seekers.

Jason Alba created JibberJobber as a result of his own frustrating job search process. So what else is an Internet application design expert to do but invent his own tool set that complements, yet doesn't duplicate, other tools out there.

JibberJobber helps you organize all the information you gather during a job search. Where have you sent your resume? To whom do you owe a follow up call? What is the name and number of the hiring manager your friend told you about? Did you remember to send a thank you note after the last interview? You can have all that data in one place.

The especially smart aspect of the tool set is that has features that help you manage your career on an ongoing basis (I'm talking about networking here), not just when you're looking for a job.

I can't tell you how many people I talk to who need to contact people with whom they've lost touch and feel really awkward about that.

Ideally we're staying connected with the past and meeting new people frequently - you know, keeping up our relationships with others. It's so easy to let a really interesting person or a mentor from years past fall off the radar. But it's also easy to keep in touch, especially if you have some kind of system to help you do it.

You can get a free, basic subscription to JibberJobber, or you can pay about $10 per month for additional features.

Heather Mundell
Dream Big Coaching Services
www.dreambigcoaching.com
heather@dreambigcoaching.com

Attracting Your Perfect Job

Photo by Xerones

How attractive are you?

I'm not talking about your hair, your clothes, or your winning smile.

I'm asking what you're doing to be attractive to your perfect employer. Assuming you are in the market for a different and more perfect job and/or employer.

This is not a post about the Law of Attraction, per se. I haven't seen The Secret, and I don't have any magical affirmations to offer you.

But I am convinced that we can do a lot to attract the kinds of people and situations we want in our lives.

Stacey Hall and Jan Brogniez's book, Attracting Perfect Customers: The Power of Strategic Synchronicity, is one I turn to weekly as I develop and grow my own business. I have a business, and the business depends on customers. Every business owner has to figure out where those customers are going to come from. 

The tactic of running around, chasing after customers wasn't working too well for me. Imagine that. When I read this book, which was introduced to me by coach extraordinaire, Molly Gordon, I began to think about attracting perfect customers. I created something called a strategic attraction plan. And this changed my business entirely.

OK, so what does this have to do with you and your perfect job?

Everything. You can create a strategic attraction plan to attract perfect customers, a perfect job, mate, perfect vendors, business partners, or whoever. It's not magic, but is a fresh way to look at marketing or job seeking.

The book has all the details, but here are a few highlights:

• You are most attractive when you are like a lighthouse, standing still with a very focused beam of light, than when you are running up and down the beach, shining your light everywhere, trying to attract the attention of all the boats in the harbor.

This metaphor is about knowing who you are - in the case of being a job seeker, knowing your value proposition - and not trying to be what you think everyone else wants you to be. Focus is attractive, diffuseness is not.

Paring the process down quite a bit, your strategic attraction plan is the result of:

• Envisioning your perfect employer (it helps to have already worked for one that was awfully good), writing down their qualities and attributes
• Writing down what you choose your perfect employer to expect you to do
• Writing down what you need to improve to attract your perfect employer
• Working to improve what you decided you need to improve
• Reviewing the plan each day, to keep it alive

Creating a strategic attraction plan for a job search requires that you know yourself well, that you can imagine an ideal environment for you, and that you understand what you can do to make yourself more attractive to your perfect employer.

Just getting to the point of writing the plan takes a lot of thought and exploration! But it helps you become the lighthouse, someone your ideal employer will recognize as a great fit for their needs.

If you've done reading on personal branding, you recognize how closely tied the strategic attraction plan is to developing your personal brand. (Check out the 1997 Tom Peters article that started it all for more information). Dan Schawbel, among many others, is at the forefront of personal branding evangelism today.

Heather Mundell
Dream Big Coaching Services
www.dreambigcoaching.com
heather@dreambigcoaching.com

How to Choose the Best Career Assistance for You

If you feel stuck in a career rut or unsure of how to take the next step in your career path, there are a number of resources you can use to help you move forward.

There are friends, books, study programs, mentors, tele-courses, group coaching, career counseling and career coaching. Choosing from among the options can be a dizzying process in itself.

I am a career coach, and part of my job is connecting people with the resources that are right for them. Career coaching can be a wonderful catalyst, yet is not the best solution for everyone in a career slump.

This article from Lower Hudson Online does a good job describing what to look for and expect from a career coach.

If it's time for you to turn to some kind of outside assistance regarding your career (usually when your spouse and/or friends are just sick and tired of hearing about your career woes!) take a few minutes to think about what exactly you're needing.

• Tactical job search advice?
• Assistance figuring out how your skills could translate to a different industry or career?
• A long term career plan?
• A new resume?
• Contacts in the field of your choice?
• Time in your day to do thinking and planning on your own?
• Someone to be a sounding board and support you?

Also think about how much time you have to dedicate to this exploration, whether talking to another person or group is important to you, and what kind of financial investment you're willing to make.

For instance career books are a great low-cost investment, if you know you have the self discipline to complete the exercises and process on your own.

Career coaching is a significant investment that can yield powerful results in a short period of time, if you enjoy partnerships and can commit the time and energy it requires.

Thankfully, we don't have to figure out everything about careers by ourselves. Knowing what you need will make it easy to find the career assistance that's best for you.

Heather Mundell
Dream Big Coaching Services
www.dreambigcoaching.com
heather@dreambigcoaching.com

Serendipity and Your Job Search

Serendipity is one of my favorite words. It's both mysterious and delightful.

A job search can seem like such an uninspiring list of tasks. But when you think about it, serendipity plays a big role in many of our successful searches.

• Did you find out about your job from someone unexpected?
• Were you the right person at the right time?
• Did that lay off lead to something a lot better?

Serendipity shows up all over the place.

To invite serendipity into our job search however, we usually have to take some kind of action. I'm sure someone out there has gotten the call about the amazing job after doing nothing but sitting on the couch paging through a magazine, but the rest of us need to get "out there" and do something.

This means you get out from behind your computer, put on your coat and go talk with people.

"Referrals from friends or business contacts remains the top way that most candidates find work", says Perri Capell in a recent CareerJournal.com article.

She quotes David Walker, managing director of a well-known outplacement firm:

"What happens a lot in job hunting is serendipity. One person introduces you to the next, and they introduce you to a third and that's the person you were supposed to meet."

I frequently advise my clients to take action that doesn't offer a promise of success. This is because frequently things don't go as we imagine (or fear), and if we do nothing, we generally get nothing.

I'm talking about:

• Applying for a job that requires more schooling than you have (It may not really matter!)
• Attending a professional association meeting (You never know who will be there and what you'll talk about!)
• Calling all your former co-workers and managers with whom you were friendly to let them know exactly what you're looking for, even if you haven't spoken to them in over five years. (Everyone likes to hear a friendly voice from the past, and there's no telling who they know now!)
• Cold calling someone in your desired field for an informational interview (People are generally flattered and generous!)
• Contacting your target company and introducing yourself (Who knows where this will lead!)

The list could go on and on. There is so much to gain and so little to lose by meeting and talking with people, or by simply expanding your comfort zone of activities.

Don't worry about jumping off the high dive just yet - just go one level deeper than you usually swim in the pool.

You could find it to be a serendipitous experience!

Heather Mundell
Dream Big Coaching Services
www.dreambigcoaching.com
heather@dreambigcoaching.com

Why You Don't Hear Back From the Interviewer

Isn't it annoying when you've had what you thought was a good job interview and you never hear back from the interviewer again?

It's rude, it's frustrating, and it happens a lot. Here's a great explanation about why it happens, as described by Penelope Trunk's HR friend in Penelope's blog, Brazen Careerist:

The primary reason candidates don’t hear back after the interview is that most recruiters and/or interviewers don’t shut the discussion down when they know it’s a non-fit.  This is rooted in human nature and avoiding conflict.

Bingo.

Skilled interviewers will avoid wasting everyone's time and will say what needs to be said. Most interviewers however, not only hate rejecting people but don't bother to acquire the skill and the guts it takes to clearly say "Thanks but no thanks."

Penelope's right on with her advice - if you're given the cold shoulder, just move on and focus on how you're going to ace the next interview.

Heather Mundell
Dream Big Coaching Services
www.dreambigcoaching.com
heather@dreambigcoaching.com

All You Ever Wanted to Know About Networking

The crew at Career Hub has written another must-have eBook for job seekers, this time on networking.

"The Insider's Guide to Networking" is the fourth installment in a series of eBooks for job seekers, written by Career Hub bloggers (including me), who (modestly speaking of course) bring many years of experience and a whole lot of credibility to this subject.

One thing I appreciate about books with different contributing authors is that I can quickly get a variety of opinions about a subject and decide which viewpoints resonate the most with me.

You can download all of the Career Hub Insider Guides (on networking, job search, resumes and interviewing) for free here.

Heather Mundell
Dream Big Coaching Services
www.dreambigcoaching.com
heather@dreambigcoaching.com

Changing Careers: Build on Your Transferable Skills

I help some of my clients consider, plan and execute career changes. This process can be exciting, challenging, daunting or energizing. "Simple" is one thing it usually is not.

After you've made the decision to change careers and decided which one you are going to break into, it's time to figure out how you can make your case to the hiring managers in the industry or job of your choice.

Most people involved in hiring want to hire round pegs to fit into their round hole job openings. They don't have the time or interest to work hard at reviewing your square peg resume, figuring out how it could fit.

If you can get introduced to a hiring manager through someone you both know, that's outstanding. Then the manager has a lot more to go on than just how you look on paper.

But say you are relying on just your resume and your superb interviewing skills to get hired. Your challenge is to make the hiring manager's job easy.

There are at least three key steps to pulling this off:

1. Make a list of the skills you have (especially the ones you actually enjoy doing).
2. Find out the skills that the industry or job you are targeting needs and wants.
3. Describe in a compelling way on your resume and in a job interview how your skills and experience relate to the targeted job's requirements.

This article from the Ventura County Star has some great tips about how to start identifying your transferable skills.

Many of us find listing our skills to be somewhat difficult because we don't think about them very often, and when we do we tend to be very general (e.g., "I'm good with people"). Also we usually underestimate what we do and assume that other people can do what we can. As a result of this thinking, we judge the skills we have as too unimportant to mention.

Begin by just listing skills off the top of your head, no matter how small they seem. Be specific. You don't just have "good management skills". You juggle multiple priorities, you coach your team, you give constructive criticism well, you motivate your group, you create budgets, you stay on budget, you innovate new solutions to big problems, and so on.

Then find a resource online or in a book (such as Richard Bolles' What Color is Your Parachute?) that lists skills, to help you remember or identify additional skills that you forgot to write down.

When you have your big long list of skills, it's time to investigate what your dream job requires. The more actual people you can talk to in the company or industry about what they do, the better. You can find out certain pieces of information online, especially about large companies with many posted job openings and job descriptions.

After you've talked with people, go through your list of skills and mark the ones you think would be used in the job you want to have. With luck there will be many! Assuming at this point you think you could make a case for why you'd be a good choice to perform the job, it's time to look at your resume.

I've said it before, and I'll keep on saying it, when having the right resume is key, (and it is if you are changing careers!), hire a certified professional resume writer to review it and/or rewrite it. Your resume needs to tell the hiring manager what she wants to know in about 12 seconds. Professional writers are experts in marketing communication who can make you look good and get you to that next step, the interview.

To prepare for your interview, think about specific stories you can related that demonstrate how you used the skills the job requires in your past work. Point out any similarities you can, being as specific as you can.

Is there more to getting hired? Of course. There's personality and perceived "fit", timing, recommendations, and serendipity, to name a few other considerations. But the foundation to build on when you're changing careers are the transferable skills.

Heather Mundell
Dream Big Coaching Services
www.dreambigcoaching.com
heather@dreambigcoaching.com

 

Linked In Answers as Networking Tool

One of the most brilliant features of LInkedIn has to be "Answers".

Wondering whether an MBA will help your HR career?
Launching a fashion label in Egypt?
Want to know what people look for in a VP of sales candidate?

LinkedIn's Answers feature allows you to pose a business question to your network (and the connections of everyone in your network). People have seven days to respond.

But wait, there's more! You can browse the questions that are "open" by category to find a subject you know something about, and chime in with your two cents. If your response is chosen as the best answer you become flagged as an "expert".

In the meantime you can become more closely acquainted with all sorts of people, as you give information and assistance and receive information and assistance. Virtual networking at its best.

Of course you need to have people in your network to make this an interesting experience.

LinkedIn's recommendation is that you only add people to your network whom you know and trust, and that makes sense. But I also see the value of having new connections who interest you in some way. I don't see the value in "collecting" hundreds of connections whom you couldn't possibly know or care about.

I'm curious about your own experience with LinkedIn Answers and how you believe it stacks up against other social networking sites' features.

Has it been worth your time? What benefits have you received from it?

Heather Mundell
Dream Big Coaching Services
www.dreambigcoaching.com
heather@dreambigcoaching.com