Dynamic Resume/CV and Static LinkedIn Profile

I teach my job seeking clients that they should consider as if their LinkedIn profile is virtually stapled to each CV that they send out. Ignoring this is a grave danger; recruiters will find your profile on LinkedIn if they invest a small amount of time, and believe me, many do!

If the LinkedIn profile positively complements your resume, everything is wonderful. However, if your persona on LinkedIn is somehow different or adds confusion for a recruiter, you can be eliminated from contention for a job without even being aware of it.

Most job seekers create multiple versions of their resume because they have more than one objective in their job search, and/or decide to emphasize different elements in their background depending upon the specific targeted job. In such real-world situations, the static nature of the LinkedIn profile that is associated with these various versions of the resume creates a problem.

And, since LinkedIn currently gives no means to a person to create the equivalent of multiple profiles, one to match their different resumes/job targets, there is no satisfying solution.

With such an obvious inherent conflict, some people choose to make the LinkedIn profile all-encompassing, essentially a combination of all versions of their resume. Another approach is to use LinkedIn to supplement their primary job search objective, and lose the benefit of LinkedIn as a complement for the remaining career goals.

Either of these solutions is imperfect at best, and until LinkedIn allows for the equivalent of multiple profile functionality, there is no way for many job seekers to fully support their job search efforts using this otherwise excellent employment search resource.

Translating Your CV from English into Hebrew

There are multiple issues in moving from English (or some other language) into Hebrew with your CV in preparation for your Israeli job search.

The initial thing to consider is whether this is even necessary for you to do. There are a variety of opinions.

One is that if you won’t be able to understand your own CV in Hebrew, then there is no reason for you to have such a version, and it is even misleading in giving the impression that your level of Hebrew is higher than it actually is. Others say that you should send your CV in the language that the employer used to advertise the job itself, independent of your own level of Hebrew. I can attest to the fact that in my personal experience of receiving thousands of CVs in Israel, the majority are submitted in Hebrew, with the exception of sales/marketing and technical jobs, where English CVs are a more common occurrence than in other professions.

If you think back to the objective when sending your CV, it is to move forward in the recruitment process. You have 10-20 seconds to make a positive impression. Since you don’t know what the level of English the person(s) reading your CV will have, it is dangerous to send your CV in English, even if the job requires a high level of English. Keep in mind that multiple people may be reviewing your CV, and the first can be a person simply doing filtering on keywords and/or past job titles. Again, since in most cases you can’t know who will read your CV and what their comfort level is in Hebrew and/or English, a safe approach is to send your CV in both languages, and let the reader decide which is preferable for them. The CVs can be sent in two separate files with names that make the contents obvious, or put together into one suitably-named file.

If you do decide to create a Hebrew language CV, then you need to confirm that your CV is designed according to Israeli conventions, meaning among other things, short and targeted. Of course, any English CV that you use in Israel should also conform to the Israeli standard.

The Hebrew output needs to be both grammatically correct as well as using the accurate professional/technical terms. The second requirement is as important as the first. If the translator is not familiar with the current sector-specific words for your employment objective, then the result will generally be a document that gives a clear indication that you don’t know the subject matter adequately, putting yourself immediately at a grave disadvantage.

Certainly for either one of these goals, using an automatic translating service (eg. Google Translate…) is out of the question – there is no chance to generate a suitable document.

The translator must be at a minimum mother tongue level Hebrew with relevant knowledge of sector, in order to ensure the profession-appropriate terms are used. At the same time, if you need assistance massaging the non-Israel-style English CV into an Israel-style Hebrew CV, then the translator must be knowledgeable in this area as well. Sometimes this might even require getting assistance from two separate people, one knowledgeable about Israeli-style CVs and another with the Hebrew skills to perform the translation.

Whether the person is paid or not is dependent upon the cheapest and most reliable access you have to someone that meets the above criteria. Your CV is generally your first impression-maker to the employer – make sure you consider all of the implications of your language decision.

Is Your Job Search Routine?

Most people got up today thinking that it is just a normal day. Not me, though. I stayed awake until 3am watching my San Francisco 49ers beat the New Orleans Saints in a playoff game (American football for those who don’t know). What an awesome finish, the Niners got a touchdown with nine seconds left to win! So, I am especially tired, but today is a great day, not merely regular.

As a sports fan, I am by definition filled with routines; some call them superstitions. When something works previously, I stick with it. About one year and a half ago, the San Francisco Giants (baseball) were two (series) wins away from winning a championship, something that hadn’t occurred in my lifetime (and I am almost 50), so I incorporated them into my Employment in Israel article: Loyalty at Work. They ended up surprising everyone, especially San Francisco fans, by winning the World Series. So, now that the 49ers are two wins away, and I feel that their fate somehow rests within my fingertips, I have the responsibility to help push them over the top.

If you are not a sports fan, you might want to skip the next paragraph.

Actually, I am somehow feeling less nostalgic writing this article than the previous one in this series. One year and a half ago, there had been no championship for any of the Big Three of San Francisco sports in more than 30 years, and the Giants themselves hadn’t won since 1954, before I was born and before they were even playing in San Francisco. Even more importantly, after being removed from US sports since the time I made aliyah in the 1994, I reconnected to something that was almost a matter of life and death for me when I was younger. So, it was a kind of coming out party for me – I was confident enough being an Israeli to become overtly American again (not that my accent when I speak Hebrew fools anyone). Some of those components are missing this time. However, there is a big positive now. Previously I had no way to watch the games; last night I used a free website that shows the games live. Lack of sleep is a small price to pay for being able to see the action rather than just reading about it. The next improvement will be to find other San Francisco sports fans in Israel and watch together in a place where I can yell when they score, rather than restrain myself so that I don’t wake up my wife and kids.

Routines like this are building blocks in the construction of our everyday lives. In this particular case, the events themselves that make up my routine are spread apart by many months, so it is difficult to see the pattern without me hitting you over the head with it. However, the big and little things we do automatically each day without thinking about them comprise a large portion in all of our daily activities.

This seems to be especially true for those searching for work. The question is, does your routine make sense – is it the correct way to go about securing your next employment? Well, of course that depends upon what your objective is, and what you are doing to realize it. However, all job seekers should be “routinely” asking themselves these questions:

• Is your routine in tune with the realities of the 2012, or are you using what worked for you previously, before social media became so prominent in the majority of effective job searches, or before you moved to Israel? 
• Are you using resources (websites/placement companies) that someone recommended to you, even though their career objectives and yours are very different? 
• Are you focusing most of your time using job websites for your next opportunity? From what I understand after speaking with numerous job seekers, this is the routine for many people. In my opinion, this is THE number one reason why people become frustrated with job searches. Certainly people do get jobs they apply to from websites, but the majority of people working today did NOT find their job from a website. Two-thirds of all jobs are never publicly advertised, so spending so much time on job sites guarantees that you will never even be aware of the majority of available jobs. Networking is the single best investment of your time when seeking work: Employment Networking - Getting to the Other Two Thirds of the Jobs.

So, we will all know soon if my routine that began with the SF Giants will carry over to celebrating a Super Bowl victory for the 49ers. For job seekers, results of your routine usually cannot be discerned so quickly and clearly, but nonetheless, they are much more tangible to achieving your objectives than mine are.

Or maybe not…

Go Niners!

And yes, if things go according to plan, in the very near future I will be writing my third installment in the San Francisco Sports trilogy, Ode to the (Golden State) Warriors. Maybe if they sign Omri Caspi, everything will turn out good!

Job Seekers – Don’t Like What You See in the Mirror?

I heard of a study done some years ago that stuck with me. Most people, when they look in the mirror, are not happy with their appearance. According to this research, a person has a much lower evaluation of their looks than someone else does. What was the explanation for this phenomenon? Well, it seems that every person has something(s) about their face that they wish was different - for instance the color of their hair, the shape of their nose, or the size of their ears. This one aspect of their face that they don’t like is the exact area that they hone in on when looking in the mirror. However, when someone else looks at that same face, they are looking at the entire package, and most everyone seems to be put together nicely (after all, we were created in God’s image).

Job seekers can get stuck focusing on a small detail that causes them to forget the overall value that they offer.

Many people intuitively and automatically identify one or more factors that they feel are causing them to not get hired. Recently I heard the following explanations:

• Don’t have a university degree
• Live in Jerusalem (too far from the center)
• Over 50
• Don’t speak Hebrew well enough
• Don’t have work experience in the sector

Any of these issues can certainly increase the difficulty in landing work. But keeping in mind that you as a job seeker are a combination of many elements, only one of which it seems is causing you problems, may help in putting things in their proper perspective.

When an employer is seeking to fill a role, they generally have a conception of the candidate that can meet the requirements. Oftentimes it is difficult for the job seeker to infer this vision from the advertised description, but that doesn’t change the fact that it exists in the mind of the employees responsible for the hiring process.

When an employer creates their job listing, some of these profile characteristics are included and other are omitted, purposely or not. They can ultimately be divided into two categories: required and nice to have. In a perfect world, all of this would be clear to the applicant from reading the job posting. However, as we all know, we are living in a world far from ideal. For instance, sometimes in the job requirements section there is an entry for a university degree, even including the additional request “from a known university”. It is impossible to understand if this is an absolute requirement or a nice to have; being listed in the requirements section is not always an accurate indication. And whether my university is considered “known” in Israel, especially when I graduated from a university in the US, is totally unknown to me. Another possibility is a requirement for fluent Hebrew – who can accurately define what the employer considers fluent? Other examples can include a listing that previous work experience in the Internet sector is nice to have; I know some of these companies and a candidate that doesn’t possess work experience in the internet sector won’t receive even the slightest consideration, independent of the job listing wording implying it is not a requirement. The unwritten absolute job requirements are silent killers – candidates that are sure they are perfect for the job may not hear back because they don’t live in the right part of the country, are deemed overqualified and/or fall outside the age range.

Let us take a more in-depth look at a situation where the company has a candidate profile requirement that the applicant must have a university degree. You meet all of the job requirements, except this one. You have two options:

1) Don’t apply for the job
2) Apply for the job

Probably readers this far into the article can guess that I believe this job should be applied for, because nobody can know if it really is an absolute requirement, and even if it is, if it may be overcome anyway.

OK, so if you apply for the job, how should you go about it? Alternatives:

• Include on your CV a fake university and degree that fulfill this requirement
  
  • Never do this! No additional explanation required…
• Send your CV without any indication of university/education
  
  • This is not the best of all worlds, but if you have absolutely no post-high school education, you may be forced to use this approach.
• Include on your CV that education which you do have, including university courses even if you didn’t graduate.
  
  • Most people that I come across without university degrees do have some post-high school education credits, whether they be professional classes, junior college, or university courses without obtaining a degree. Listing these may get you to the next round.

I am sure some people may find the reasoning above faulty. Why waste time applying for a job if you don’t meet the requirements? In fact, as a recruiter, I generally agree with this, as many of the CVs I receive are from applicants that don’t approach the published requirements – something tremendously useless! However, if you are close, then I certainly don’t hold it against anyone for trying, and there are times when I have the ability to present a candidate that does match in all ways except for one, and help them to get invited for an interview.

And let’s remember, what is the objective of a CV? The correct answer is to get yourself called for an interview. And for any of the issues that are sensitive for you, including certainly job requirements which you don’t match, it is much better for you to be able to address them in a face-to-face (or at least telephone) interview, rather than when you are a one dimensional CV piece of paper. Keep in mind that according to studies of how CVs are processed, a CV that arrives is checked for 20-30 seconds on average. Therefore, there is no chance that the entire CV is being read in that short period of time; it is simply scanned, possibly electronically. So, if including truthful information in an education section, even if it doesn’t fully meet the requirements, is enough to get you to the next stage, then this approach makes sense.

If we return to the initial concept of thinking about the big picture rather than focusing on a single (negative) item:

• The initial objective in submitting your candidacy is to get to the next stage, giving you the ability to speak with the employer directly. Creating a CV that increases your ability to reach this goal is the only objective when considering what to include. Approaching the company in the correct manner is equally critical. In conjunction with sending your CV in response to job posting that you find on Internet, if you can develop a contact within the company (using LinkedIn or some other manner) to also submit your CV can do wonders for your response rate. An advocate inside the company oftentimes can mitigate the fact that you don’t meet all of the job requirements. I have seen many cases in which applicants arrive to the HR group via an internal company contact and go to the head of the list compared to others whose CVs arrive in response to a public job announcement. Networking is the most effective way to have the employer consider you by looking at the big picture, rather than the small individual details.
• Once you get to the interview, you now have your best chance to make a big picture impression. Yes, it may be true that you don’t have the required university degree; however you have the opportunity to show all of the value that you can deliver to the employer, which sometimes can cause them to reconsider whether the university degree is really so significant for candidates. Or, it may allow them to consider you for another position where you are appropriate.

All job seekers are made up of a variety of skills, aptitudes, and personality. Different subsets of these characteristics are relevant for each individual job, and when going through the recruitment process, if you remember to focus on the attractive overall “package” that you create, you will find that you will move from appearing defensive about particular items you perceive as negative to portraying a more rounded and positive image of yourself as a future employee to the company.

Don’t be afraid to look in the mirror – most people will find you attractive if you give them a chance, so why can’t you?

New Immigrants' Employment Issues

In my job at Israemploy, I am in touch with many new immigrants and potential immigrants to Israel. While certainly each individual has questions/concerns/problems that are specific to their unique situation, there are issues that are common to many people relocating to a new country. These do not impact new immigrants only, but most new immigrants do consider some of these questions:

• Can I get a job before moving to Israel?
• Are there realistic opportunities to continue to work at my current company (before immigration), either by telecommuting or making regular trips?
• My level of Hebrew is poor, will this be a problem?
• What types of jobs are suitable for English speakers?
• I want to change careers, should I do so immediately upon making aliyah?
• I know the value of networking, but I don’t know anyone (in my profession) in Israel
• What are the differences between an US resume and an Israeli CV?
• What should I be prepared for in Israeli interviews?
• What are cultural differences between Israel and North America/Europe?
• I want to open a company upon arrival in Israel, how should I go about it?

Can I get a job before moving to Israel?

It is the dream of most potential immigrants to have a job waiting for them before arrival in Israel. However, in most cases Israeli companies will not even begin the recruitment process with a candidate before they are living in the country. From the employer’s perspective, there is plenty of logic in such a decision: why begin a discussion with someone from long distance that may or may not actually relocate when there are usually plenty of other qualified candidates already living in Israel. From my viewpoint, the most important thing to convey here to potential new immigrants is that associating your decision to make aliyah upon having a job waiting for you is an almost sure recipe for indefinite postponement. Unfortunately, except in very rare cases, people make aliyah without a job.

Are there realistic opportunities to continue to work at my current company (before immigration), either by telecommuting or making regular trips?

More and more people are able to keep some or all of their pre-aliyah incomes by continuing at the same company after relocating. There are two typical ways this is done:

1. Telecommuting, simply from across the ocean rather than the neighborhood. If you think about the job that you are doing before aliyah, it may be that a good portion of the tasks you perform can be carried out from the comfort of a telephone/PC/internet equipped home office, with occasional trips to meet with the rest of the staff and/or customers. Unfortunately, I have found that there seems to be a large gap between the number of people that are comfortable with telecommuting from Israel, and the number of companies that are progressive enough to implement such an arrangement. Not all companies/managers are open to such a working arrangement, but if you do have the ability to convince your pre-aliyah employer that it is in their interest to keep you on, this can turn into the perfect win-win situation.
2. Long Distance Commuting – If you have a high enough salary that can justify paying regular travel costs, then you can join the growing club of Europeans and North Americans that meet at Ben Gurion airport on Saturday nights or Sundays for their weekly/bi-weekly/monthly flights to work outside of Israel. I don’t want to come across as a proverbial Jewish mother here, but I do think it is important to raise the non-financial consideration in this arrangement, and that is the cost on the family. Long term regular separation of one spouse (usually the husband) from the family for an extended period of time is difficult in the best of circumstances and combined with aliyah can make it even harder.

My level of Hebrew is poor, will this be a problem?

Some people move to Israel with a fluent level of spoken Hebrew. Others have a solid basis, either from school/yeshiva and/or hearing Hebrew, and are able to get to the conversational level in a relatively short period of time. Then there are the rest of us, with a Hebrew school level of Hebrew or less, recognizing the letters but not having much vocabulary/grammar, essentially starting from the beginning. So, the good news is that anyone reading this article is presumably fluent in English, which is a valued asset in the Israeli employment market. The average salary in Israel for someone that has a mother-tongue level of English is higher than the overall average salary. However, English is best when used as a supplement for Hebrew as opposed to a substitute. There is a small niche of jobs for people that speak English (or some other foreign language) only, and while this can be a short-term solution until your Hebrew becomes conversational, it is not the ideal long-term situation, as such a person is severely limited in terms of types of jobs available and associated salary. Putting a focus on getting your Hebrew to at least a conversational spoken level is for many immigrants the best thing they can do to increase their employment horizon.

What types of jobs are suitable for English speakers?

So, you’ve read the blurb above, and you still want to know what jobs are suitable in Israel for people that are not yet conversational in Hebrew.

For bilingual people, there is no shortage of positions that can be suitable. Here are some examples:

· Administrative
· International Sales/Marketing/Business Development
· Technical/Marketing Writing
· English Teachers
· Accountants
· Lawyers
· Purchasing
· Translator

Essentially any job that requires interactions with organizations outside of Israel, either customers, suppliers, partners… will require someone that speaks a high level of a foreign language, usually English, although to a lesser extent also Spanish, French, Russian and other languages. Most of these positions also require a conversational level of Hebrew, so that the employees can interact with the rest of the staff and participate in meetings.

For non-Hebrew speakers, the list gets much smaller and specialized for those jobs where you can use a foreign language, including:

· Customer Service/Support
· English Teacher – for people that are not beginners
· English language writers – not so much the technical/marketing writers that have to integrate in companies, but content writers/editors for websites

Another type of job that can be done by people that are not conversational in Hebrew is one that doesn’t have a particularly high language skills requirement for any language. Examples of such positions are gardeners, cooks, working with babies…

I want to change careers, should I do so immediately upon making aliyah?

Immigrating introduces such a large number of life changes, so a good initial objective can simply be to keep things as simple as possible. A job candidate is always more attractive to a potential employer if they can show relevant work experience/education. So, you might decide to postpone making that career change until you have put some of the more major aliyah issues behind you, and gained some Israeli work experience. [Update to this section: http://jobsearchinisrael.blogspot.com/2010/01/changing-careers.html].

I know the value of networking, but I don’t know anyone (in my profession) in Israel

See the networking article: http://jobsearchinisrael.blogspot.com/2009/11/employment-networking-getting-to-other.html.

What are the differences between an US resume and an Israeli CV?

Two main differences:

· an Israeli CV is very short: one page is good, two pages is maximum (except in the case of academic CVs, which generally run longer)
· Israeli CVs are very focused on the targeted job, as opposed to often more general US style resumes.

For more details about Israeli CVs, see: http://jobsearchinisrael.blogspot.com/2009/10/cvresume-chronological-or-skills-based.html.

What should I be prepared for in Israeli interviews?

At the high level, the interviews should be quite similar, as the employer objective is consistent: to try to identify which candidate is the best to fill the open position. However, although the goals may be identical, Israeli interviewers sometimes have a different way of trying to achieve this result than what you are used to in your pre-Israel working career. In general, questions in Israel may be more “sensitive” than interviews in other countries, including:

· Are you married?
· Do you have children &/or will you have more children?
· How old are you?
· Are you religions?

When unexpected questions are thrown at you, take a deep breath, try not to show shock in your facial expression, and then answer calmly.

One other question relates to language, generally for people that are less than comfortable in Hebrew. Interviews in Israel are conducted in Hebrew, unless the environment of the job doesn’t require Hebrew at all. If you get invited to an interview, obviously the level of your Hebrew will be one potential point of discussion. However, you always have the right to ask the interviewer if it is okay to have the interview in English. There are pluses and minuses to such an approach, so weigh this decision carefully.

What are cultural differences between Israel and North America/Europe?

A good article written on this subject: http://www.israemploy.net/Work_Culture.

I want to open a company upon arrival in Israel, how should I go about it?

The two main profiles of people that speak to me about this option are those that ran businesses before they had aliyah, and those that are in an “advanced” age category where they face a difficult time entering the workforce. You can find horror stories of immigrants that invested their life savings in a business shortly after making aliyah, and for a variety of reasons lost large sums of money. Even experienced business people will find that the culture of doing business in Israel is different then what they are used to, so my words of caution are to make such a decision very carefully, and do what you can to learn about running a business in Israel before making the financial investment.