Skills
.So what does all this new technology have to do with job search? Actually, everything! In my interaction with members of The Five O’Clock Club, and job hunters in general, I have come to realize that more people, especially those of the Gen X, Y and Me 2.0 generations, are more comfortable corresponding via e-mail, texting or instant messaging. Certainly, more of us baby boomers need to recognize this. And more companies and Human Resources professionals are responding in kind. Not only are more companies communicating with potential hires via e-mail and text, they are engaging in streaming videos on Skype and tweeting one another on Twitter. Recently, a member of one of our Insider Groups mentioned that after he was contacted for an initial phone interview with the hiring manager, he immediately looked up this person’s profile on LinkedIn only discover that the hiring manager had already checked out his profile. This is one example of many that we are hearing from our members who often go through a lengthy screening process in which e-mails, tweets, and streaming IM’s define the first step in the recruiting process.
So what is one to make of this shift away from the more personal approach to communicating via phone and in-person, to these ongoing dialogues over the Internet? In her book “Alone Together,” author Sherry Turkle, a professor of technology and a practicing clinical psychologist, speaks of a whole generation starting in the early 1980’s (the blossoming of the Gen X generation) who grew up with the first computers hitting the mass market, then evolving through the subsequent decades to the present in which Facebook, video games, and even interacting with robots and Avatars where “young people” spend a majority of their lives. After conducting numerous interviews and research, Turkle found the majority of people from these generations find a security in communicating via the Internet so they don’t have in speaking with people in person (or even on the phone). It’s almost as if you can present yourself more “perfectly” online than you can in-person, so why risk it!
Although these new modes of communication may present less risk in exposing oneself when interviewing, in some ways this kind of communication may create more risk in others. If job hunters feel more secure in presenting themselves and their credentials online rather than in person, many companies are responding in kind by looking for the perfect candidate. In an earlier blog, I had written about the new buzz word floating around HR departments referred to as chasing the “purple squirrel’, where companies are looking for that impossibly qualified candidate to fill an opening. This “checking each other out” over the Internet where more HR professionals and hiring managers are pre-screening applicants by viewing their LinkedIn profiles, Facebook pages, or other social media appears to be the new “norm,” but it is creating a much longer and less personal process for filling jobs. More of our Five O’Clock Club members are reporting that the initial interview with a potential employer is almost always by phone, and usually after some initial correspondence via e-mail, LinkedIn, or Twitter.
So here’s the conundrum for me, and I believe for many job hunters: in order to compete in this new type of job market gone virtual you need to be on LinkedIn and have constant surveillance of your e-mails, tweets and IM’s to be seen and recognized by potential employers. But how do you break through this process, which can also be extremely impersonal and require you to be almost perfect? Somehow, I think there is a happy medium between these two extremes. We know these new modes of communicating via technology are here to stay but we also know the importance of human contact. While perhaps sounding somewhat paradoxical, there is a power in being vulnerable in front of other people. As a former corporate recruiter myself, the periodic blunder, or show of nervousness or uncertainty added a human element to those whom I interviewed. Of course, knowing how to handle and rebound from a faux pas was the real test! Unfortunately, I am not sure enough HR people and hiring managers are giving themselves an opportunity to see this human element in their applicants.
So here’s my advice to our members: keep on top of all the new technologies because that will be a matter of survival, but strive for those in-person meetings. We have a presentation we offer at our Insider Group meetings called “How to Turn Job Interviews into Offers.” Perhaps a precursor to this presentation might be “How to Turn an Initial Phone Screen into an In-Person Interview ,” vulnerabilities and all. It’s not an easy task, but as one of our recent members stated upon landing a new position, “while taking me out of my comfort zone, picking up the phone (not e-mail) and calling the hiring manager directly is what got me the interview, but only after a great deal of persistence.” And just think, taking this approach may just make you stand out from your competition who are too busy texting one another!
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