CZP wrote:
The article from Dave Jensen "The Path of a CV, 2014 Edition," was a welcome read. It was nice to see that Mr. Jensen recognized the need to re-evaluate his previous comments based on the rapidly evolving atmosphere that many of us find ourselves in today.
However, I was left wanting more out of the article and I invite Mr. David Jensen and the community at large to weigh in on several concerns that I have.
1.) There is no mention of a clear solution for the intended readers: The job seekers. What I took away from this is that the moral of the story is that the end justifies the means. The "end" being your resume on the hiring managers desk. The "means" being either the network or sheer luck with right key words in your resume, and the suggestion was to use your network to gain an advantage in the hiring process. To me, I realized that if these are the current state of affairs, it does cry out there is no real sense of fair play. I think to be truly fair, the fictitious Ms. Yastrevski should have had her profile also run through the computer to see if she would have made the cut. Instead, she short circuited the system my introducing herself with a connection. So, I left wondering, is that employer truly equal opportunity? More importantly, what lesson is that for the rest of us? Find all HR managers who were mentored by someone that you somehow knew? It wasn't very clear how Yastrevski knew Wright's mentor to begin with. But I get the gist: It's about connections. And honestly, the article doesn't do this topic justice because it is probably the first thing most job seekers in science do. I have yet to meet anyone who in seeking a job didn't first seek their primary connections to see what opportunities are out there. A better approach to this article would be to suggest how to turn your relational networks into something actionable for a career. I have no answer to how this is done, but evidently, that is what this article ultimately aims at.
2.) Why not advocate a better system of evaluation for the employers? Mr. Jensen is a professional in career placement. So how does Mr. Jensen place candidates for their employers? If it is true that the rifle and scope analogy should be used, why are there professional career placement firms at all? Certainly they must use a different tactic, so I welcome your thoughts on that. Like the rest of us, I am sure we all ears.
3.) Thus far, not to sound pessimistic, I have yet to find so-called career experts who can clearly delineate how to be successfully hired, yet they continue to write articles on how to do it. I think the issue is that there is something lost in translation so to speak. But to be fair, it is not their fault. Let me explain why. Career placement experts see nothing but success day in and day out. They see actions X, Y, and Z, and whoa la! A job! Ergo, by doing X, Y, and Z, you get a job. However, the catch is that many are already doing X, Y, Z, but, in their case, they are not getting jobs. There is a disconnect in terms of an unintended myopic view of the Venn diagram of certain actions leading to hire. So I welcome Mr. Jensen's thoughts on why many doing X, Y, and Z aren't getting jobs even though by all available metrics, they should have landed that job too. I think job advice should be enhanced by people in the trenches. Which in this case, means you and I, the job seeker.
Let me give you some numbers of mine: 78 applications submitted. All carefully crafted. Scope on my rifle. Properly aimed. Correcting for wind speed, temperature, you name it. Adjusted scope and cross hairs on target. Trigger pulled, or in my case, hitting the "submit" button. And...well...nothing. My results are just the same if I used blanks. Except for 3 times. They were all interviews from people I knew personally. They wanted to hire me, but no money was available. Now...there is a topic worthy of writing: The state of funding in science overall.
I welcome your thoughts, and of course Mr. Jensen's as well, whose opinions I really admire, and whose contributions I am appreciative of. I do want to take this opportunity to thank him.
Thanks for reading.
After nearly 20 years of running this forum, I have made it a habit to avoid responding to overly long, emotional posts. They are typically trouble for the moderator. Despite that, I'll make comment on a few of your points, because you are referring to my article.
To your point #1, each article in Tooling Up serves up a different lesson. They are often pointers to a problem area, without a full set of "solutions" -- you sometimes have to read other columns on the site to understand the solutions. So, to the job seeker reading this month's column, it's about the process of filling in job applications. Unless you are about 70% or so a fit (sometimes less, sometimes more), you'll just be screened out, so the question is "Are there more productive ways to send your time?" And the answer is, "Yes there are." Read other Tooling Up columns about different subjects and you'll find better ways to spend your time.
As to your feelings that the system is somehow "unfair," and not "equal opportunity," I suggest that nothing about looking for work is fair. The only job search process that isn't played like a game is the academic job search -- if the ad for the Assistant Professor slot says to do this, and this, and to send this, you'd better do that!
On the other hand, in industry those rules don't apply. It's each to his own. It's a whole new world of competition, instead of collaboration. One person reads the ad and sends in the CV. Another person finds a way to get around that. Perhaps the person with the ad response is the best fit -- I'm sure you'd say that's "fair." But perhaps the hiring manager just wants to find a person and get the darn job filled. He or she has a problem to be solved. Does that person really care where the CV comes from? Heck no! They only want to end their grief and get a person employed who they'd like to work with. (Incidentally, Wright is NOT a Human Resources person, but a scientist just like you).
As to Point #2, you have no idea what I do, you have a completely incorrect version of what a "headhunter" is, suggesting it is somehow allied to "career placement." Once again, articles on this site can help your understanding. Headhunters are not that effective for new grads or postdocs.
Point #3: On the topic of the "so called Career Experts" . . . I don't write with my own career advice -- I've screwed that up royally on a number of occasions. But, nearly 30 years of recruiting work has meant that I've had as many as 10,000 interviews with scientists. And since I ask them all the same questions about what they did right, and what they would like to have done differently, it has built up quite an interesting knowledge base from which to write.
Yes, I see success every day. And I see failure every day, not just my own but in the descriptions of what went right and what went wrong that I hear from people in many different levels of their science careers. That's what I write about.
Dave
Statistics: Posted by Dave Jensen — Sat Mar 01, 2014 5:47 pm