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Helping Job Seekers at SmartRecruiters HQ

David Smooke
September 5, 2013
5 min read

We welcomed 50+ job seekers into the SmartRecruiters headquarters. As a part of our Give Labor Day, jobseekers ranged from recent MBA graduates to seasoned developers to new entrants into the labor market who quite understandably, didn’t know what they wanted to be when they grew up.

In addition to volunteer recruitment consultants from the SmartRecruiters team, Premier Staffing (a partner in the recruiter marketplace) brought over a team of recruiters to help job seekers. Some job seeker behavior trends I noticed and would like to change:

Resumes are too long.

Large paragraph objectives to begin a resume … that’s great if the recruiter is really interested in you. Like really interested. But what is your one sentence objective? This is a useful sentence for all job seekers but should it be on your resume? I’m but on the fence but If you talk to our Director of Business Development, Charlie Nelson, he’ll tell you, “Cut the objective off the resume altogether, and get right to the meat and potatoes of work history.”

Two pages? Forget about it. The purpose of a resume is to market your career by sharing your professional work history and skills. Don’t let recruiters pick and choose what they are going to read about your professional accomplishments. Write in a length that fits their their time to read. Sometimes that means editing out cool stuff for the sake of only listing the coolest stuff. When summarizing job history, ask yourself, what did you do? The verb choice is essential – can you describe each one of your past jobs in three verbs? Which verb do you lead with? The verb that fits best for the work you are now interested in.

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Difficulty in finding career assistance.

If you ask recruiters and human resource professionals for help, they’ll probably help. Long-term business professionals believe in paying it forward. A candidate that they help today may be a great fit for a new opportunity tomorrow.  Or they may recommend a friend in the future. We tweeted about #GiveLabor, and help followed. Recruiters and human resources professionals from around the country gave their time. I’d like to highlight a few volunteers from Virginia, Washington, Missouri, and New York:


How to tell your professional story… in one minute.

Tell me your story. It sounds cliche. But can you sit down and brief someone on your professional history?

I spent a lot of time coaching job seekers on how to tell a story. Mention an accomplishment or two but don’t brag. Drop numbers (budget, people managed, etc.). Explain why you moved from one place to another while leaving a thread of how the previous experience prepared you for the next challenge. And end with why you are here today. In your voice. Practicing the telling of your one minute professional story is time well spent.

Another avenue to share you professional story is LinkedIn. Your LinkedIn profile is a dynamic online resume that can be quickly glossed over for basic information, professional accomplishments, and who you know. Again, be personable. “On LinkedIn, don’t be afraid to share your personality,” advises SmartRecruiters Community Manager Lexie Forman-Ortiz.

 

Some immediate aftermath

Premier Staffing is following up with some new job opportunities for top attendees. SmartRecruiters, led by John Coughlin, is starting a clothing drive in cooperation with attendee Sameer Bhasin from Wardrobe for Opportunity. And the “Thank Yous” in emails, LinkedIn connections, and Facebook comments made for a great next day.

 

The Future of Give Labor


 

We face an uphill battle. The labor market remains broken. Businesses struggle to find talent. And candidates struggle to market their skills. But as our CEO Jerome Ternynck says, “We live in a connected world in which hiring should be easy. There should not be such thing as a hard to fill job or a hard to reach company. It’s just a matter of distribution and management.”

SmartRecruiters will continue to work toward a better labor market. Help us make job assistance a permanent social responsibility of Labor Day. Please take a few minutes out of your busy Labor Day week, and help a friend find a job. If you have great ideas to help people find jobs and jobs find people, lets work together: [email protected] 

 

 

David Smooke

David Smooke was the Director of Content Marketing and Social Media at SmartRecruiters and is the Founder of ArtMap Inc & AMI Publications.

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