The BranchOut logo suggests the networking potential for Facebook users.

Social media is now a permanent part of the job market, there’s no getting around it. But for the majority of people in the workforce, there continues to be a disconnect between the two worlds that’s puzzling.

After writing about the subject a few times this year, I came up with a fairly simple theory: LinkedIn remains the best social media platform for business, but its doesn’t integrate into most user’s lives all that well. Meanwhile, Facebook has found a way to connect to millions of users’ daily lives, but most people still resist using it for their career pursuits.

Thus, people’s working lives and personal lives have become two separate worlds in the social media realm, with Facebook obviously towering over the competition. There are scores of social media users who are willing to spend hours posting pictures of themselves on Facebook, but still haven’t considered posting their resume online.

So when I saw the headline on TechCrunch, “BranchOut Unlocks the LinkedIn in Facebook,” I immediately took notice. Michael Arrington explains the basics of how BranchOut works:

The application unlocks massive amounts of career data about my friends and friends of friends that was just impossible to get to before. Search on a company name and see which of your Facebook friends work there (or used to). If those friends have installed the app, you can also see how many of their friends have worked at that company. You can then reach out to them for an introduction if you like. My network of 5,000 friends have worked at 4,664 unique companies. My 20,607 friends of friends have worked at 17,901 unique companies. Basically, someone I know or someone that they know works at any place I want access to. BranchOut tells me that 5 of my friends worked at Sun. 68 worked at Microsoft, and 53 worked at Google. I also have three friends who were in the Navy, apparently.

To me, BranchOut could be that missing piece that finally unites personal and working life in social media, and allows who knows how many people to finally make the leap to 21st century career networking. As Joe Grimm said about it at Poynter Online:

BranchOut is worth a look. I know you may have privacy concerns, but employment information seems to be relatively benign. The big take-away, though, should be that another company has built a tool that employers are using to look for help. Isn’t it time you got serious about how social media sites can help your career?

Indeed. I gave BranchOut a test drive. It’s not perfect, and its functionality is still somewhat limited, but there is an incredible amount of potential there.

Basically, it sends you to your Facebook account, and then gets to a page that will spook a lot of people, especially with all the furor over Facebook privacy. It asks for access to your profile and friends info, as well as access to your Wall, your email and “any information I’ve shared with everyone.”

It also wants to access that data at any time, even when you’re not on Facebook yourself. None of these things is particularly invasive, but it does look a little sinister all crammed into one list, and my guess is many people will chicken out, at least in the early going.

But they shouldn’t, as far as I can tell. What opens up is an extremely user-friendly, and potentially very valuable list of companies where all of your friends work (provided they have made that information public, of course). You can also invite your friends to join BranchOut, which allows you to see where their friends work. Lastly, there’s a job board to browse.

BranchOut may not be the be-all, end-all for career networking on Facebook. But it’s a big step.

Health care is among the fields offering transition job opportunities around the world.

Is the “transition” job a worthwhile move for someone established in his or her career? It’s been considered preferable, traditionally, to hold out for something in one’s own field rather than take an unrelated job simply to pay the bills. But as with so many other things in this recession, conventional wisdom is not what it used to be.

One of the reasons many unemployed workers do volunteer work today is to fill their resumes between jobs. In support of transition jobs, Denene Brox argues that they fulfill the same purpose — while offering a salary to boot:

In addition to providing you an income, transition jobs put you back into the ranks of the employed, the group most attractive to potential employers. “Transition jobs help you avoid those large gaps of unemployment on your resume, which is a concern in this economy,” says Nancy DeCrescenzo, director of career services at Eastern Connecticut State University.

The experts quoted by Brox also seem to think that one of the main reasons transition jobs became stigmatized no longer applies:

“I don’t think taking a transition job will hurt your resume, because the number-one thing that recruiters and employers ask is what you’ve been doing with your time. So you’re better off doing something than nothing. It shows that you’re a go-getter — that you’re out there working hard, doing whatever it takes to pay your bills,” says career coach Deborah Brown-Volkman.

Keri Coffman-Thiede on JobDig goes one step further — to her, a transition job is something that should be looked on as a positive opportunity. She relates her own experience as an example:

A transition job is work that is easy, you CAN’T take it home with you, and your career aspirations are in no way tied to it. For example, I used to be a recruiter. I called myself “a recruiter.” I felt loyal to the organization and incredibly responsible for filling their / my open positions. My ego and sense of self was wrapped up in this work — work that stressed me out and I didn’t find personally satisfying. Then, I took a customer service position in the same organization and life changed.

Coffman-Thiede discusses both the difficulties and rewards of her choice:

This “transition” job was a drop in status, responsibility, stress and pay AND allowed me the space for the work I DID want to come into my life. I literally could feel my muscles relax more and more as each month passed in this new, easy job. By about the fourth month, I had new energy and was interested in exploring what I would really like to do for work. Eight months into this transition job, the answer hit me as clearly as if it were written in the sky…I’m a coach! The great thing about this transition job is it also allowed me the time and energy to then pursue my dream job. I spent the next 2 years in this transition job while I got my training and certification in coaching and starting my own practice.

If you think a transition job might be for you, Patricia Soldati has a fantastic column on how to succeed in getting one by explaining to potential employers why you are motivated and qualified to make such a leap:

Career-changers have an additional challenge: How do you convey why you spent 10 or 20 years doing one thing and are now intent on doing another? In other words, what is your ‘transition story’ — that makes good sense AND emotionally grabs the hiring manager? The situation requires you to prepare a story that is rational, succinct, compelling and totally positive. You must be able to share it in a couple of minutes. And, there must be an emotional component that captures the imagination of the interviewer.

Soldati provides great guidelines for doing just that. I recommend reading the article in its entirety, but here are her three basic steps: 1) explain what you’ve done, (2) explain why you’re changing, (3) explain what value you bring to the new field.

It looks like we’ve hit a turning point for the transition job — whether for financial, strategic or other reasons, it’s no longer taboo to take one.

Volunteering for groups such as the Red Cross has become a resume-builder for many in the recession.

Once upon a time, conventional wisdom was that someone who already had a job was around six times more likely to find a new job than someone who was out of work. Unfortunately for the unemployed, things just got worse. A lot worse.

Last week, CNN Money reported that many companies and recruiters are no longer considering unemployed applicants:

Employment experts say they believe companies are increasingly interested only in applicants who already have a job. “I think it is more prevalent than it used to be,” said Rich Thompson, vice president of learning and performance for Adecco Group North America, the world’s largest staffing firm. “I don’t have hard numbers, but three out of the last four conversations I’ve had about openings, this requirement was brought up.”

Whether or not employers can legally advertise that they will only accept candidates who are already employed — by, for instance, stating it in a job listing — has become a murky gray area. Some companies have removed such language from their job materials, including one South Carolina recruiter who did so after being asked about it by a CNN reporter working on the story!

But whether or not it’s explicitly expressed, what’s obvious is that even those who have been laid off for reasons that have nothing to do with their performance have a lot to overcome.

So…where to start? Many people who haven’t been able to find a job are finding other ways to boost their resumes, as this article explains:

They are tour guides, airport greeters, hospital helpers, fund-raisers and more. They provide hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of work for free. They are volunteers. And, neither the struggling economy nor summer doldrums have taken a lasting toll on their numbers or hours of service. But they aren’t always easy to find: Some area organizations have worried about finding enough help this year. Yet help has come from a strange place: the ranks of the unemployed. Many people who have lost their jobs are volunteering to stay busy and fill gaps on their resumes.

What’s most interesting to me about the article is that it tracks how attitudes towards the recession and unemployment have shifted. Initially, many people faced with job insecurity or job loss dropped everything else to focus on finances. But that has shifted yet again, sometimes for the very reasons laid out in the CNN Money report:

When the local economy hit the skids, “we initially lost volunteers - about 200,” Baugher said of the volunteer corps of nearly 2,000 people today. Then, as Lee County’s unemployment soared — to a peak of 14.2 percent in January — “we got droves of people coming in to volunteer: people who’d lost their jobs. … Quite a few got jobs through volunteering.”

In fact, entrepreneur and author of The Brazen Careerist Penelope Trunk thinks that job-hunting is the last thing you should do when you’re unemployed. She’s got five other things you should be doing, which all at their core are basically ways to prepare for your next job.

The one that makes the most sense to me is number five, “practice talking about yourself with everyone.” Rarely do people acknowledge that interviewing is a skill that takes practice, and many people — particularly those laid-off after years with the same employer — are decidedly out of practice:

High performers practice for interviews. So now you know what you’re aiming for, but you need to talk about it with everyone – parties, at the gym, on the phone with friends. When they ask how you’re doing, talk about what you’re doing like you are in the job interview. And the good news is that the better you get at talking like that, the more you will actually believe your story, the story that being unemployed is lucky because you have learning opportunities.

However, eventually most people will be back to the job search, and news like the CNN Money report can be discouraging. But it’s important to remember job-search-steps.com’s assessment of the unemployed jobseeker’s secret weapon: “Actually, you have one big advantage from a job search standpoint when you are unemployed: time.”

Are you ready to get extreme with your job search?

Stories abound in this recession about stacks of resumes unread by employers as applicants pile on to job openings. It’s not enough anymore to be qualified for a position. Sometimes it’s not even enough to make a resume that stands out. So what can you do to have a better chance of getting an interview, and of ultimately landing that dream job — or, indeed, simply a job you might like?

Here are five extreme measures for extreme times:

1. Make a list of what you will and won’t do.

Laurie Ruettlmann at Punk Rock HR argues that even when people have been out of work for a while, and start to say things like “I’ll do anything for a job,” they don’t really mean anything. She suggests making three lists: “things I would never do for work, “things I might do for work,” and “things I really want to do for work — whether I have the skills right now or not.”

My point is simple: you have to do the work and figure out the psychology behind your unemployment before you post your resume everywhere and pray that someone calls you for an interview. That’s now how life works, anymore. An honest list that outlines standards and expectations will help you to redirect and redefine your job search.

2. Put together a marketing plan for yourself.

The days of just spamming employers with blind emails whenever a new opening appears online are over. Even tailoring your resume to individual employers, though often a good idea, isn’t a guarantee. Take a cue from some of the leaps and bounds in 21st century marketing. Modern companies work hard to sell their brand, what can you do to sell your own brand better?

Jerome Young at Forbes.com has some solid ideas. He points out that everything you use to brand yourself — resume, cover letter, online profile and interview remarks — must have a consistent message. But his central theme, in a nutshell, is showing what you’ve done, rather than just telling:

Have you increased revenue or profit? Have you decreased costs or minimized risk? Tell concise success stories of how you met these goals, and you’ll make yourself an exceptional candidate. To identify those success stories, you must understand how your position and your accomplishments clearly helped the bottom line of the business. That allows you to explain the value you’ve provided in the past and can offer in the future…

Examples of what you’ve done are far more effective that just talking about what you’ve done. Websites, pictures of products, and actual products themselves grab an employer’s attention and generate interest. I have offered employers a slide show with pictures of me working, just so they can visualize me effectively laboring on their behalf.

3. Establish your credentials.

Dan Burns of Career Rocketeer reiterates that the typical application package is no longer enough to establish your brand with employers. He suggests what he calls a “credentials package” that includes a customized cover letter, customized resume and a references summary, along with two additional pieces that he calls a “summary of qualifications” and “personal profile.” The summary of qualifications, he says, can be particularly good for snaring the interview:

After you pique the hiring manager’s interest with your cover letter, you save him/her the time of going through the details of your résumé by providing qualitative, objective, and definitive reasons why you are the best person for the job. If done correctly, often the Summary of Qualifications is sometimes all that the hiring manager has to read to select you for the interview.

4. Pay close attention to even the smallest of details.

Careless mistakes, all-too-common in this era where applicants can point and click to respond as quickly as possible, can ruin an otherwise promising bid for a great job. Maria Hanson at LiveCareer has collected some ironic and painful examples of real-world carelessness on resumes, comments like “speak, read, and wright English/Spanish.” And “I’m very detale oriented”:

“Making errors on your resume just screams, ‘I’m careless, I don’t care to double-check my work or have a friend look it over, and that’s exactly the same sloppy, lazy effort I’ll give you as my employer,’” says Tony Katsulos, who keeps a file of the worst resume bloopers he’s received as head of Jetstream Public Relations.

That’s one stack of resumes you don’t want to be in.

5. No matter what, don’t get desperate.

Thinking outside the box can also go horribly, horribly wrong. Laurie Buhl at Yahoo! HotJobs has a long list of things to avoid, such as coming off like a social media stalker and standing on the corner with a sign. And don’t forget that it’s possible to make your personal branding too unique:

Executive recruiter Kim Bishop has seen a variety of wacky queries, including one large package containing the message “Will work for food,” and resumes comparing themselves to Broadway shows and to NCAA tournaments. “One person asked whether he should send an employer confetti in an envelope. I said, ‘Think about it: would you want confetti all over your desk?’”

One good thing about a single-page resume is you can fit it on a t-shirt.

Let’s face it, the one-page resume never seemed fair. After working years to build interesting, solid careers, job seekers were suddenly told to boil it all down to what would fit on a single, generously spaced 8 x 10 page. Resume writers often have to spend far more time figure out how to cut out their experience to fit than they do crafting useful descriptions of everything they’ve done.

Once, not so long ago, it was acceptable to document one’s career with two, three, even four pages. The idea wasn’t so much that a human resource staffer would necessarily read all of it, but if someone responsible for hiring a position was interested in a particular candidate and wanted to read a little deeper into his or her particulars, the information was there.

Somehow, that got replaced by the notion that no one in their right mind would read more than one page about any one person, even if that person was being considered for an important position. Once an important tool for providing an in-depth look at the history of a job candidate—and a useful reference point for interviewers—the resume has since become basically a quick and crude means of weeding out unqualified candidates.

But in 2010, the art of the resume is at a crossroads. Joe Grimm at Poynter Online does an excellent job of laying out some reasons that the one-page resume may be a thing of the past. Two important ones:

(1) People are doing more. The best are simply winning more awards, having more opportunities, changing jobs more frequently and earning more degrees than used to be the case. They can sustain quality into a second page. (2) Look on LinkedIn. It’s hard to tell which resumes are one-pagers and which are longer. And when I see your digital resume on my computer screen, can’t I blow up the type? The same thing happens when you e-mail me a resume. I can blow it up. Digital resumes are making the concept of “page” a little arcane.

Unfortunately, though, Grimm doesn’t think breaking the one-page convention is a safe bet—yet:

I have thought for a long time that the one-page rule should be dead. However, a lot of the people that like them are still alive. So, it is wisest to stick to one page. While I will not ditch a resume just because I have to turn to a second page, some of the recruiters I respect insist on the conciseness of one page. So, I have a one-page resume and you probably should, too.

Louise Kursmark at careerthoughtleaders.com says the one-pager isn’t going anywhere. In fact, she says, resumes will only continue to get shorter.

Resumes for people at all levels are by necessity becoming crisper and more to the point. Factors influencing this trend include the proliferation of smart phones and other hand-held devices with minuscule screens; the explosion of the social media site Twitter that condenses all messages to 140 characters; and the bombardment of multimedia messages and advertisements that constantly entertain, distract, and shift focus. Readers quickly lose interest in wordy resumes that don’t get right to the point.

It’s interesting that Kursmark thinks resumes will continue to get shorter for the same reason that Grimm thinks they will get longer: technology has taken away the boundaries of the printed page. Certainly Kursmark’s points about screen-size are legitimate, but as the iPad has shown us, smaller is not necessarily the wave of the future.

Be careful about what winds up in the ear of a potential employer.

In a competitive job market, references can be the final hurdle to a dream job. But job seekers who had a difficult relationship with their former employer—or simply find their former employer difficult—face not one, but two big problems: how to deal with someone who might be giving a bad reference, and how to find someone who’ll give a better reference.

Not easy, and it may be worse than you think, according to U.S. News and World Report:

So, what do you do if you think a previous boss is likely to give you a bad reference? Simply not listing that person as a reference isn’t enough; reference-checkers can call anyone you’ve worked for, or who might know you, even if they aren’t on the list you provide. In fact, smart reference-checkers will make a point of calling people not on your list, because presumably you’ve only listed the people most likely to present you in the best light.

The article’s three suggestions for how to handle the situation (ask the former employer if he or she would be willing to negotiate what will be said when a reference inquiry is made, complain to the former employer’s HR department that the supervisor is giving inaccurate information that may be grounds for legal action, and/or warn the prospective employer that a bad reference might be coming) are gutsy, but more confrontational than many people are willing to get. And any of them could backfire.

Sometimes the best defense is a good offense. How can you present the kind of references that will blow away hiring managers and ensure they don’t feel the need to go after any others? The first thing is to broaden the scope of who you’re considering asking for a reference. Few employers require more than three references, and it needn’t be your last three employers. If you’re being considered for a managerial position, a cross-section of one former supervisor, one employee you supervised, and a longtime personal reference can be an excellent choice.

This is a great list of 10 possible people in your life to consider for a reference, and some of them are people who rarely get considered, yet whose opinion can be authoritative and influential: a volunteer coordinator, a teacher or a sports teammate you’ve worked or played with can be good choices. Former customers and clients can be great references, too, depending on your field.

Susan Adams of Forbes points out that an important next step (which often gets overlooked) is to go over with your references what they might say when asked about you. If you feel comfortable enough to do this, it’s a good bet you’ve made the right choice.

There’s also the question of reference etiquette, and here’s a good guide. It points out that thinking ahead can save you a lot of headaches later on:

Ideally you should never leave a company without asking for a reference letter on company letterhead. That way, if you lose contact with everyone at a particular company, you will always have the reference letter to provide to potential employers.

Never, of course, provide a reference without asking permission. It’s one more way to be sure you never run into what Adams writes about:

When Sarah Stamboulie worked in human resources at Morgan Stanley and then at Cantor Fitzgerald, she routinely checked job applicants’ references. They were not always positive. “You know it’s bad when you ask about the person, and then there’s that pause,” she says. “Or they might say, ‘Is attendance important to you?’” Or they claim that their company policy prevents them from talking about the person. “If you get three of those, you’re, like, this person is not good,” says Stamboulie, who is now a career coach in New York.

Some notes from Social Media Camp on how the job search has changed.

It’s inevitable in this day and age that by the time any cultural phenomenon truly arrives, doubters will be counting the days until its downfall. You know you’ve made it when you’ve inspired a backlash.

That’s what happened lately with social media. A cynical streak has crept into the cultural conversation over Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and the like. The most common complaints relate to “information overload,” the kind Christy at Quirky Fusion describes:

I’m predicting that we’re going to start seeing some backlash. We already are in platforms like Twitter. We’re going to start seeing more and more people pretend to listen (followers and friends are status points and resume builders in the social media world), while really tuning out. And if no one is listening, why should we continue to talk? In my wishful-thinking world (a lovely place, really), people will start reining in on their over-sharing and choose their tweets, updates, whrrls and posts with a little more restraint. In reality, I think that’s less likely to happen.

Blowing off steam is all fine and good; no one would argue that social media in any of its current incarnations is perfect, and it’s natural for emerging technologies (which many people forget that all of these platforms are) to bring their share of frustrations.

What’s more worrisome is when prognosticators begin ignoring social media’s relevance, and advising others to do so, as well. We’re beginning to see some of that advice dished out to job seekers, at a time when Twitter, Facebook and other social media sites are more important than ever.

This is not a good call. Panic over “overnetworking” is not a wise response to the complexities of social media, at a time when it is such a critical tool in recruitment, outplacement services and job search.

Much smarter is to figure out how an admittedly complex and rapidly changing social media landscape work for you. Tara Weiss has some great basic tips on how to make Twitter work as a job-search tool, as well as some stories that underline why all of this social-networking stuff—far from being sinister or empty hype—can actually make your life and job-search easier in the end.

Consider Kyle Flaherty’s story. He left a marketing position in Boston determined to find an in-house public-relations job. He tweeted about his decision and included a link to his professional blog where he described the kind of work he was looking for. Within days, his tweet was retweeted. That is, an acquaintance forwarded it—to his current boss. “I don’t think I would have gotten this if not for Twitter,” says Flaherty, who moved from Boston to Austin, Texas, for the new job with a pregnant wife and a two-year-old son.

Obviously, that’s not the typical Twitter job search story, but the point is that social media has given jobseekers a whole new set of tools. Weiss recommends following the right people, as Twitter can connect you to important people in your field that you might otherwise have no access to. Maintaining a profile and a feed that shows how engaged you are in your profession is important, and so is looking for companies and even hiring managers who may tweet their job openings.

Best of all is this quote that I think sums up social media’s potential for employment opportunity: “’There is nothing revolutionary about this stuff,’ Flaherty says. ‘It’s evolutionary. Back in the day, we would have sent out cover letters, a few years later e-mails, and a few years later we updated our blogs. The beauty of Twitter is that it’s as if you’re at a networking event all the time, in real time.’”

Oh, and before you get in too deep, absolutely look at this rundown of social media mistakes that can ensure you don’t get the job you want.

The most important thing is to figure it out now, if you haven’t already. Because, guess what, social media’s not going anywhere.

Tomorrow, we’ll take a look at how social media’s importance for businesses has changed, too.

2009 was a long and challenging year for jobseekers. Unemployment reached record highs, and competition for jobs was fierce. If you had trouble landing your ideal job, you weren’t alone.

As we cross into 2010, it’s a natural time to take stock of your 2009 job search: what worked, and what didn’t; what time was well spent, and what time was wasted. If you were using methods that didn’t give good returns on your time and energy, now is the time to drop them.

Then, resolve to channel your fresh start and high energy into new habits designed to get you into your ideal job in the coming year. Here are six recommended resolutions to make your job search successful in 2010.

Resolution #1: I will create a list of targeted employers.
If you’re only applying to jobs that you see being advertised, you’re leaving key elements of your job search up to chance. Take control of your future by identifying the organizations in your industry where you would like to work — even if they don’t have any job openings at the moment. Do your research, and make up a list of 8-12 target employers with products or cultures you admire. Devote time to introducing yourself to them as a future candidate. Get on their radar now, before a job is even open, and sow the seeds for them to call on you later on when something opens up. This is one of the best ways to take advantage of the “hidden job market.” It requires time and planning, but the end result is a position with a company you hand-selected as a good match for your skills and desires.

Resolution #2: I will carry job-search business cards.
A person’s job is a large part of their identity, and sometimes displaced workers feel lost without the security of a title and a business card. But do you really want to be scribbling your contact information on a napkin or index card when you network in public? Increase your poise, confidence, and professional appearance by creating and carrying a personal business card just for your job search. They are easy to produce at home with a printer, or simply use a free service such as Vistaprint, which offers jobhunters 250 cards printed free (pay only shipping and handling). Job-search cards are the perfect positive marketing tool — shorter than a resume, but something physical for people to take away and remember you by. This leads to our next resolution:

Resolution #3: I will expand my network.
No matter how much you are networking, you could undoubtedly do more. Jobseekers are often shy about expanding their network, but people are typically flattered to be asked for their expertise or connections. So take the plunge: if you haven’t made the time for Facebook or LinkedIn, now is the time (keep it professional on Facebook, of course). And don’t just concentrate on online, either! Whenever you talk with a friend, peer, neighbor, or relative, aim to get at least one informational contact (not a job interview, but a person you can call and chat with for 10 minutes or so about their industry) out of the conversation. While jobseeking, you should aim to have a short informational call or coffee meeting at least a few times a month. People will be impressed with your initiative, and flattered by your attention. You may be surprised where these short, no-pressure meetings can take you.

Resolution #4: I will build my personal brand.
This is a fairly new element of the job search, and as such, many older jobseekers are not aware of it. The candidate’s role now goes far beyond their resume; it is now common for employers to do preliminary research on you on the Internet before you are contacted. Your competitors are building their personal brand online, and so should you. Start commenting on an industry with a Twitter account or on a free blog at WordPress or Blogger; establish your expertise. Benefit #1 is that you’ll make great industry connections. Benefit #2 is that you’ll shape your online image for those who are researching you. Both are necessary for your successful 2010 job search.

Resolution #5: I will revamp my resume and cover letter.
When was the last time you really gave these crucial materials more than a simple update? Adding your last position is the bare minimum, and for 2010, you owe yourself an upgrade. Research current job ads for the hot keywords are in your field, and make sure your terminology matches the current jargon. Evaluate the entire document, even older sections that have served you well for years — these are the very sections that could benefit from a re-write in the context of your later accomplishments. Aim for a clean, simple look. When you’re done, save a formatted version for printing and email attachments, and a plain text version for online forms.

Resolution #6: I will genuinely seek out feedback.
Many jobseekers get “stuck” on some issue that they don’t even know about. Maybe it’s the presentation of their resume; maybe it’s some interviewing quirk. The point is, they won’t ever know about it unless they ask their “support squad” for constructive criticism. Unfortunately, due to rejection in the job market, these same people may feel too vulnerable to ask for any feedback. If this sounds like it might apply to you, turn to trusted friends and family for resume critiques, mock interviews, and ideas about where your talents might be useful. They know you better than anyone, and you should resolve not to let any insecurity prevent you from asking for their excellent help and perspective. Ask for feedback, and you may get a surprising boost!

Do you have any job-related resolutions for the New Year? We’d love to hear about them. Share your inspiration and progress in the comments.

I usually write to you from an HR perspective, but today’s blog is from my perspective as a job-seeker. I just finished an 80-minute task that was deeply demoralizing: I applied for a job using some of the industry’s “best” employee screening software. What I experienced was excruciating.

I thought the process would be short-ish, perhaps 15 minutes at the most, because the hiring company used a well-known screening software that I had used before. I even remembered my username and password! However, this did not seem to mean that the system remembered me, as once I was “welcomed back,” we began with my name, address, email, and other depressingly basic information.

I had hoped that the system would have retained my resume (isn’t that why I have an account and a password?), but no such luck. But if I uploaded one, the site promised, it would “read” my resume and extract the relevant information. I knew better than to upload my “fancy” PDF, and chose the simplest Word document I had. Even so, all the software could extract were my dates of employment. As I began the tedious task of filling in company names, titles, duties, and more, I recalled performing the exact same task with this same software just a few months ago. Why could it not remember me or save any information to my account?

Then things got… deep. Before I could actually submit my application, I had to provide:

• the names, titles, and contact info for not one, not two, but three professional references
• starting and ending salaries for every position I have ever held
• the reason I left each and every job, and whether it was voluntary or involuntary
• consent for a background check and a credit check
• a pledge to submit to a drug test within 72 hours of an offer of employment
• a written explanation of any gaps in my employment lasting 30 days or more

At this point, I started to feel that I was just giving the company reasons to reject me. After all, this job and I are not even at the courtship stage yet! Is it really necessary to compile such an exhaustive list on a candidate that you haven’t even spoken to – and may never speak to? Of course, I support the right of HR people to get the information they need to do their jobs, and I do understand the role of screening software, but this process left zero room for any magic, any spark, any feeling of “this is the right job for her” or “she’s the right person for this job.”

Imagine for a moment that this software was used for pre-screening romantic partners instead of potential employees. Who would put up with answering this depth and breadth of questions simply to see if there is mutual interest in a coffee date? (And who could tolerate the intense scrutiny?) I doubt that most of us would have met our current love interest if the date had been preceded by a questionnaire that demanded you list each former relationship, your levels of satisfaction with it, whether your separation was voluntary or involuntary, and phone numbers and email addresses of your former sweethearts for a “romance reference check.”

The automation of this system, and its extremely detailed nature, left me feeling more “dissected” than “discovered.” I knew perfectly well that I was typing away to a database, not a human, and that the database was designed to weed me out, not “discover talent” or help the employer and I connect. I don’t have anything to hide about my past, but this process was SO exacting that I felt I was not able to make my best qualities, skills, and experiences shine. Worse still, I was forced to tip my hand on the matter of compensation. If this employer ever decides to contact me, I’ve already lost the salary negotiation, unless I was devious enough to lie, which is a prohibited activity that I agreed not to do elsewhere in the application.

I probably wouldn’t go so far as to use the word “suck” to describe this kind of software, but other bloggers certainly do:

• Hey Employer, Your Online Application Sucks!
• Online job application systems suck
• Job Applications Suck

I’m interested in hearing solutions from the job-seeking side to the time-consuming process of screening. I know that using a portable resume format from a service like ResumePal is a good start in saving time on redundant application info. Many people say, “Dodge the software altogether and guerrilla-approach the HR department.” While this may be effective, the very fact that so many people advise doing an end-run around the software reinforces to me that it is more of a barrier than a doorway.

Is there a better way? Let us know in the comments.

Hands-down, the most fascinating post I read about HR this month wasn’t from an HR blog at all — it was from a blog for Java developers. It serves up some extremely valuable information about the relationship between programmers and tech recruiters.

The title of this must-read is “How to Make HR Dump a Programmer’s Resume,” and it was written by Esther Schindler of JavaWorld. The post made a huge splash on the Net… it’s been reposted in countless forums because it’s just so on-the-nose. Schindler followed up a few days later with the other side of the coin: “What HR Professionals Look For in a Programmer’s Resume.” The two pieces together create a whole, and are not-to-be-missed.

In the first article, “How to Make HR Dump a Programmer’s Resume,” Schindler discusses the difference in audience between an HR professional and a technical manager. Most people are capable of slanting the document to cater to one or the other, but oftentimes, applicants don’t know who is reading the resume first. It’s a real problem for techies, whose resumes are often markedly different from those of other types of applicants. Some other topics covered to make sure programmers don’t get their resumes dumped are:

• Having the right buzzwords, optimized for “literal” screening software
• Using business language instead of technical jargon
• Knowing when to leave out irrelevant or obsolete skills
• Using the “in vogue” term for a particular job
• Showing discipline in editing the resume for length (IT people are notorious for having loooooong resumes)

After the popularity of the first post, Schindler was determined to show her programming colleagues the DOs as well as the DO NOT DOs, so she penned “What HR Professionals Look For in a Programmer’s Resume.” The HR people she talked to said that the three things most often overlooked by programmers in their self-marketing are 1) specific achievements, 2) metrics, and 3) an introductory summary. This introductory summary idea is important: a lot of software people jump straight into a list of technologies or achievements without giving the reader a context of what kind of person they’re dealing with. Also covered:

• Don’t describe the organization; describe what you did there
• Include a self-rating of Beginner, Intermediate, and Expert for each technology
• Making the world a better place: covering work on open-source endeavors
• The worth of technology certifications to HR

I recommend you read these articles yourself if you are at all involved in recruiting tech personnel.

All of this reminds me of a brilliant cartoon (pictured, in part, at the top of this post) by Steve Hanov, a software developer who also creates tech-related cartoons. It’s a little harsh on HR — so you’ve been warned going in — but it’s quite funny in its description of how an HR professional and a programmer will read the same resume completely differently. Instead of taking the digs in the cartoon badly, I choose to take them as a sincere comment from a techie as to what is really important to them — which is truly worth knowing. I remain confident that organizations with open communication and a commitment to great technical recruiting can value the input of both programmers and HR when it comes to building the software team.

What is key for you in noticing a programmer resume?