Bypass Human Resources in your Search for that Great Job

Yet another tsunami of layoffs has washed over the corporate world, which means tens of thousands of displaced workers are reviewing, revising and sending out their resumes. It is a simple fact that 99.2% of them will get tossed into the real and virtual wastebaskets of the human resources departments that receive them, says Jeffrey Fox, a marketing consultant and author who promotes counterintuitive job-seeking methods. The HR department isn’t a job-seeker’s friend, he says. “HR is a gatekeeper and part of the job is to keep unwanted, unexpected, unrequested resumes off managers’ desks,” he writes in Don’t Send a Resume, And Other Contrarian Rules to Help Land a Great Job. “They view speculative resumes as a time-waster.” And when companies advertise openings, the HR department is deluged with resumes, so its first task is to reduce the stack of applications. It is a brutal exercise with the singular negative focus of quickly finding reasons to reject candidates and reduce the pile. Job-seekers must understand that HR culls by the book and the book is the written job description for the position, Jeffrey says. HR is involved in writing the job description and is inclined to reject resumes that contain anything that is even slightly off the written description. “Good candidates are routinely rejected because their background doesn’t seem to precisely fit the job description.” Jeffrey says. “The actual hirer (that is the manager of the department with the opening) is more flexible” and more interested in an applicant’s talent than a rigidly defined job description. Part of his contrarian approach to getting a job is to bypass the HR department altogether. The convention of sending an application to HR means your fate is entirely dependent on one person, usually a junior HR clerk, to properly interpret your resume, translate it into potential value to the company, and then voluntarily send it off to the proper department head. It also means that you won’t make contact with the hiring manager, thereby missing out on the critical strategy of reaching the person who will decide who gets the job. “A company will only hire you if they think you can solve their problem, if you fill their need,” Mr. Fox says. “You are a product the customer will buy if you are affordable, and if in solving the problem the customer will earn more from your work than the amount of money you will be paid for that work.” Jobs exist in organizations to create value and the job-seeker has to demonstrate potential value, either through the promise of increased revenues, reduced costs or innovative products and services. Be bold, he says, and “dollarize” your value to the company — that is calculate in dollars and cents what you are worth. The numbing sameness of resumes is understandable, he says. “No one writes weak resumes. It is always biased in favour of the writer; it is inherently imbalanced” and poses a barrier between the hirer and candidate. “It produces a shadow persona: The modest take credit; the spare are verbose; the humble become egocentric; the literate use arcane jargon; the creative get common.” Other contrarian job-seeking advice and how to stand out from the crowd: Eliminate all self-serving, cotton-candy descriptions from your resume. As difficult as it might be, get rid of any variations of the following phrases: passion for customer service, strategic thinker, long-term vision, proven leadership, results-oriented, ability to rise to new challenges. Delete any references to affiliations and memberships (these might be off-putting to the hirer). Cover only the previous five to eight years’ work experience. Don’t include a personal objective (the company is only interested in what you can do for it). Avoid the pronoun “I” in your resume and minimize its use in the covering letter. (“Hirers are looking for self-confidence, not self-centredness,” Mr. Fox says.) Limit your resume to two pages, otherwise you are telling a prospective employer that you are overly impressed with yourself, can’t prioritize, don’t get the point and your office memos will be “snore bait.” Always write a tailored covering letter for each application (based on your research of the company).

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