Simply Hired Blog

Gaps between Jobs: Your Resume

How Do I Handle an Employment Gap Between Jobs?

There are times in our careers where we may find ourselves in the position of having lost a job without being able to find another one immediately. This leads to the dreaded “gap in employment,” which can cause us to feel unsure about how to handle inquires surrounding this period. It may also suggest a yellow flag to prospective employers. I am often asked how to handle this gap on our resumes, in interviews, and how to maximize the time itself

Your Resume

I am a big fan of resumes that list employment dates by year alone, versus month and year. I like this for two reasons: Visually it reduces the clutter of your resume, making it easier for the hiring manager to read. The visual layout of a resume if absolutely mission critical. People with the most visually appealing and streamlined resumes have a greater chance of getting the interview. In addition, using years only has the sidebar benefit of making your employment history appear contiguous. Of course, that doesn’t prevent you from getting asked why you left your last job during the interview. If you do, you must always be truthful, but frequently, the subject won’t even come up.

Tomorrow: "What if I am asked to explain this gap?"

Recruiting in the Creative Age: The Ages

Note: Before we get into the conversation about "Recruiting in the Creative Age" I thought it best to reprint the original article from early last year that frames the entire concept of "The Creative Age."

I believe that there are three types of businesses. Please note that these "types" are descriptions of philosophies and principles, not business models. There have been some great small foundry steel shops (which would seem to be the ultimate Machine Age business) that focus heavily on talent (and in fact view the delivery of steel as the delivery of applied content). There are also art firms that are no better than sweatshops. The models described below seek to evaluate the perception of management about how valuable the unique capabilities of human beings are to the long-term success of the company (return to shareholders, including employees).

Machine Age - Companies in this category see human beings as their top liability. Their machines can't run effectively without something with a pulse pulling the right lever, but (in management's opinion) just about any idiot can pull the lever. Since their machines make all the money, the people are the weak link in the economic chain. And since the skill level required is relatively low, people are seen as easily replaceable. Machine Age companies are the reason that corporate America gets the bad rap it so frequently deserves. If you think people are your greatest liability then you should outsource all non-production activities and hope that your shareholders don't notice that you are about to lose all their money.

Information Age - People create and use information, so people are every bit as important as machines. You still run the business to avoid risk to capital, but you get that without people you can't run the business or have much of a market for you goods and services. The cost of delivering value is roughly equal to the cost of developing value. These companies are interesting because they had to take lots of their shareholder's money and plow it into decreasing the cost of communication and delivery infrastructure enough that the Creative Age becomes possible. Information Age companies still do lots of dumb things, but they are usually close to understanding that there is a better way to do it.

Creative (or "Talent") Age -The cost of talent is higher than the cost of capital. The potential return on talent is higher than the potential return on capital (not applied to the purpose of acquiring and growing talent). The cost of developing value for the market is much higher than the cost of delivering it. Content is king, but even more so, the application of content to customer problems and opportunities is where the market value lies. These types of companies will rule the economic world of the future, and represent the light to the Machine Age dark. Its not that capital doesn't matter. It does. But you don' pay attention to trying to manage the risk inherent with employing capital (which is at the heart of so many bad business decisions), but instead focus on how to maximize the value of applied talent, which is inherently risky. But there is no way to get the returns your shareholders demand without taking those risks.

Recruiting in the Creative Age

In March of 2005 I published a list of rules called "New Rule for Recruiting in the Creative Age." Since SimplyHired is what I would call “an advanced recruiting tool in the creative age” I thought it might be worthwhile to go back and look at that list and start a series to explore some of the items, especially given our conversation about “Relative Value of Talent.”

Tomorrow we will start with a reprint of the article that laid out the concept of the "Creative Age." Thursday we will review the rules. Friday we will take a look at the second rule: “A portfolio is more important than a diploma” (over on the Job Seeker side).

I look forward to your comments and questions. The world of recruiting is changing, and the “Creative Age” concept was the way that I first started to describe that change. It will be fun to reinvigorate that discussion.

(P.S. – We will return to the “Burning Debate” questions momentarily, but I am having a devil of a time completing the TPR / Corporate recruiting function comparison in light of the Relative Value of Talent, so I thought I would take this break to work on that. Thanks for your patience!)

Avoiding the Land Mines of Office Politics: A Leader’s Role

“The best politics is right action." - Gandhi

In today’s business climate it is impossible to avoid getting tangled into the office politics. Why? An organization is a social entity, where people gather to conduct business. Although the role of the leader that runs that business is to unify actions of all who gather and participate to make it successful, it is difficult for an average leader to truly unify all agendas and to create one grand vision so powerful that everyone works to service that single purpose. It is the lack of leadership force that creates political ferment in an organization.

So, what are some of the reasons why people have different agendas to begin with? The following list will shed some light on the origins of the ferment. If this ferment is not dealt with early-on and not managed on an ongoing basis, an organization can become dysfunctional and can be torn asunder. A leader’s job is to recognize this ferment and to deal with it to unite the purpose of all and achieve the goal to which the organization is committed:

Not bringing everyone together before making a major decision. The hallmark of a great leader is to have a vision and then to have the ability to infect everyone in their organization with that vision. A business or an organization is not a democracy, not by a long shot, yet, its leader has the responsibility to bring everyone together in ways that all agendas unite under their leadership. The command and control structure of an organization is what makes this aspect of a leader’s job particularly challenging. This is counterintuitive.

Not having a studied vision. One of the main roles of a leader is to formulate a compelling vision for their business. Creating such a vision requires hard work. Once a vision is formulated, the next challenge is for the leader to socialize that vision across the organization. This is not always easy. Socializing a vision when there are different agendas to begin with takes special leadership. Without everyone coming on-board, moving ahead with a major decision can be foolhardy.

Not inspiring and empowering others to act decisively. One of the key duties of a leader is to develop their followers by showing them how to move forward in uncertainty, take risks, and to learn from failures. Many leaders fail in their roles by micromanaging and paralyzing their organization. It is here when independent-minded activists start looking to form their own agendas and this is where the seed for political ferment is germinated.

Not listening to diverse opinions ... as things evolve and then not uniting others to the original purpose in a way that dissent becomes the source of achieving clarity in the original vision. This is also one of the toughest challenges of leadership.

Not making course corrections as things change. It is difficult, nay impossible, to foresee all possibilities at the onset of making a decision. As new surprises come to light or loom, a wise leader makes course corrections and informs everyone why. Without such an intervention politics can take over and soon agendas become diverse.

Not acknowledging mistakes (and soon). No one is perfect and great leaders know their limitations. When they have a new insight or a new learning from doing things differently than how they should have been done they immediately acknowledge their foibles and get on with the right course of action. Without such actions politics takes over and the organization suffers because of it.

Not giving credit to those who excel in what they do. No leader is omniscient. They should have the willingness to surrender themselves to others when their own abilities do not serve them well in certain critical areas. When they are helped by the experts who bring new energy to the cause good leaders always acknowledge such help.

Not knowing when to quit. Not all causes are just. Things change. Wrong assumptions derail an otherwise noble cause. A good leader always assesses their options in light of new knowledge and takes appropriate action to make course correction, including reversing the original decision and moving forward with a new one. This takes courage. Without it, politics can take over an otherwise well-functioning organization.

Not being truthful. When things go south it is tempting to go into denial. When leaders go into denial their followers start diverging on their views of what is really going on. This sets the stage for a political revolt. A good leader goes out of their way to find the truth and to deal with it in a forceful way.

Not being consistent. This is one of greatest reasons for politics to take over an organization. Unless everyone who is following a leader knows what to expect in typically encountered situations those around a leader get confused. It is this confusion that is a breeding ground for politics in an organization. Consistency over convenience is the mantra good leaders diligently follow.

The list above is by no means a complete prescription to avoid the office politics. In fact, a certain amount of politicking is healthy for a leader and its business. It keeps them vibrant and on their edge.

It's a Relationship: Ask Questions

I was just watching “The Breakup” with Vince Vaughn and Jennifer Aniston. In the middle of the movie there is a scene where Ms. Aniston is trying to get Mr. Vaughn jealous and by dating other people. Of course the first guy she dates is an insensitive boob who does nothing but talk about himself. The scene ends predictably when Ms. Aniston flees the dinner table as fast as she can

The scene made me think of the recent comments I have seen from recruiters on this site. They all say the same thing: “Ask questions and listen.”

It doesn’t matter whether you are dating, working on your marriage, trying to close a sale or get a job: relationship skills are always key to closing the deal. And rule #1 of any relationship that you show a genuine interest in the other person by asking questions about them and listening closely to the answers.

I have a friend who is a marketing consultant. He has worked with Gates, McNealy, Olsen… all the big guys. He asked if he could meet my another friend who is an executive at a big Silicon Valley company. I called to follow-up after the meeting. “How did it go?” I asked. The responses couldn’t have been more different. My consultant friend reported that he did a fantastic job, if he did say so himself. He said “I know exactly the problems that your brother is trying to solve. I’ve been there before. I told him exactly what he needed to do. I expect that he will want to work with me.” My executive friend, on the other hand, had an entirely different impression of the meeting “The guy is just too full of himself. I don’t have any confidence that he really understands my business because he never asked me any questions to indicate that he was even interested in what makes our situation unique. He was a typical consultant – thinks that the only way he can get the contract is to make me feel stupid if I didn’t hire him.” Needless to say nothing ever came of the introduction.

Candidates do this all the time. They hear that employers want people who are confident and assertive. That leads many candidates to walk in and give the hard close: “I am completely and totally awesome and if you don’t hire me you are an idiot.” As the previous “3 Things Candidates Should Know” articles have indicated, this is not nearly as impressive as you might believe. There are “professional” reasons for this: being a self-absorbed braggart tends to mean that you are intellectually incurious, not open to criticism and difficult to work with. But the main reason that walking into an interview and acting like a narcissistic know-it-all isn’t effective is that it puts other people off. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that if you don’t form a personal connection with your interviewer (date, spouse, etc.) that they will find quickly find a “professional rationale” for not continuing the relationship.

So you have to ask yourself which is more important: coming across as perfect or getting the other person to take an interest in you? You quickly realize that your job in a relationship is to turn the other person into an advocate for you, and that impressing them with how much you can talk is not the best way to achieve your objective. So what do you do? Ask questions that show that you are listening. For instance, you can ask why the interviewer works at the company. After their answer ask them a question that shows that you heard what they said. When it comes to a point where the interviewer explains something that really resonates with you, tell them so, and explain why. The interviewer will know they aren’t “being pitched”, that your natural enthusiasm for the conversation is a clear indication of who you are and what you like. It will also show them that you are the kind of person who is smart enough to figure out that in order to work with others, others have to want to work with you.

Questions and answers. Whether you are trying to land the perfect job or the perfect relationship, asking and listening are two keys to success.