Unemployed? Four Hacks to Get Your Next Job
In the past two months, more than 30 million people across the country suddenly became unemployed. Quite a dramatic and startling shift from where we were kicking off the new year.
February 2020 saw the lowest unemployment rate in the last 50 years and the future looked even more promising. Fast forward to now, and millions of people are potentially looking for that next career move in the midst of a pandemic.
The reality is that for many of these individuals, this is their first time ever dealing with unemployment and when it comes to finding a new career, they aren’t sure where to even start. If this is you, understand that you’re not alone and there are things you can put in place today that can ensure you find yourself gainfully employed come summer.
To get started, we put together a few best practices and resources to help you with that job search. Most people just wing it. Don’t be most people.
Find a Good Fit
Easier said than done right? Really what we mean by this is to apply to only the jobs that interest you and match your skill set, not all of the jobs that might be open in your city.
Being unemployed is stressful and unnerving enough and sometimes it may seem more productive on your end to apply to let’s say 10 jobs a day. That sounds awesome, and if you do research on all 10 jobs and put in the elbow grease for each one, it can be great, but in reality what typically happens is that you will not read the job description or even do more than glance at the company name and job title.
If this non-research application blitz is your strategy, each day you’ll submit all of those applications, kick back, and simply check your email for interview opportunities. What, no one has contacted you yet? Well I’m not entirely shocked and you shouldn’t be either. It is important to do some research on the open positions that match your skills before applying.
The name of the game in looking for a job is to set yourself apart and is to “not be like most people.” Most people will apply to lots of jobs without doing any research and then will have a deer in headlights look during interviews when they are asked questions like “So what brought you to this company?” This is why it’s important to find some common values that you share with the company that you can use in interviews. Make sure you meet all of the job qualifications and can perform the essential functions listed.
It also helps to know someone at the company. Do you have any friends or family members that work for any companies you are interested in?
The reality of the world is that many people get jobs because they have an inside reference. Even if you have that inside reference, you will likely still have to go through the application and interviewing process but as we all know, it helps to have someone fighting for you on the inside.
Don’t have any connections? Well you can always find some on LinkedIn. People working at the company you’re applying to can be incredibly helpful if you connect with them and ask insightful questions.
“Hey can you get me a job?” is not an insightful question. That may be what you want but that is an awful way to start a relationship. Although not technically a question, maybe something more along the lines of “I see that you are attending the Wounded Warriors recruiting open house next month in Albuquerque and I just wanted to thank you and your company for your commitment to hiring veterans.” This line of messaging is more likely to get attention and a response.
You can connect with their recruiters (most companies do recruit on Linked-In now) or talent acquisition staff. Please, before you do any connecting, check your account profile. Make sure it is accurate and appropriate before you start reaching out to make connections.
Resume Games
Before you start applying for jobs, it is important to dust off and update that resume. Need some formatting or structure tips? After you have a format and structure, make sure the resume is refreshed and current with your recent experience. Before venturing too far outside of the format and structure, it is important to first understand exactly how companies use resumes as a screening tool. Knowing this can help you navigate the application process and increase your odds.
If you are completing an online application, usually that application will ask for a resume upload as part of the process. What most people do not know is that the majority of all companies have Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) in place.
Think of an ATS as kind of a computer program which scans resumes and immediately sorts you as a yes or a no based on your resume right off the bat. Yes, you heard that right, instant rejection, sometimes before you have even left their online careers page.
While this sounds cold and impersonal, companies can easily narrow down applicants in a cost-effective way with these resume screens. This is especially needed in a time when a company may be receiving hundreds or even thousands of applicants for a single position each day. So how can you use this knowledge to your advantage?
You need to customize your resume for each and every job that you apply for. This gives you the best chance of getting by the computer. Want to apply to 10 jobs? You need 10 different resumes matched up to the 10 job descriptions.
A great way to start this is to find the position you are applying for, print the job description out and use a highlighter to select the essential duties that match things you’ve done or experience you have.
For example, let us say the job description requires “4 years of salesforce experience.” Cut and paste that same exact phrase and put it into your resume if you have that experience. If you have more than 4 years, I would just add a plus sign indicating “4+ years of salesforce experience.”
The ATS systems look for matches between job descriptions and applicant resumes. That right there is a huge key to getting past a company’s applicant systems and getting closer to an actual human to talk to.
Remember those 10 jobs you applied to earlier and didn’t hear back from? This is the most common reason why applicants never hear anything back or get rejected. Their resumes didn’t make the cut. It may seem like a pain but you have a much better shot with a customized resume than you do sending the same one to 10 different employers.
Need help figuring this piece out? You can check out Jobscan. Their site is geared specifically towards making sure your resume matches a job description.
Online Quizzes
For many positions that you will apply to, you can expect to take an online quiz or an assessment test as part of the application process. These can test your emotional intelligence, industry knowledge, trustworthiness, and pretty much anything else under the sun. They can be 25, 50, 500, or 1,000 questions. Unfortunately, there is no getting around this as you are required to take them or the system will not let you submit your application.
A little known fact: many employers have no idea what questions are on their own application quiz. They don’t know the types of questions, what those questions measure, and believe it or not, many of the recruiters that you’ll be interviewing with would not even pass their own company’s application test. Companies simply use it as just another cost effective way to cut the pool of applicants down to a smaller size for their hiring managers.
Knowing about these quizzes can help you play that game that gives you the best shot at speaking to a human about your skills for the role. Let’s take a sample question from some of these quizzes and see how you would answer it.
How often do you do great work?
A) All of the time
B) Most of the time
C) Almost Never
D) Never
E) Thursday mornings
If you are like most people, you would answer B) Most of the time. You try to be as honest as possible and answers C,D, and E are clearly not what the company wants to hear right? But the answer that will actually get you the most points is answer A) All of the time.
Because these questions operate on a point system to assess candidates, you can use this knowledge as a little trick to help you with these quizzes. Answering to the extremes (in this case picking ALWAYS over MOST of the time) will get you more points than being humble.
For these tests, companies add up your total score and if you hit the required number of points, the computer allows you to proceed to the next step, usually an interview of some kind. If you do not get enough points, it will kick you out of the process and pass along a nice “thank you for your time” email. The difference between answering A instead of B in our sample question could be the difference maker for you on whether you are eligible for an interview.
Let’s flip the question and try another example like, “How often are you late to work?”
With those same answers, the best possible answer is now D) Never. Most people would select C) Almost Never and that would get you points but not the highest level of points.
This is a very helpful trick to keep in mind as you are navigating these quizzes. It also helps to think of who the company’s ideal candidate is and answer those quiz questions with that in mind.
How to Answer Job Interview Questions
Congratulations, now that you’ve made it past the resume screen and the online quiz, it’s time for the interview. This is also an area where people commonly struggle, whether it’s a phone, skype, zoom, or in-person interview. If you remember what we mentioned earlier about doing research on the company and the position, this is exactly where that will come into play.
One of the first questions you will ever get asked is “What brought you to this company?” or “Why did you apply here?” Most applicants do not have a good answer for this even though they have had, sometimes, weeks to think of one. They will say “I really like your company.” That answer does not make you stand out at all.
Mixing in some research you did on the company that matches your values is something that will. Maybe you like how environmentally conscious they are and can cite some recent facts about their efforts or perhaps you support their involvement in the veteran community and you are proud they attended a recent veteran event.
Whichever interview questions you receive, please do not turn into a chatterbox. Interviews are nerve-wracking and they do cause some of us to talk until we forget the question and before we know it, we are talking about our kid’s soccer team for 20 minutes.
When you nervously babble, you usually give the interviewer too much personal information and that alone can knock you out of contention for a job. Instead, it’s best to keep your answers focused on your work experience and skills only.
The company wants to know why they should hire you; what skills you bring to the table. They are not interested in finding out the innermost workings of your soul, your hobbies, or your life story. It’s ok to have a personal side but make sure that the information that you give out is not anything an employer could use against you. For example: If you offer up “In my free time, I have my own side business in reverse logistics”, I guarantee you that employer will be thinking you may not have enough time for them.
The good news is that companies ask the same types of questions in interviews. Questions like, “Tell me about yourself” or “Tell me your greatest weakness” or “How would you handle an angry customer?”
I’m sure you’ve heard some of those before but here’s the thing. We almost never practice those questions in real life. If you never practice them and get them in an interview, sometimes things do not go well.
We encourage you to write these type of “tell me” questions, as well as any other tough ones down on a sheet of paper, and then write your responses to each, and practice saying your answers out loud. It’s also effective to use the STAR response method as great way to keep your mind organized with these questions.
You can find more detailed information about the star interview response technique here but in it’s simplest form, it basically suggests breaking down your response into the STAR methodology – Situation (S), Task (T), Action (A) and Result (R).
An example of this for the question “tell me about a time you had an angry customer” might go like this:
Situation, the who, when and where: “5 years ago I was a cashier at Wal-Mart.”
Task, or what needed to be done: “I had a customer who approached me furious about being overcharged and wanted it corrected.”
Action, or what did you do: “I calmly let her finish her explanation, looked up the order and saw that she was in fact right, I processed her refund and apologized.”
Result, or what happened. “She was happy and I saw her return nearly every week I worked there.”
And there you have it, you’ve taken a tough question and answered with STAR which gives the employer a short positive story about how you solved a problem and made someone happy. Everyone wants to hire someone like that. But the majority of people being interviewed (your competition) will not use this structure or practice these questions so doing so will be another way you can set yourself apart in the interview process.
Another insider tip is that most companies actually want you to use the STAR method to answer their interview questions, in fact some have interview guides with a STAR area under each question where the company wants interviewers to write down each component of your answer broken down into STAR. Why not just give them what they are looking for?
Being unemployed is stressful and we hope that these tips have provided you some insight on how to overcome a few of the common obstacles that people face in their search for employment. Good luck and we know that you’ve got this!