Career Connectors

Connecting professionals in career transition with hiring companies and quality resources

Subscribe Here

HonorHealth

6/10/21 – Success for the Seasoned Search

by

Written by Gary Matsuda

Abby Kohut Success for the Seasoned Search

Try out for a team sport, and you’ll need to meet or surpass minimum performance requirements to get on the roster. If you’ve got the talent, you’ll make the team look good and you’re a shoo-in to make the squad. However, in the job search, meeting the qualifications and having more doesn’t mean you’ll look better on paper.

KEYNOTE

A hiring manager or recruiter will almost never tell you the truth about why you were rejected for a job, especially if you are an older candidate. So, we brought in Abby Kohut, who for the past 25 years has held corporate recruiting positions and helped 10,000 people get hired. She’s got some impressive creds too. Among them is her website, Absolutelyabby.com which was selected as one of the top 100 websites for your career by Forbes.

As an independent career coach, Abby can say the things that HR really doesn’t want to (or can’t) tell you. For many of us it could simply be ageism, but the reason for job rejection could mean something else. But as Abby defines it, older really is better and she changes our job search situation from ‘Over-Qualified’ to ‘Absolutely Qualified’.

What does ‘Over-qualified’ mean?
• Too much experience
• Title too high
• Too much education
• High salary requirements

But why are these concerns? It’s because hiring managers fear:
• You will have a ‘been there, done that attitude’
• You will leave for a higher salary or title
• Your coworkers and manager may feel threatened by your skills or experience
• You may want to be promoted too fast
• You could find another job that pays better

All these are valid concerns for an employer trying to keep harmony in the organization. So instead of letting these concerns fester, you’ll need to be proactive and do some serious self-examination to find strengths that can be valuable to any organization. Such as:

• Shorter learning curve
• Dependable loyal nature
• Proven track record of success
• Strong work ethic
• Strong problem solving
• Broad range of experience
• Works with different personalities
• Role model for others

Your ‘Absolutely Qualified’ Resume

As with all advice from career experts, their opinions certainly come from years of experience but take what tips will work for you but be flexible with what you use. Try these out and see what works for you and for specific industries and demographics.

Years of experience. Should you list them? Yes but generally no more than 15 and write preferably avoid exact number, for example ‘3+ years’, ‘5+ years’.

College graduation dates. You can mention graduation dates if they are more recent, say you went back for a master’s degree later in life (and assuming it could be a requirement for the position). But generally leave them off.

Advanced degrees. If you have advanced degrees which may not be necessary for the job you are applying for, leave them out to avoid overkill. Don’t worry, extra degrees won’t be found in background checks if you don’t mention them.

Direct reports. Omit exact number of direct reports, especially if the job has few or no direct reports. Instead, like years of experience you can say that you managed a team or managed a department without the number.

Old looking email accounts. Try to avoid using AOL or Yahoo email accounts as they do look dated. Instead get Outlook, Gmail or your even better, get your own domain.

Objectives and references available. Instead of ‘objective’, use summary section. No need to say references available on request since it’s assumed you have them, especially if you have experience.

Your ‘Absolutely Qualified’ Cover Letter

These are still useful, even in the age of ATS. Have them ready but send them to those ATS that ask for them. If you send them to the right people (HR) they should also be addressed to those who will be doing the hiring. In addition, use a cover letter where applicable because this is where you can show writing skills, professional insights and detail your value. Write how you are a good catch and why you do what you do.

Years of experience. Avoid mentioning number of years’ experience, if it is to be mentioned, include it on the resume.

The pay. Specify salary requirements (if it’s lower than your previous pay) in cover letter if you are overqualified. Get that out of the way so you’ll prime them into knowing you’ll fit right in.

For Abby’s cover letter template, email ‘letter@absolutelyabby.com’

Your ‘Absolutely Qualified’ Interview

If you get an interview, be confident they believe you have the capability to fill the role and are taking your candidacy seriously. Congratulations!

However:
Expect someone younger. Many recruiters/interviewers you may meet are just starting out and despite their inexperience, are a gateway to your career. Impress but don’t intimidate.

Dress code. Find out from the recruiter how you should dress, they can provide inside information to the culture so you can look your best. They called you for the interview, so they want you to succeed.

Check your ego. Again, use your wisdom and workplace relationship building skills not to overpower the interviewer but to make them feel in control.

Demonstrate your energy. Don’t just let your resume speak for itself. While face to face work into the conversation your physically active activities.

Demonstrate technology aptitude
Please keep up to date and be comfortable with current technology, like video conferencing and mobile tech. If you’re a luddite, Abby says this might help: try visibly carrying an IPad. You don’t need to use it, just show it!

Explain why you are interested in the position, tell ‘here’s why I do what I do’. If the question of why you are willing to take a position lower than your previous jobs, one thing to say is that you want to be more hands on without the responsibility of managing people. Some people actually like being an individual contributor. Or that you can afford to take a pay cut and have made enough money already.

Once they see your experience, qualifications and (gasp) your age, it’s best that you work into the conversation how you’ve nothing to worry about regarding health issues, pay, energy, use of technology, and retirement. Show that you’re definitely not on your last legs, and not here for your last rodeo.

Abby likes the use of thoughtfully applied clever comebacks. If you sense you’re getting rejected because of your ‘over-qualification’, you might try a Hail Mary comeback something like this: “If you were having open heart surgery, would you prefer a qualified surgeon or an over-qualified one?”

Mic drop.

For more tips, go to Abby’s website, www.absolutelyabby.com.

HIRING COMPANIES

Republic Services
Robie Rankins, Talent Acquisition Partner
Do meaningful work while sustaining the environment. With this company you’ll be doing all you can to keep this earth livable while working alongside friendly, energetic and passionate people. Now hiring for customer service representatives (starting at $16/hour) and inside sales reps (starting at $18.75/hr).

Find other opportunities at: https://republicservices.jobs/

Honor Health
Robin Ersland, Talent Acquisition Marketing Specialist
Instead of working to sustain the Earth, if you would rather focus on sustaining human health, look to Honor Health. With locations that cover the entire Phoenix area, there’s a location close to you in both clinical or non-clinical settings.

Find hundreds of career opportunities by various professional categories on https://www.honorhealth.com/jobs

The Entrepreneur’s Source
Anna Schulman Brambilla, Career Ownership Coach
Transitioning (or have been transitioned) out of your job and looking for something completely different? Consider owning a franchise. Even without small business experience, you can go into business for yourself! So, whether you want to see what you’re made of or you want to make something of yourself, growing a business could be the most personally rewarding path for you. While the work can be harder than you’ve ever experienced before, so many franchise owners say it’s worth it.
Ready-made for you are proven business models and systems that you’ll have to learn, implement and execute so that you’ll be in business for yourself but not by yourself.

For more information and to see if owning a business is right for you, contact
Anna at https://abrambilla.esourcecoach.com/
408-314-6831
abrambilla@esourcecoach.com

Resources

Financial Tips for Career Transition
LPL Financial, Jian Boldi
Money is often a primary concern when you’re in career transition. Jian gave a few tips to help with money management.

1) File for unemployment as soon as possible. It can take a few weeks to actually see the checks come in.
2) Don’t forget to pay your taxes.
3) Deduct job hunting expenses. That includes expenses for resume printing, travel to interviews, moving expenses.
4) Go back to school to advance your skills.
5) Become under-employed.
6) Budget, then budget and budget some more.
7) For over 55 but under 59 ½ can take penalty free withdrawals.
8) Get health insurance.
9) Consider reversing a contribution made to your IRA.
10) Ask for help – from a friend or at a networking vent like Career Connectors.

For more details, on these tips, you can ask Jian for help:

3910 S Alma School Rd Ste. 8
Chandler AZ 85248
480-722-0202 ext14
Jian.boldi@lpl.com

1/28/21 – Job Search Communication to Reach All Generations

by

Written by Gary Matsuda

Michael S Seaver

What generation do these quotes describe?

“… entitled whiners who have been spoiled by parents who overstocked their
self-esteem. . . how unmanageable they are in the workplace . . . with their inability to take criticism… they’re a generation of basket cases profoundly narcissistic and deprived of a sense of agency . . . in short they’re a nation of wimps.”

”…lazy entitled selfish shallow unambitious shoegazers who have trouble making decisions…”

“Partly I am lazy. I don’t feel like working this summer. I’m writing a book and taking a history course at Columbia. Even the dullest art history book gives me a greater sense of freedom than being imprisoned in an office. I don’t feel like being confined, I want my time to be at my own disposal. I suppose I’m spoiled.”

“The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents . . . and tyrannize their teachers.”

They are in the order given: Millennials, Generation X, the Boomers and some young punks described by Socrates from about 400BC. If you had trouble associating the quotes with an age group, that’s the point, each generation seems to say the same thing about the generation after them.
Michael Seaver, an award-winning executive coach, leadership consultant, author and speaker was with us recently to get us to think differently about our approach to communicating with another generation. If we go beyond focusing on our differences and we should find more things in common than we think.

KEYNOTE

Too young. Too old. They just don’t get it, so out of touch with reality. While every news post you read seems to support the position on how flagrantly wrong others are, Michael asks must there really be a ‘Generation Gap’? There is if you believe there is. Our natural inclination to be wary of strangers, to ‘size up’ someone new prevents us from creating real human relationships. That’s our brain’s limbic system at work, protecting ourselves from new situations and potential enemies. In just a few seconds it tells us if someone we’ve just met can be trusted so we have to be intentional about overcoming our brain’s natural protective tendencies to create negative emotions, work through some of our biases and actively work to find something in common.

We can do that on an emotional level and he breaks it down with ‘Five Ways We are all Similar‘ that demonstrates human commonality and how we’re more similar than dissimilar and enables us to find better ways to start and deepen relationships.

Credibility – Who do you trust the most?

It turns out the top three credible sources of information for most people are, technical experts, academic experts or a person like yourself.

You would wonder why celebrities are used to promote a product or service when it’s actually more effective to get validation from experts or from people who look like us.

Why is this important? You can use this to ask the right questions to get to the point of trust faster.

When informational interviewing an expert –
• Why do you enjoy your area of expertise?
• When and how did you know it’d become your career?
• How do you use your expertise day to day?

When networking with a person like yourself –
• Walk me through your journey to today.
• What are your most important life lessons learned?
• Why do you continue working for this organization?
• Fastest way to build rapport is to find commonality

10 Principles of What Everyone Likes/Dislikes and Needs

Knowing that these fundamentals are true for everyone, you can apply these to just about any relationship.

You don’t have to know someone’s past or what generation they belong. You can use questions like these to get past small talk:

  • What is your favorite thing to learn about?
  • What recent life changes have you experienced?
  • What do you value in a leader and why is that important to you?
  • Do you have a coach? What has he/she taught you?

Human Needs

Another way to cut through the generational divide is to look at human needs from ‘Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs’ model.  Absolute life essentials are near the bottom of the pyramid and as these lower needs are met, we grow and build upon each successive need, ultimately to be able to help others.

Although sometimes, life happens. A crisis can quickly move us down a level or more, so the application here is to ask carefully how someone is meeting or has met their needs. With tact, you can ask someone from a different generation –
• Tell me about the community you were raised in.
• From your teenage years, what world events do you remember most vividly?
• What values are you trying to pass to your children/community?

4 Life Stages

Another way to communicate across the generational divide is to categorize life into stages using psychologist Carl Jung’s Four Life Stages:

Like Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, as we mature, we find ourselves in different roles and changing needs. As we try to navigate upward in Maslow’s Pyramid, in Jung’s model, we’ll will generally move from left to right ‘Athlete’ to ‘Spirit’. Allowing that ‘life happens’, boundaries between stages are fluid and we can move from one stage to the next on our own time.

So how can we use Life Stages to our benefit?

Common questions to help you connect in ways we are all the same:

• What are your life’s most important goals?
• Have you defined your life’s legacy? What is it?
• What challenges did you overcome? How do you help others do the same?

Five Brain Wave States

Dr. Bruce Lipton’s description of how Electroencephalogram brain waves is associated with different activities and different ages. From birth to age 6 a high percentage of the brains’ activity is spent in Theta and Delta where a child’s mind processes and absorbs a billions of bits of information that tend to stay for a lifetime.

Gamma 32-100Hz: Heightened perception, learning, problem solving tasks, cognitive processing

Beta 13- 32Hz: Awake, alert consciousness, thinking, excitement

Alpha 8-13Hz: Physically and mentally relaxed

Theta 4-8Hz: Creativity, insights, deep states, dreams, deep meditation, reduced consciousness

Delta .5-4Hz: Deep (dreamless) sleep, loss of bodily awareness, repair

All this matters because if you want to connect meaningfully with someone, (and hopefully your brainwaves will get synced up!) ask things such as:

• What did your parents do that you find yourself doing?
• What new habits have you formed recently?
• What do you do to find stillness, to find time to reflect?

Booker T. Washington said, ‘Excellence is to do a common thing in an uncommon way’. Be uncommon by using some of these five ways to find similarities others often miss. If we are to connect with more people and have higher quality relationships use these ideas to find uncommon commonality and appeal to someone’s nobler motives so they will want to offer you expertise or guidance.

HIRING COMPANIES

Cenlar

Robin Stanton, Sr. Recruiter, Talent Acquisition


Most likely the oldest company you’ve never heard of. Unless you’re in the business to business mortgage servicing industry, you’ve like not heard of them. But having been around for over 100 years and still going strong proves they’re doing something right. With projected growth of 40% for the next few years, they act like they’re like a startup.

Some opportunities are:
• Call center servicing
• Support services in claims, loss mitigation and foreclosures
• Leadership

Contact: Robin Stanton, Sr. Recruiter, Talent Acquisition

JPMorganChase

Patrick Groome, VP, Military and Veteran Recruiting Manager


Chase has positions open in everything (not just finance!) from entry level to VP positions but they are looking closely for the soft skills that you bring. If you are a good fit, you’ll have a good chance to find a place anywhere from customer facing positions to back office support. Once you get in (with one of their 111 jobs now open in Arizona), there’ll be plenty of room for career growth.

Contact: Patrick Groome, VP, Military and Veteran Recruiting Manager

Honor Health

Robin Ersland, Talent Acquisition Marketing Specialist


One of the biggest employers in the Valley and getting bigger especially during the pandemic, the needs are ever growing. A wide variety and number of jobs (700 positions!) and career paths are open to you from entry level on up including areas in but not limited to, supply chain, analysis, research, coordinators and security.
Contact: Robin Ersland, Talent Acquisition Marketing Specialist

RESOURCES

Free DISC Assessment
We all like free, so at no cost to you find your behavior traits (which may help point to your values) and what kind of job will likely fit you through our online DISC assessment at:
https://careerconnectors.org/DISC/

For details about upcoming Career Connectors events, click here to visit the events section on the website for dates, times and details about hiring companies and keynote topics!