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- #025 - The Last Job Search Q&A of 2023
#025
The final Q&A edition of 2023. We did it, guys.
No intro because there’s plenty of protein in the below and in the conclusion. (It’s about David Beckham. You’re welcome, ladies.)
Here’s what we’re covering today:
Any advice on folks on toxic job recovery?
How do you catch the attention of recruiters/hiring managers when jobs get over 1,000 applications in 24 hours?
What should be included in the CV/resume summary? What are you as a recruiter looking for?
Should I make my CV/resume plain and boring? Or beautiful and exciting?
How can I say write on my CV that something is what I have achieved when I’m actually working together with a team?
“I have a question for you, if you don't mind — I didn't get laid off from my job but I quit last month because it was a toxic environment. Any advice to folks on toxic job recovery? I've been reading all the articles, but a fresh take would be lovely if you have the bandwidth.”
Something I learned in therapy is that even though you might not think it’s your fault on the surface - and you’d be right, of course - you might’ve internalised you were in a toxic job because you don’t deserve anything better, because that’s all you’re worth, that it is your fault.
None of these are true, of course. But us humans have strange little minds sometimes (all the time?) and it can’t help but think that things are our fault when they’re not.
When you’re ready, have a little explore - a journal, perhaps - to see how you got yourself into this situation. This isn’t about blaming yourself, to be clear. Just kindly and gently and with compassion ask yourself if you perhaps missed or chose to ignore any red flags, if you let unacceptable behaviours slide here and there, if you knew something was wrong for a long time before you said or did anything.
Again, do this when you’re ready. And again, do not blame yourself. You’re simply mining for information here. It’s important to do this because you don’t want to get yourself into another toxic job situation. You want to process it, grieve it, learn from it, and move on.
Also, if you can, go to therapy. It’ll help you process what happened to you and also to move forward with confidence, compassion, and boundaries. Not a bad combination.
More resources to help with the above:
Set Boundaries, Find Peace: A Guide To Reclaiming Yourself by Nedra Tawwab
No More Mr Nice Guy by Robert Glover
Linda Le (follow her on LinkedIn)
“A question that comes to mind is: how do you catch the attention of recruiters/hiring managers when jobs get over 1,000 applications in 24 hours?”
Send them an email with this subject line: I have your kids.
No. Don’t. But I understand if you feel like it’s gotten to the point where you need to do that.
Here are some more productive and less-likely-to-get-you-on-a-watch-list things you can do that might help:
Ignore the number of applicants. It’s out of your control and it might not even be accurate.
Have LinkedIn job alerts on and apply as soon as you see any relevant roles.
Find potential hiring managers and recruiters on LinkedIn and politely reach out to them to let them know you’ve applied. Keep it short. (We talked about this last week.)
If possible, get a referral before applying. In this number of applicants, referrals will probably be prioritised. If you don’t think you know anyone at the company, check your LinkedIn connections. Someone you knew once upon a time might work there now. Please check!
There are no guarantees, unfortunately. And I know seeing these numbers can feel daunting. But, as ever, “the chief task in life is simply this: to identify and separate matters so that I can say clearly to myself which are externals not under my control, and which have to do with the choices I actually control.” (Thank you, Epictetus.)
“What should be included in the CV/resume summary? What are you as a recruiter looking for?”
A recruiter - or hiring manager - is going to be looking for one thing when looking at a CV/resume: can this person potentially do the role we need them to do?
A summary at the top of the CV is no different. The goal of a summary is to turn a few seconds into 30 seconds into a call or email or DM or fax or telegram or carrier pigeon. If you’re ever struggling with what to write, just ask yourself, “What does the hiring manager need to read to choose to interview me?”
Let’s do an example. I just searched for a ‘Senior Recruiter’ role and these were a few of the bullet points:
• Deliver and manage a high quality and proactive in-house recruitment service
• Build excellent relationships with stakeholders across the business units
• Drive down agency costs through direct sourcing, approaching candidates about Kier opportunities and building a high-quality talent pool for forthcoming recruitment
If I were applying to this role and I were writing a summary, I’d write something like the following:
‘Senior Recruiter with 7+ years of experience. 90%+ offer acceptance rate with 76% of 100+ roles coming through sourced candidates. Consistently received high performance ratings, including strong feedback from directors and VPs. No agency hires in 2023 due to sourcing, maintaining strong pipelines, and a LinkedIn community of over 63,000.’
Deliver and manage a high quality and proactive in-house recruitment service? That’s covered with a 90%+ offer acceptance rate and 76% of 100+ roles coming through candidates I sourced myself.
Build excellent relationships with stakeholders? That’s covered in my performance reviews and with receiving strong feedback from senior leadership.
Drive down agency costs? That’s covered by me not using agencies at all in 2023, as well as having a strong LinkedIn community of 63k.
Those are three requirements for this job I’ve covered in the first four sentences of my CV. A recruiter might read that and immediately think, “Yeah, this person might be a great fit.” Off to the hiring manager my CV goes, who’ll likely think the same.
“I'm in the process of updating my resume and had a question pop up that I wanted to submit for your Q&A portion, particularly as a recruiter in the gaming industry. I've heard so many different things about ATS friendly formats and having a more simple, functional resume versus one that is more designed, and it's hard to know what to listen to! I feel like my resume is very "plain and boring. Obviously the content quality is #1, but how much does the design of a resume affect your inclination to meet with a candidate, especially in the gaming industry? And would that answer change depending on the position being hired?”
First, there’s really no such thing as an ATS-friendly format. Submitting your CV and having it go into an ATS is like posting a letter into a postbox. It doesn’t matter what’s on the letter; if you post it, it’s going in the postbox.
However.
When it comes to a recruiter looking at your CV, “plain and boring” is music to our ears. It’s like the opposite of an artist’s portfolio, which should be beautiful and exciting.
Lastly, I’ve never heard any hiring manager say, “They had all the experience we were looking for but their CV was too plain and boring so we rejected them.” I’ve also never heard a hiring manager say, “They didn’t have any of the experience we were looking for but their CV was beautiful and exciting so we put them through.”
Take from that what you will.
“How can I say write on my CV that something is what I have achieved when I’m actually working together with a team?”
Just take all the credit. They’ll never know, so who cares?
Just kidding. (I think.)
At work, there are things you’re responsible for and things you contribute to. If you’re responsible for them, it doesn’t mean you did all the work. In probably 100% of cases, you had help. You had a team. You had a supportive manager. You had something other than you helping you with your achievement.
For example, take me as a recruiter. I’m responsible for the hires I make - most of us recruiters are targeted on the number of hires we make - but that doesn’t mean I did everything all by myself. There’s a hiring manager, there are other interviewers, there’s the candidate experience team, there’s HR, there’s Finance, there’s the Rewards team - and they all help me out.
Recruiters and hiring managers know you didn’t achieve everything (or anything) on your CV alone. That doesn’t mean you weren’t primarily responsible for that achievement. That doesn’t mean you weren’t the driving force. That doesn’t mean it would’ve happened just as easily or as seamlessly (or at all) without you.
Put it on your CV. “Responsible for [x].” And then, when you get an interview, own it and credit the great people you had around you.
In Conclusion
Have you seen the Beckham documentary on Netflix? It’s about a former footballer called David Beckham. Seemed like a popular guy so maybe you’ve heard of him
I watched it with my girlfriend and my favourite story from it was when Beckham got dropped from the Real Madrid team because he’d been benched and so was talking to other clubs.
“You’ll never play for Real Madrid again,” the manager said.
Exile.
He was made to train alone. He was relegated to a different pitch to the rest of the team. Just him and a trainer, working hard, knowing that nothing he did was going to make the manager put him back in the team.
With Beckham out of the team, Real Madrid struggled. The favourites to win the league were blowing games left and right and were in real danger of coming second or third. Or worse. That was, at the time, unthinkable.
Still, Beckham didn’t play. He wasn’t even allowed to ;suit up’ and watch from the bench with his teammates. He was far away, up high, in a box, allowed to make no impact whatsoever.
Well. Maybe not no impact. Because despite this treatment, Beckham kept working. He turned up to training every day, on time, worked his ass off, and didn’t once complain or pout or disparage anyone in the media. “I was surprised,” the manager said. Maybe he’d underestimated Beckham.
(Remember Alive Time vs Dead Time? This is one of the all-time examples.)
It didn’t take long for the rest of the players to speak to the manager. “Let him train with us,” they said. They wanted to win the league and they knew they needed him but time was running out. At this point, Beckham had given the manager no choice. He’d been the ultimate professional, even when he had every reason to throw in the towel. And the manager knew that having his “magical right foot” would probably help Madrid out a little.
Beckham went back to training with the team. He went back to playing in the games. He went back to the starting eleven. And Madrid went back to winning.
In Beckham’s final ever game for Madrid, they won the league.
Redemption.
After the story is told, the interviewer asks him why he did all of that. Why didn’t he just walk away? Why did he put himself through that?
Beckham sits there. Looks around. Thinks. He gets a bit emotional.
“I don’t give up easy,” he says. “I don’t give up.”
Just a reminder that when it comes to your job search, when it comes to your dream industry, when it comes to your dream role, neither should you.
Cheers!
PS If you missed last week’s edition, here you go: What To Do When You Get Laid Off: The Ultimate Guide
PPS If you joined us because of the LinkedIn audio event on Thursday, hello!
PPPS Highly recommend the Beckham documentary. Loved it.