1. Do not follow job posting requests. If a posting requires a resume AND a cover letter, just send a resume. If the posting requires a salary history along with the résumé, just wait for the next opportunity to clarify your expectations. 
2. Do not use keywords in the top half of your résumé. Since scanning for keywords is essential for most employers, it will prove that you care less about the job position and the requirements.
3. Don’t ask questions about the job, just ask about salary and benefits. Since phone interviews are part of the screening process, the first impression is critical. Blow it big by focusing on the “perks” and the hours you can’t work.
4. Lack enthusiasm about the opportunity.
5. Don’t exude professionalism. Don’t answer a direct question, and don’t give a direct answer.
6. Your résumé will be ignored by including every non-relevant position you ever had. Just think of the time that could be wasted by looking at all the detail you included.
7. Fax your résumé and cover letter so that half the text is blurred. This way no one can read it.
8. Finally, miss your phone interview time. There are only 100 people who applied for the position. It makes it so much easier for the employer just to rule you out.

Enjoy these posts from TheTempBreakRoom.com:

How to encourage age discrimination from potential employers

Perfect Your Resumes and Cover Letters: Use These Grammar Websites

Your Potential Employer Disqualified You Because Your Credit Sucks

Enjoy my interview from last September about keeping a job. It’s just old school common sense. ENJOY!

Enjoy these recent posts:

Come With A Solution, Not With a Resume

Work Lesson from “Message To The Grassroots”

5 Out-of-the-box Job Networking Strategies for 2010

Jobseekers, Laid off Does Not Mean Lay Down

I came across this news article recently and was impressed by this thought by Stephen Covey thoughts on creating job opportunities.

Now you’ll still need a resume, you just won’t need one to snag the interview (look at your keyboard, and now look at me in disbelief, and repeat).

I thought it was refreshing to hear a bold new step in obtaining a job and keeping it. To wrap up Mr. Covey’s points:

1. Be prepared to do something different
2. Write a contribution statement (more like a plan resulting from research)
3. It must be humble and modest; double check for tone
4. Find out what’s going on with your prospect’s industry and competitive forces
5. Be very courageous, creative, analytical, and research oriented

This call to action suggests several different other strategies to help you become more successful:

• Put yourself in a position to find out and experience problems that you can identify and solve that the prospective employer can quickly identify with. It doesn’t matter if they didn’t know about the issue or not. It does matter that someone from the outside can plainly view it and come up with a solution. One way is to call the target or prospective company’s #800 and pretend to be a customer. When you can speak to customer issues and concerns in any setting, you will score. 
• Focus on relationship building with the prospective and  become familiarized with the company’s culture and its challenges.
• Know who the competitors are and sit down to compare and contrast. Good companies will hire people who fill in the gap, and by coming in with a plan will do so.

An out-of-the-box suggestion for your resume: Make that “Objective” or “Career Summary” a “Contribution Statement” in two or three lines and be specific about what you researched and project results. The rest of the resume should breakdown how your experience embodies what you can produce and results that you’ve achieved.

Adopting this strategy into your cover letter would really attract even more interest. Don’t tell everything, but just enough to tease the reader (Hiring manager) into calling you. 

Are there other ways you can bring this to life? How bold and courageous can you be in implementing these strategies? Please feel free to comment here or on Twitter.

All of the little things count

• Dress a notch or two above what’s required for the interview (pocket square?)
• Smiling makes an impression, even for the interview over the phone
• Nice firm handshake, pretend you have the job already
• Talking loud enough to be heard, clear enough to be understood
• Joke naturally, but no stand up routines (take every aspect seriously to get the job)
• Even though you are the center of attention, don’t try to be the center of attention
• Shoes shined?
• Extra copies of your resume
• Did you send a cover letter with your resume
• Confident and claim that this is your time

Make the leap over superman

• Ask for the job after the interview
• Ask questions during the interview
• Not having all of your eggs in one basket
• Call about your next interview with the other company, not just this one
• Emphasize your contributions, clear vision about “we”
• Let your positive attitude dictate your actions
• USE YOUR HEAD!
• Profuse gratitude for the interview opportunity
• Thank you letter sent
• Call and follow up after the interview

At one time or another, we’ve all felt like slaves at work. Underpaid for more work unlisted or our job descriptions always seems unfair and unappreciated.

One of my college professors had us analyze and study “Message to the Grassroots” speech from Malcolm X in 1983. In this speech, Malcolm X prosecutes certain black people who were buying into an unfair American system by doing nothing and not protesting vigorously the way the black people were treated as “slaves” in 1963.

He uses a slavery theme to say that because of the ignorance of many blacks,they were really the “house” Negro who is as zealous about the preservation of the “Masters” house and not the “field” Negro who resents the “field” Negro and the Masters eating from their labor, and really wanted the Masters house to burn.

My intent here is to feature the debatable strategies of doing all you can to get and keep a job, and to  do all you can to be true to thyself. My intent is not focus on the “Revolution”, although, job hunting these days collectively is a revolution, fairness in working and advancing is a universal issue.

The “Field Negro” comparatively would be the one who did anything to be hired, even if it meant doing other things that would be considered subservient (coffee, deliver mail, etc.).

The “House Negro” comparatively would be the one who worked hard at doing the dirty work, uncompromising in wanting recognition to only do the job that matters, and would never brown nose to The Man. In fact, he would tell the boss the truth and then some.

There are so many levels of applications here, and to deny this speeches’ depth and power is, in my opinion, submitting to ignorance.

I purposely did not want to lay a framework of thought, because there are so many bullet points of varying themes. No matter what your viewpoint is, this speech is relevant, and somewhat prophesies about our culture but I think even more amplified.

Is your work philosophy  more of a “Field Slave” or a “House Slave”?

Listen and then decide.

I also include the text of the speech as well:

Message to Grassroots Text (click link for text of speech)

How often have I heard that I don’t sound black on the phone?

How often did I hear in the ‘80’s that I didn’t sound black on phone? People and the environment don’t change much, conversely people and their nature don’t either.

Or better yet, the killer, I’m glad you don’t sound anything like your friends…when compared to other black men and women.

Black History month is here, and in 2010, sounding white is still better, and forgetting that I’m black  is supposed to be a compliment according to Chris Matthews of MSNBC’s “Hardball”.

Many blacks like myself, whose intelligent parents endured the inflammatory remarks made daily about skin color by white people, wanted the field of opportunities to be level.  My parents reaction to sounding 
“black” was to sound educated  or speak proper English. In part, it spoke to the effort that  was expected of me.

My parents thought that “ain’t”, which I generously used, was unacceptable, and uneducated despite it’s acceptance as informal vernacular. 

My oldest son faces this same battle, and has endured as an honorable soldier, as young black men ask him why he speaks, “white”. Speak proper English is a double edged sword, and frankly, one that I abhor.

So when Mr. Matthews exposed his heart about Mr. Obama and forgetting Mr. Obama was black, I wasn’t offended. Let’s banter about this because it’s so relevant, as people from all races and ethnic backgrounds are subjected to phone interviews that are so easy to filter and purge non-white sounding candidates.

Let’s banter about race, never comfortably, but passionately. The dissidence is alive and well especially when religion and the color of God is the subject. White speaking is still the gold standard? Was God white? If God were black, would black be the gold standard for proper English?

Does it ultimately matter if God were black or white if He looked out for us 24/7? In the same way, would it matter if it were a black or white man who was zealous about getting the job done? How about whether if God sounded black or white? Ludicrous to compare the two right? Well maybe.

White media persons given the platform choke when given an opportunity to express their views, especially about color. The history of this continues to happen, and its ugly head is reared in the workplace in the 21st century by blacks and whites. I don’t think of myself as a victim of these observations, but what would you think if the events below happened to you:

• After I introduced myself as one of the new managers in my department a young black man says “Oh, you got one of those positions!”
• One of my bosses’ told me once that I don’t talk and act like one of them, so I should never be friends with them
• I was once told that I do not sound black over the phone. That came from a manager who thought it was a compliment.
• My verbs don’t always agree, but they do 97% of the time. The other 3% will keep me from being CEO of Famous Amos cookies.

No shame, no one’s better than anyone else by not sounding black, and no one conjugate any verbs please.

If you’re like me, you’ve fought all of your life to have the chance to be measured by the same criteria. According to Chris Matthews, you can be a leader by not sounding “black.  The competitive side of me, and maybe you, loves the satisfaction of winning. I wanted to experience a triumphal procession, knowing I overcame odds.

Proper English is all I know how to speak Mr. Matthews. So do most of my friends. So does Mr. Obama. Not sounding black was never the goal, nor should it be, no matter what position you interview for.

1. Very few responses from resumes you've forwarded through jobs postings and referrals
2. Phone interviews are short because the wrong impression was given on your resume
   
3. Actually obtaining the interview, and finding out at the interview that you are under qualified
4. Forcing yourself to believe that there are skills you have but really, you don't
5. You're making pleas, and not presenting facts on your resume. It was kind of acceptable in the '80's, but doesn't scan well because you lack keywords these days.
   
6. You can't convince your friends to forward your resume for any position because YOU want to apply for everything
   

• Just having a Linked In account. Linked In is not only one of the best job search sites, but also one of the best networking sites on the web. Just having a Linked In account without joining groups, or participating on the forums is like having a “Thriller” CD and never playing it.

• Not following up with friends and family about possible job opportunities. No one really cares as passionately about your situation that you, right? Yes, asking them twice in a month is ok.
  

• Harassing, stalking, or shameless requests. Overkill is dead

• Applying for positions on job boards that you don’t qualify for in the least bit. If it says Masters and ten years of experience, a Bachelors with five years won’t have a chance

• Never follow up behind a forwarded resume. It’s like never applying for the job, or like getting a “maybe” after asking for the date.