I've noticed this trend on LInkedIn as of late. A number of candidates in consulting, finance, and business in general write up these sob stories about being unemployed for months, I read one just a few days ago about some guy approaching a year. And anyone who knows me on this thread knows I lend a hand where I can. So I shoot a few of them a quick dm saying I can review their app package free of charge, and give them my email for review. In my head, it takes ~30 mins of tims to thoroughly review a resume, and often, good feedback is hard to find unless you pay a resume coach or have friends in the industry you're trying to break into.
A few get back to me and send their resumes. They. Were. God awful. Although, I gave them the benefit of doubt, offered thorough revisions and critiques from the formatting, the bullet structure to the general resume structure. Some resumes were four pages, and no, they did have anything that substantiated even two pages. Others had pictures of themselves which is a norm in some Asian and European countries, but reflects poorly in North American countries. Others made every mistake you could think of - Education was riddled with Coursera, Udemy, Bootcamps, and such, when this stuff should go in additional information or be highlighted within the technical skills area. Just... everything.
So I provided thorough review, and just thought "oh, they never had access to a career service centre" or "they don't know the trend in NA region for reusmes". After that, I had some actually say: "thanks for the feedback, but I've had my reusme reviewed for a few months now, and I think it's fine" or just completely go silent (this was months ago). Yet, these same people then repost or reshare similar stories or frequent LinkedIn.
So, I've come to the conclusion... just because they're unemployed doesn't mean they were laid off in bad faith, nor is the layoff an excuse to negate actually looking for work. And a core take away for me, I'm not going to put in more effor than the candidate I'm helping. Some folks deserve the situation their in for misplaying the hands their dealt.
Seriously, someone offers to help you secure a job by thoroughly reviewing your application package after you've been unemployed 6 months and you not respond whilst also continuing a fruitless job search. I'd be grateful in the fact that someone is willing to help. I know when I got laid off, I had to beg (exagerating) people to review my resume and cover letter just to scrutinize every word a thousand times over.
Not all of them are like that of course, and the reason they're not is why I'll continue to help the few who reciprocate my kindness and support.
tl;dr - candidate resumes suck, they don't care, but some do.
Edit: to the users who saw this thread and shat all over it - I stand by my statements. If you have a counter argument, I'm listening.
I’ve had similar experiences, both over LinkedIn and surprisingly even on this site (although usually much higher quality here).
I used to reach out and also accept almost any request (not like accept being added to my network, but coffee chats, phone calls, etc - I have been, when the people are really good, referred them and helped that actually land jobs). And what I’ve seen is that for most people it’s a “check the box” exercise and they don’t actually come prepared, have a plan, or follow up. Many times I’ve given them advice and people to reach out to, and they don’t (sometimes even when I directly introduce them) it’s embarrassing. And usually when it isn’t exactly what they want (usually for me to get them a first round interview) they stop trying, communicating, etc
That isn’t to say that everyone is like that, but the hit rate is very low and has gotten worse. The sad thing is, it actually ruins it for others as I take a lot fewer calls. I actually gave this feedback to my university (which is a good/target school), because I was getting so many bad networking calls/emails that I had stopped taking more. Now I have just started to screen more aggressively before committing much time.
It boggles my mind how someone is both stuck, looking for advice and then conversely ignoring pointed, curated, and stress-tested advice. Every piece of advice I give is from the thousand applications I've sent and the hundreds of others I've helped.
But I get it, people don't want to take up the journey, they want to reach the destination. Sucks, by c'est la vie.
At this point, it probably comes down to:
1) They want an easy fix but dont want to put in the work (I'm not ruling out the possibility that they might be genuinely so defeated/ burnt out/ clinically depressed from the process that they can't do it anymore) and
2) They subconsciously dont want you to tell them that their applications and knowledge need fixing. They want this blue pill that it's the world that's singled them out unfairly (maybe due to their race, their non-target school or anything), and they just can't get a job despite their very best efforts. It's an easier pill to swallow than to accept that they put together a trash resume and they were weak candidates to begin with
#2 is a big one. I would say most people actually live their entire lives in 'blame the world' mode. It's the economy's fault they got laid off and cant get a job. It's the supreme courts fault they have student loans. It's traffics fault they are late. Blaming others is easy because it makes you feel less bad, but it also strips you entirely of agency. Only when you accept to some large degree that by and large your life situation is mostly your fault then you can actually be empowered to change.
Anyone who has self actualized will tell you eating failure shit for breakfast , learning on it, and improving, is what it takes to be successful. Meanwhile the people in your #2 camp have a word for this too - 'luck'. I have a word for them though. 'losers'.
When they succeed, it's all their hard work and ingenuity and how they pushed barriers in the industry. When they fail, it's all bad luck and racism. Humans
My boss had me help to review resumes at my last company and it was my first time doing this. 80% of the resumes for certain positions, even MD positions were a joke (bad experience / bad formatting). Rejected. Then some with good experience had terrible unorganized resumes. Rejected. The most surprising to me were CFAs and M7 graduates with highly qualified resumes and completely awful formatting and organization (probably 15% of M7 graduates).
What will it take to get you off this site? Just seeing your username evokes so much hatred
lol is this you?
I was honestly bad at networking when I was in college in terms of requesting things like coffee chats, I would try and come prepared with clear questions and stuff but I normally did a poor job following up/staying in touch with the person. Now I am trying to do something in a different industry where it is much harder to get people to want to talk and I am following up with everyone I am able to meet with but they are bad at staying in touch with me (the person trying to network). It is interesting how the dynamic is different.
I can relate to this as well; it's tough keeping up relations with folks via LinkedIn or email. I try to keep more core professional network updated every 3-6 months with just a few highlights on what I've been doing and see if they'd like to catch up.
I've found some folks just have a lot of other obligations, things going on - I remember I sent this one guy a message in May of 2020, got a conversation the coming June for a coffee chat and then he went silent. I followed up in Jan of 2021, and in July he responded saying he just had a kid and that took up 99.9% of his time/energy for the past ~1-1.5 years.
Might be a dumb question, but when you're doing this is it like a "hope you're doing well, I've been keeping busy with X, Y, and Z lately. Would you have some time in the near future to catch up?, but less of a rough version of what I wrote? Asking because I'm honestly not too sure (if this is wrong don't worry I haven't said this)
Pick any M7 business school and check how many candidates in that school's MBA resume books have typos and formatting errors on their resumes, now consider that this is a small sample of what many consider to be the high end of the market for finance recruiting. (I usually find errors in well over 50% if we include small formatting issues and inconsistencies to 10% which contain something that's a large issue)
It was a surprise the first time I saw it but it happens every year. Sometimes I want to mass email an entire cohort at H/S/W and ask what the excuse is...
In general, we all make mistakes, you can't help those who aren't willing to invest the time into fixing theirs.
I think we all have our own blindspots and it's difficult to address them when we can't assess the accuracy of a third party perspective on them.
I helped a few folks in Europe with this same problem. Their profiles were stellar, went to top 5 Undergrads or Masters in the region, but were struggling securing a job. It was really just the fact that their resumes needed tweaking to get some more conversions. I totally get the notion about blindspots, I have my own in other aspects of life (nutrition/exercise for instance), that's all the more reason to help out whoever I can to at least make it 1% easier for them to get an internship or ft position.
Boy, am I thankful my university had an extracurricular course on CV building... Granted, I nerded out a bit over the typeset and refused to go with Arial, but that's just me.
100% agree on the point that people often don't even want the help, but I was just the same in the beginning. Would curse and seethe at anyone telling me straight as it is that I was a loser, and guess what, I stayed a loser. Once I actually started to incorporate some feedback, things turned around rather quickly.
I'll never forget the pivotal moment I realized the impact of a resume has. I showed my resume to a 4th year at in my program when I was just getting my first resume draft ready. He took 30 seconds and said: "Yah, this is a compliation of sh*t. You should really just start over than work this." I incorporated his feedback and got much better conversion on interviews. The funny thing is, I had other folks review my resume, but they mostly just checked formatting and grammatical errors or consistency checks. They didn't validate the bullet points. I re-did my resume like 3-4 more times after the first re-build and it just consistently got better and better.
Have had this happen to me before. Almost word for word.
Note that this is a problem outside simply a job search. One of my favorite quotes from Catholic social reformer, Dorothy Day, is "there are two things you should know about the poor: they tend to smell, and they are ungrateful."
This is just the nature of helping others. Some people just don't appreciate what you're doing for them. The difficult part of helping others is often not the act itself. It is doing it over and over again even when those people dissapoint you. However, some you will help tremendously. Same thing even happened to Jesus when he cured a group of lepers. Only one of them acknowledged him. (Luke 17:11 - 19)
The worst thing about instances like this is not the spoiled and ungrateful recipients of the advice. It is their actions which harden the hearts of generous people and stop them from helping others in the future. Be smart about whom to give advice to but don't let them do that to you.
Thanks for the perspective and for the litrature; appreciate it!
I am currently reaching out to people through linkedin and stuff because I am looking for a new job in my field but a different position. I think coffee chats and calls are really helpful because people can give me insight into what different kinds of positions really entail. The active networking has been kinda of new for me because I had a steady gig and I slacked a bit on the networking stuff because it wasn't necessary, worked for myself pretty much, this was a mistake looking at it now, you live you learn.
I am kinda suprised by the stuff i read in the above comments, I am always very grateful that people take time out of their busy day to take my call or respond at all to my messages, because they don't know me and I don't really have anyone to offer them in exchange, at least at this moment. So I try to make a point to show that I am grateful in advance and afterwards. Also that the advice or knowledge that they shared was valuable.
I had a question about following up:
What kind of approach do you guys prefer when it comes to the follow up what is the fine line between keeping in touch in a good way and it being too much and annoying for the recipient.
my rule of thumb is to follow up in a few weeks based on the intial discussion and for long-term contacts, send them a message/email every 3-4 months with updates/asks for catching up.
Have experienced this a lot throughout my career. Have spent many years recruiting, training, mentoring, developing producers in the PWM space. Some quite experienced and others rookies. My overall take is you can't want it more than they do. Have shown them many systems, processes, techniques to be successful. Have explained what it takes. Some get it. Most don't. Interesting to note that when I dedicate time to them and get them focused, they all do pretty well. Then when my attention goes elsewhere, they slip back to their natural state which leads me to believe "they are what they are."
Joe Paterno was once asked how he motivates so many 5 star athletes. His answer was incredible. Essentially said he doesn't motivate anyone. He recruits kids that are naturally motivated and gets them to work together. His success was about recruiting the right rock. I've also seen that where I can tell right away if this guy/gal has the goods. If they do they do and if they don't they don't. Coaching them will make them marginally better but not much.
More recently I've spent time helping kids in the job search process. Some are all over it. Others act like they're bothered if you ask them to do something (write a letter, change their resume, make some calls, etc.)
This is a key point, especially for young people asking help from those with experience and maturity. We stand a lot to lose with little to gain by helping. We help because we want to give back. Reputation risk is huge! I can site countless examples of positive reputation capital that I've leveraged throughout my career. I've also had a few dings. Those are quite detrimental and can remove your name from serious opportunities downstream. If we're willing to risk that, you need to be willing to take constructive criticism and take action on requests.
When you do a good deed, you should not really care how it is received instead think that 1/15 of those people you may help could get to where you are today. Then consider they help 15-30 people one day.
How about you shut the fuck up and understand that maybe they’re dealing with a lot of other shit. You never know what’s going on behind the scenes. Take your self-righteous attitude somewhere else.
A mentee of mine was recently laid off, despite me trying to advocate to management for him — was actually a pretty solid guy. Since then he has been trying to find purpose. Sometimes people post to grieve but are not actually ready to find employment. But then they feel guilt for “not putting in more effort” which results in obligatory but half-hearted participation when provided help that they may not be fully invested in (due to job fit, helper being overbearing, and many other factors).
It’s a challenging environment out there, and in many cases, the complexities that people encounter are not always “rational.” Nor is life for all that matter.
Understand that the effort you put in may not be reciprocated. Accept, wish the best of luck, and move on.
Valid criticism - this was a rant I wrote without a clear head; I'll accept that and keep in mind this sentiment for next time. I'll admit I can't understand the entirety of what others are going through and their headspace after months of layoffs will probably not be rational. I equated their experience to my own forgetting that their situation probably differs wildly. On a side note, telling me to shut the fuck up was well warranted given this was an emotionally charged rant I posted after being disheartened, but if you'd like to offer pro-bono services within your space of world for those interested or contribute, go right ahead.
I appreciate the thoughtful reflection. I thought that the strong language I used would be an effective communication style to induce in you sudden realization.
Anyways — kudos to you for being willing to help!!! Seriously, it is commendable to put forth sincere effort in helping others - I wish many more on this forum shared the same bright attitude. In many ways, that is what makes humans significantly different than mere beasts - a higher calling to help one another, which is thankfully becoming more ubiquitous as we move forward in society.
I also help others with areas of knowledge in which I am well equipped. The same advice I shared with you is something I’ve learned over the years.
It’s made me a more effective helper, empathetic leader, and unwavering in my pursuit to serve others.
Best of luck with everything!
While I understand that perfection isn't expected in online forums like WSO, it was challenging to take your post critiquing others seriously due to the numerous grammatical errors on your end. Especially considering the apparent arrogance projected in your message.
It's easy for my message to be misunderstood - I gave these candidates the benefit of doubt and provided them comments on what was most likely holding them back in their recruitment search and removed the emotion/accusation from my communication with them. I offered my time to help them rebuild their resume on their schedule at no charge and as others have mentioned, great candidates can write bad resumes. This post has typos because it was spaz of text written while I was emotionally charged. I never claimed to be the Messiah of resume writing nor the end-all-be-all of recruitment, I just know that professional career consultants charge an arm and a leg that these people don't have for equivalent services. If you view my frustration as arrogrance, then shit on this post, this comment, or my profile.
That’s fair, and it’s great to have people like you who are willing to lend a helping hand. Just don’t let their lack of motivation, or failure to follow through, drive you mad. You did your part, the rest is up to them. If the pandemic taught us anything, it’s that there is no shortage of people who enjoy being victims.
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