“Ask me any­thing, being polit­i­cally cor­rect was checked at the door. You want to know what the Recruiter or Hir­ing Man­ager is think­ing? I’m going to tell you but be pre­pared to know it might not be what you’re expecting. ”

That was my dis­claimer, how I started the bare all ses­sion for 7 job club mem­bers who were fac­ing the end of unem­ploy­ment compensation.

They had all sent count­less resumes, received calls and attended inter­views. They were turned down every time dur­ing more than a year of search­ing. After longevity rang­ing from 7 — 30 years, and one odd duck that had never held a job more than 2 years, they were hurt and con­fused why no one “wanted” them. They had been loyal and hard work­ing and con­sid­ered them­selves “lif­ers” at their jobs. They felt put out on the street even though they all acknowl­edged that it wasn’t personal.

“I go in, they look at me, see I’m in my 50’s and I can see it in their faces… they’re think­ing, what are we going to get out of her, she’s old”.

“What hap­pened to paper applications?”

I asked each of them what they con­sid­ered to be their pro­fes­sion or career and how long they had held their longest job for. I found that they felt it nec­es­sary to man­u­fac­ture resumes that look like lengthy to do lists rather than career mar­ket­ing pieces with exam­ples of strengths and accom­plish­ments because they were proud of every sin­gle thing they did well.

“How do I know if they got my Inter­net appli­ca­tion, there’s no name of any­one to call?”

“The job was taken down off the site a week ago and I still haven’t heard any­thing. How long should I wait to call?” Call about what,” I asked. “To see if I am being con­sid­ered”, the pro­fes­sion­ally dressed 50 some­thing asked. She wanted to know before she went on vaca­tion so she could stop think­ing about it.

“Here, let me help you”, I said.  I let her know that if the job was taken down it meant the search was over and a deci­sion had likely been made or at the very least final can­di­dates selected. She didn’t get it because she con­tin­ued on. “What if I am one of them and I’m not home to get the call because I’m on vaca­tion?” I tried to be gen­tle as I explained it was over… I asked if she needed to hear the rejec­tion.. She said yes. I saved her the call and sug­gested she enjoy her vaca­tion and get excited about new oppor­tu­ni­ties that might be avail­able upon her return.

The patri­ot­i­cally dressed woman who was con­cerned about her age had dif­fi­culty com­ing up with her most impor­tant career accom­plish­ment. After all, she was just an Admin Clerk who main­tained hos­pi­tal depart­men­tal records and admin­is­tered the data­base over the past 30 years. “I don’t know you”, I said, “but let me guess what your strengths and accom­plish­ments were and you tell me how accu­rate I am”.

• You have supe­rior time man­age­ment skills
• Your can learn on the fly and imple­ment new processes and tech­nol­ogy rapidly
• You are good at train­ing and work­ing well with others
• Atten­tion to detail and accu­racy are finely honed skills you possess
• Your atten­dance record is excel­lent and your per­son­nel file lacks dis­ci­pli­nary action

And I went on… And her face lit up. Her demeanor changed as she agreed with what I was say­ing. “Yes, that’s me”, she said. I asked how many records the depart­ment main­tained and the poli­cies for record reten­tion. I talked about con­vert­ing the to do list into an achieve­ment ori­ented resume that cap­tured her skill as a repos­i­tory spe­cial­ist with great capac­ity for knowl­edge management.

She asked me to slow down so she could take notes. She was get­ting it…

There are peo­ple who need your help my friends. They are good peo­ple but they do not under­stand what we look for. It’s not their job to under­stand and we really shouldn’t expect them too. We’re out there look­ing for expertly crafted resumes and pol­ished pre­sen­ters. For­tu­nate indi­vid­u­als do not spend a sig­nif­i­cant amount of time between 18 — 65 search­ing for work. Why should they be expected to be experts at job search, resume writ­ing and interviewing?

The light bulb went off for me the first time I was invited to speak at the local job club. I felt the ques­tions were from far left field. Each time I go back I hear the same or very sim­i­lar ques­tions. So if it’s a bunch of peo­ple that do not know each other, at dif­fer­ent times and places with the same ques­tions… is it them or us?

It’s us. We’re expected to do more with less, we look for the per­fect can­di­date on paper. It’s eas­ier to put a resume in a no pile than the maybe pile and pick up the phone to help make that deter­mi­na­tion. We pop out the job post­ings elec­tron­i­cally and sit back for ATS alerts that there are incom­ing. We don’t think about the effort and time put into each web appli­ca­tion filled out, each resume and cover let­ter crafted.

We look to dis­qual­ify can­di­dates, not qual­ify them.

I chal­lenge you to pick up the phone. Call a local job club, state employ­ment agen­cies (one stop job shops) all have them. Vol­un­teer to speak. You’ll learn from them as much as they learn from you.