Hello Everyone!
I recently received an email that was personally upsetting to me. It was a resume and cover letter that was generated by one of those resumes “build and blast” sites that are all over the internet.
It was upsetting to me, because the job seeker wasn’t getting the value he thought he was getting. If you haven’t noticed, I take you job seekers very seriously, and even if you don’t hire me as a coach, I want you to win.
First, let me share what the service says about themselves, from their website:
• “Employment help, job search, resume writing and posting”
• “Post your resume online, to thousands of employers”
• ‘Why spend hours going from one employment site to another?”
• “Get a job fast”
Sounds great, doesn’t it? They do all the legwork, seemingly at no charge…what could be easier, right? I can see where the part about blasting my resume to thousands of employers would be most attractive, because that’s the hard part of job search, the researching and the contacting of people.
There is a small catch – the ‘blasting’ service is free if you are content to leave your resume in their searchable database, so you can hope hiring authorities will find you…if you actually want that resume sent out, well, that service comes at a cost, Visa, MasterCard, and Discover cheerfully accepted…
Hidden costs aren’t really the point of my rant here…the point is, what are you as the job seeker are getting for your money from places like these?. I charge real money for what I do… BUT, you also become a better, stronger, faster job seeker… these people just take your money. I know this because as I said in the introduction, I was the recipient of one of these “blasted” resumes,
The subject line was probably the worst I had ever seen:
I saw you were recently hiring, here’s my “Management” resume
Several things wrong with this – one, I’m a coach, I don’t hire anyone…so much for the websites ability to find employers, much less “match” them with jobseekers.
Secondly, “management” is a broad term, that doesn’t really say anything specific.
Trust me when I tell you, subject lines like this one will get you deleted quicker than anything. Speaking of not saying anything specific, the attached cover letter and resume was vanilla flavored pabulum, just as I suspected. We will go over those in the next blog.
The bottom line for me is that this fellow paid some good money for this service, and all it did was waste his time. I will say this until I am blue in the face – there is no easy way…researching and reaching out to companies, drafting compelling letters, emails and documents, following up, all of these are YOUR jobs…don’t abdicate them to some third party that doesn’t know you and won’t take the time to get to know you.
The key is that it’s about being effective. If it takes you hiring a coach to be taught how to do effective things, great, I hope you like me enough to pick me… BUT, if you can be effective without a coach’s help, that’s great too, go get‘em…BUT if you take stock of yourself, and feel you need help, don’t engage in magical thinking and expect an impersonal website to solve your problems. That just doesn’t happen.
Until next time, I wish you all the best.
Coach Tom
Thomas Patrick Chuna is a certified Five O’Clock Club job search coach.
The Five O’Clock Club is a nationally recognized outplacement firm with a proven job search methodology that helps job seekers get better jobs faster.
The Five O’Clock Club also provides affordable, humane outplacement services to companies who care about the well being of their employees.
Tom is also an experienced independent recruiter specializing in molecular oncology research scientists & MD’s.
Learn more: http://www.fiveoclockclub.com http://www.patrick-international.net
