Career Pivot

Repurpose your career. Pivot now.

Call today!
512-693-7132
Contact Me

It Is Permissible To Be A Pest In Your Job Search

by Leave a Comment

Being a Pest is not Just Permissible it is Required

PestI cannot tell you the number of times I have heard from the unemployed, I do not want to be a pest. They may get angry with me and reject me.

If you want to get the attention of a prospective employer, you may very well have to be a pest, a nice persistent pest but a pest none the less.

You may reach out to a prospective employer by sending an email or calling them and leaving a voicemail and then you get nothing, it feels like a black hole.

Many of you will stop right there and give up. No, you need to be persistent.

Check out my post called 3 Steps to Get the Hiring Manager or Recruiter to Respond which explains that it sometimes takes 3 touches to get a response. You are being a pest!

The reality is you have no idea why some hiring managers or recruiters have not responded.

Let me give you some recent examples.

Dragging Their Feet Hiring Example

Sometimes, hiring organizations just drag out the hiring process for a whole variety of reasons:

  • Budget issues
  • Disagreement on what would make a good candidate
  • Turf war on who this position will report to
  • Changing market conditions
  • Hiring manager goes on vacation
  • Recruiter’s mother gets ill and has to take 2 weeks off to take care of her
  • Hiring manager’s dog gets attacked by a pit bull and drops everything to take care of her dog

I can tell you all of these have happened and none of these reasons would have been evident to you.

Sam is a member of the Career Pivot Community and had multiple job opportunities that just went dormant. He had not heard anything from any of them in a couple of months.

By not being a pest and following up, he started to suffer from MSU disorder, he just made stuff up in his head.

Follow Up Email

Sam sent the following email to all of these dormant opportunities:

Dear hiring manager or recruiter,

I have not heard from you in several months. I wanted to follow up with you and see if I am still in the running because I have several other opportunities in the pipeline.

If I am no longer being considered please let me know and let me know if I can be of any help in filling the position.

Thanks

Sam

This follows the process described in the post 3 Steps to Get the Hiring Manager or Recruiter to Respond where when you offer the hiring manager an out, and you are still in the running, they will respond immediately.

He sent 5 emails and received 3 emails back in less than a day stating that each opportunity was still open and he was being considered. In all 3 situations, the hiring organizations were dragging their feet in the hiring process.

Why did he not follow up sooner? He did not want to be a pest.

He is now following the poke, poke and poke some more method of follow up. Be a persistent pest, a nice pest but still a pest.

Overly Busy CEO

Charles is also a member of the Career Pivot Community and is executing a long-distance job search. He wants to find a job before he makes a move, and one of his most recent visits to the place where he wants to relocate, he met the CEO of a company that was a really good fit for Charles. The CEO was looking for a VP of operations, he was in his early 50s, Charles is around 60 years of age, and they really hit it off.

The CEO told Charles to look him up the next time he was in town. Before his next visit, Charles sent the CEO an email and got no response. He later texted him and did get a non-committal response about getting together.

Charles made the trip and could not arrange a meeting. He continued to text the CEO regularly, every 3-5 days.

CEO eventually got back to Charles and set up a meeting. What surprised Charles was that the CEO thanked him for being so persistent. The CEO told him that he was really a marketer and did not know much about operations. He knew he needed a really good operations person but kept putting it off. It was Charles being a pest that eventually got him an interview.

Charles will be waiting on the outcome of that interview in the coming weeks by still being a pest.

It is Okay to be a Pest

Just like in Charles situation, the CEO appreciated his persistence. Charles did not know that the CEO was just procrastinating about hiring a VP of Operations. How would he have known?

When we do not know something or there is a void in our knowledge about a situation, we all have the habit of wanting to fill that void or Make Stuff Up.

Instead, we can be a pest and poke and poke and poke. Remember I said to be a nice pest but be persistent so that you can fill that void in your knowledge.

You may not get a response and you will probably never know why. More often than not, being a pest will get you a response.

Have you been a pest? Has it paid off for you?

Marc Miller  

Be sure to check out the Career Pivot Client Testimonials Page

Like what you just read? Share it with your friends using the buttons above.

Check out the Repurpose Your Career Podcast

When you subscribe to this blog you get full access to Career Pivot’s Whitepaper Library

Do You Need Help With ...

 Job Search  Career Pivot/Change Career Success Careers in the 2nd Half of Life
Social Media Multi-Generational Workplace Networking Entrepreneurship

The Purple Cow Job Description – Should I Apply? [Updated]

by 14 Comments

Purple Cow Job Description?

Purple Cow Job DescriptionI guarantee you have read a purple cow job description. It’s one of those that, when you finished reading it, you said to yourself:

I am not qualified for this job but…is anyone?

They are looking for the purple cow. The ideal candidate does not exist!

I am going out on a limb to say that most job descriptions are badly written.

In my last corporate job, I had an open position to fill. I had to write a job description. Did I know how to write a job description? NO!

I went onto Indeed.com and searched for openings with the same job title. When I found one I liked, I copied it!

Did I know what a good description should look like? NO!

I am sure that the job description I picked was as vague as any other one I had ever seen.

I was expanding my team for a training and certification program. I wanted a technical trainer who was familiar with the program and was already certified. We had certified less than a thousand people worldwide. The candidate needed to have five years of technical training experience and be located in Austin, Texas.

The odds of finding someone who was certified in the topic, had five years of experience as a technical trainer AND lived in Austin, was close to ZERO! No, it WAS ZERO.

I was looking for the Purple Cow!

Did I write the job description saying I wanted everything? YES!

Note: This post was originally posted in August of 2014 and updated in September of 2018

Dissecting the Job Description

We will want to look at:

  • High-level job description
  • Responsibilities
  • Requirements/Qualifications
  • Education

(More: Is the Resume Still Relevant? )

High-Level Job Description

Can you honestly see yourself in this job? One of the problems with high-level job descriptions is they are so vague. Do not write yourself off even if it does not look like a fit just yet.

Perform a Google search using the high-level job description and see what comes up.

Responsibilities/Description

Read through this section carefully. Have you actually performed more than half of the responsibilities described? If so, you are probably qualified.

More importantly, do you want to have all of these responsibilities? For those of us in the 2nd half of life, we do not want the grind of lower-level tasks.

Requirements/Qualifications

Check out each item in the requirements/qualifications section of the job description:

  • How many of the requirements/qualifications do you have? Make sure you meet at least half of the requirements/qualifications.
  • Do you have equivalent requirements/qualifications? Do you have existing skills that you can map to what is in the job description? How long would it take, given your current experience, to attain what is needed?

Take some time to diagram out how your experience directly relates to these requirements. Creating a visual will help you determine whether this is a good fit for you, and give you a way to explain why you are a good fit.

Education

Do you have:

  • All of the required educational credentials?
  • The preferred educational credentials?
  • The experience that can be substituted for any of the credentials?

One way to get around having all of the educational credentials is to put in your resume a statement like the following:

20 years of experience in xxxxxx…in lieu of an MBA.

This will often get you past the applicant tracking systems and at least get you a phone interview for you to prove your worth.

(More: What Does Your Resume Say About Your Age? )

Gender

Havard Business Review recently published an article Why Women Don’t Apply for Jobs Unless They’re 100% Qualified. Basically, the author opens the article with the statement:

You’ve probably heard the following statistic: Men apply for a job when they meet only 60% of the qualifications, but women apply only if they meet 100% of them.

Women appear to be especially susceptible to the Purple Cow job description and will tend not to apply.

Ladies, is this true based on your experience?

Do Not Be Afraid of the Purple Cow

The purple cow job description is an outgrowth of the explosion of technology that has been injected into the hiring process. The fact is, most companies do not use this technology effectively, or to be blunter, they do not know how to hire. You may want to read my post on 5 Things You Will Never Know About the Hiring Process on how broken the hiring process is at some companies.

Lastly, if you are following a targeted job search strategy, you will have an internal contact within the company. Ask your contact to find out what the hiring manager is really looking for!

Your next job is going to come via a relationship.

Have you encountered a Purple Cow job description?

Marc Miller  

Be sure to check out the Career Pivot Client Testimonials Page

Like what you just read? Share it with your friends using the buttons above.

Check out the Repurpose Your Career Podcast

When you subscribe to this blog you get full access to Career Pivot’s Whitepaper Library

Do You Need Help With ...

 Job Search  Career Pivot/Change Career Success Careers in the 2nd Half of Life
Social Media Multi-Generational Workplace Networking Entrepreneurship

Over 50 and Unemployed? Your Next Gig will not be Your Last.

by 3 Comments

Your Next Gig will not be Your Last

Your Next Gig
Copyright: dmitryguzhanin / 123RF Stock Photo

You heard me right when I say your next gig or job will not be the last. It will likely be temporary; to assist you to get your bearings and get you back on your feet.

I have had this discussion with several individuals in the Career Pivot Online Community in the last several weeks. They are over 50, and sometimes over 60, have been unemployed for over 6 months, and are still looking for that ideal job. They are starting to show what I refer to as unemployment fatigue.

The stress of being unemployed at this time of life is starting to get to them. This shows up in speech patterns, weight gain, sleep problems, and other signs of stress. They need to go back to work to re-establish patterns and give them a sense of self-worth.

This is especially prevalent among individuals who come from industries that are in a downward spiral or being affected by creative destruction. I explain to them that their next gig or job will be suboptimal. They just need to go back to work.

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

From Wikipedia:

Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is a theory in psychology proposed by Abraham Maslow in his 1943 paper “A Theory of Human Motivation” in Psychological Review.[2] Maslow subsequently extended the idea to include his observations of humans’ innate curiosity. His theories parallel many other theories of human developmental psychology, some of which focus on describing the stages of growth in humans. Maslow used the terms “physiological”, “safety”, “belonging and love”, “esteem”, “self-actualization”, and “self-transcendence” to describe the pattern through which human motivations generally move. The goal of Maslow’s Theory is to attain the sixth level or stage: self-actualization needs.[3]

When you are unemployed without the financial assets that allow you to live without employment income, i.e. you are able to retire or you have enough FU money to do what you want, then you need a job to meet the bottom 2 levels of the pyramid. You need an income to feel secure, put food on the table and have a roof over your head.

If someone offers you a job in your area of expertise, you will take it. It may not be exactly what you want, but you will take it.

I know, I know, many of you will push back and say, “But what if the right job shows up a couple of weeks or months in the future? You will have blown it!”

You will take the job, but you will not stop your job search.

Hey, what about loyalty to your employer?

Will your employer be loyal to you? NOPE!

Why should you be loyal to them?

Next Gig Example #1

Larry is a project manager, over 65 and has been unemployed for 18 months. He has managed many large complex technology projects throughout his career. The major employers who he has worked for over the years have abandoned the city where he lives. There is little work for him and he needs to reinvent himself if he wants to continue to work.

Out of the blue, a contract project managers job was presented to him in a related industry but it was in manufacturing and not development. It was for half the money he made previously.

Should he take it? The answer he got from just about everyone was not just yes but H*LL YES!

Larry needed to go back to work. Get up every day, put on work clothes, and re-establish patterns.  Going back to work is a great time to re-establish patterns in our life. Almost immediately, I saw changes in Larry that he did not see. He was clearer in his communications, walked with a little more life in his step and just appeared happier.

This was just his next gig and not the last gig.

He will be a much better candidate and hopefully land the job he wants after he has been on the job for a few months. This is an intermediate position and not the final position.

Next Gig Example #2

Sarah had been unemployed for 18 months and was reinventing herself as a business analyst by attaining a BA certificate from the local community college.

She was courting a variety of staffing agencies looking for a contract business analysis position and she got a call from one of the agencies that had a temp position for a spreadsheet jockey. The local hospital chain had been acquired and they were moving the entire accounting function to another city. A large consulting firm was brought in to manage the project and they need someone with good MS Excell skills to grind through data. It was a grunt job from Sarah’s perspective.

Sarah took the job with my encouragement. Like with Larry, she put on her work clothes every day, went to work, worked with smart people and started to rebuild her self-esteem.

This was just her next gig. It was 5 months before she was offered a full-time contract business analyst position with a large technology company. I do not believe she would have gotten the job if she had not been working at the “grunt spreadsheet jockey” job. Her attitude improved, she presented herself with confidence, her basic needs in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs were being met.

Your Next Gig Will not be the Last

Sometimes when you have been unemployed for an extended period of time, you need to take what is available to rebuild your self-confidence. This makes you a better candidate.

I know, I know you do not want to take a step back but sometimes you need to ‘suck it up’ and take what is available.

The key message is: do not stop looking as it is not your last gig!

Marc Miller  

Be sure to check out the Career Pivot Client Testimonials Page

Like what you just read? Share it with your friends using the buttons above.

Check out the Repurpose Your Career Podcast

When you subscribe to this blog you get full access to Career Pivot’s Whitepaper Library

Do You Need Help With ...

 Job Search  Career Pivot/Change Career Success Careers in the 2nd Half of Life
Social Media Multi-Generational Workplace Networking Entrepreneurship

Waiting is not a Job Search Strategy [Updated]

by 2 Comments

Waiting is not a Strategy

waitingMost of you are waiting on a:

  • Job to be posted
  • Recruiter to respond after submitting your resume to a job posting
  • Recruiter to respond after a phone screen
  • Hiring manager after an interview

I know, I know you do not want to be a pest or appear to too forward. Well…be a pest. Be a polite pest – but be a pest. Pursue what you want.

Most importantly…STOP WAITING!

Waiting for a Position to be Posted

Approximately 80 percent of positions are never posted. So why are you waiting? The days of thinking you are going to get a job by applying online are over for most of us in the 2nd half of life. If you were 20 years younger and looking at junior positions, then maybe applying online might work.

The hiring process at many companies is broken. You will want to check out my post 5 Things You Will Never Know About the Hiring Process. Your belief that that the system is fair and equitable is very outdated.

Your next job will come through a relationship. Go work your network, work your network and then … work your network some more.

Use the Targeted Job Search approach by targeting companies and quit chasing “the job.”

Build a list of companies who are capable of hiring you. Use LinkedIn advanced search to find companies that hire people with skills like yours. Approach potential peers and hiring managers, telling them about the problems you solve.

Stop waiting for a position to be posted!

Waiting is not a job search strategy!

Waiting to hear from Someone after Submitting Your Resume

Immediately, seek out a company contact if you see a position posted or hear about a job through your network as a huge percentage of positions are filled through referrals. Do not wait and find a referral first!

At the same time, very aggressively, reach out to recruiters or HR professionals in the company to find out who is hiring for the position. Your goal will be to have a discussion with the hiring manager.

Waiting is not a job search strategy.

The strategy of my fellow Launch Pad Job Club board member, Jim Adcock, was to reach out to recruiters and ask, “I wanted to make sure you received my resume. The sexual nature of my last name sometimes causes my resume to get caught in SPAM filters.”

Yes, this strategy works!

Waiting for a Response after a Phone Screen with a Recruiter

It is very common for recruiters to have up to 60 positions to fill at any one time. Call the recruiter 24 hours after the initial phone screen. Be courteous but persistent. You want to stay on the top of their mind.

Be a pest, a polite pest but a pest none the least.

The important point here is to call them. Leave them a voicemail if they do not answer.

I know, I know you sent them an email and you have not heard back. When people are getting hundreds of emails every day, it just makes sense to call the recruiter and be persistent. If you do not hear back, call them again in a day or so. Do not wait a week to call them back. Be persistent.

Waiting is not a job search strategy!

Waiting for a Response after an In-Person Interview

Make sure and get business cards and contact information from everyone you interview with. Ask for their business cards at the beginning of every interview. If they decide you are not the right candidate during the interview, they may not offer you their business card at the end.

Similar to waiting for a response after a phone screen, you want to follow up quickly and be persistent.

If you do not hear from them after several weeks, use the Take-Away Closing Technique  by calling the hiring manager and leaving them the following message:

I am presuming that you are no longer interested in me for the XYZ position. If you have not found your ideal candidate, I would be happy to recommend someone else for the position. Let me know if I can be of any help to you in filling this position.

If the hiring manager is still interested in you, they will reach out to you quickly. Earlier in my career, if I wanted someone to call me back, I would leave the following message:

Hey Larry, could you call me back about the planned gold shipment.

Larry would usually call me back because he wanted to know about this supposed gold shipment…which was fictitious.

Be Persistent and Quit Waiting

The idea for this blog post came from a presentation by Gary O’Neal, who presented at Launch Pad Job Club.

You may want to listen to my interview with Gary on the Repurpose Your Career Podcast called Gary O’Neal on Looking for a Job in the 2nd Half of Life [Podcast] where Gary talks about how he would approach a job search. He would not be waiting but be proactive.

Gary made it very clear that recruiters and hiring managers would like to respond to every applicant. The reality is that they have way too much on their plate. For every job posted, on average, there are 180 applicants.

The hiring process is broken at oh so many companies. Technology has made it way to easy to post and apply for positions that there is a glut of information that clogs up the system.

If you want to get hired for a job in the 2nd half of life, you need to quit waiting, be persistent and be a pest!

Marc Miller  

Be sure to check out the Career Pivot Client Testimonials Page

Like what you just read? Share it with your friends using the buttons above.

Check out the Repurpose Your Career Podcast

When you subscribe to this blog you get full access to Career Pivot’s Whitepaper Library

Do You Need Help With ...

 Job Search  Career Pivot/Change Career Success Careers in the 2nd Half of Life
Social Media Multi-Generational Workplace Networking Entrepreneurship

 

Full Employment is Here Except For Baby Boomers

by 21 Comments

Full Employment is Here … Well, It Sure Does Not Feel Like It.

Full employment well maybe
Copyright: lightwise / 123RF Stock Photo

All of the data that is being published says we are at full employment. With unemployment rates below 4%, we should all be feeling pretty good.

Why then does it not feel that way? I speak at job clubs every few months and try to attend them on a semi-regular basis. The faces I see are well… old. Some of that is because these people are part of the long-term unemployed. Being unemployed over 26 weeks is a real drag on your health.

According to the AARP Public Policy’s Employment Data Digest, the numbers are pretty good. The unemployment rate for those over 55 years of age is only 3.2%.  This is based on those who are either working or looking for work. The employment rate (sometimes called the employment-to-population ratio) refers to the proportion of the civilian non-institutional population that is employed is only 38.7% which is one percent higher than it was in December of 2007. This includes a lot of people who have retired.

This is not so bad, right? We are at full employment, right?

Why does it not feel right?

Where not to be Old and Unemployed

I live in Austin Texas, where the unemployment rate is under 3%. Wow, that is great.., right? Well not if you are over 50 years of age. The unemployment rate if you are over 50 exceeds 12%.

Back in 2015, The Atlantic published the article Where Not to Be Old and Jobless which listed Austin as the #4 worst place to be old and unemployed.

AARP has funded a program at Austin Community College called Back to Work 50+. This program targets the most vulnerable members of the community, primarily women, who if they do not find work will likely become impoverished.

I was at my breakfast club a few months back where we had a prominent speaker say, in Austin, if you want a job you can have a job.

If we are at full employment, why do we need such a program like Back to Work 50+?

Retired Because You Want to or Have to?

I know a fair number of people who have retired before the age of 65 but they are mostly retiring from government jobs.

I also know some people who have retired because of health reasons, either their own or their spouses.

Then there are those of you who have given up looking for a job, took your social security early and checked out. We know that 40% of people who initiate social security do so at the age of 62. Only 7% wait to take social security until the maximum age of 70. Since you are no longer actively looking for work, you are labeled as retired. If you have retired you will not count in the calculations for the unemployment rate.

I do not know this as a fact but it is my feeling that many of you fall into the last 2 categories, retired for health reasons or because you can no longer find work.

Remember, we are at full employment … right? Everyone who wants a job has a job… right?

Is It a Skills Issue?

There is no question that we have a skills mismatch in the market. We are seeing creative destruction accelerate through so many industries. This is eliminating positions where skills were acquired and honed over many years. I wrote about a couple of clients in the post Living in a “Career Disaster Area” at the Age of 65 where their worlds disappeared in less than 5 years. You will also find this post on Forbes.com. 

You might be saying to yourself, I will refresh my skill set and make myself viable again. There are so many ways to acquire new knowledge and skills. There are many inexpensive and free online educational websites where you acquire the knowledge and skills in the latest technologies and industries.

Once you acquire those new skills, will any consider you for employment? I have lots of examples from the Career Pivot Online Community (which is currently in beta), where members have acquired skills in the latest programming technologies and data science and still cannot get hiring managers to speak with them.

Hiring managers do not want to invest in the careers for people in the 2nd half of life. The way I have heard this expressed in the past is, “they do not have enough career runway”.

When we are at full employment should we be worried about having enough ‘career runway?’

Adapt or Be Left Behind

Marti Konstant, author of Activate Your Agile Career: How Responding to Change Will Inspire Your Life’s Work, who was on episode 82 of the Repurpose Your Career podcast said it best, adapt or be left behind.

You have a choice, you can plan for the future that will be significantly different than today or be left behind. It is a choice!

There are several members in the Career Pivot online community who are working to get ahead of the change. They are taking bold action to put them in a position to be ready for the change.

A classic story of change is Mike Martin who is now a drone pilot instructor. You can hear Mike’s story, which is an extraordinary one on the “Repurpose Your Career” podcast episode #24. When Mike started down his journey to becoming a drone pilot instructor that career path did not exist.

Many of us will want or need to work into our 70s. Working in our 70s will not look like working in our 50s. It will most likely be a combination of different types of jobs.

Does It Feel Like Full Employment to You?

I wrote this post because this employment scene does not feel right.

I would like to get your perspective. If you would be so kind to comment below I would really appreciate it.

Am I smoking something or are the numbers not telling the complete story?

Marc Miller  

Be sure to check out the Career Pivot Client Testimonials Page

Like what you just read? Share it with your friends using the buttons above.

Check out the Repurpose Your Career Podcast

When you subscribe to this blog you get full access to Career Pivot’s Whitepaper Library

Do You Need Help With ...

 Job Search  Career Pivot/Change Career Success Careers in the 2nd Half of Life
Social Media Multi-Generational Workplace Networking Entrepreneurship

COACHING PACKAGES

  • Career Pivot Review Package
  • Career Pivot Evaluation Package
  • Brand Story Development Package
  • Targeted Job Search Package
  • Birkman Assessment®

All packages can be combined at significant discounts – ask about discounts for the unemployed!

Learn more

FROM OUR BLOG

RESOURCES

Check our our RESOURCES, including:

  • Books we recommend
  • Career Pivot white papers
  • Webinars
  • LinkedIn instructional presentations

Learn more

CONTACT ME

Marc Miller

Career Pivot

512-693-7132

Contact me