Will You Pass the Background Check? A Guest Post by Jane Smith

A resume is a carefully self-selected presentation of relevant data that casts you in the best possible light. There’s a reason job interviews exist, rather than hiring candidates on the spot based on their resume: the employer wants a chance to independently verify the first impressions they’ve received from the resume, cover letter, and any other communications with a prospective employee.

But while an interview provides enhanced detail in the form of nonverbal cues, body language, personality, spontaneity, performance under pressure, and the answers given for any number of questions the hiring manager has prepared, many employers choose to go a step further and perform a background check on potential employees.

This is especially true in jobs that put an extra premium on physical safety (like mining or trucking), confidentiality or trade secrets, public image (any political job), or responsibility for minors (like teaching or daycare). While most job-seekers aren’t applying to work someplace with a truly intense standard of scrutiny, such as the FBI, it’s still worth asking yourself: if they dig into my record, what are they going to find?

It helps to know a little bit about how this research is conducted. There are different levels of thoroughness, ranging from the most basic due diligence to some real heavy detective work. At the lightest level, a conscientious employer will do the bare minimum of calling former employers and whoever else you’ve got listed as references (though you might be surprised how many of them don’t bother). This is a good reason not to burn bridges with the people you have worked for, even if you have to leave a job under strained circumstances.

The next step would be to check your credit history. There’s a law governing what employers can do in this regard, called the Fair Credit Reporting Act or FRCA. It requires that you be given a written form so you can sign off and give them permission to do a credit check. This is a piece of paperwork that’s probably handed to you at the interview itself. In that setting, you’re probably nervous and have a lot of other things on your mind, so consider this your warning beforehand. If you’re currently unemployed, one good thing to do with all that free time is check up on your own credit. Just don’t get suckered into subscribing to some other product as many supposedly “free” credit reports will have you do. There are various measures you can take to improve your credit, and you want to make sure you’re not being penalized for some kind of fixable error.

Aside from having you take a urine test to see what you’ve been smoking, the next and generally highest level of scrutiny would be a government records search. Your criminal record, any past bankruptcies, your driving record...all these are publicly accessible government documents. Laws vary from state to state on what information an employer can use to judge your fitness for employment; there’s often a statute of limitations so that they can’t judge you for what you’ve done beyond a certain horizon of years.

Unless you really are applying for a job with a government security clearance like the CIA (in which case they’ll interview just about anyone they can who knew you), there’s just one final step to the typical employee background check you should be aware of. There are two terrifyingly sophisticated and intrusive new tools whereby anyone who wishes to can learn practically every detail of your life.

They’re called Google and Facebook. There’s no bill yet that protects the right of employees not to have their name entered into a search engine. Make sure you’ve scrubbed any material you can from the Internet, not just visual but verbal, that might cast you in a bad light. Welcome to the new normal here in the mutual surveillance state. It used to be the Stasi had to collect information about East German troublemakers in vast storehouses filled with reams of paper documents. Nowadays, we voluntarily broadcast our dirty laundry and all anyone has to do is tune in. Make sure what you’re putting out there is the best version of yourself!

Familiar with personal information screenings and online background checks, Jane Smith regularly writes about these topics at backgroundcheck.org. Feel free to send her comments at janesmith161@gmail.com.

RESUME WRITING & THE DREADED ATS – Part II

If you happened to miss Part I it was posted  here on August 5th. 

Then as now I believe visual appeal is the key to resume writing to land a job. I also feel strongly that more job seekers will get hired via networking and getting a resume directly into the hands of a decision maker, or at least the hands of a trusted intermediary, than by means of electronic submission.

However numerous reader responses to my 8/6 post led me to conduct some further research on the topic. What I discovered is there is now a proliferation of software and products in the ATS market at a price that is affordable for small businesses and placement firms. Thus more employers and recruiters are jumping on the ATS bandwagon to deal with the high volume of resumes submitted for consideration.

This being the case, today more than ever unemployed job seekers and employed personnel who desire to advance their career must take ATS seriously when preparing a resume. This also means writing your own resume is now more complex than ever in terms of knowing what works best for electronic eyes and human eyes; how many resumes you need; how many formats your resume should be in; and which one to use at all times.

So here is some additional food for thought on resume writing and ATS.

1: ATS no longer searches strictly for key words. Now it is capable and programmed to parse and select key words in context. So, although it has value, a laundry list in say an Areas of Expertise section has less value today than in the past unless it is part of a well thought out ATS driven writing process.

Although it appears repetitive to a novice human eye, the computer assigns a value to each key word based on the number of times it appears. This is why advanced resume writing expertise and wordsmith skills are so important.

The ATS compliance process is somewhat complicated and is also constantly changing. But in simple terms certain words and phrases need to appear a number of times in the resume, they must appear in the proper physical location on the resume, and they need to be written in relation to the desired context and relevance of specific job descriptions.

2: I’ve been told by a few SME’s that a candidate profile is parsed, identified and stored in the ATS system as existing or new. So in many systems once a resume is parsed and uploaded that version will remain in the system for a predefined or indefinite amount of time, even if a new one is submitted. On this point I will say that not all experts agree, and most who do say it also depends on the software package.

If true, this means if a poorly written resume and/or one that is not ATS friendly was submitted first and then you edited or rewrote it completely and submitted the new version to the same company for a different job, there’s no guarantee it will replace the one already in the system. Instead you will still be bypassed as being an inappropriate match.

As a job seeker you don’t know which system an employer uses (if any) and when a newer version of your resume will replace the original one already embedded in the system. So my advice is to write and submit your resume with caution.

For those who work in fields or at levels where electronic submission is more prevalent, and for job seekers who target working for specific companies and submit their resume multiple times for multiple positions I’d suggest you get it right the first time or get a professional who knows about ATS to prepare your resume.

3: Key for the resume writer is the ability to read and categorize job descriptions and build favorable profiles based on the data, with particular emphasis on proper vernacular. A resume writer should also pay attention to identify and include specific and non-specific words and jargon that apply to the field and industry the resume is being written and targeted for.

If you have additional information on ATS to share with me and others, please email me and let’s talk. I can then include your knowledge and expertise (attributed or unattributed) in a 3rd follow-up post.

Again, I am available to offer a professional critique of resumes and social media profiles and offer thoughts on how to improve them. Just send it along to perry@perrynewman.com. No cost/no obligation.

Are You One Of the Long-Term Unemployed? by Phil Cooke, Ph.D. Special Guest Blogger

If you’ve been out of a job for more than a year, one big thing could turn it around.

It would be an understatement to say that the economy is in terrible shape. Statistically, it would be worse, except for the millions who have simply given up and walked away from full time employment. I have close friends who are brilliant, but haven’t worked in more than two years. I happen to live and work in Hollywood - an economy built on “freelance” talent. But even there, those who haven’t had a job in years are perceived as unemployable.

What’s the answer? In researching my new book One Big Thing: Discovering What You Were Born to Do I found something remarkable: the power of the niche. In today’s cluttered and distracted culture, special interest groups, demographic targeting, and digital technology have created a world where the niche rules.

Remember the days of major, national magazines like Life and Look? When I was a kid, there were only a handful of these mass-market national magazines available. But today, there are literally thousands of niche magazines catering to ever smaller, more specialized audiences. According to the Huffington Post, there are actual magazines called: Meat Goat Monthly News, Teddy Bear Times, Mules and More, I Love Cats, and Wood. You can pause your reading here if you’d like to race out and buy any of these magazines.

There are so many niches in the music industry that the producers of the Grammy Awards were harshly criticized recently when they cut the number of categories by more than thirty.

Today, corporations and their marketing teams understand that the key to connecting with customers is to be the best in the world at a very small niche. Even most giants of American business like Apple, Starbucks, and Walt Disney Studios, began serving a very small, focused market.

So what does niche marketing have to do with your career? Everything. Accurate statistics are hard to come by, but many believe the average person will move from seven to eleven different companies during their working life. Today, it’s rare that someone actually retires from the same career they began. To a certain extent, those statistics reflect the reality of changing technology and it’s impact on the marketplace.

But they also reflect the incredible distraction we face on a daily basis. Technology has made it far easier to tryout multiple jobs, communicate with more potential employers, and experience a wider range of opportunities. But it’s also created a generation of men and women who are average at many things, rather than being extraordinary at one big thing.

I suggest that it’s time to focus. The truth is, more and more studies are confirming that the only thing multi-tasking does is allow us to do many things badly. We may have many interests, but when it comes to our career, perhaps it’s time to become the best in the world at one big thing.

Olympic level athletes understand the power of focus. Even those who compete in multiple events keep it in the same specialty. Perhaps the reason Alison Kraus has won more Grammy Awards than any other female artist is because she’s the best in the world at the tiny category of Bluegrass music. No matter what happens in the other categories, when they announce the bluegrass awards, year after year, she walks away with the spoils, because she’s remarkable.

Take a moment of brutal honesty. You may be pretty good at many things, but are you world changing in a single area? Do you perform so highly at one big thing that people notice?

In a world of interchangeable workers – many of whom are mediocre at best – what’s the single area of focus where you could potentially perform at Olympic levels? Figuring it out could change the course of your career, and transform your future.

About the author:

Phil Cooke, Ph.D., is a filmmaker, media consultant, and author of One Big Thing: Discovering What You Were Born to Do. Learn more at PhilCooke.com.