Episode 65 – Marc interviews Career Sherpa Hannah Morgan who shares her insights on how far we have come since the days of mailed or faxed resumes, and where we are headed in our search for the perfect job.
Description:
Hannah Morgan is a speaker, author, and founder of CareerSherpa.net. She serves as a guide to today’s job search, delivering no-nonsense, actionable advice for job seekers. Hannah’s experience in human resources, outplacement services, workplace development, and career services equip her with a 360-degree perspective of job search topics.
Recognized by media and career professionals as an advocate for job seekers, Hannah speaks and writes about using social media, personal branding, and other modern strategies to help job seekers take control of their job search. Hannah is frequently quoted in local and national publications and she writes a weekly column for the U.S. News & World Report. Hannah is the author of The Infographic Resume.
Listen in for trends in the job search you need to know.
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Key Takeaways:
[:44] Marc welcomes you to the episode and announces the download numbers for January. They are almost double the numbers of three months ago. He appreciates the great feedback from listeners and hopes to continue to meet your expectations of a podcast that inspires.
[1:20] Marc has lined up a travel blogger and hopes to interview the owners of Collworks.com, a website that connects people with work in parks and great outdoor destinations. Marc is working on a number of other great guests.
[1:50] If you enjoy this podcast, Marc invites you to share it with friends, subscribe to it at CareerPivot.com or iTunes, share it on social media, and tell your neighbors and colleagues.
[2:13] Marc gives an overview of the podcast series. This month the series will be out of the normal order. Last week Marc interviewed Camille Knight, a logical creative who married her love for data and creativity into making beautiful Tableau dashboards for executives. She transitioned in her fifties.
[2:40] Next episode is an interview with an expert. That is usually the first episode of the series. This week, Marc will interview Hannah Morgan of Career Sherpa fame. Hannah started in the career space right before the Great Recession. Marc will interview her about job searching in 2007, in the present day, and about her projections for 2028.
[3:10] The third in the series is a topic of Marc’s choosing. He is thinking about an episode about FOMO or fear of missing out. This affects Marc and other people about to make a major change. Marc’s major change is his planned move to Mexico.
[3:29] The last episode in the series is the Mailbag episode where he answers listener’s questions with Elizabeth Rabaey. Last week’s episode was the Mailbag.
[3:34] Marc introduces the episode and reads Hannah’s bio.
[4:40] Marc welcomes Hannah. She calls herself an introvert who loves nothing better than just hanging out by herself at home, or carting one of her two teenage sons to Lacrosse, football, or other sports-related activity.
[6:12] Hannah started in the career business over a decade ago. Marc ‘rewinds time’ to 2007 to ask about job search then. There was no LinkedIn. Networks were the focus and job seekers had to rely on often out-of-date email addresses and phone numbers to build networks. It was almost impossible to find the names of people in companies.
[7:27] Networking was incredibly different. There were still a lot of jobs being posted in the newspaper. People were still sending resumes by hard copy or fax. Marc remembers faxing resumes.
[8:14] We really have seen a lot of change since 2007, making things better and easier for job search. Job seekers used to bring 20 copies of their resume to a job fair. A lot of money was spent on good resume paper with matching envelopes. Then there were printing, word processing, and typesetting costs.
[9:21] Marc talks about joining LinkedIn in 2006 and working with Indeed and Jobvite. Things have changed in twelve years, and where you are in the country impacts how quickly local companies embraced the changes in recruiting methods. In some areas, until a few years ago, you may have been emailing your resume to individual people.
[10:52] Marc jumps forward to 2018. What has changed? At the end of 2017 and early in 2018 a couple of things changed. We’re starting to see the job market be in the job seeker’s favor because of the extremely low unemployment. Employers are doing more to attract candidates. They are putting job centers on their websites.
[12:37] The majority of job seeker and companies have embraced LinkedIn as the primary spot to be seen and found. Applicant tracking systems are everywhere. Companies are realizing the value of company employee referrals.
[13:18] Marc recalls the interview with Gary O’Neal (in Episode 58) and the anecdote about a company with 1,300 resumes in their tracking system, all of which were being ignored. People were hired by emailed resumes and referrals.
[14:33] Some companies are implementing chatbots that will make it easier for people to get through the application process.
[15:44] Some of the biggest problems in hiring today are inadequate screening processes for applicants and resumes, so a lot of good people don’t make the cut, there’s a communication gap, where job seekers don’t know how to prove to employers they have what the employer is seeking.
[16:49] The resume is the primary document, even on LinkedIn. In order for your resume to be attractive to an employer, they have to understand what you’re talking about. Candidates have not been taught how to write a good resume or promote themselves.
[17:41] Employers don’t know how to write accurate job descriptions. They ask for everything, whether they need it or not. They also don’t know how to write about salary.
There’s a lot of salary information on the internet, and much of it is GIGO. Garbage in, garbage out.
[19:50] Job titles are meaningless now. Titles vary from company to company. LinkedIn just published their most promising jobs for 2018. The top job is Engagement Manager. Would you know what that job is? It could be a few different things. What about Customer Success Manager? It depends on the company.
[22:17] Marc has a client who wants to move from consultant to employee, for insurance benefits. Marc suggests he look on LinkedIn for people with specific job titles and ask them what they do.
[22:54] Hannah tells job seekers that everyone in a job transition is looking for a new career. The job they had at their last company no longer exists. It requires a major shift in thinking. It’s really about getting good at talking about the things that you did well. Marc has clients whose jobs disappeared in under five years.
[24:20] Marc had a director-level job seeker in engineering interviewing at a company similar to his previous employer but they couldn’t understand each other as they were using different terminologies. He didn’t get the job. Learn the language of your target company.
[25:26] Hannah would like employers to do more to simplify their recruiting language, and explaining their recruitment process to applicants.
[26:28] Marc jumps forward to the year 2028 and asks what has changed? Hannah predicts that will still be a lot of job seeking and hiring, and there will still be a large communication gap between employers and candidates.
[27:05] Hannah hopes that changing jobs will have become easier by candidates building relationships with companies before jobs become open. This could be done with an online talent pipeline. The companies could provide ambassadors to the online communities.
[28:07] Hannah suggests the resume should be replaced with a simple chronological work history. From that and the conversations and some other form of evaluation will be the interview process.
[29:37] The career lattice is the new norm. The career ladder is out. People don’t always want to be a boss, they may want a different challenge, and they go from place to place in the company or outside. Companies that only want a ladder climber may be eliminating good candidates. More and more people are moving laterally.
[30:44] The gig economy has been growing. It allows additional freedom to do things that would have been hard to do in a company. The only problem is health benefits tied to employers. To keep our economy growing, we have to allow people flexibility.
[33:03] Marc refers to Unretirement, by Chris Farrell, and the looming worker shortage as Boomers retire. Employers will have to bring back older workers. HR departments have a natural bias against flexibility for older workers.
[36:01] Boomers want to stay employed another five or ten years, maybe for less money and more flexibility. Millennials are the next largest group. They don’t want 9-to-5 jobs. Employers are going to have to listen to their largest employee groups and provide flexibility.
[36:46] Marc talks about moving to Mexico, and the tax implications. He has done a lot of research. He is taking his job virtually.
[37:18] Marc jumps back to 2018. What is the most important thought from this conversation? Hannah says that change is the norm. We all have to adapt and understand change and be willing to flex. Understand where you fit in today’s world of work, what you want, and what you are good at doing. Find a way to use that.
[38:58] Marc’s last thought. He likes Hannah’s comment that change is the new norm. We all have to stay nimble. Think about that.
[39:29] The Career Pivot community website is alive and in production. This is the only online community anywhere in the world focused on job seekers in the second half of life. Marc is now soliciting people for the third cohort. Join the waiting list at the link.
[40:54] Check back next week when Marc discusses FOMO and how it’s affecting his thinking.
Mentioned in This Episode:
U.S. News & World Report — Hannah Morgan
Email Hannah at HMorgan@CareerSherpa.net
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