Alumni looking for work or who are between jobs have an opportunity to learn a few ways to get their foot in the door wherever they go.
The Alumni Career Association held a workshop on resume writing, networking and interviewing Tuesday in the Fetzer Center.
The workshop featured Lynn Kelly-Albertson, executive director of Career & Employment Services, Maryann Lavender, director of Corporate Relations in the WMU Development Office, and Richard Daudert, career management consultant for Right Management in Kalamazoo.
Daudert, who counsels people between jobs, knows the job-seeking process isn’t perfect.
“I hate interviews and I hate resumes,” Daudert said. “They’re the most flawed system I’ve ever seen, but it’s the game – we gotta play it.”
Job seekers looking to differentiate themselves can easily do so when asked, ‘Tell me about yourself,’ by a potential employer, Daudert said.
“You need to say what happened at the company that caused you to be between positions. You can ignore it and hope it doesn’t come up in the interview, but it probably will. You need to examine the metrics and facts: what changed at that company, how it affected your status. You have to base it on facts.”
That admission doesn’t mean the conversation has to go negative, though.
“What I didn’t say was, ‘I was…’ then, ‘fired,’ ‘terminated,’ ‘let go’,’” Daudert said. “Those are emotional words. What you need to say is ‘my position.’ This is where the interview goes negative. You need to follow that with a positive statement, what you enjoyed there, what you learned there.”
Kelly-Albertson discussed how a good resume could make a job candidate stick out.
“Every two people in the world are very different,” Kelly-Albertson said. “Remember that your resume needs to be unique. To me, a template is the easy way out.”
People who bounced around between lots of jobs or with diverse work histories that don’t necessarily related to job being applied for have a chance, they just need to focus on their work experiences in their resume, not their work histories, Kelly-Albertson said.
“There’s a very significant difference between the way you describe your work experience and the way you sell your work experience,” Kelly-Albertson said.
Having a couple resumes doesn’t hurt, either.
“For the most part, you should have a couple resumes depending on what you want to focus on,” Kelly-Albertson said. “If you’re applying for a job at Western and a job at KVCC, your resumes should not be the same. Western and KVCC have very different values and goals, and your resumes should reflect that.”
Lavender stressed the importance of networking, now that the job market has become more competitive.
“I understand that today we hire people who look like us, act like us and are friends with us,” Lavender said. “It helps to have the sharp resume and suit, but that isn’t everything. How you start the race is how you run the race.”
That networking can be anything from a business lunch to standing next to someone buying grapes at the grocery store, Lavender said.
“Everyone we meet is an opportunity,” Lavender said. “Either they’ll do something for you or you’ll do something for them.”
Despite its importance, job seekers shouldn’t network with people who aren’t respected in their circles, nor should they take networking for granted, Lavender said.
“It’s not the number of people you add to your network but the quality of those people,” Lavender said.
“Networking is not laying business cards down, it isn’t putting your resume on Facebook or MySpace and telling your friends to pass it along and it isn’t over when you find a job.”
The workshop also showcased the Alumni Career Association’s online Alumni Career Network, accessible from www.wmich.edu/alumni and clicking on “Services.”
The Network features postings of alumni events, resume writing resources, alumni mentoring opportunities and links to the Graduate Survey and Salary Report.
A similar workshop will be held from 6 to 7:30 p.m. Nov. 17 at the Embassy Suites Detroit – Southfield, 28100 Franklin Road, Southfield, Mich.
Registration is required. To register, visit www.wmich.edu/alumni and click on “Events.”
