A couple of weeks ago I sent out emails to a number of candidates we haven’t chatted with for a while. It’s not really my job, but I figure that if I were looking for work and didn’t hear from a recruiter, I’d wonder whether or not they had lost interest in me (or gotten run over by a bus or whatever). So I make it my business to keep in touch with candidates.

I have to confess, I find it interesting when I reach out like this.

It’s a sign of the times when I send out notes and hear back from a small fraction of the candidates. When that’s happening, it signifies that candidates have already found work and couldn’t be bothered to reply. That’s NOT what happened this time.

I heard back from about 70% of the people I emailed. Many of them responded to me within 24 hours.

Of those who replied, the vast majority confirmed that they are still looking for work. A lot of them are employed in unsatisfactory situations—either dead end jobs or unstable companies or contracts that are coming to an end soon. And a lot of them are unemployed, in some cases unemployed for a long time.

A few people told us that they found work in Michigan. And more told us that they found work outside of Michigan and, regrettably, had to take it.

I assume that those who didn’t reply at all are working again. At least I hope that’s the case.

We are seeing improvements. More projects finally coming on line. Many are small, but they are coming in. This is what we expect to see as things loosen up. It seems consistent with what our candidates are seeing, too.

Let’s hope that this is the upswing we’re all looking for!

By the way, we don’t lose interest in candidates. We just don’t have reason to call them unless/until a position comes in that looks like a match.

That’s right folks, I had a social media garage sale last weekend. No, I didn’t sell off my Twitter account or a Facebook fan page. I had a garage sale in real life and, while I didn’t completely rely on social media for promotion, I used it and it helped.

The back story is simple enough. Upcoming move + too much stuff = garage sale. Nothing special about that but the result and how I got it was very interesting to me.

Last week I gathered what I wanted to get rid of and made a list as my first action. Friday, I hit the garage sale section of Craigslist and posted the dates, times, location and the list of goodies. After this I took my sale listing link, shortened it up with bit.ly, and Tweeted it. I got a few hits, but it sure didn’t go viral.

Saturday morning I did the standard garage sale action: Signs! I put out three signs on the main roads surrounding my block and people were showing up before I even got the table out. I made over a third of my total sales within the first half an hour. Throughout the rest of the weekend, people trickled in and so did the cash.

Guess where the most talkative of my customers came from? Craigslist. I had one confirmed hit from Twitter as well: @daleandthomas was looking for my window air conditioner and with a “social media” fistpump we saluted the Twitter love. I got a kick out of that.

So, what’s the point of this story?

While planning all of this, I had a passing thought that the “economy” might affect my sale, but because I discounted that idea and promoted by every means available, I did well.

The signage started the sale with a bang and the combination of Craigslist and Twitter brought in a steady stream afterward. So my advice is whatever you have to sell always keep promoting. Use traditional avenues. Use new avenues. People will see what you have to offer and they’ll reach out to you for it.

Here’s a cautionary tale I thought might be interesting since there is a higher level of competition for jobs right now.

Stout Systems recently landed a project doing substantial ASP.NET development. Given the complex nature of the project, we knew we needed to add a very skilled developer to our team.

We interviewed a number of people and put them through our standard screening process. As part of our routine procedure, we asked candidates for a code sample.

And this is where the story gets interesting…

We asked one promising developer for a code sample. After two days the code sample hit our inbox right on schedule. That afternoon, our technical architect for the project phoned me, “Uh…I don’t know how to say this, but this developer plagiarized the code sample.”

WHAT!?!

How we caught the cheat:

1. The first clue the sample was plagiarized was that the developer told us he didn’t have permission to share any of his commercial work and would have to custom-code something for us. Fair enough. So he sent us a massive and complex Web site (that no mere mortal would be able to write that quickly) and claimed to have prepared the entire thing over the weekend. Hmm…

2. With that clue, our technical architect got suspicious, pasted a code snippet into Google and ran a search. He got a direct and immediate hit. So he downloaded the code and compared it with the developer’s submission. It was a 100% match except where the author’s name was changed. Even then, the original author’s name was left intact in a few places in the plagiarized version.

Unbelievable.

Needless to say, the embarrassed developer did not get the job.

I could tell more stories like this where people blew it by lying or faking. It is tempting, especially when you are competing for work in a tight job market. But in our experience, you’re better off laying your cards on the table and dealing with whatever the prospective employer throws at you.

Just a few weeks ago, a developer we know told us that he was certain he’d scared off a prospective employer by giving them his real salary history (which was much higher than the salary they were offering). After a delay of several weeks, the employer came back saying they had the green light to hire and presented him the offer. Now there is a great example of an honest success.

So, you’ve gotten the HR department past your cover letter but how do you keep them from tossing your resume out the window before they finish reading it?

One mistake I see too often is a resume that ranges from 4 to 8 pages (or even more!). Comments about candidate’s resumes being of excessive length are on the rise and I’m being mild when I say “comments”.

Applicants are expected to summarize their career in 3 pages or less. This requires making choices about what stays and what goes, but the Pareto Principle does apply here – 80 percent of what an employer wants to see is going to be covered in 20 percent of the resume. The trick is knowing what the employer wants to see. Increase your visibility by observing the following list.

Professional Summary: This is your 30 second commercial. Use it to spotlight your strengths and years of experience.

Skills Summary: Often, the eyes go here first. Highlight where you excel, but don’t pull everything out of the closet or it’ll be too cluttered. And if you only touched it, it’s not a skill and should be left off the list.

Employment/Experience History: Company, dates of employment, position held, and a few bullet points of what you accomplished. Keep each position to a brief paragraph. Remember, this is just the hors d’oeuvre to whet their appetite. Give them the main course in the interview.

If your career has spanned many years and multiple jobs, keep the detail to the last two or three positions. With anything prior you should list the company, date of employment, position held, and a one line description.

Education/Certifications: If your wall is covered with framed gold seals, list those that apply to the career you’re seeking.

Groups, Affiliations: These demonstrate your involvement in the industry community.

Remember, recruiters and HR managers are scanning through a ton of resumes. In fact, one hiring manager I talked with today just received 1400 resumes for one technical position! So, maximize the chance of your resume getting a close look by focusing your content.

Who has the time to spend a week learning how to use something they just paid $X,XXX for?! I don’t.

Every day something new is unveiled, but not every day does that something new create the reaction you would expect of these “fantastic, look what you can do, cutting-edge” items. The products and services that take off are easy to pick up, learn and use. The iProducts and the Twitters and the whole realm of social media are intensely complex behind the scenes. But up front, they’re accessible. They’re USABLE and people are USING them.

The speed of advancement we experience now has magnified the need for human factors/usability people.

When did personal computers become popular? Mainstream acceptance happened when knowledge of all the codes, abbreviations and structures behind operating the system became unnecessary. Accessibility came with the revolution of graphical user interfaces like Windows OS and Mac OS.

More than ever we get interest from clients when they learn that we have human factors/usability personnel available for projects. I think that’s good, because it suggests that we are all learning this lesson.