Ninety-five percent of Fortune 500 companies use an Applicant Tracking System (ATS) or talent management system to organize and track résumés. Companies readily admit that many qualified candidates, as many as 70%, are screened out before their résumés are reviewed by a human. When you submit your résumé online, it is screened by a bot, if it can’t read the inform...

If job postings are windows into the working world, maybe somebody needs to clean the glass, because it can be awfully hard to know what you’re really seeing! That’s why the first letter in REAL stands for “Read between the lines” when you read job postings. In this post I’ll tell you how to do that, as well as how to Evaluate the fit, Apply with an advantage and Learn from the experience so...

For many years during my 18-year corporate career, I remained in a number of roles I disliked, and a few of them were a terrible fit. Now I see that there were some critical factors that influenced my strong resistance to make the changes I needed to, including worries about money, self-esteem issues, confusion as to what I really wanted, reluctance to start over in a new job, and just plain fear. Now, after two reinvent...

The resume black hole. The abyss. The void. The applicant tracking system (ATS) creates all kinds of stress and irritation for job seekers. Candidates almost universally loathe the experience. The ATS requires them to copy and paste sections from their resume into tiny boxes and answer questions that could be easily discussed in a quick phone call, adding to what is already a user-unfriendly, often tedious experience. While...

Failing to commit has sometimes been recognized as a West Coast issue, but I haven’t seen hard statistics about it. I don’t really know if this trend is limited to one area or not, but from what I observe, the reluctance to commit to just about anything is an increasing phenomenon in the Pacific Northwest. There’s a huge difference between evaluating and weighing out options to see what works best and j...

The essentials of the job hunt don’t really change according to your employment status, but employed searchers do have to consider a number of special issues that don’t affect their unemployed counterparts. 10 RULES OF THE ROAD Rule 1: Mum’s the Word The first rule of the searching-while-employed club is: You do not talk about searching while employed. The one exception applies when, and only w...

When I was in my most unhappy period at the end of my 18-year corporate career, I was the definition of “stuck.” At age 40, I had spent all those years slogging through jobs and promotions, trying so hard to finally land a senior role that I could love and feel I was great at, working with people I respected, engaging in tasks I enjoyed. And I desperately wanted to be a part of a company that was delivering prod...

You’ve been practicing your answers to the typical questions for your next big interview, but what about the inevitable “Do you have any questions for us?” portion? Asking the right questions gives you not only more information about the company, but it will show that you’re 1) insightful and a critical thinker and 2) eager for the job, a real team player. Basing your questions off of how the inte...

Over the last 19 years as a career & professional development consultant, I have worked with countless employers seeking ideal candidates to fill critical roles in their organizations. Regardless of the career field, recruiters and hiring managers agree that after the basic criteria of skills and experiences are met, candidates are accepted or eliminated based upon how they fit into the culture of an organization....

A substantial part of my work is helping people identify why they are unhappy at work and figure out what they need to do about it. The other end of that is helping them carry out their plans successfully. Although there are many ways to change someone’s experience inside of their current employment scenario, it’s not always possible to do that. There is a variety of reasons someone may decide to change: they de...