iPad Job Search Tips | Take You With You (Part 1)

As you’ll hear here – and on the likes of 60 Minutes - the hardcopy resume is swimming towards the top of the dead pool.  It is on the same trajectory as the Blackberry: stolid corporations still love it - but consumers and progressive companies loathe it. 

But until the world catches up  – you still need to have a resume along with all your social media derivations (at least a Linked In Profile for  professionals – other sites depending on your industry and job). 

But now is the time for you to show the world – and your perspective employer – that you’re ahead of the curve.  You need to show them you’re not doing your homework on the back of a shovel with Honest Abe and that you are relevant in the digital and social age.

It’s a thousand pages give or take a few

Earlier this year, on my trek along the job search process, I decided to go paperless and also green.  For certain interviews, I printed zero copies of my resume and simply loaded a PDF of it onto my iPad. 

As often happens, a number of interviewers would come to the meeting empty handed and ask, “do you have a copy of your resume”?

With one tap of the Home button, I closed whatever app I was using to take notes, opened my Kindle for iPad (with my resume already loaded), and flipped the iPad around and handed it to them and said, “here you go”.  

Better still – you can click to your Linked In profile and show them a recommendation that underlines a point you had just been making in the interview.   At that point – like the iPad itself, the interview becomes interactive and tactile.  You can show them you are relevant online by showing them you online.

 

Epilogue: Let’s make this clear about these posts on the iPad and job searching:  You do not need an iPad to get a job.  If there is any reason that cash is king for you and your family, then be smart.  But if it makes sense for you – and is a differentiator in your industry - it’s another tool in the bag.  In other words, have style. There are always other ways to demonstrate your prowess during an interview.

Further – we all know results vary.  Make sure you know the person on the other end of the table will appreciate this tactic (“you never open your mouth until you know what the shot is”). 

 

Related and not so related links:
iPad Job Search Tips | Every Move a Picture (3Minus3)
3Minus3 Facebook site
”The resume will become an obsolete tool” (Trapped in Unemployment-60 Minutes)
”Style ain't the jeep U bought when U know your broke ass got bills” (Prince)
Paperback Writer (The Beatles)

iPad Job Search Tips | Every Move a Picture

I mentioned the other day that I recently went through an interview cycle on the way to a new gig with an awesome company.  During this process, it is easy to see (what you should already know) how smart phones and social media are increasingly intertwined with the interview/job search process in big and small ways.

Here’s one small way: documenting what you wear to an interview.

Tryin' hard to look like Gary Cooper

Ok.  Guys have it easier on this front.  2 suits, a sports jacket, a few shirts and a few more ties and you’re ready for 3-4 rounds of interviews at a number of companies.

But for every gift there is a down-side.  Most dudes are not normally fashion conscious.  Unless our favorite sports teams have given us the Garanimals head-start (e.g. Patriots Nautical Blue suit with a white shirt and red tie), we may be challenged.  It is such a blind-spot for some guys that I have a recruiter buddy who escorts charges to the first meet to ensure they are dressed like an adult.

Snap, Snap!  Grin, Grin!

Enter the iPad camera.   Snap a quick self-pic on the way out the door and then tag the photo when you get home (e.g. Job x, Interview 2). 

Eureka! 

You’ve got a pictorial catalog of how much variety you are mixing into your wardrobe that you can store right next to your “customized for that job resume” you did (because you did – right?).  This “scrapbook” can be especially valuable given the extended sales cycles of most jobs in this market (interviewing with more people over and extended period of time).

Any interesting ways you are using your iPad or social media in your job search you care to share?

Related and not so related links:
“Every move a picture” (Jerry Lewis)
Putting on the Ritz (Taco)
Nudge, Nudge (Monty Python)

Facebook Strip Search

Having just successfully completed a job interviewing cycle, and having gone through more than my share of background checks for employers/clients (that required me to hand over my fingertips or a bottle of pale yellow liquid from time to time), I’m all for qualifying candidates.  I have often used “the Google”, Linked In or other tools on the “interwebs” during my hiring process (as have people that I have worked for – I know because they often have mentioned this blog during an interview).

Cutting to the chase, given the hue and cry in the news, I’m pretty sure I would think twice before giving my login credentials to my Facebook account during an interview. 

Let me be clear – I have nothing to hide on Facebook (which has mostly an open profile).  I assume that anything on my Facebook page is public – or may be  (“the web is forever”).   Therefore – sorry ladies – there’s no pictures of me shirtless on Facebook.  As my Facebook friends can tell you – my posts are mostly “tame” (and more often than not – much like this blog - obtuse and random).

The Right to Chose 

My pause to produce my Facebook passwords during an interview is based on – like the Bozo Interview Question – I don’t know why you care or what you intend to learn from my timeline?  Do you want me to dig up my high school yearbook so you can see what folks wrote in there (other than “stay gold”)?

How I look at it - unless I am applying for a job that requires top level clearance (TSA) or the job as your Social Media Director – it is likely not germane.  That being said – let that be a choice between me and the person interviewing me.  If you REALLY want to ask me for my password and I REALLY want the job – then you may get lucky and see pictures of my cats (who by the way – also have Facebook pages of their own).

Trying to write a law (Bill Would Put Facebook Off Limits To Employers) is silly and not needed. To quote my good friend Joe – “the marketplace is brutally efficient” and will take care of this hiring manager.  Companies will properly screen many candidates this way – which is to run away.

p.s. Max (the cat) said he’d also give his credentials to you for the right opportunity (such as Cat Food Quality Control Engineer).

Random | And the beat goes on

The news of the last 24 hours was one of those Al Stewart moments that collapses the bookends of (nearly) a decade into a single moment.  I (like many folks) was immediately transported back to that Tuesday morning in September 2001.  The sights, sounds, smells and the feelings of that day that also lives in infamy flooded me. 

As is common in these human milestone markers (the birth of a child, your 40th birthday, MJ dying), we can often take stock and ponder the delta of all the things in our lives that have changed over that period.

I heard the news back then, oh boy

In 2001, I was in my recently purchased first home and my just as recently acquired unemployment status.  Just 3 days past my 3 days of severance, I sat in my spacious home office that Tuesday morning massively searching online for a job and scheduling networking meetings.  I was listening to KSTP-AM (talk radio - the social/edgy/viral/ media of that day) when (the late) Mark O’Connell announced “a private plane” had struck the Trade Center in New York.

Still in my work outfit of that day (running shorts and a wife beater), I headed into the living room and turned on the TV and flopped onto the couch.  Moments later,  I witnessed a second plane hit the other tower.  For the next 3 days, Max (my cat) and I remained similarly splayed on that couch watching all the gory details unfold on broadcast/cable news (primarily through the eyes the late Peter Jennings and the now retired Tom Brokow).  There was little else to do - my anemic job search ground to halt as quickly as civilian air traffic that day.

Who told you this guy was in here?

Fast forward to last night.

I am in the same room as 2001 – but now it is my master bedroom.  Max the cat is still there – but also my wife (who I did not know in 2001).  She was watching The Housewives of “Whatever” (since I was not paying attention).  

I had my headphones plugged into my iPad and had resumed streaming “The Sting” via Netflix (as I often use movies as sleep inducing white noise):

Billie: Who told you this guy was in here?
Lieutenant William Snyder: Nobody. I just know what kind of woman he likes. Going to check all the joy houses till I find him

The movie had just rolled by the above scene (with Charles Durning and Eileen Brennan) when a muted beep from a KSTP-TV “push notification” informed me that President Obama was about to speak.  Soon thereafter, we all knew why he was to speak.  It would be over an hour before he came to the podium – by which time both my wife and I had fallen asleep.

The next day, reports chronicled (that like so many recent events around the globe) that Twitter was the source of the first credible reports. 

History has turned a page, ah-huh

As I am wont to do – linking and transitions filled my mind and my morning commute (although dressed in a real suit as I headed to a client site today). 

Of course, in 2001 I did not have a blog (let alone this one).  In 2021, I doubt I will.  What will be the social media killer app of that day? 

October 23, 2001 – one month after 9/11, the first iPod was introduced to the market (white only).  Many colors and variations of iPods, iPhones, iTouches and two iPads would follow. In 2020 – what will be the mass communication media platform of that day…the holodeck?.  If so – I hope I have the life size (virtual) Paul Newman and Robert Redford acting in my living room

There are countless other examples that remind us that drums keep pounding rhythm to the brain….

All I know is we don’t really know what is to come in technology and media that far in advance (although we get closer to the Jetsons and jetpacks every day).   All I know is that I look forward to the journey to come. 

Oh – and don’t worry.  My wife swears that Max will beat the odds and still be with us in 2021 (at a  spry 25 years old).