“I found it far more interesting and profitable to romance than to tell the truth.
Joseph Weil 1875-1976
Tactic 1 - The 30 second attention grab
Resumes are all about presentation. Some hiring manager is going to scan your resume and make a determination in about 30 seconds or less. Your resume is then going to one of two places, the callback pile or the garbage can. If you don't do what you need to do to capture their attention, you’ll never get a callback. No callback no interview, no interview no job, no job no cash, no cash no…well, you get the picture.
Basically, you have 30 seconds or less to grab attention and get that callback. This books main focus is how to make your phone ring. While there is no short way to explain exactly how to grab their attention, you will generally attain the knowledge through the: ―what to do‖, ―what NOT to do‖
and ―how to‖ guidelines and principals of this book. The number one thing you can do is learn to think like the person hiring you and avoid the obvious pitfalls once you understand the mentality.
The general guidelines for avoiding the 30 second, resume to garbage can are:
Do NOT copy and paste the bullet list of skillsets, experience or keywords a company is looking for.
DO Make your fake job title match your stated salary.
If necessary, research your industry’s keywords and use them correctly throughout your resume.
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Do NOT leave large gaps in employment, unless easily excused in the cover letter.
Make sure that your experience and educational background makes make sense together.
Have ―printed‖, ―original‖ documentation of listed certificates or degrees.
NEVER clutter your resume with hobbies, activities or groups you belong to. More often than not, They’ll be used against you.
Do not leave mistakes or sloppy grammar in your resume. At the very least, pay $50 bucks to have it edited online.
Do NOT take too much credit for a project that obviously needed more than 1 person to complete.
In a poll of 150 hiring executives at large companies, the execs estimated that nearly 30 percent of all job candidates fudge on their résumés. It’s actually worse than that, says Patricia Gillette, a San Francisco lawyer who has investigated hundreds of résumés while defending companies against former employees. "Probably 90 percent of the time, people lie on their résumé," she says. ―We figure that means 60 percent of the job force lies and gets away with it.‖
60% lie and get away with it. Those are pretty good odds for you! Just think, if the average idiot can lie and get away with it, what can you do with knowledge and a planned approach? Main rule: don’t lie about experience you can’t learn in 90 days and don’t make up lies that don’t make sense! If you going to bother to lie, do it well. We all hate bad liars but we love good ones. Kennedy, Clinton… We feel so charmed we excuse the behavior.
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Tactic 2 - Know How Reference Checks Are Conducted – Find Out What Your References Will Say About You
You must plan on each of your references being contacted by your
prospective employer. In order to be more convincing you should include at least one former supervisor, one peer, and one customer or client. Choose your best bets on all 3 accounts and then check for yourself. DO NOT LEAVE THIS UP TO CHANCE. Why on earth would you just hope for good reviews? Don’t just hope, find out or get someone to lie for you.
Make sure you know EXACTLY what each reference will say during the call. You can’t afford to be blind-sided by them saying something you weren’t prepared for. If you can’t find people willing to lie on your behalf, then at least call each reference you have listed yourself to find out what is being said about you. At the end of each call, ask the reference to
recommend someone else to contact. You can’t afford to let any ―wild card‖
references to be thrown into the mix. Again, you must cover ALL angles.
When performing your own reference checks, avoid asking questions that require a yes or no answer. Open-ended questions will reveal patterns in how your performance is being rated. There will be more on this in the how to section of the book.
Yes, and incidentally, the power of the Internet comes into play here because you can now go to Linkedin and be proactive. Get in touch with other job hunters and network. Put your heads together. Agree to be each-others references. Who better than a guy that you know for a fact can speak the language? Make it mutually beneficial. Lie for each other to get better positions, titles and salaries. When corporate America tries to squeeze you like a tube of toothpaste, grab them with both hands and squeeze back!
Tactic 3 - Know what HR people look for – the 4 basic facts
Legally HR can only ask a few basic things:
Confirmation of employment: ―Yes, he worked for us.‖
Dates of Employment: He worked for us from (start date) to (end date)
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The job title of the most recent position held.
Would you rehire this person? If they answer no- you’re done!
Due to the oppressive legal environment in which we live, this is where most references will end. Since anyone interested in hiring you can only prove the where, when and job title, this leaves a great deal of room for exaggeration or, if necessary, even outright fabrication. The specific job duties or
responsibilities can be rather freely expanded as can your former salary. You might also get away with some minor extension of the period of employment should you wish to cover up a gap in your employment history.
Every company I interviewed reported that, according to well-established written rules, they are required to perform mandatory employment reference checks on every single applicant. However, when I discussed the subject with a dozen hiring managers in a bar after a few drinks, an entirely different story emerged. Every one of them admitted that checks are often either skipped or only partially completed.
Today’s managers live in a very rushed environment so many managers simply can’t find the time to place the repeated phone calls and mail out the reference requests. They also know that should they make a mistake during a check it could get them into hot water so they’re more than a little
intimidated.
Another arrogant mistake is made by those that carry the attitude that they, and they alone, can confidently extract the best employee from a crowd by
"gut feel" because they’re such a "good judge of character" and so have no need for further data. Several managers with extensive hiring experience admitted that they had yet to perform their first reference check! Just be aware that for whatever reason, many checks are never made.
Tactic 4 – Make the hiring authority jump through hoops - Provide a slightly altered address for former employer
If you provide a slightly altered address for your former employer, the mail may go astray. If the address is a PO Box, simply switch two digits of the PO Box number. Otherwise, you might try incorrectly abbreviating the town name and switching two digits of the zip code. This may only serve to delay
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the arrival of a reference letter, but there’s always the chance that they won’t even bother to follow up with a second attempt.
The goal here is not to blatantly lie but to make more hoops for your hiring authority to jump through. Be a pain in the ass. Give them a good story and make it (un-seemingly) hard to verify anything except what you want them to see. Humans are human. No one wants to do more work than they feel is necessary. Everyone cuts corners. The odds are good that if you make a good impression and follow it up with a great interview, you’ll land the job and never look back.
Tactic 5 - Learn how HR Managers Check the Truth in your Resume – learn where your lies will be most effective
A survey by the New York Times Job Market research team identified the following techniques used by hiring managers to verify job candidates' claims made on their resumes:
Checking of
references………47%
Evaluating candidates during the interview process………30%
Checking of past employers/schools listed on resumes………...17%
Asking questions of candidates to see how specific their answers are………6%
Evaluating new employees once they are on the job………...……….4%
Requiring samples of candidates'
work………2%
Requiring candidates to complete tests during the hiring process………2%
As you can see from the above chart, by paying attention to the top 3 areas you can achieve effectiveness on 94% of your resume! This is close to the 80/20 concept found in most business models today. 20 percent of your customers bring you 80 percent of your business and so on. Pay attention to
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reference checking, the interview and past employers & schools to be 94%
ahead of the rest of the jobseekers.
Tactic 6 – People believe paper documentation - Using Mail-Drops and PO Boxes for Reference Checks
Another way to create nearly un-checkable references from large companies is to use a mail drop service, such as a rental box at a Mail Boxes Etc., that accepts mail addressed to massive organizations. AT&T is a favorite
because it is so large, decentralized, and hard to track down.
Here’s how it works. A cheat gives a recruiter the mail drop and the name and number of a fictitious supervisor. If the recruiter calls, the given
reference, a "secretary" he’s set up (a friend who can act on the phone) says the company’s policy is to respond by letter only. Mail is then sent to the fictitious supervisor and forwarded to the cheater, who then writes his own recommendation. People believe paper documentation. The Society for
Human Resource Management study found that only 30 percent of all people hiring verify the authenticity of references in letters provided by candidates.
Tactic 7 - Understanding Employment Background Check – then using that to your advantage
It's not so much what employers can say, as it is what they're willing to risk saying. In many states, the laws related to employment background checks allow you to sue. If your ex-employer intentionally states false or
misleading information that prevents you from landing a job, they could be subject to your subpoena. Employers are even hesitant to even state the truth to begin with, because former employees might try to sue anyway. It's a burden of proof thing and it costs employers to go to or stay out of court.
Even if employers are in the clear, they risk worker-bee juries siding with the "little people" against the "big, bad, corporate giants." This is one of those times a stereotype is tilted in your favor. Leverage it for all it’s worth.
Use this to your advantage by calling your old employers and pretending to inquire about yourself as a former employee. Ask leading questions and see how far this employer is willing to press their luck when discussing details about you. Even do this to employers you know that you left on bad terms with, just to see the limits of the kinds of information that can be given. If
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you are too chicken to do this imagine the box and step outside of it. Get a friend do it for you and listen in on the other line.
Employers face yet another lawsuit dilemma, which might make them more willing to spill the beans about you however. Laws in some states permit employers to sue other employers, if during employment background
checks, they omit or lie about serious employee acts. This is especially true if the employees again commit the same or similar acts on the job.
Employers might also get sued for "negligent hiring" if they don't screen employees through background checks, and someone suffers injury because of it.
Two rather serious examples of employee hires a company can get sued over are convicted child molesters working with children and substance abusers working in the transportation industry. Check your employers state
guidelines and be extra careful when applying for jobs that work with victims, children and those that can lend to serious injury for they be more sensitive and inquisitive for obvious and necessary reasons.
Chapter 3 – Phrases To Avoid & Dumb Mistakes
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