Four Ways to Stand Out in the Job Hunt

The scariest time in a 22-year-old's life is upon them.

The post-graduation job hunt.

At that point in my life, nothing was more anxiety-inducing than staring down my graduation date without a job lined up. Nothing felt scarier than having no clue what I wanted to do and no idea how to find a job, let alone find the right role that I’d hopefully enjoy enough to tolerate being in an office for forty hours a week.

A few years and three companies down the road, I’m fortunate enough to be in a role where I enjoy my coworkers, have flexibility in my work, and see a path to success. But, in May 2017, the goal was to obtain employment, to earn money so I wouldn’t have to live with my parents, and to kickstart my career.

In my current position with TEKsystems, I work with Fortune 500 companies to provide staffing services and IT services. In the last year, I’ve helped place seventy-seven people into roles with a variety of tenures and job functions. When I work with our clients to help place people, I typically sit in on interviews and gather client feedback. I’ve sat in probably 120+ interviews, spoken with 250-300 people as a part of a pre-screen process, and looked at 500+ resumes in just the last year. (Side note: titles are always interesting to me. The best title I’ve seen to date is a valet who upgraded his title to “Vehicle Relocation Engineer”...that guy should be in sales, not valeting cars.)

From the innumerable resumes, countless interviews, and myriad of client feedback calls I’ve helped conduct, I’ve gleaned a thing or two that I think may be helpful in the job search for recent graduates (or individuals of any job tenure, really). While every individual, situation, interview process, and organization is different and while some advice may not apply to some industries or jobs, I know what it’s like to be in depths of a job search and I think what I’ve learned could be beneficial to those going through the process.

On a resume, specificity will set you apart.

The average time a hiring manager or HR person looks at a resume is about a minute. Why is that? It’s because most resumes are littered with vague statements like these:

• Assisted leading XYZ project, helping perform day-to-day tasks and participating in meetings.
• Collaborated with a variety of teams across the organization to ensure deadlines were met.
• Executed on day-to-day tasks as directed by manager and other stakeholders.

Imagine sorting through hundreds of vague comments – would you spend more than minute on each resume? These statements provide little to no context for what you actually did. They also don’t provide much room for individuals to credit themselves for the things they’ve accomplished. A resume is your opportunity to brag about how awesome you are, the skills you provide to a job setting, and who you are. The more specific you can be in the summary of your experience, the more you’ll stand out. Below is an example of how to take the first vague statement above and turn it into a definitive set of facts highlighting a specific skill set:

• On a team of 10 people, assisted leading XYZ project which included weekly reporting to show (insert KPIs here), setting the agenda for daily stand-up meetings, and holding other team members accountable to outcomes.

Additionally, the more data you can provide the better. Most roles have a quantitative measurement of success. Provided the data isn’t confidential, including quantitative examples of success in previous roles will set you apart.

When you land an interview, don’t just answer questions with a basic “yes” or “no”.

Being the interviewee is a nerve-wracking experience, but it’s also challenging to be the interviewer. Both sides just want to get through the awkward process, so many interview questions end up brief and closed-ended, sufficiently answered with a “yes” or “no.” However, those answers don’t reveal anything about you as an individual, your experience, or what you bring to the table.

When you’re in an interview and have been posed what appears to be a close-ended question, avoid responding with one-word answers. Provide context around your “yes” or “no,” by explaining instances in which you’ve successfully used a skill. In the event you don’t have the requisite experience or skill the interviewer has inquired about, prepare an answer about a comparable skill to speak about to answer the question.

Often, its soft skills, not technical ability, that can be the deciding factor in whether to hire an individual.

Unless the role you’re applying for is extremely technical and requires specific domain knowledge (for example, it’d be difficult to hire an accountant who doesn’t understand how to read a balance sheet), managers and companies are looking for soft skills as much, if not more so, than technical ability. Even for highly technical positions, you may not be the most skilled at a specific task, but you may be a better culture fit for the team, which may tip the scales in your favor. After all, you do spend most of your week with your coworkers.

Individuals who can collaborate with different team members, communicate ideas effectively, learn new skills, and be adaptable in their role are in high demand. Monster’s Future of Work report reported that employers named the top skills they look for in employees as teamwork, problem solving, and flexibility. Google ran a study that showed their higher performing teams typically possessed a higher emotional intelligence rather than the highest IQ.

LinkedIn can be a place that at times resembles a weird, professional version of Facebook?– but it does add value having a presence.

LinkedIn’s a weird place. You’ve got people bestowing career advice, sharing memes better served for Reddit, reposting stories clearly ripped from other accounts on different social media platforms, and selling LinkedIn influencing courses because they have 1 million+ connections. Sometimes, that’s even all the same person.

However, after reading your resume, the next task any prospective employer will likely do is look you up on LinkedIn. Having a profile that includes a professional headshot, an updated version of your resume, and a summary of your skills and work-related attributes will show that you care about your professional brand. You don’t need to post every day or write long articles, but having a polished, updated profile is another small item you can do to elevate your candidacy above the rest of a given applicant pool.

It’s also an extremely useful tool for researching companies and the individuals who work at those companies. Looking at the profiles of current team members may give you an idea of what type of background an organization might be looking for. Keep in mind, any time you look at another person’s profile, they can see that. So, you might as well look professional when they see you’ve viewed their page.

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Each person’s situation and background are different, so take this advice (as well as every other piece of advice you see on this platform) with a grain of salt. Whether you’re just starting your career or on an established career path looking for the next role, remember that it’s less about technical ability and more about attitude and aptitude.

Yes, experience is important and frequently required, but if it was only about technical ability, job descriptions wouldn’t include generic phrases like “Must be a team player” or “work well within a team”.