I had the chance to volunteer this morning with the nice folks at Arapahoe/Douglas County Works (
http://www.adworks.org/) doing resume critiques for job seekers. The center I was at (5550 South Quebec St.) offers tremendous resources, classes, and counseling to those seeking employment. I've had the chance to do this several times in the past as Pinnacol gives all of our employees 12 hours of paid time off to volunteer in the community every year. The resume critique is coordinated through an organization known as 530 Inc. which is a networking group of human resources professionals. I always learn as much from these sessions as hopefully the job seekers do and its really rewarding to give back through volunteering.
One thing that always amazes me is the pressure people put on their resume. Over and over again this morning we explained that a resume has only one purpose - to get a recruiter, HR person, or manager to pick up the phone and say we'd like to meet you. The resume won't get you the job, but it does get your foot in the door. What is perhaps more important than the resume itself is getting it into the right person's hands and in our meetings with candidates this morning we couldn't emphasize enough the value of networking with everyone you know. There are lots of tools today that make networking easier, but it still takes old-fashioned
w o r k! Numerous candidates told us they were on
LinkedIn,
Facebook,
Twitter and the like but when we asked what they were doing to actually network through these tools we only saw blank expressions. When we talked about actually staying in touch with contacts on a frequent basis, gaining additional contacts through friends of friends, joining groups, and volunteering in the community we saw the lights slowly come on. One of the folks we met with said it best - finding a job today is a harder job than the job most people are actually looking for. She was absolutely right! The power of these new tools is staggering, but people still need to do the work. For example, in LinkedIn I have 82 contacts. My 82 contacts have on average about 160 of their own contacts, which means that I have a potential network of 13,000 contacts of friends of friends. 2,000 new people have joined my network since yesterday! What a staggering resource, but clearly one that the folks we met with this morning are underutilizing.
One thing that always amazes me is the pressure people put on their resume. Over and over again this morning we explained that a resume has only one purpose - to get a recruiter, HR person, or manager to pick up the phone and say we'd like to meet you. The resume won't get you the job, but it does get your foot in the door. What is perhaps more important than the resume itself is getting it into the right person's hands and in our meetings with candidates this morning we couldn't emphasize enough the value of networking with everyone you know. There are lots of tools today that make networking easier, but it still takes old-fashioned w o r k! Numerous candidates told us they were on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and the like but when we asked what they were doing to actually network through these tools we only saw blank expressions. When we talked about actually staying in touch with contacts on a frequent basis, gaining additional contacts through friends of friends, joining groups, and volunteering in the community we saw the lights slowly come on. One of the folks we met with said it best - finding a job today is a harder job than the job most people are actually looking for. She was absolutely right! The power of these new tools is staggering, but people still need to do the work. For example, in LinkedIn I have 82 contacts. My 82 contacts have on average about 160 of their own contacts, which means that I have a potential network of 13,000 contacts of friends of friends. 2,000 new people have joined my network since yesterday! What a staggering resource, but clearly one that the folks we met with this morning are underutilizing.
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