Steer Clear of Bad Job-Hunting Advice

by Penelope Trunk
http://finance.yahoo.com/expert/article/careerist/19128
Posted on Wednesday, January 3, 2007, 3:00AM

Among the most common types of career advice that people toss around are tips for job hunting. But be careful who you take advice from, because the workplace is changing very fast right now. As the new generation makes its voice heard at work, a lot of the old rules no longer apply.

Here are eight job-hunting rules that will hold you back if you're not careful:

Bad Rule No. 1: Draw a clear picture of yourself

A résumé is not an autobiography, it's a marketing document. So the goal is not to tell every single thing about yourself, but rather to get an interview. And the best way to land an interview is to make the employer want to find out more about you.

This is why a résumé should be a tease, not treatise. (This is a great example of why that old rule about keeping your résumé to one page is still a very good one.)

Bad Rule No. 2: Don't be too narrow

If you're not narrow, then what are you selling? Think about cars. Is a BMW the car that meets every need for every person? Is a Saturn the car for high-end and low-end markets? You're no different from a car. You can't be everything to everyone.

If you want to stand out, you have to stand for something. This is your unique selling proposition, and once you have one, you'll naturally focus your résumé a little more sharply than, say, a generalist who, in trying to get every job, isn't a fit for any job.

Sure, this means you have to decrease the pool of jobs you'll take. But when it comes to getting flexibility from employers, it's the specialists, not the generalists, who get what they want. That's because the specialists are the hardest to replace.

Bad Rule No. 3: Don't job-hop

The Bureau of Labor reports that people under 30 switch jobs every 18 months. Most people who cite these statistics are aghast at the lack of loyalty in the workforce. But I say, who cares about loyalty? You know what it got the baby boomers? Layoffs.

Job-hoppers are generally happier in their work. They have more passion for their career because their work changes before it gets boring, and they have better vacations because they can really relax between jobs.

Bad Rule No. 4: Don't have gaps in your résumé

This is a good piece of advice if you're going to make work the only thing in your life. Because if you have nothing else in your life, a gap in your résumé means you're staring off into space.

But if work is a means to do other fun things, a gap is a way to grow, and you can say that in an interview.

When someone asks me about the gap in my résumé, I explain how I lived on a French farm and learned a lot about business and life while I plucked the chickens I ate for dinner.

Bad Rule No. 5: Don't have typos in your résumé

I'm not recommending that you misspell words on purpose, but I am recommending that you chill out about the typos. How can you possibly send out perfect résumés every time? Especially if you're customizing each résumé for each job, which is what you should be doing.

Look, if proofreading were such an easy job then publishing companies wouldn't have to hire proofreaders. So don't make yourself crazy about the typos, because while 10 typos is a sign of incompetence, one typo might be a sign that you have a moderate and healthy standard of perfectionism.

Bad Rule No. 6: Honesty is most important

Résumés are marketing documents, so write yours that way. Give an employer exactly what they want without saying something false.

If you're marketing Pop-Tarts, do you start by saying they have a lot of sugar? Not if you want parents to buy them. You say Pop-Tarts have fiber, maybe. Of course, they don't have a lot. But saying it has some fiber isn't false.

My own résumé says, "Boston University, graduate program in English, wrote master's thesis about hypertext." I never graduated from my program (because I got an amazing job offer based on that thesis). But I did write my master's thesis. It's not a lie. Anyway, it would be insane to say, "English graduate program, cut out early."

The bottom line about honesty: Don't be more forthcoming in your own marketing materials than the marketing manager for Pop-Tarts would be in hers.

Bad Rule No. 7: Clean up your online identity

Stop stressing about the stupid stuff you posted when you were drunk (or worse, not drunk). It's out of your control.

Instead, build a more current online identity that will pop up highest when an employer or recruiter does an online background check (which about 70 percent do). One way to get your new identity to the top of the search engines is to use Naymz, a service that helps control what people find out about you online.

Another way to control what people see about you is to blog. A blog can represent you effectively to the online world, and a good blog will show up higher in searches than almost any kind of page that could damage you.

Bad Rule No. 8: Treat a job hunt like a project and be a project manager

That's great advice if you look for a job four times in your whole life. But today, job hunting is so frequent that often there's no downtime -- not even while you start a new job.

Also, job hunting is continuous today because it's mostly about networking, and you can't build your network if you're taking breaks, because being good at networking means being a good friend. And who takes breaks from that?

So treat your job hunt like a personal development project. And question all the advice people give you. Ask yourself, is this the advice someone was giving 20 years ago? Because if the answer is yes, then you probably need some new advice for today.