I know I say this A LOT, but I’m not perfect. I’ve made these same mistakes, but I make a diligent effort to help people out, no matter what the circumstance. After seeing people struggle to find jobs, it’s made me realize how much it hurts and how difficult that process can be, especially nowadays. If you’re a recruiter, please, please, please, make this one little effort. Respond to the candidates that you have interviewed or that have interviewed at your employer. I don’t care how big of a company you are and how busy you are, that is just simply common courtesy. I was a little disappointed to learn just how common this is. Simply ridiculous if you ask me, and something that takes so little time to do. If you’re afraid of hurting feelings, it hurts more by not responding.

Twitter/Hootsuite

I’ll start by saying I think Twitter is great. I was a skeptic, but I’ve learned a ton from the people I’m following, and I’ve really worked hard to share valuable information to the people that keep an eye on me. Problem is, I can’t keep an eye on Twitter all day, it distracts me too much that it takes aways from the tasks I have on my plate at work. Granted, Twitter relates to work. But, it’s a small part and I have more important tasks to get accomplished most of the time. I know Twitter is a two way street, you have to interact with your tweeples. But how can you do that consistently when you’re following hundreds? It’s tough. I’m slowly using Twitter less. I have to, and I think I’ve gotten less and less out of it as time has gone by. I think it’s true as most things, you get out of it what you put in. The less you put in, the less you get out.

But in order to at least try and keep up with Twitter, I researched a lot of 3rd party apps to help me try and automate some of my tasks……some. I have my personal twitter account, and one for the company I work for so I needed an app that allows for multiple accounts. After a bunch of research, I found Hootsuite. At this point, it’s great….that can obviously change but it has some really cool features (it just needs an iPhone app). I’m still in the infancy for that app and for the corporate twitter page. But scheduling tweets, an RSS feed function, groups (with 2.0 release), and so many other features, it’s awesome. So for an hour in the early morning before I get to work, or for a bit late at night, I go through my google reader and read blogs and sites with relevant information for my industry. If I find some posts/stories that are worthwhile, I schedule those tweets throughout the day and week. So I’m kind of done with my sharing. I also use that time to see what the people I’m following are up to and try and RT anything that I’ve read and enjoy and think would benefit the people following me. I’m VERY picky who I follow, make sure you’re going to get something from following them. Since I have been picky, I’ve really learned a ton….I’m following some really smart people and not getting bogged down by all the crap out there. So by scheduling these tweets, it leaves me more time to interact with my tweeples throughout the day.

As mentioned above, there’s a neat feature of Hootsuite, it basically has twitterfeed (RSS) functionality built right in. Our corporate site is based on Wordpress, so everything is an RSS feed. New blog posts, new news and events, and new job opportunities are all fed automatically into the corporate Twitter page (and some on my personal page). Again, this leaves me more time to interact, which I’ll admit hasn’t been my strong suit. I also have this set up for my personal blog, whenever I post something new, it posts into my personal Twitter account.

Digsby

I use Digsby for my chat client and for “popping up” recent tweets, Facebook updates, and LinkedIn updates. If something pops up that I’m interested in, I want to jump on it right away, and a little box that pops up in the lower corner of my laptop is much better than sitting on Twitter/Hootsuite all day. It’s a solid tool, but I use it mostly for my chat client (which works great).

Blogging

Speaking of blogging, I suck at it. I’m still not sure why I started a blog, but I’m trying (so you have to at least give that to me). This has been tough to find time to do, because this is not done on work hours as well. So, this means personal/family time has to suffer. If you have kids, you know how crazy things are when you get home from work. It’s great, I love it. But, there’s no way anything productive is going to happen when they’re awake. The only reading I’m doing is frickin’ Dora the Explorer books. So, I find an hour every so often after my kids are sleeping and I try and put something semi-intelligent on my blog. I then refine it the next night. I typically try and throw ideas and post topics out out on Wordpress whenever I think of something, and then build on those ideas slowly. Wordpress has a solid iPhone app that lets me do that when I’m on the go, so I don’t forget. My rule on my blog is no more than 1 post per week, no less than 1 per month. So far I haven’t lived up to that, but we have a newborn at home so give me a break.

Facebook

I use Facebook a little differently, but I’m still open for suggestion here. I don’t have all my tweets posted automatically to Facebook. The friends that follow me are typically closer than my tweeples. So I post select posts/stories to my news feed and update my status a bit more “personal”. I also have a corporate fan page setup, that I have mostly automated with RSS-Connect, but I do post pictures and some other odds and ends manually. I don’t spend a ton of time on Facebook during work time, it’s more for the later hours after my daughter goes to bed. I think it’s an extremely under-rated recruiting tool, and much more effective than Twitter.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn has apps now, so my profile gets updated with new blog posts whenever I post something new. Hootsuite also has Ping.fm integration, so I set up a trigger to update my LinkedIn status from Hootsuite. Since it does have Ping.fm integration, you can update all the available accounts with Ping…which is a lot. But for me, I want Facebook to stay different and Friendfeed is already linked up with Twitter anyways (for now).

OK, holy crap. That seems complex. I’d really like to know how others handle the craziness of Twitter and other social networks. What applications are used the most, how much time do you really devote to Twitter and Facebook? I’ve talked to a few professionals out there, but want to hear from more. Please pass this on, let’s see how everyone is accomplishing this.

I have a true commitment to my employer, and I have an internal drive that never dies. I think with all the technology we have strapped to us at all times, it’s tough to escape. I remember when I was a bit green in this industry, and didn’t care as much. I’d take my vacations and completely disengage from everything work. It was fine and great and all that stuff, but what sucked was coming back to an inbox so bloated it would take me an entire day or two to attempt to get through it. And the biggest issue; a week away from candidates, hiring managers, and clients can leave a hefty dent in your wallet if you’re paid on commission. You hear people talk about stress, and the need to take vacations. A recent study by Towers Perrin argues Employees Stress can add to Perfomance Risk. I agree, a little. But what’s more stressful, missing out on a placement or two (or more) and taking a significant hit to your book of business, or being available at times even when you’re on vacation? I guess I lean towards keeping my book of business built up, but that’s just me.

So how can you refresh while maintaining your book of business?

The key trend I’ve seen over these 10 years is the flexibility and understanding from most employers. Most understand recruiting is not an 8-5 job anymore. If they don’t, please educate them! It’s a job that you get done whenever you can, whether that be closing a candidate at 7 at night, or meeting a candidate before he goes to work at 6:30 in the morning. You do what you need to do. But likewise, employers need to understand and remember that extra time you put in (even while you’re on vacation), and allow you that flexibility to take a day off or an hour off here and there when it’s slow. Worse case, they better credit you those hours spent working on vacation. Make sure to talk to your manager, ask them for that flexibility. Most will not have an issue, as long as you’re delivering results and bringing in revenue. If you’re not producing, don’t ask.

I think it’s important to use those hours/days to do something you really enjoy. Go play a round of golf, hang out with friends, take a 3-4 day weekend and venture somewhere away from home, or whatever else you like to do. I find it’s essential to do things you really enjoy when you’re taking those extra few hours. If you’re just going home and mowing the lawn or grocery shopping or some other mundane weekly chore, you’re not going to get that refreshed feeling. When you aren’t meeting candidates/employees for lunch, go take a walk outside, go for a run, something to rid your mind of work for a little while.

Now on the other side of the coin, if you’re the type the NEEDS an extended vacation, there’s a few important steps to do before taking one. For the few weeks leading up to a vacation, you should work extremely hard to put together a detailed, lengthy hotlist for the sales organization and for whomever is filling in for you. The few times I have taken a vacation away from work, I made sure the sales folks were completely aware of all the available candidates I had for each particular skillset I was responsible for. It helped, but I rarely made placements because I wasn’t there pushing the envelope. In my experience, the person filling in for you or looking out for your book of business wasn’t particularly concerned about helping you when they still had their own responsibilities to worry about. Keep that in mind.

I always looked at vacation hours spent working not necessarily as a negative, as long as my employer saw the effort and value I was giving them. America is burnt out, we see it all over. People work too much, and don’t take enough time for themselves. But put things into perspective, you don’t need to take a 2 week vacation every year. A day off here and there, a long weekend every once in a while will typically suffice. In fact, it makes me cherish those afternoons off a little more, and I get to take a few more afternoons off compared to taking 2 straight weeks. Remember, your employer or employees are contacting you because they need you. That’s a good problem to have these days. I’d be scared if I didn’t get called. As soon as you’re not needed, well, you’re not needed.

I’d love to hear your thoughts about this.

Being a recruiter, you talk with multiple people on a daily basis, you interview people on a weekly basis, and you hire people monthly more than likely. All of these situations require you to give feedback. Now whatever kind of feedback you give, that’s up to you. Sugar coat it, make the negative into a positive, etc. But, in all of the above situations, feedback helps these people. Yes, whether it’s great feedback or crap, it’s information that candidates and employees can use to better themselves professionally and personally. Do you tell a candidate that failed an interview miserably because he/she chewed gum and talked too much? Absolutely! Do you tell an employee that he/she is pissing off the client because he/she is cursing frequently? Absolutely! Now I know there are “HR” rules to comply by here, especially in a corporate setting. But, if nobody tells these people what they’re doing wrong, how can they get better?

On the flip side, I’ve had potential candidates get angry with me because of some negative feedback I’ve given out. I ran into this study recently, Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One’s Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments. I found it interesting, and accurate at the same time. The most humble people in my mind, have almost always underestimated their knowledge, taken any kind of criticism, and possessed those true “consulting skills”. And the arrogant, well read the study. There’s always a fine line, because I’ve dealt with many extremely smart employees that had large egos and consistently delivered. But, in all cases I’ve dealt with, by far the most valuable employees were the ones that had very little egos and were always eager to hear what they could improve on.

I know of a bunch of IT consultants that tell it how it is. They’re great, they deliver, and most projects they’re involved with are successful. But, everyone on their projects complains about them. “They’re too brash”, “they’re control freaks”, etc. There are better ways to, as I said, “sugar coat” things, but why? People are scared of their deficiencies, and when someone points them out (to improve them), they turn against you. So it brings me to my conclusion, we all need to accept criticism from our peers and find a way to turn these negatives into positives. I’m definitely not humble and it’s always been tough for me to accept criticism, but I’ve learned to find positives in whatever junk gets thrown my way.

Love me or hate me, I’m who I am, and I’m ultimately trying to help you when I give out feedback.

One case in particular really pissed me off and I’m going to highlight her advice below as another example. But me being Mr. nice guy I didn’t really do much about it. But after thinking about it more, I should’ve spoken my mind to this person and told them to shut their pie hole and quit giving people advice when you have no experience and/or background to do so. It was such bad advice, that if my brother-in-law would’ve taken it, he would’ve have had an even bigger hurdle to jump to get a job (and it’s already hard enough). And I guess what pissed me off the most, was the tone and the arrogance of the advice and email. If I was fresh out of college, I would’ve said “Wow, this chick knows what she’s talking about”. But, if you do your due diligence, you’d find her on LinkedIn and know that she’s been out of college for 2 years and hasn’t worked in a recruiting/hiring capacity whatsoever…..in fact, not even close. Yet, she’s an expert and gives advice to others. Here’s just a few of the many examples of her advice below.

“A resume is not just a piece of paper, it is a projection of yourself, so with it comes a pep-talk and advice. Confidence wins jobs, and confidence needs to shine through on a resume, otherwise the interview never comes. (Which I also coach, by the way, so if I get a little wordy, I’m sorry – I love helping people with this stuff!)”.
OK, ya a resume is a projection of yourself, super. Confidence wins jobs, sure. She coaches interviewing, that oughta be interesting!

“Work experience comes before education. ALWAYS!!! While the degree is an accomplishment and something you worked for and can be proud of, you have something now that employers want more – experience!!”.
Wrong! Work experience doesn’t always come before education first of all, not if you’re fresh out of college or have been out of college for a while but have been getting by with employment that isn’t your career path. So she’s saying you should highlight your bartending jobs in college or that position in the warehouse packing boxes….good idea! Resumes are meant to be flexible. I hate that she said “ALWAYS!!!”.

“Remember – white space is not bad – it is actually very important in a resume. It shows you have made a choice, and are only telling the reader things that you find to be important. Save the rest for the interview!”
WTF? White space is not bad, what the hell does that mean? It’s important in a resume? Again, WTF? I especially like “Save the rest for the interview”. So she’s saying purposely leave a bunch of stuff out of your resume, because it leaves the recruiter/hiring manager in suspense….they’ll want to interview you to find out more. Now that’s funny.

“There should always be the same # of bullet points under each heading.
Are you frickin’ kidding?

“Not centering the name gives the resume a flow that psychologically works to your advantage – it makes the reader think a) you are organized in your thoughts, b) you are confident enough in who you are that you do not need to center yourself on the page.”
OK, my anger is turning into laughter now.

“Make the name HUGE!!! This is you. If the resume ends up in a pile, a quick skim through the pile will always bring yours back to the top!”
Great idea! Make your name 58 font, it’ll stick out.

“2 fonts: sans serif and serif fonts work together to help separate thoughts and ideas. The fonts aren’t character fonts, showing that you have chosen these with purpose and decision, and are not afraid to stand out, yet still maintain a professional attitude.”
I’m starting to laugh a little harder now.

Oh yah, and she took his nice, catchy professional summary out of his resume and put this objective in there “To obtain a full-time position in a world-class organization utilizing my abilities as a reliable, productive, customer-focused team member.”
Boy if that doesn’t scream hire me, I don’t know what does!

All this brings up a really valid point. How and when do you consider yourself worthy of a professional blog? Great question. Since I’m new to this little community, I don’t really have an answer. But it’s something everyone should ask themselves before giving out career advice. Remember, new college graduates and the unemployed are a sponge desperately waiting for any kind of advice – and sometimes they don’t know how to decipher the good and the bad. Now I can’t blame the people posting/giving bad advice ALL the time, I think ultimately they are trying to help. But as we continue to see an enormous increase in the amount of blogs and people involved in social media, we’re bound to get more people claiming expertise in certain subjects. All we can do as recruiters (with experience), is to keep trying to help people find jobs, and respond and stick up to the crappy advice we all see. Educate as many job seekers and candidates as possible, research the people that are giving you advice. If they’re worth anything as a recruiter or HR professional, they’ll be on LinkedIn or somewhere on the web. Find them, and make sure they have the experience to be giving out advice. And most importantly, get second opinions on all advice you receive before implementing them into your job search or career path.

Other ideas?

Define your Brand. I think the first step in personal branding is to take a step back and define exactly what you want your brand to be. Do you want to be a leader in the recruiting industry, do you want to be a part of the Minneapolis Groovy/Grails movement, or a do you want to be a lobbyist for green peace? Whatever it is, define who your target audience is and how you want them to perceive you, and deliver a consistent message about your brand.

Market your Brand through Social Media. This is easier and easier to do these days, purely because of the availability of social media at every corner of the internet. As mentioned above (and every single day of our lives currently), Facebook, Twitter, personal blogs, professional user groups, and LinkedIn are all ways to promote yourself professionally (and personally for that matter).

I think the biggest benefit of Twitter is to drive people to your blog and professional profile. I’m still in the infancy of using Twitter, so take my comments with a grain of salt. Twitter has been a great learning tool for me, but also a chance to change the way people view me in the marketplace. And the more people you follow, the more people that follow you (and ultimately see your blog posts). My only advice there is to only follow people in your target audience. I haven’t fully utilized all of Twitter’s power quite yet, but I do see it as a surefire way to differentiate yourself from your peers if you ever do find yourself looking for a job.

Blogs are great, and really easy to set up. Wordpress is simple to create a professional blog, and there are many other sites that exist to host blogs (blogger.com, blogspot.com, typepad.com, etc.). The main reason I wanted to start blogging is to create and promote my personal brand and the company I’m working for, while also getting an opportunity to research topics of interest and share them with my target audience. By doing so, I’m basically validating my experience to employers, clients and candidates, and I’m showing the world that I do know some things about my profession (depends on who you ask .

LinkedIn is basically an online resume, it’s personal branding at it’s best. Now with LinkedIn apps, you can integrate your blog, current books you’re reading, and your travel destinations with your profile. I can tell you right now, if I’m meeting a candidate for an initial interview, the first place I look is LinkedIn. And if that person has a blog, I look through it thoroughly. I look at the people they’re connected with, if we have any shared connections, and I look at all recommendations. LinkedIn groups and Q&A is also a good way to promote yourself. LinkedIn exists to help define and promote your personal brand, you better use it.

A newer “online portfolio” concept through PersonaVita, is promoting “an exciting new way to capture your experiences, validate your contributions, and draw from your social, professional, and academic achievements to create a personal brand online”. My first glance is that it’s a more involved LinkedIn networking site, drawing from others to validate your experiences and accomplishments (sort of like recommendations on LinkedIn).

All these are great ways to promote yourself, and the more you use the better.

Profit from your Brand. Hey, click on the link to Dan’s book above….what a great way to profit from your brand! If you have time and more importantly the knowledge to do that, more power to you. Dan’s situation is unique as he is more of an expert, not to mention a great writer. Many of us who have full-time jobs are blogging once our kids are in bed and have about an hour to do so. It’s tough to get everything accomplished in that timeframe, especially if you’re writing a book. So how else can you profit from your brand? Well, I think if you’re branding yourself appropriately, you should have an increase in marketability and job stability; which ultimately leads to more money in your pocket. Don’t forget, as recruiters you’ll be driving candidates to your social networks, and ultimately that will give you more options for increasing sales and commissions. As technologists, you’re driving recruiters and employers to your profile that will increase your marketability and hopefully higher paying jobs and/or gigs. Of course if you’re selling a real tangible product you’ll bring in some coin that way. You can always start advertising on your blog to earn a few bucks here and there. Adsense is easy, and if you get big enough, I’m sure you’ll attract other advertisers. Ultimately, I don’t think personal branding is going to make me rich, but I’m hoping it will increase my marketability, job stability, and give me more options for career advancement.

In conclusion. I could go on and on about this, but I think you get the picture. We’re being branded everyday by companies selling their products and images to us. We need to look at ourselves and careers in the same light. We are a product, we need to define and market this product. If we don’t, we’re going to lose out to our competitors (whoever that may be). Remember to be careful and what you’re putting on the web, it could ultimately affect the way anyone views your brand and could cost you more than you think. Take a proactive approach to marketing your brand, and make sure to deliver a consistent marketing campaign to your target audience.

Ask yourself a question, if you’re looking for a job, what do you want potential employers to see? Your tweets about how you hate John McCain, or tweets/blog post on how to avoid office politics to increase productivity? Remember, recruiters/employers are resourceful, we’ll find you….and we know what you’re doing and where you live! Ok, maybe not where you live Remember, it’s a competitive job market, and always will be. You don’t want to give ANY employers/recruiters/hiring managers reason not to consider you for a job. Who knows, maybe they love John McCain.

Looking at the shear numbers of job postings in the last year, there has been a significant decrease. A January 2009 stat from Indeed.com indicated that besides education and healthcare, job postings in all other industries were down roughly 50% during 2008 when compared with 2007. With those numbers and with the current state of the economy, I’m guessing it’s just going to get worse in 2009. And the amount of companies renewing their licenses for the big ticket job boards has decreased significantly as well. So if job boards are going away, or are at least not as effective, where do you find candidates?

If you’re truly a great recruiter, you should be effective in leveraging the relationships you’ve made over the years. When hiring recruiters or sales reps, I believe years of experience is very important. Afterall, it takes time to develop those relationships. But with the social media phenomenon, you don’t need job boards. And if you’re smart, you’ll use these tools to the fullest capability, because ultimately these tools belong to you, not the company you’re working for (there’s a fine line here obviously).

If you talk to a recruiter and the first line of defense they lean on is Monster.com, they’re just not going to be all that effective. Of course, in the true “staffing” business, you’re going to have some weird requests from your clients that you’ll have to jump on Monster/CareerBuilder for. But ultimately, it’s the passive candidates that we want to find and lure away from their current employers. The active candidates are typically the ones that leave you high and dry when you least expect it. And most of the time I can’t blame them. Those active candidates are getting called by 5-10 other recruiters right now, commonly about the same position at the same client.

Here’s some other obvious ideas:

Referrals, Referrals, Referrals

Oh oh oh how important referrals are. Gerry Crispin and Mark Mehler of CareerXRoads have produced their 8th Annual Source of Hire Study (PDF) from their client base (55 total firms, and over 1800 recruiters responded), on specifically where companies are finding the candidates. I think it’s a pretty accurate look into where recruiters/companies are getting their candidates. Although, I think it’s a little too job board heavy for my liking. But, the stat they came up with for referrals was 27% (see figure below).

So 1 of every 4 employees hired are coming from referrals. That’s a pretty big number, and one that I’m positive increases the smaller the company is. Referrals are the best source of candidates. They typically stay around longer and are generally better employees because the referrer knows his name is attached to that person and will make sure they’re appropriate fits. So if you’re employer is not heavily investing in an employee referral program, push for it. It’s the single biggest and best source for quality candidates.

Social Media (LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, etc.)

I’m not going to spend a ton of time on this because this is a topic for a seperate blog and it’s been crammed down our throats for long enough. But, the point is, if you’re not using LinkedIn or Twitter as recruiting tools, you are sooooooooo far behind. LinkedIn is the single best recruiting tool I’ve ever used, and Twitter is obviously gaining momentum (although I haven’t hired anyone off of Twitter yet). But these social networking tools are a low cost way to reach out to a very broad candidate base and the sheer number of candidates using these tools is staggering.

User Groups

User groups are a great way to promote your personal brand as well as your company’s. I will admit, sometimes it’s tough to break into some user groups, most are “anti-recruiter”. But if you know one person on the inside, typically that’s all it takes. Go to a user group meeting with that one person, start meeting others. Get to be the recruiter of the group, or at least one of the recruiters that people go to for questions. Sign up for the dist list, and get the OK to post jobs to the list. At the very least, try to know someone in a technology user group that you recruit for and have that person post jobs for you. I know of 4 user groups in the Java community in Minneapolis that are active. There are multiple multiple groups out there, get involved!

Your own corporate website

This is often times overlooked. But having a solid strategy for enticing and driving candidates to your website can payoff in a big way. Social media plays big into this as well, with the majority of larger (and smaller) companies now are incorporating blogs and videos into their corporate site. Good example is the site I helped design and launch recently (www.objectpartners.com). We drive candidates to the site from the technical blog posts and the monthly tech talks. Since we’re so focused in one specific area, typically our name gets out in the software community pretty quickly. And it validates our expertise and existence as a company to a lot of candidates and clients. We also have quite a few subscribers to the blog, so we can drop in a job posting or two should they arise and we have difficulty filling it. Make your corporate site interactive, get people involved. Make it so candidates want to come to your site, offer something that they value.

The moral of the story is that job boards and postings are on the way out. But, I don’t think it’s difficult to make up that decline with other techniques and practices. Job boards will always be there, it’s just going to be the last stop in the recruiting process. Start today to refine your recruiting process, and ween yourself from using job boards; it will pay off in the long run.

The Summary. I believe the summary is the single most important part of the resume, so I think the most time should be spent on it. You want the summary to be your sales pitch, and ultimately it’s the first thing hiring managers should see when they look at your resume. It should be a 4-8 sentence blurb about your strengths, experience, and personality traits. In the old days, we’d see resumes with an objective. Please please don’t use an objective. I don’t care if your objective is to be a Sr. Software Engineer at a progressive, forward thinking company. I care about what you’ve done in your career, the things you’re good at, and why I should hire you. Please tell me in your summary why you’re better than the other 10 resumes I’m looking at for the same position. An example technical summary is below.

Technical Skills. The Technical Skills section should be a laundry list of applications, languages, databases, methodologies, or whatever other tools you use or have used to do your job effectively. This can be applied to Accounting, Finance, Engineering and many other professions. If you’ve touched on a particular tool/software/language, put it in here. If you’re not an expert with it, that’s OK. If you’re really good with one particular skill, it should be mentioned in your summary as well as your professional experience multiple times. An example of the technical skills section is below.

Professional Experience. Obviously the Professional Experience section of your resume is important. You need to be able to paint a clear picture of what you did, but also what you accomplished. I think a lot of people forget about the accomplishment piece, and just explain their daily tasks. But, adding accomplishments will tell the hiring manager you deliver. Mention that you were on a critical project that built an application that ultimately saved the business 10k per month. Mention that you were selected by your manager/peers for outstanding performance (or whatever). Now there’s always exceptions to this rule. If you played a fairly insignificant role and were purely a taskmaster, well then it’ll be tough to explain accomplishments. Also, if you’re a technologist, make it technical. It always sucks when I get a resume that has all these fancy bullet points but no specific technical detail in it. An example would be “Worked on a team do develop a large scale accounting system.” That’s great and all, but it should read “Worked as a developer on a team of 10 building a large scale accounting system using Spring, Hibernate, JPA, Maven, blah blah (you get the picture). You should also have the last bullet point be a list of the types of tools/technologies you worked with. In conclusion, for each position, use 4-8 bullets of your daily detailed tasks, but also 2-4 of your accomplishments. Example below.

Education, Certifications, Training, etc.. In a technical resume, I prefer Education and the like at the bottom of the resume. The exception is if you’re fresh out of college or fairly new to the industry. Then putting the Education under the Summary at the top is more useful. I always tell newbies out of college to list relevant courses to whatever position they’re applying for. So if you’re applying for a Software Engineer position that requires C# experience, you better mention the CIS class you took that was called “Building Web apps with C#”. Again, you get the picture. I also always recommend any marketable education (which should be easy to know) be included somewhere in your summary at the top as well. If you have a Masters in Software Engineering from the U of M, a Scrum Master certification, or you’re a CPA, put those in a bullet point at the top of your resume in the summary. Again, examples below.

I’ve heard a lot of people talk in detail about formatting and where the dates should be, how and where your name and address should be, what font and size to use, etc. I think these things are so minor that very little time should be spent on them. If you’re asking me these questions, I’ll tell you what I do (Times New Roman 11 font)….but it’s the last thing that should be discussed when putting together a marketable resume. I also don’t agree with the notion a resume shouldn’t be over a page, or two pages, or whatever. Your resume should be as long as it needs to be. If you’re on page 4, yes maybe you should think about taking some details out of the position/s you had 5 years ago. But if you have a ton of experience and it’s recent and relevant, well than that’s the way it has to be. Just make sure to tailor and customize your resume to each position you’re applying for, take the irrelevant crap out.

I know as well as anyone, resumes are a pain mainly because everyone tells you something different and it’s tough remembering all the things you’ve done at times. The main point is that if you’re not getting interviews, well then maybe it’s time to take a closer look at your resume. Otherwise, if you’re not having issues getting in front of the hiring manager, I highly doubt there’s much you need to change.

I keep in tune with the economy and job market (although I hate the media right now), and I always laugh when people try and make an accurate evaluation of when we’re going to come out of this recession. Like anyone frickin’ knows, c’mon. I keep hearing, Q3, Q4, blah blah blah.

Personally, I really don’t think we’ll see a significant amount of progress until next year. Consumer confidence is absolutely destroyed right now, and companies are taking a “wait and see” approach. The tech field has been relatively stable in the Minneapolis market, but I don’t foresee any growth in the immediate future. I think we’ll see more layoffs and companies turning to consultants to do the work that needs to be done, but it will be hit or miss. Obviously retail and financial companies will be hurt, but the beauty of the Minneapolis job market is the amount of diversification that’s present. Healthcare should do well, the medical device manufacturers should maintain, insurance is doing well. When some industries are down, there’s always something else that picks up the slack.

Also, companies use technology to gain efficiency, and I don’t foresee a big change in that this year. However, they will be very cautious on who they hire or engage for the things they need to get accomplished. My advice, sharpen your skills now more than ever. If there are jobs out there, it will be more competitive than ever! You’ll be facing other applicants more qualified than you at times, and you need to prepare yourself for that challenge. Make sure you don’t forget about personal branding, afterall you’re a product and you need to know how to present yourself as a quantifiable entity.

Keep feelers out there at all times, and don’t burn any bridges. I always laugh at people that get pissed at me because I contact them or email them, what a stupid move. That person will be the one that gets laid off and has NO contacts or opportunities on the horizon, then he/she will post his/her resume on Monster.com and get killed with phone calls from all the staffing companies offshoring their recruiting capabilities to India. Good luck!

So, stay positive right now and remain optimistic, things are on the mend and we will pull through this downturn. But, don’t become complacent about your job and finanical situation….be prepared.