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Top 10 Worst Job Tips

by Liz Ryan
Wednesday, September 3, 2008provided by

The world abounds in bad advice for job-seekers. Here are some spectacularly unsound directives.

Nearly
every day, someone sends me a bit of astounding job-search advice from
a blog or a newsletter. Some of this advice seems to come directly from
the planet X-19, and some of it seems to have been made up on the spot.
Here are 10 of my favorite pieces of atrocious job-search advice, for
you to read and ignore at all costs:

1. Don’t Wrap It Up

The
Summary or Objective at the top of your résumé is the wrap-up; It tells
the reader, “This person knows who s/he is, what s/he’s done, and why
it matters.” Your Summary shows off your writing skills, shows that you
know what’s salient in your background, and puts a point on the arrow
of your résumé. Don’t skip it, no matter who tells you it’s not
necessary or important.

2. Tell Us Everything

Another piece of horrendous job search
advice tells job-seekers to share as much information as possible. A
post-millennium résumé uses up two pages, maximum, when it’s printed.
(Academic CVs are another story.) Editing is a business skill, after
all — just tell us what’s most noteworthy in your long list of
impressive feats.

3. Use Corporatespeak

Any
résumé that trumpets “cross-functional facilitation of multi-level
teams” is headed straight for the shredder. The worst job-search advice
tells us to write our résumés using ponderous corporate boilerplate
that sinks a smart person’s résumé like a stone. Please ignore that
advice, and write your résumé the way you speak.

4. Don’t Ever Postpone a Phone Screen

A
very bad bit of job-search advice says “Whatever you do, don’t ever
miss a phone screen! Even if you’re in the shower or on your way to be
the best man at your brother’s wedding, make time for that phone
interview!” This is good advice if your job-search philosophy
emphasizes groveling. I don’t recommend this approach. Let the would-be
phone-screener know that you’re tied up at the moment but would be
happy to speak at 7 p.m. on Thursday night, or some other convenient
time. Lock in the time during that first call, but don’t contort your
life to fit the screener’s schedule.

5. Don’t Bring Up Money

Do
bring up money by the second interview, and let the employers know what
your salary requirements are before they start getting ideas that
perhaps you’re a trust-fund baby and could bring your formidable skills
over to XYZ Corp. for a cool $45,000. Set them straight, at the first
opportunity.

6. Send Your Resume Via an Online Job Ad or the Company Web Site, Only

Successful job-seekers use friends, LinkedIn
contacts, and anybody else in their network to locate and reach out to
contacts inside a target employer. Playing by the rules often gets your
résumé pitched into the abyss at the far end of the e-mail address
talent@xyzcorp.com. If you’ve got a way into the decision-maker’s
office, use it. Ignore advice that instructs you to send one résumé via
the company Web site and wait (and wait, and wait) to hear from them.

7. Never Send a Paper Resume

I’ve
been recommending sending snail-mail letters to corporate job-search
target contacts for three or four years now, and people tell me it’s
working. The response rate is higher, and the approach is friendlier. A
surface-mail letter can often get you an interview in a case where an
e-mail would get ignored or spam-filtered. One friend of mine sent her
surface-mail résumé and cover letter to a major company’s COO in New
York, and got a call a week later from a general manager wanting to
interview her in Phoenix, where she lives. She showed up at the
interview to see her paper letter — yes, her actual, signed letter, on
bond paper — and résumé sitting on his desk in Phoenix (probably
conveyed via an old-fashioned Inter-Office envelope). An e-mail might
have ended up in the COO’s spam folder.

More from Yahoo! Finance: • Social Networks Are Your Career’s Safety Net • Job Hunting: Price Yourself Like a House • Help Wanted: Senior-Level Job, Junior Title, Pay Visit the Career & Work Center

8. Wait for Them to Call You

You
can’t wait for companies to call you back. You’ve got to call and
follow up on the résumés you’ve sent. If an ad says “no calls,” use
your LinkedIn
connections to put you in touch with someone who can put in a word with
the hiring manager. Don’t sit and wait for the call to come. Your
résumé is in a stack with 150 others, and if you don’t push it up the
pipeline, no one will.

9. Give Them Everything

Give
them your résumé, your cover letter, and your time in a phone-screen or
face-to-face interview. But don’t give anyone your list of references
until it’s clear that mutual interest to move forward exists (usually
after two interviews), and don’t fill out endless tests and
questionnaires in the hope of perhaps getting an audience with the
Emperor. Let the employers know that you’d be happy to talk (ideally on
the phone at first) to see whether your interests and theirs intersect.
If there’s a good match, you’ll feel better about sharing more time and
energy on whatever tests and exercises they’ve constructed to weed out
unsuitable candidates. Maybe.

10. Post Your Resume on Every Job Board

This
is the best way in the world to get overexposed and undervalued in the
job market. (Exception: If you’re looking for contract or journeyman IT
work, it’s a great idea to post your credentials all over.) People will
find your LinkedIn profile if they’re looking and if you’ve taken the
time to fill it out with pithy details of your background. If you’re
not employed, include a headline like “Online Marketer ISO Next
Challenge” or “Controller Seeking Company Seeking Controller.” Your
résumé posted on a job board is a spam-and-scam magnet and a mark that
your network isn’t as robust as it might be. These aren’t the signs you
want to put out there. Use your network (vs. the world at large) to
help you spread the job-search word.

What’s the worst job-seeking advice you’ve ever gotten?

Liz Ryan is an expert on the new-millennium workplace and a former Fortune 500 HR executive.

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