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40hz:
Every job requires a variety of skills, and it's those individual skills that are important (not the job title or sector), and nearly every job has at least 1 skill that will be relevant to whatever you are applying for. Sometimes it just requires a bit of thinking to see it, so you can list it.
-app103 (August 23, 2014, 06:53 AM)
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Agree.

But...

It's not so much a thing an applicant can do - but certainly something a potential employer should do - is to remember the advice given by Paul Hawkins in his book Growing a Business: Hire the person, not the position.

Unfortunately, in an era of HR departments and 'pre-screening' forms with checkboxes, if you don't have enough exact hits on a laundry list, you'll often never make it to that F2F interview where you can (hopefully) shine.

I went in for an interview ages ago where I was asked if I had any direct Sun experience. I was familiar with it as far as the name and general specs went. And I had played with a SPARC station - once. So I said "no, but" I was very experience with IBM, Novell, and (the then spankin' new) Windows NT Server network environments. And that I also had enterprise level VAX and Unix experience - so picking up another network/OS shouldn't be a problem.

The HR person frowned and stared at her form and said "I don't have a box for any of those..." Then she smiled (I had been laying on the charm big time up till then) and said "Well...why don't I just check it off as yes anyway, and if it comes up in the interview, you can explain it to them!"

Turned out this company was migrating off Sun and was looking for migration specialists. Of which there were a fair number applying. Or so they said. (Yeah, sure! ::)) However, what they didn't have (yet) was anybody who really knew NT server. So I didn't get the job I went to interview for. Instead, I got a different job with them. As their NT server "goto" guy.

But I never would have gotten to interview at all if the HR person hadn't checked the box for "recent experience with Sun Microsystems environment." And that's always going to be a problem whenever non-tech screeners (HR) sit between a candidate and the interview panel for a technical position.

In this economy candidates have to be pre-screened if you don't want to interview 200 people every time there's a job opening. And people with sufficient tech experience to read between the lines are usually far too busy with their own work to be handed a list of 50 interviewees to attend to. But with a poor screening process you risk throwing out the gold along with the sand when you're panning for the "good help."

I don't have a good across the board suggestion for how to fix that.

Of course there's always this to contend with if you're a job applicant:

this

app103:
Unfortunately, in an era of HR departments and 'pre-screening' forms with checkboxes, if you don't have enough exact hits on a laundry list, you'll often never make it to that F2F interview where you can (hopefully) shine.
-40hz (August 23, 2014, 08:01 AM)
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I believe it was a single keyword search (Zendesk) on oDesk which got me invited to interview with Sitepoint/Learnable, and it was everything I have ever done, which got me hired, much of which was not in any of my employment history. All that extra stuff I did for fun, while unemployed, made me a perfect fit for the job, more perfect than someone else with a lot more job experience. I didn't just shine in the interview, I glowed and showered sparks. I believe I may have been the first and last person interviewed for the position.

I got really lucky when a job, that seemed like it was made just for me, accidentally landed in my lap (I didn't apply for the job, they contacted me, first). Results like this would be hard to duplicate, either by myself or by any company with a position to fill, especially if they use a short checklist of keywords for their pre-screening.

40hz:
Results like this would be hard to duplicate, either by myself or by any company with a position to fill, especially if they use a short checklist of keywords for their pre-screening.
-app103 (August 23, 2014, 07:38 PM)
--- End quote ---

Or a single keyword in your case? ;D

But either way,  congratulations once again. You deserved a break. And they got a very fine asset. :Thmbsup:

KynloStephen66515:
One thing should be noted here:

Never lie about qualifications.

A friend of mine is a Manager at a local company, and recently we have been discussing one of his members of staff (For some reason, my opinion is of a meaningful nature to him when it comes to anything 'managerial'...not sure why but hey ho!)...After careful review of his employment documents (Which I have already been authorized to view by the owner of the company for the reasons already mentioned) I spotted that the member of staff in question has put a Masters Degree in a certain topic...now...not being relevant to the job he is doing, this got left unchecked.  I have met the person in question...and I can tell you right here and now, they with that one interaction with him...I know for a fact that he did not have said qualification...but obviously these things needed to be verified...anyhow...long story short...I was right...now they are just deciding what to do and if it will affect the persons employment or not.

Innuendo:
You have seven seconds.

More on this in a bit, but let's start at the beginning, shall we? When you spot a position you are wanting to apply for, don't send in the stock, default version of your resume. If you do, your resume will never make it through the gauntlet and reach the person who can make this a happy ending for you.

Someone mentioned that you shouldn't load up your resume with jargon because the people in HR won't understand the terminology. There's an element of truth to this, but there's a certain amount of jargon that must be present or, again, the running of the gauntlet will be a failure. Allow me to explain why. The job market has changed drastically in the last few years, at least in the United States. Hundreds, maybe even thousands of people will apply for each position.

In order to help separate the applicants who are worthy of further attention from the time-wasters who apply for every job they see, a lot of companies are implementing automation. This means that quite often the first person to see your resume isn't a person at all. It's a computer program designed to parse the resumes of all the applicants, retain the ones that reach a certain percentage threshold of hitting on all the key phrases and jargon that someone somewhere has decided that will show if a candidate is worthy or unworthy. Please, please, please be acutely aware that it does not matter how awesome you are, how perfect you are for the job, and that your resume and cover letter are literary works that would make Shakespeare himself break down and weep. No human eye sees your submission at this point.  If your resume does not meet the minimum requirements of jargon and key phrases at this point, your hard work will be quietly jettisoned into the black hole of the internet with no notification sent to you or the employer. It will simply be as though you had not applied for the position at all. Period.

Now before you freak out and start scrambling around screaming questions like what key phrases? What jargon? Do they expect me to be psychic? Just take a deep breath and relax. The company has already given you a blueprint to succeed. The job posting is more than just a description of duties. It's a road map to what this company is looking for. It will list all the key phrases and jargon you'll need to get past the automated slice-and-dice designed to keep the unworthy from stepping foot inside the corporate building.

While we're on the subject of the automated routines, often a job posting will include a line that says that applications are accepted until a certain date. Do *not* let that lure you into a false sense of non-urgency. Oh, sure, you can happily submit your resume up till the very last day if you wish, but do you remember those thousands of people applying for this position I mentioned earlier? A lot of companies help the weeding out process along by programming the system to only accept x amount of submissions. Any submissions received beyond that number....quietly jettisoned.

Now, say you managed to make it past the slice-and-dice. What happens next? This is when the submissions that are left actually reach a human and land in the hiring manager's in-bin. They view submissions with a program that uses that aforementioned list of key phrases and jargon to highlight everywhere they appear in the resume so they can examine the syntax and the context of the words.

This is where you have seven seconds. Hiring managers will spend seven seconds or less looking over your resume before deciding if it should be sent along to the next step in the hiring process or thrown out. If you just took all those words and threw them in a list to rack up a high percentile score in the automated phase, you're most likely out. If your words are dry and uninspired...mundane...you're most likely out.

Unless you are a rock star in your chosen profession and your job descriptions and job titles make hearts quiver and stir up feelings of envy, you're probably going to need to use those sections of your resume that go beyond job experience to catch the hiring manager's eye. Academic excellence, unique volunteer/charity work, unique life experiences are all ways to nudge the hiring manager to break the rules and spend an extra couple seconds on the awesomeness that is your resume. Remain truthful at all times, but if there's something exceptional about you then you need to mention it without being too boisterous about it.

Again, unless you are a rock star in your chosen profession, chances are good there are going to be a hundred people with job experience exactly like yours, maybe better. You need to convey that your benefits to the organization go beyond hard skills and you bring competent soft skills to the table as well, the total package. The name of the game at this point is to convince the hiring manager to put your resume into the pile that will be forwarded to the department head.

If you've done all this and managed to get in front of the department head's eyes as long as you've put your job skills forward in an honest and competent fashion, there's not much you can do beyond that. They usually know what they are looking for when they sit down to hire someone, but...you never know. Maybe if you aren't exactly what they are looking for, those mentions of academic excellence or other things might be enough to catch their eye & they'll take a chance on calling you in for an interview anyway.

P.S. Follow Miles' advice to the letter. With the advances in technology, the time when someone could fabricate credentials and get away with it has passed.

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