Resume Tips and Career Advice

When you're looking for a job you never know how long it's going to take. It's not like golf when you can tell whether the hole you're playing is a par 3 or a par 5. At any given point in the game, a golfer can see exactly how far the flag is and what terrain lies in between, and he can make adjustments to his swing, the club he uses, and how he follows through. Even then, however, the ball doesn't always land exactly where he wants it to.

A job seeker scoping out the current employment terrain, where the average duration of unemployment is now at 32 weeks vs. 21 weeks a year ago, should be prepared for a long haul. Yet many job seekers I know are overly optimistic early in the process that they'll beat the average. I was floored, for example, when a friend of mine said he was getting help from just a couple of close contacts instead of going all out on his job search campaign.

A close contact of mine was hiring for a position in his department at a Fortune 500 firm. He had spent a great deal of time wooing one candidate in particular who initially wasn't sure he wanted to leave his current job or relocate his family but said he might do so for the right opportunity.

After passing several rounds of interviews, it became clear he was the front runner. But the candidate kept asking for more time to make the decision, stalling with more questions, and asking for more in his compensation package, with my contact doing everything he could to accommodate.

To find a job these days requires not just meeting the requirements of the job posting but also marketing yourself effectively on paper and in person. What people perceive in the first few seconds of glancing at your resume, speaking with you at a networking event, or looking into your eyes at a job interview can make a huge difference.

Are you doing all you can to maximize your chances, or are some essential ingredients missing from your toolkit?

A colleague of mine had some damage control to do when one of his staffers fired off an internal email complaining about a difficult client, and inadvertently included said client in the email distribution list. Disagreeing about feedback from the client about her work was one thing, but this staffer had also included some derogatory personal remarks as well. Ouch.

Recently, ESPN suspended radio host Tony Kornheiser for comments he made on his show about co-worker Hannah Storm's "horrifying, horrifying outfit." Whether you believed that Storm's wardrobe was appropriate or not, there is no question that Kornheiser should have kept his thoughts to himself.

A recent study by CareerXroads found that of all the full-time positions filled in 2009, 51% came from internal transfers and promotions, up from 39% in 2008 and 34% in 2007. And of the remaining positions that were filled by outsiders, 27% came from referrals.

One executive at a marketing firm with open positions on his team recently told me that he's considering only candidates he knows personally or who come recommended by a trusted colleague. "It's just too much of a risk to bring in someone from the outside," he said. "They might look good on paper and do well in a few interviews, but you really don't know how they'll actually perform on the job once they get here."

If you know you need to network to get that new job or promotion, but you just can't bring yourself to do it because it seems like such a chore, maybe what could help you most is a shift in focus.

Scientific Blogging reported on a new study in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology which showed that while hard workers are motivated by hard work and do better in tasks where "achievement" is the stated goal, those who don't like to work as hard do better than their counterparts when tasks are presented as "fun." So if you can't get motivated to network, could it be that you're more a natural net-slacker than a natural net-worker?