Former hiring manager and consultant J. T. Kirk was kind enough to answer a few questions about his very useful and comprehensive guide to getting a job in today's difficult economy Confessions of a Hiring Manager: Sage Advice for Fearless Job Seekers and Career Changers in a Confused Economy.
The author shared insider secrets, gleaned from his over twenty years of experience as a hiring manager in both the private and public sectors. He described the tools that every job seeker needs, for getting hired in any employment market.
Thanks to J.T. Kirk for his time and for his very informative and insightful answers to the questions.
What was the background to writing this book Confessions of a Hiring Manager: Sage Advice for Fearless Job Seekers and Career Changers in a Confused Economy?
J.T. Kirk: I think the major impetus for writing the book was my repeated frustration over a 20-year career as a hiring manager in several technical fields at seeing candidates fail to get the jobs for which they were highly qualified. They managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, I often say.
In the late 1990s, I wrote an article for an industry publication on what hiring managers want—and don’t want—to see in cover letters and resumes. Several months later, a professional association got hold of a copy of that article and asked me to present a workshop on cover letters and resume writing for their annual convention. It was so well received that I began to offer the workshop to regional and local chapters of that association as well as to others. In early 2009, I finally compiled my notes, handouts, and training foils, and committed my experiences to paper, the final result being Confessions of a Hiring Manager.
How is this book different from the countless resume and job finding books already on the market?
J.T. Kirk: Confessions of a Hiring Manager differs in these respects: It’s the first book written on finding a job or changing a career from the perspective of someone who actually has hired hundreds of people and who has spent 20 years going through the grinding process of screening thousands of resumes, conducting hundreds of interviews, and many dozens of salary negotiations. It shows returning U.S. military veterans how to translate military skills, knowledge, and experience into a language that hiring managers understand and need.
It demonstrates to job seekers how to control job interviews and how to negotiate the best possible compensation package. It teaches job seekers and career changers the only strategy that works in this or any economy, which is being sensitive to the issues and needs of the hiring manager, and not how “great” the candidates are.
Unlike the other resume and job-search books on the market today, which only give people a fish to feed them for a day, Confessions of a Hiring Manager teaches people how to fish—how to develop a job-search strategy that will feed them for a lifetime.
Why do so many qualified candidates for a position fail to get hired?
J.T. Kirk: Several reasons: they don’t have a well-thought-out strategy, if they have one at all. They do not grasp that they have seven to ten seconds to grab the hiring manager’s attention before the hiring manager is off to the next cover letter or resume—they don’t know how to seize and sustain the hiring manager’s interest to get him or her to continue reading. They mistakenly think that the cover letter is all about them and their accomplishments, when it’s about the needs of the hiring manager and his or her team or group. They approach job interviews out of fear instead of seeing them as the opportunity to sell hiring managers in person how they understand the issues and concerns facing the organization.
One major hurdle that all candidates must be aware of: they must come across as approachable, likable, and knowledgeable—and in many cases, in that order of importance. To fit into an existing team dynamic, the “likability” factor has to be high because if it’s not—even though a candidate may be highly qualified and knowledgeable—I as a hiring manager don’t have the patience to have to deal with so-called “high-maintenance” people—and neither does a team that has too many projects and not enough people to work on them. The squeaky wheel that has to get the grease is quickly resented by the other wheels.
How is today’s job market different from previous ones?
J.T. Kirk: The job market is always a competitive one, and some industries or fields are historically more competitive than others. More people are changing fields, seeking opportunities in different areas of the country, trying to start their own businesses, working part-time or as contractors. The changing population demographics suggest that post-“bust” job growth will likely occur in the service industry, and that many jobs lost over the past two years will either not return to previous levels or show up in a different form in other industries. In this current job environment, people with impressive education, skills, and experience credentials are seeking jobs well below their capabilities just so they can pay the mortgage, put food on the table, and have some kind of insurance coverage.
Such a jobs environment makes many hiring managers nervous because they fear that when hiring rebounds in the future, there may be an exodus of current employees returning to their former professions, thereby creating a job loss for some industries. I don’t think that fear is well-founded because it didn’t happen to any significant degree during the middle 1980s when the price of a barrel of oil dropped to under $10. At that time, many unemployed geologists took jobs in the environmental sciences field for 30 to 50 percent lower pay.
The fear was that as soon as the price of oil began to rise to more profitable levels, many would exit the environmental sciences in droves to return to the oil patch. That left hiring managers in the environmental sciences reluctant to hire over-qualified professionals for fear of the possible stampede to their former jobs when economic conditions improved. But it didn’t happen for three reasons: first, it took awhile for the price of oil to return to more stable-market levels worldwide; second, ex-oil company geologists were “bitten once, twice shy” about jumping back to the oil patch; and third, the oil companies did not go on a hiring blitz to bring back experienced geologists.
How can prospective employees better package their skills to greatly enhance their employment opportunities?
J.T. Kirk: They need to learn to align their skills with the needs of hiring managers and their organizations. That usually means having more than one version of a resume so that it speaks specifically to that vacancy. Prospective employees must understand how to package themselves in their cover letter, resume, and supplemental information as a potential “profit center” or “revenue generator” for that hiring manager’s organization, because in essence, that’s what a hiring manager is looking for.
No one hires anyone just to “do a job”—it’s the potential to add value to a product or service that enhances the overall value of the organization that makes a job candidate stand out.
You describe the PSKE Portfolio™ in the book. What is that system, and why is it so much more effective than traditional approaches
J.T. Kirk: Most people approach the entire process of getting a job in a disjointed manner, where the cover letter shows no “provenance” or relation to the resume. And any supplemental documentation, other than official documents, adds to the incoherent presentation of an individual’s professional background and qualifications.
The Professional Skills, Knowledge, and Experience Portfolio, what I call the PSKE Portfolio, organizes this information into a coherent, consistent documentation set. It’s more than using the same formatting and font choices for the cover letter, resume, and supplemental documentation; it’s how each document is staged according to purpose to present the candidate as the complete professional the hiring manager needs.
The cover letter is written after the resume is finished because the cover letter includes the highlights of interest to the hiring manager that have been culled from the resume. The cover letter serves as an introductory brochure to get the hiring manager to want to review the resume.
The resume highlights the accomplishments and achievements of a professional career; the supplemental documentation, such as patent awards or a publications list, further attests to the candidate’s being a potential profit center or the hiring manager’s solutions provider; the “leave-behind” documentation, such as copies of industry journal articles, conference papers, or other samples continues to work in the candidate’s favor long after the interview by being yet more reminders of the candidate’s expertise.
It’s all about keeping your name at the top of the short list.
How can resumes be made more useful and effective?
J.T. Kirk: Here are five tips that will greatly improve any candidate’s chances of getting hired sooner than later:
1. Don’t include an “Objective” section on a resume. It’s a waste of valuable resume real estate space and the vast majority of Objectives are obvious and self-serving. A hiring manager reading a resume asks this question: “What can this person do for me and my team?” and not “What does this person want my organization to do for him or her?”, which is how most Objectives read. Sell the hiring manager on your objective, in so many words, in the cover letter.
2. Hiring managers want to know more about what a qualified candidate accomplished, not what they were “responsible for.” We all have responsibilities, so tell the hiring manager what you managed, completed, developed, designed, managed, created, designed, sold, wrote, etc.
3. Hiring managers love to see quantitative information about candidate accomplishments. Nothing says “I’m great” more than seeing on a resume the number of dollars a project generated, or costs avoided by the implementation of a new process or design change, or even percentage increase in efficiency for some procedure or process adjustment. And highlight those accomplishments in bold so they stand out for the hiring manager. That kind of information demonstrates a candidate’s ability to be a profit center or revenue generator.
4. Don’t try to disguise insufficient education with a list of courses, two-day seminars, and week-long workshops — unless they led to certification or some type of license. Don’t put your GPA on your resume, either. While it may impress you, your resume may be screened by others with more impressive education credentials. If you are asked to provide your GPA, do so in your cover letter.
5. Here are some “grab bag” tips:
a. Contact information: name, email address, and phone number are sufficient these days; no need to include a street address (for personal safety reasons, especially for women)
b. Don’t include personal information such as interests, hobbies, children, etc. That’s good conversation after you have been hired and are on the job.
c. Avoid fancy fonts, graphics, and photos on your resume.
d. Limit any job duties to one bullet item for any position older than 10 years; hiring managers are more interested in your most recent experience.
e. Ensure each entry attests to the professional you are claiming to be.
Why are so many cover letters ineffective, and how can they be made to catch a prospective employer’s eye?
J.T. Kirk: I hate sounding like a broken record, but most cover letters smack of a “Hey, look at me!” approach to trying to get the hiring manager’s attention with unqualified assertions of how skilled, knowledgeable, or experienced the candidate is.
Candidates must pull from their resume those specific bulleted items that attest in a demonstrable manner their expertise (the dollars earned on a project, costs avoided by implementing a new program, and/or percent improvements in efficiency) and put them in a bulleted list on their one-page cover letter.
Here’s a sure-fire way to check that a cover letter is on the right track to speak to the hiring manager’s needs: the number of instances of the words you/your/yours should be greater than the number of instances of the words I/me/my/mine. In Confessions of a Hiring Manager, I show several examples of cover letters that fail and succeed with this simple test.
Cover letters should close with a strong statement that says “I will contact you in several days to discuss…” rather than the weak “I hope to hear from you to discuss further my qualifications.” Assertiveness in a cover letter backed up by demonstrable accomplishments on a resume sells. Too many letters take a Cowardly Lion approach to gaining the attention of a hiring manager.
When a person lands a job interview, how can that individual gain control of the interview and land the job?
J.T. Kirk: The first thing an individual must do to gain control of the interview is to be thoroughly familiar with the contents of his or her cover letter, resume, and any other documentation they may have provided, such as a list of patents or publications list, and be able to speak to any item on them at length. For many of the questions that will be asked, this information will form the basis of responses about skills, knowledge, and experience.
It’s also better to respond to a question with “I don’t know” rather than try to bluff a correct response. If you’re wrong, folks will consider that you don’t know what you are talking about, which may call into question your responses to other questions. Best policy is to be honest in all responses.
The interview is not just something to “survive” as many other authors try to portray; it’s an opportunity for the candidate to shine and promote him or herself as that hiring manager’s solutions provider, and in that sense, it’s the attitude of being in control that shifts the “feel” of the interview to an occasion to demonstrate how and why the organization should be interested in hiring You, Inc.
Those candidates who take on the attitude of being in business for themselves when they are interviewing for a job do a better job of promoting their skills, knowledge, and experience than those who are simply interviewing for a job. That kind of self-confidence and assurance comes with adequate preparation and a well-developed skill set.
Negotiating a compensation package is always challenging. How can a person receive a great salary and benefits even in today’s economy?
J.T. Kirk: Most people when they are offered a salary figure either accept it or reject it. Most don’t think of the third option: negotiate. Knowing whether a salary figure is “good” depends on how well you understand your family’s immediate and future financial needs. Therefore, a good salary figure for one person may be unacceptable to another.
Most people leave money on the table when it comes to negotiating a salary because they accept the first number they are given, or they blurt out a salary number when asked. The key to maximizing any salary offer is never to be the first one to volunteer a salary figure. The process of “drilling down” to the best possible salary offer is achieved by answering a question with a question.
For example, many candidates will be asked: “So, what are your salary requirements?” and their first instinct is to toss out a number, but how do you know where that number stands in relation to the number the hiring manager had in mind? Was it higher or lower? You won’t know unless you respond to that question with a question of your own: “Can you tell me the range of the salary for the position?” Even if the job posting included a salary figure, now you are asking for more information that will determine whether that posted figure is in the low end, midpoint, or upper end of the range for the position, and are in a better position yourself to start negotiating for a higher salary.
The people who are most successful at negotiating higher salaries or “perqs” are those with highly valued skills, experience, or knowledge and those in higher executive-level positions. Salary negotiation is much more difficult for entry-level or junior positions.
I have several actual salary negotiation examples in Confessions of a Hiring Manager that show how such a negotiation can drill down through several layers of questions to arrive at a salary level that leaves little or no money on the table.
Career changes are the norm today. How can skills be made more transferable between careers?
J.T. Kirk: People should think of their skills more as areas of functional expertise and less so as specific day-to-day tasks. While some day-to-day tasks may transfer well, such as a proficiency with using spreadsheets like Microsoft Excel or Microsoft Project, the ability to organize and track multiple responsibilities across different functions suggests a project management functional expertise. While many people know how to use the basic functions of these software programs, fewer know how to use the Visual Basic programming language and macros to customize these applications for specific purposes, which is a highly transferable and marketable skill.
Chapter 10 of Confessions of a Hiring Manager speaks specifically to how returning Armed Forces veterans can translate their military skills, knowledge, and experience into an expertise recognized and valued by the civilian job market by showing how a single task contributes to a core competency, and how several core competencies contribute to a functional expertise that hiring managers need and understand.
The format of a functional resume highlights transferable skills in different functions and should be the format of choice for people wanting or needing to change careers. The functional resume emphasizes in priority what you know, and secondarily where you used that knowledge. The reverse-chronological resume is the format used for folks wanting or needing to change jobs within the same field or profession and combines employment history with accomplishments. Confessions of a Hiring Manager has several annotated good and bad examples of both functional and reverse-chronological resumes.
What is the first step a person should take toward getting that dream job?
J.T. Kirk: Ah…the elusive “dream job”…many people talk about getting one but no one can really provide a hard-and-fast definition because there is no such thing, because most people’s concept of a dream job is based on whimsical notions. A dream job is not one that pays you lots of money to do little or no work, requires no special skills or knowledge, or rewards you handsomely but leaves you stressed out.
A dream job, by any detailed definition, is one that rewards you well for your specialized skills and knowledge, inspires your spirit, and values your contributions, to name just a few qualities. I can sum up the idea of a dream job with this quote: The happiest people are not those who have the best of everything but those who make the best of everything they have.
OK, but back to the question. The first step is to assess how well a person’s current job approaches their ideal job. Next, conduct an assessment of the skills, knowledge, and experience necessary to be in that job. Finally, create a plan that addresses how to obtain the required expertise for that position, and keep that plan current with regular adjustments to it. That may involve going to back to school for a different or advanced degree; it may involve significant personal sacrifice on the individual’s part and that of that person’s family.
The book of Proverbs is full of very practical wisdom, and Chapter 22 Verse 3 states “A prudent person foresees the difficulties ahead and prepares for them; the simpleton goes blindly on and suffers the consequences.”
What is next for J.T. Kirk?
J.T. Kirk: Besides speaking to audiences and conducting workshops, I also provide one-on-one collaboration with individuals who need my personal assistance with developing their PSKE Portfolio™. I’m also working on my next book, entitled 50 Things You Can Do NOW to Keep Your Job, to be published this fall by Kings Crown Publishing as well as other publishing projects.
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My book review of Confessions of a Hiring Manager: Sage Advice for Fearless Job Seekers and Career Changers in a Confused Economy by J.T. Kirk.
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