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Published: July 16, 2018, 6:13 p.m.

JobInsights 7: The Job Hunt – Resources, Resumes and Strategies

 

Full Transcript Below

 

Welcome to Episode 7 of Job Insights with Serina Gilbert and Jeff Thompson. We focus on Employment, Careers, enhancing opportunities and bringing you the latest innovations from across the Vocational  Rehabilitation field to ensure your choices lead you down the career pathway that you want and succeed in gainful employment.

From getting started with services, to assessments, Individual Plan for Employment (IPE) to gaining the skills to succeed and tools for success, Job Insights will be giving you tips and tricks to help your journey to employment and break down the barriers along the way.

Job Insights Episode #7 is all about the Job Hunt. Serina and Jeff talk about resources, resumes, strategies and their own experiences while in the hunt for the Job you want.

A couple of apps were mentioned that can help you enhance your job hunt experience:

InDeed Job Searchis and app and is on the web at www.InDeed.com and offers searchable job listings with the ability to set alerts for listings in your selected fields.

Career Connectis an app from the American Foundation for the Blind and has many resources that will help you navigate your pathway to the career you want.

Thanks for listening!

You can find out more about Job Insights on the web at BlindAbilities.comand follow Job Insights on Twitter @JobInsightsVIPSend us your feedback and suggestions by email.

Thank you for listening!
You can follow us on Twitter @BlindAbilities
On the web at www.BlindAbilities.com
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Full Transcript:

JobInsights 7: The Job Hunt – Resources, Resumes and Strategies

 

Serena Gilbert:
When you're making some cold calls, I know it sounds super old school, but it's very effective.

Jeff Thompson:
Job Insights, a podcast to help you carve out your career pathway and enhance the opportunities for gainful employment.

Serena Gilbert:
Yeah, I especially love Indeed. It's an app as well as a website, it's indeed.com.

Jeff Thompson:
To help you navigate the employment world and give you job insights and enhance the opportunities to choose the career you want.

Serena Gilbert:
Somebody once told me when it comes to a resume that even Colin Powell has a one page resume and that resonated with me because I'm like, "If he can get it down to one page, surely I can."

Jeff Thompson:
Sometimes some job interviews or some process that you go through is just gaining experience, so you can do better at the next one.

Serena Gilbert:
Exactly.

Jeff Thompson:
You can find the Job Insights Podcast on blindabilities.com. Part of the Blind Abilities network with host Serena Gilbert and myself, Jeff Thompson, and you can contact us by email at jobinsights@blindabilities.com. Leave us some feedback or suggest some topics that we cover on Twitter @jobinsightsvip. Checkout the Job Insights Support Group on Facebook where you can learn, share, advise, and interact with the Job Insights community.

Serena Gilbert:
You are interviewing them as well. It might not feel like it, but you are.

Jeff Thompson:
Yeah, it's a two way street.

Jeff Thompson:
And now please welcome Serena Gilbert and Jeff Thompson with Job Insights.

Serena Gilbert:
When a job opened and they saw my name, they could place a face with that name and know that I took that extra step to want to be with that agency.

Jeff Thompson:
How are you doing, Serena?

Serena Gilbert:
I'm great Jeff, how are you?

Jeff Thompson:
I'm good, I'm getting ready for conventions coming up.

Serena Gilbert:
Very nice, I'm jealous, because you get to go to Orlando.

Jeff Thompson:
Oh, yes I did attend the National Federation of the Blind convention in Orlando 2018. It was a great time, got to meet up with lot of people, attended a lot of the employment breakouts led by Dick Davis from Minnesota and our very own Hadeisha Van Alstine was down there working with the employment groups. I had a great time, got some great content for some future podcasts and here we are, back in the studio talking about the job hunt.

Serena Gilbert:
I know summer is well underway and I know we have a lot of graduates that might be looking for some job hunting tips. So we thought we'd take today's podcast to talk about a lot of different techniques and resources to help you with your job hunt.

Jeff Thompson:
Yeah the job hunt can be very challenging. A lot of up and downs. But remember this is an experience, you're going to learn from it and experience is the best teacher.

Serena Gilbert:
Job hunting is definitely a full time job. It kind of feels overwhelming, I'm sure, and I hope that some the things that we chat about today will help break it down and give you some systematic steps that might help you identify some jobs that aren't even posted that might be perfect for you.

Jeff Thompson:
So I think one of the first things you want to do is identify the type of job that you want.

Serena Gilbert:
Exactly. If the type of job that you want is technical in nature, think outside the box. For example, maybe you're going into web design. Think about the biggest industries that are in your market that might still need a web designer. For example, some of the top industries I know here in Colorado, and probably pretty much nationwide, are healthcare, education and government. So everyone in those three particular areas would probably need some web design type of experience in order to run their company because they're such large organizations there's a seat for everyone. So I would start by identifying some of those places that maybe some other people wouldn't think about when you're looking at your skillset to start making a list of companies you want to look into.

Jeff Thompson:
And I always suggest to people when they're looking at the companies to go online, check out their about page, check out their mission statement because that will identify what the company is about. It's always nice to have some of their keywords if you get into an interview to have that to be able to utilize and use that during your conversation.

Serena Gilbert:
And that will help too with, and I know this next thing will get some people a little bit nervous, but that will also help with when you're making some cold calls. I know it sounds super old school but it's very effective. A lot of companies do not even advertise a great deal of their jobs because maybe they know that there's an opening coming but it just hasn't been posted yet. And if you can call and get your name in front of a hiring manager before they even posted that job that decreases the competition for that job and increases your likelihood of being seen by that hiring manager.

Jeff Thompson:
That's great information. It's who you know sometimes and getting your name in there really works. Get your resume and your application right to the top.

Serena Gilbert:
Exactly. And don't be afraid to volunteer at an organization that you want to work for as well. Because a lot of organizations, especially maybe a hospital or something like that, might hire from their volunteer pool before they would go into the applications that they received from candidates.

Jeff Thompson:
You know, volunteering is such a key part because if you're not working that's a void in your resume. So when you have volunteering in there a lot of companies look at that as a plus.

Serena Gilbert:
Exactly and you're still building your skill set, and more importantly, you're networking and you're keeping yourself busy as well. I know one of the topics that we're going to talk about on our upcoming podcast is talking about mental health and vision impairments and things like that and also some self-care tips. Getting out of the house will certainly help with keeping that balance for yourself and also keep that positive, optimistic outcome coming out.

Jeff Thompson:
So once you identified a company that's when you start honing in. If you have two, three companies you start, as Serena said, the cold call, you explore their job opportunities. And on most website they might have an area that is employment and you can go in there and check. Some places do post four, five, six different jobs, different areas and check out the area that you're interested and see if there are some opportunities right there too.

Serena Gilbert:
And also look up not only just their website but do a quick Google news search on that company. See what kind of things they have up and coming because that will help you with if you do get to make a cold call and speak to a hiring manager that'll give you some talking points to mention. For example, I saw that you guys are launching a new product. I wanted to let you know that I have just recently graduated from UCLA and I have some significant web development skills and I wondered if you had any openings for me to be able to utilize those skills at your company. That shows you that you dedicated some time to look at their webpage, look at some news clippings. And it also shows that you've been pretty thoughtful about how your skills might fit into the company and where they're going next.

Jeff Thompson:
And if you want to learn more information about searching for jobs and some ideas to have, there's apps out there that will help you like CareerConnect is one of them from the American Foundation for the Blind. There's another one from Indeed and this just gets you into that groove. You start looking through this stuff it might spark some ideas in yourself. Not that these are total answers for getting a job but it does enhance your own possibilities because you're reading stories or you're reading about other jobs and tips and tricks for the interviews. So don't shy away from these apps, they're a good resource of information.

Serena Gilbert:
Yeah I especially love Indeed. It's an app as well as a website, it's indeed.com. And the very nice thing about Indeed is it's obviously very much accessible as screen readers. And it filters out a lot of those spam type postings that you see sometimes on other job boards that maybe aren't so legit and it still pulls in jobs from the government websites such as USA Jobs or your state government or even your county or city government. So you're seeing virtually every job that's posted that meets the search results that you're putting in. And it also allows you to set up job alerts. You can enter your email address, enter the keywords and every day it'll send you all the postings that match those job alerts. And you can also save your resume on there.

Jeff Thompson:
One thing I really liked about these apps, these are not apps for just the blind. CareerConnect might have a twist to it and help you out with some hurdles or obstacles that you think might be in the way. But Indeed is just listing the jobs that are available and that's some frame that you have to be in that you can do these type of jobs and why not.

Serena Gilbert:
Exactly. That's half the battle right there because, and we'll talk about this again in an upcoming podcast, but if you go into the job search thinking, "Well maybe I can do this, maybe not," it's going to definitely impact you when you're called for that first interview and you're asked very specific questions about how you're going to perform duties or react in particular situations. So we got to remember to be really optimistic about what we can and can't do as well as think of the ways that you can get accommodations for what you'd like to be able to do.

Jeff Thompson:
Yeah, we were talking earlier about volunteering you mentioned that what positive that is on your resume. You might be doing a resume and you might have some gaps in there. The thing is volunteering can fill those gaps.

Serena Gilbert:
Well we talked a little bit about volunteering and I know that sometimes individuals think, "Why would I want to volunteer? I'm really trying to get paid, I don't really have the benefit being able to volunteer my time." I see that as an investment in your future. I know that sounds really cheesy and kind of corny but in order to get where you want to be sometimes we have to do some things that we don't really necessarily want to do and make some sacrifices but in the long term that will certainly pay off. Because those volunteering opportunities, like we said, will most likely, especially if you're doing them in the field that you're interested in, will put you in touch with lots of individuals that maybe work in the field or the company that you would like to work for. And they've seen your work ethic and seen how you can do things. And that will help get you that paid employment down the road.

Serena Gilbert:
Even when I started with vocational rehabilitation here in Colorado, I took one of my personal days off of my regular job to literally chat all the counselors in the office for an entire day and meet with the supervisor that was at that office. So they knew who I was. When a job opened and they saw my name they could place a face with that name and know that I took that extra step to want to be with that agency.

Jeff Thompson:
I think another thing that volunteering does it gives you experience that you are not probably expecting. Because when I was teaching, I taught woodworking at a blindness training center. I also did a teen night, a volunteer thing that I kind of created on a Friday night. And the teens kept coming back, 10 to 12 of them for four years straight. And it was just interesting because I wouldn't never got that experience to just like freelance time, three, four hours, with a group of teens that kept coming ... I didn't know why they kept coming back. But the experience I got from that was like I could be innovative, I could be creative and to keep their attention. That experience is a lifetime and I've taken that into my other jobs. You do gain a lot of experience from volunteering.

Serena Gilbert:
And you mentioned gaps in a resume before and along with gaps in resumes comes some gaps in current professional references. And most employers when they're looking at candidates would like at least three professional references. And they like them to be people who have recently worked with you. So again, that volunteering opportunity could give you an option to be able to build new references that you can then use to apply for paid positions down the road.

Jeff Thompson:
And if you've had plenty of jobs and moved around and planning on volunteering there's a limit to how many you may want to list that keeps it relevant.

Serena Gilbert:
That takes us right into resume writing. And there's so many theories on resumes. I have my own personal theories. I am very traditional in the way that I approach resumes. And by traditional, I don't mean as far as the formatting or the layout, because there's lots of different layouts that you can use that are very effective. But somebody once told me when it comes to a resume that even Colin Powell has a one page resume. That resonated with me because I'm like, "Well holy cow, he's done all kinds of stuff." And if he can get it down to one page, surely I can. I know it's a little different nowadays because yes there's computers that are looking at your resume and scanning for specific words and things like that. But even when you're in front of the interview panel they might not look at every single page on your resume and if there's some really cool experiences that you want to make sure that they see but they're on page two or page three that's not going to work to your benefit sometimes.

Jeff Thompson:
Put it all on the front page.

Serena Gilbert:
And there's lots of ways to creatively do that because there's skills-based resumes which is more so at the top of your resume listing different categories and then sub bullets of very specific skills related to the job that you're applying for. Or you can do the traditional chronological, there's all kinds of different ways. But especially if you're career changing maybe you're having some vision loss a little bit later in life and you're moving into a different type of career, you'll want to do more so of a skills-based type resume. Because that will allow for you to show your transferrable skills to open the employer's eyes to what you've done in the past that will also work to their benefit on the new position.

Jeff Thompson:
That's extremely important because the stuff that is relevant is stuff that you done lately, the stuff that they see will help you succeed at the job that they need to get done. And when you frame it that way that makes perfectly good sense, because if I went chronologically, wow, we're talking page four, page five. But if you-

Serena Gilbert:
That's it Jeff?

Jeff Thompson:
That's just the introduction. But that's one way to bring it all to the front because they want to find the important stuff. Because they're looking for someone to fill a job tomorrow. If you put those skills right up front, they're interested.

Serena Gilbert:
And somebody once told me, and obviously being visually impaired this is really hard to kind of wrap my mind around, they said that it's easier for employers to read your resume if there's a lot of white on it as opposed to a lot of big chunks of text. So for example, when you're writing a bullet maybe keep it to five, six, seven words instead of three lines because they want to be able to visually just scan down it, see the highlights. Use a lot of bold, italic, that sort of thing, for different sections because they're not going to read it word for word.

Jeff Thompson:
Right, sound bites we call that. I had a teacher that said, "We become a society of sound bites." And this was years ago where people don't read paragraphs. Well they don't. You got about seven seconds to get someone's attention with the beginning of a podcast, with beginning of a story. Even a song or a jingle, those little catch phrases, that's what you want your piece of work, your resume. When you're talking about the job description and your skills that's where you're going to find all the stuff they're looking for. The job description, bang bang, you're going to look at that, dissect it and bring all your skills that fit that to the forefront. And the keywords that they're using in there because you want to use those keywords, probably an algorithm that's going to go through there and search for those and move your resume to the top.

Serena Gilbert:
It's almost like taking a chemistry test but having all the notes and the book right there beside you. You got the job description, you have the internet to research every single thing you could possibly want to know about a particular company to be able to tailor your cover letter and your resume to at least catch someone's attention. So that they see, "Oh my gosh, I said I needed all these great things and look this person's perfect." And it's okay to use the same words as them. I wouldn't say copy/paste the job description into your resume because they'll notice that, but it's okay to use some of the same keywords. Like if they're looking for specific software or specific programming languages or whatever your field may be make sure that's on your resume if you have those skills.

Jeff Thompson:
Exactly. Serena, I really think you hit the nail on the head here with tailoring. Because if you're going to apply to two, three different companies they might have job descriptions that are similar but a little bit different. You want to tailor each application that you put in, each resume that you submit, you want that to be tailored to that specific job. And it's not just something you make three copies and send to three companies, so I really like how you use the word tailoring your resume.

Serena Gilbert:
In order to make it as easy as possible for you to be able to customize and tailor that resume make sure that you have a master copy of your resume that's in an easily accessible format for you to be able to switch it around and copy/paste or do whatever you want to do. Make sure that it's saved maybe in ... I would suggest, highly suggest a Word version. Even if you do use a Mac computer, most people in the business world do not use Mac computers when they're accessing things. So even if you do create it in Pages make sure you're saving it as a Word document.

Jeff Thompson:
And this final resume that you do come up with, your master, I would suggest, and some people may debate this, we might get some fan mail or some other kind of mail about this, is having someone take a glance over, a once over. Someone that is familiar with checking out resumes. One of your people that you put down as a reference. Maybe you can send it to them and say, "Hey, what do you think?" You may not be saying that, "Hey, I can't see the resume I want you to check for format." But they'll just glance at it and if there's something obvious that just strikes them they'll probably suggest, "Oh, you might want to do this or do that." There's ways of actually having someone check out your resume, and I highly suggest you have someone check it out.

Serena Gilbert:
Well unsighted or not it's always a good idea to have a second person take a look at your resume. And spell check, spell check, spell check, and then spell check again because the worst thing you can have happen on your resume when you're submitting it is there to be a glaring typo or grammatical error that will immediately eliminate you.

Serena Gilbert:
I know that we have a lot of listeners that are looking to enter into employment in the federal government. So I wanted to take some time to chat about that because that's a whole different beast to tackle and there's some tricks and things that might help out with that. So usajobs.com is where all of the federal government jobs are posted, including what's called non appropriated fund jobs which are the types of jobs that aren't tied to the federal budget. So I'm not sure if people follow politics but I feel like every six months or a year the federal government is threatened with a shutdown. The non appropriated fund jobs are jobs that would not be affected by budget because they're essentially self-supporting with the money that they bring in. So those are jobs, for example, at the child development centers. They're recreation centers like the gyms or the bowling alleys. Overseas, there's actually some casinos. Things like that. And they are still federal jobs, you still have all the federal benefits it's just a separate type of department. And then there's also the traditional USA jobs that are federal positions that are tied to the budget.

Serena Gilbert:
But one thing to remember about these types of jobs is that they have certain hiring I guess priority categories would be the best way to discuss it. So for example, usually on a position the first classification that is considered for a job is a disabled veteran. And then it's usually military spouses, and then individuals with disabilities is I believe the third category that gets a special hiring authority assigned to it. The reason this is important is because in order to be considered an individual with a disability is you have to have what's called a Schedule A letter. And a Schedule A letter is basically a document that you get from a professional, typically your vocational rehabilitation counselor that certifies that you are in fact an individual with a disability that qualifies for special hiring authority under Schedule A. It's a very simple letter, it doesn't even say your specific disability or anything. It could not be more general. It says, "This individual is an individual that has a disability that might be mental, physical, whatever." It's not specific at all. But it's something that has to be attached with your application in order to be considered in that special authority hiring.

Jeff Thompson:
And I know in some federal jobs and even state jobs that they are looking for people with disabilities because they do want to increase that category of hiring.

Serena Gilbert:
Well, and it's not just the federal and the state it's actually the contractors with the Feds as well. They're required to hire a certain percentage of individuals with disabilities as part of their contracts with the federal government.

Jeff Thompson:
Yeah keep your eyes open for all sorts of opportunities. It's now popular for companies to be out there saying that we're inclusive, we're looking for people with disabilities and creating those opportunities. So be aware, take a look around and you might be surprised.

Serena Gilbert:
For sure, I mean, definitely the companies that are really smart are looking for inclusiveness. Because the reality is if you look statistically, people with disabilities don't typically leave positions that they get because we worked so hard to get them. We worked so hard to get our accommodations. And frankly, it's usually a really good fit if we gotten the accommodations that we need. We're not typically trying to look for the next best thing. I think that some companies are finally starting to recognize that value.

Jeff Thompson:
It is, it's a good time to pay attention to the jobs, the opportunities that are out there. And check our show notes, check out the links to Indeed, CareerConnect. Dive in, dive in and start looking into resumes. And if you have friends that have done resumes before talk to them. Like Serena said earlier, there's not one size fits all for a resume.

Serena Gilbert:
Unfortunately, the job hunt can be an incredibly frustrating process. We're going to hear way more no's than we're going to hear yes's. That's just the reality of the process. Just remember as long as you are continuing to submit applications and you're continuing to network and talk to people about the fact that you're looking for employment, you're still moving forward. And yes I know this sounds, again, a little cheesy, I'm a little sentimental, but all you need is one person to say yes. That's all that it takes. And you're not going to hear that yes unless you put in a ton, a ton, a ton, a ton of applications.

Jeff Thompson:
Yeah, and experience is the best teacher so sometimes ... And someone, I think it was Cindy Bennett told us, "Sometimes some job interviews or some process that you go through is just gaining experience so you can do better at the next one."

Serena Gilbert:
Exactly, and that's great advice.

Jeff Thompson:
We hope this helps with your job hunt. In our upcoming episode, we'll be talking about-

Serena Gilbert:
The job interview. The scariest part of the whole job search, right?

Jeff Thompson:
... Swimming with the sharks.

Serena Gilbert:
Oh I thought that was a Jaws reference.

Jeff Thompson:
Oh yeah, well okay there you go. There is so many aspects with the job interview, preparing for mock interviews. So there's a whole bunch of topics that we're going to throw at you and give you a chance to think about on the job interview episode.

Serena Gilbert:
I can't wait to talk about that because I truly think that that is actually the hardest part of everything, especially figuring out the disability part of it. Like we talked about with the disclosure piece of it. But even just, "Oh how do I answer what's my greatest weakness?" And not say a really bad weakness. We'll talk about that and work through some questions and different tips and tricks.

Jeff Thompson:
And like we've been talking about looking at their about page or their mission statement. That is where some of those questions that they might throw at you or questions you ask them about where you can gather some of that information as well.

Serena Gilbert:
Exactly because you are interviewing them as well. It might not feel like it but you are.

 

Jeff Thompson:
Yeah, it's a two way street.

Serena Gilbert:
Well, Jeff.

Jeff Thompson:
Well, Serena.

Serena Gilbert:
Well, Jeff.

Jeff Thompson:
Serena and everybody I hope you enjoyed the show and until next time.

Serena Gilbert:
See you next time.

Jeff Thompson:
Bye bye.

Serena Gilbert:
As always, if you have any questions or topics that you'd like us to follow, you can give us a message on Twitter. That's @jobinsightsvip or on our Facebook page which is Job Insights. And we also have a Job Insights support group on Facebook. Just search Job Insights support group. See you next time.

 

Jeff Thompson:
For more podcasts with a blindness perspective check us out on the web at www.blindabilities.com. On Twitter @blindabilities. Download our app from the app store, Blind Abilities, that's two words. Or send us an email at info@blindabilities.com. Thanks for listening.

 

[Music]  [Transition noise]

When we share what we see through each other's eyes...

[Multiple voices overlapping, in unison, to form a single sentence]

...We can then begin to bridge the gap between the limited expectations, and the realities of Blind Abilities.

Jeff Thompson:
For more podcasts with the blindness perspective:
Check us out on the web at www.BlindAbilities.com

On Twitter @BlindAbilities
Download our app from the App store:
'Blind Abilities'; that's two words.
Or send us an e-mail at:info@blindabilities.com
Thanks for listening.