Has Your Job Search Reached the Ninja Level?

Even though I am involved in the recruitment sector, I find myself somehow out of touch with certain terms that are used regularly in job titles, including ninja, rock star, samurai, assassin, mermaid… (Ok, I admit, I made the last two up).  For instance, here are some recent examples: seeking a rock star programmer, or a sales ninja needed.

A job candidate recently sent me their CV, and informed me that their English was at a samurai level.  I wrote back to ask if this was a higher than a ninja or rock-star English level, but didn’t receive a response – so I am now wondering if samurai is somehow below fluency level, and the candidate was not able to understand my question in English.  In fact, I imagine that most of the hereditary warrior class in feudal Japan (the definition I found for samurai on dictionary.com) was probably less than conversational in English.

Maybe someone reading this would be kind enough to define these terms. 

And for you creative souls out there, I would be happy to receive your suggestions of additional job titles that we can introduce into this dynamic, superhero-like mix. 

A Good Job Seeker’s Dilemma

Job seekers oftentimes must make such decisions at some point in their careers:

     ·         Stay at my current company or go to a new one? 
     ·         Which new job offer is the best opportunity for me? 

What to do???

For those of you unemployed and reading this, having trouble getting one good job offer, this might seem like a dream situation.  However, the fact is that for those that find themselves in such a situation, sleepless nights are the norm.

In these cases, whether you employed or not, the situations are actually very similar, with the only difference being whether one of the options is to remain at a current position.

These types of decisions require left-brain/right-brain agility, meaning using some element of logic as well as paying attention to your gut (emotion). 

The financial element is always present, and for some job seekers, the only issue of importance. 

For many though, besides compensation, the company itself and a person’s anticipated fit into the company are equally important.  How the job seeker perceives the environment of the new company and the people they will be working with is oftentimes critical, and this is why the interviews and conversations with potential bosses and/or co-workers are so important when making the decision. 

It is so easy for a candidate to think of the recruitment process as one-directional, trying to convince the employer that you are worth hiring.  However, the other aspect is equally relevant – deciding if the company and specific role is appropriate for you.  So, while the company is trying to make its determination, you should be doing the same.  Identify, even before you visit the company, those issues that are important to you, professional and otherwise, and use your powers of observation from your time at the interviews themselves to glean what you can.  Is the work environment quiet or loud, are people working in groups or alone, is it clean or messy, what is the average age – all of these can be factors depending upon who you are and what you want.  These are not necessarily the types of things that will be clear in interviews, but at some point you generally get the opportunity to see the actual working spaces and sometimes even have the chance to speak with potential colleagues, so take advantage when the situation arises.

In addition, most job candidates don’t make an effort to reach out to people that are working at or have knowledge of the company, instead relying upon impressions from the people they meet as part of the official recruitment process.  However, just as the company asks the job seeker for references, job candidates can also take it upon themselves to use their network of acquaintances together with websites like LinkedIn to research the company itself, and speak to individuals that have an understanding of the employer.

Besides the specific details of the alternatives, there is a big intangible as well.  Something in the DNA of the person that plays a big part in these types of decisions, a person’s ability to accept risk:

·         I have seen a number of times that a person currently working gets a job offer from another company and ultimately decides to stay at their current employer, even when the conditions (financial, professional and otherwise) at the new company were considerably more attractive.  Nonetheless, risk and change can be so undesirable for the individual that they decide to stay with the known and comfortable option.

·         The converse is also true.   Someone jumps to a new company for an extra 500 shekels a month, and quickly learns that the new company is not so stable, finding themselves out of a job in a short period of time.

During your job search, choices are always a positive, but they don’t make things easier for you.  Think carefully, speak with others, and learn as much as you can about the alternatives before making a decision.

I have a dilemma of my own these days.

My team, the Golden State Warriors, is playing in the NBA finals against Cleveland, with their Israeli coach David Blatt. 

I allude to a similar far-fetched situation in a previous article about searching for work, loyalty, and sports: http://jobsearchinisrael.blogspot.co.il/2010/10/loyalty-at-work.html.  Now, amazingly, it has come true.

My childhood (and current) favorite basketball team is playing in the NBA finals against a team with an Israeli connection – whom to root for? 

Because I am getting grief about this from all sides, I feel the need to publically respond. 

I am a big David Blatt fan, and appreciate what he has accomplished throughout his career as a proud Israeli, including leading his team in his first year in the NBA to the finals.  He is the ideal representative of Israel for the sports world in America.  My brain makes a strong case for his team.

 

 

However, I simply can’t force myself to do it.  My heart tells me the Warriors, a team that has not won a championship in 40 years, is the only choice for me.  I can hopefully mitigate the potential ill-feelings by others in Israel with this choice by pointing out that the star of my Warriors, Steph Curry, has a Hebrew phrase tattooed on his arm.

 

 

Go Warriors!

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.

Misreading the Job Search Situation

So, my 13-year old son starts yelling yesterday morning as he is getting ready for school.  The current fashion style where we live is for kids to wear pants that have holes in them.  They buy them that way, and from what I can see, it seems that the more holes they have, and the bigger the holes are, the more expensive the pants actually are.  I would think that since they require less material, the cost would be lower, but that is not the way it works.

Anyway, the problem my son had on this fine morning was that his pants were wrinkled.  Yes, it’s true, a kid that is happily wearing pants that have holes in them for some reason does not like it if they are wrinkled.  I naively assumed that once he had passed the point of preferring a defect in his clothes, another imperfection would be considered even more of a positive.  In fact, I even started to hope that if our kids liked wrinkles in their clothes, the amount of time spent ironing in our house would go down.  Apparently though, not all faults are the same.

We make assumptions all the time when searching for a job, and sometimes we are wrong.  Generally though, we don’t have someone so vocally telling us when this happens.

There have been a few times over the past couple of weeks that I have heard complaints from job seekers, and I am not sure they are justified.

These particular complaints all revolved around the concept of what is correct for a company to require when seeking a new employee.  Someone complained about a company looking for telephone sales people with the requirement that candidates can’t have a foreign accent for the targeted region.  Another protested that an employer had a requirement for specific citizenship of candidates.  Someone else didn’t agree that a university degree should be required.  Or, that candidates must live in the center of the country in order to be considered for the job in Tel Aviv.

Yes, there are laws that prohibit discrimination in the workplace and recruitment process.  But such rules are not mutually exclusive with allowing a company the flexibility to decide for themselves what the suitable profile is for its candidates. 

I think job seekers would do themselves a favor by trying to imagine themselves in the HR manager’s shoes, in Israel in the year 2014.  Today it is still a buyer’s market – companies have confidence that if they wait, they will find the person that they seek, and generally don’t feel the need to be flexible in a big way.  And from what I have seen, they are correct.  Employers that have strong feelings about specific characteristics that it takes to succeed in their environment, and have the patience to wait until they find someone that matches, usually get what they want.  I have seen companies with job openings for many months, waiting for the right person to come to their attention.

If you were the HR manager of the company, I believe that you would demand to have this ability to decide.   And the chances of a job seeker changing the minds of an employer is much smaller than finding a different company that you are more suitable for, or possibly changing the way that you approach the company.

To me, the task of the job seeker when something happens that you are not expecting is to try to infer the real world situation in the market, and then take action to improve your chances, rather than ignoring the signs and continuing to rely upon faulty assumptions.

For instance:

 ·         If you looking for a job in telephone sales and mother tongue accent is an issue, identify companies that sell in your native language, and target them.  Don’t wait for them to advertise – send them your CV and use LinkedIn or other resources to start conversations with people working in the company.

·         University degrees are often times used as filters, even if they are not the most critical element in predicting the success of a candidate.  If the company has many job seekers that seem similar, and some have degrees and others don’t, then it can be a factor.  One option is to find something (truthful) to put in your education section which is meaningful.  Or, use networking to get introduced by someone trusted by the company, a way to mitigate the importance of something like a university degree.  Another approach is to focus more on job openings where a university degree is not critical.  A longer term solution, if appropriate, is to make efforts to get a degree.  There are even online options that allow the studying to be done from home.
·         The majority of jobs are in the center of the country.  No matter what your attitude is about commuting, or how far you commuted before moving to Israel, many Israeli companies want their employees to live close to the office.  They have encountered bad experiences previously with people living further away that burn out from the traveling, and as long as they have confidence that they will find someone close by that is qualified, they will stop reading a CV if the candidate lives too far away in their opinion.   Roles that are more senior are less sensitive to location, but not always immune from such considerations.  So, your options are to be open to relocating (and make sure this is clear on your CV) and/or focusing on jobs near your home (something that can be very limiting if you don’t live in the center of the country).

When you are looking for a job, you have to constantly evaluate the responses (or lack thereof) and consider whether your job target(s) and way of searching is the most appropriate for you.  If you are not making as much progress as you would like, it is a good idea to speak with others and consider new ways to move forward.

Who is worse, the job seeker that applies for a job without being qualified, or the HR/recruiter that spends 5-15 seconds reviewing a CV?

That is like asking who came first, the chicken or the egg?

I wouldn’t even attempt to address the age-old second question, but I would like to consider the first.

I am not sure how closely these facts of life are related to each other, but I do believe that in this day and age of Internet job sites, their association is an undeniable fact.

In the ideal world, job seekers would send their CV only for jobs for which they are fully qualified.  In the ideal world, recruiters/HR people would invest the time to read each CV in its entirety, in order to fully understand the capabilities of the job candidate.

Of course, in the ideal world, I would be so rich that the entire concept of job search would be irrelevant to me.

Enough of that, back to the real world…

Let’s look at this first from the HR/recruiter’s perspective (for instance, me :>).  I advertise regularly on Internet sites and social media forums for job candidates on behalf of employers.   As can be expected, I receive many CVs in response to my job postings.  At first I was surprised, but now I have become hardened to the reality that the majority of the CVs I receive are from people that do not even meet the basic requirements of the job as described in the posting.  In fact, I am convinced that many people send their CVs without reading anything but the job title.  So, what this means to me is that I need to do two phases of sorting, first to remove the completely unqualified people, and then from those remaining, to identify the most relevant for further consideration.  Certainly in this first phase of filtering, I go very fast, spending a minimal amount of time on each CV, knowing as I do that most are irrelevant anyway. 

Now, let’s consider this from the job seeker’s viewpoint.  When all you have to go on is a job posting, even in the best case, it is virtually impossible to understand exactly what the employer seeks, which “requirements” are critical and which are simply nice-to-have.  It costs virtually nothing to send a CV, neither financially nor time-wise, so it is always better to err on the side of sending and hoping for the best.  Besides, even when a CV is sent for which the job seeker feels there is a perfect match, the chance of getting a positive response from the employer hovers around the 10% range at best.

So, what we have here is a problem brought on by the nature of the medium.  I don’t mean to imply that the introduction of Internet job sites created the new situation of such a large number of CVs being sent, many not suitable.  I have no doubt that HR professionals from previous generations had the same complaints.  However, it is certainly true that when the job seeker has easy access to hundreds of jobs daily and can apply with the click of a button, the problem is exacerbated exponentially.

HR personal certainly won’t invest a great deal of time in reviewing CVs when they know the majority are irrelevant.  And job seekers have no incentive not to send their CVs as frequently as possible.

Is there a better way?

Consider this…  A general rule of thumb in the job search industry is that two-thirds of all jobs are never publically advertised.  This is generally agreed to be true worldwide.  If you stop to think about this, it seems counterintuitive.  If an employer is seeking job candidates, why wouldn’t they be advertising in as many public forums as possible?

The answer is that many companies come to the conclusion that having a recruitment process that includes filtering (via some combination of manual and automated process) large quantities of unknown people is not effective.  It doesn’t bring the results that they require, but rather a huge administrative load with a poor return-on-investment.

So, what do they do instead? 

Some may use placement agencies to do the initial filtering, meaning that candidates that are presented to the employer are only those that have been pre-filtered based upon their specific requirements.

However, informal networking (word-of-mouth) introductions play a huge part in the actual filling of these unadvertised roles.  And these entire interactions are completely hidden to those outside of the process.

One of my favorite stories told to me by a job seeker using our Israemploy website illustrates this point.  The person had seen a perfect job posting on our site, and sent in his CV as instructed.  He heard back nothing.  So, he decided to take additional action.  The company name was included in the job listing, so he used LinkedIn to find people that worked at the employer doing a job similar to his.  From LinkedIn, he introduced himself to a couple of these people, and was able to begin a conversation.  At some point in the conversation, as is not so rare, the person inside the company told the job seeker to send them his CV, and he would forward it to the HR person.  Remember, the job seeker has already sent his CV to the HR person via the job site.  Now, he takes the exact same CV, and sends it to his contact within the company.  The contact within the company takes this CV and sends it to the exact same HR person that has already received the CV via the job site.  The CV is the same, the HR person that receives it is identical; the only difference is the way that it is delivered – via a known/trusted person.  However, in this case that was the critical factor – because the internal person sent the CV to the HR person, the HR person treated it differently, and ultimately the job seeker was invited to an interview.

From this real world example, it is easy to see how networking benefits not only the employer, but also the job seeker.  This is the real (and oftentimes invisible) way that companies identify new job candidates. Job seekers must understand the significance of networking in the recruitment process, and take steps to insert themselves into the mix.  Without such awareness, the job seeker is guaranteed to be missing many job opportunities which can be perfectly suitable – and that is the biggest shame of all. 

Related Articles:

·         LinkedIn – Tying it all Together

·         Not Getting Responses to E-Mail Job Applications?

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.

Telephone Interviews

When I started doing recruiting, I had a lot to learn, as I didn’t come from the HR sector at all.

One such discovery was the significance and absolute danger for the job seeker related to the initial telephone call from the employer, especially when it falls on an unsuspecting/unprepared person.

At first, when one of my employer clients decided that they wanted to begin a recruitment conversation with one of my job candidates, I understood this to mean that the company would be inviting the person to their offices for a face-to-face interview. Now I understand from hard life experience that this is in fact the best case scenario, and certainly not a foregone conclusion.

My history with the recruitment process until this point was my own personal experience with job search for myself. Maybe I have a faulty memory, but what I remember was that when I submitted my CV and a company was interested in me, they would call and invite me to their offices for an interview. I don’t recall the telephone discussion being anything more than a short conversation to make the logistical arrangements.

What I started to realize very quickly was that many of the job seekers that had telephone conversations with the employer were never actually invited to a personal interview – the process completely ground to a halt for them with this one and only phone interaction.

It was clear that I was missing something - what was actually going on?

Each employer operates differently, but somewhere in their thought process, consciously or not, is the question: How much resources do I want to invest in this candidate? Reviewing a CV is the least “expensive” for an employer, followed by a telephone call, and then finally an in-person interview.

Maybe you have heard that a CV/resume is reviewed on average 20-30 seconds. Of course, this is the first stage of filtering, and most candidates are removed from contention at this point. Anyone who has sifted through large numbers of CVs knows that the majority of people that submit their candidacy don’t even meet the qualifications listed in the job posting. If the CV is especially interesting, I will invest more than the usual amount of time in reading it before ultimately deciding whether the candidate is suitable to be submitted to the company for further consideration.

So, what happened next was shocking to me at first. Not so much that people that I thought were appropriate were not all generating strong interest from the employer – that was to be expected, as I generally was not the only resource they had presenting candidates. However, a much-higher-than-expected percentage of people that the companies decided to speak with based upon the CV that I submitted had the recruitment process stop after one telephone conversation.

I became very curious – what is the employer looking for in this phone conversation, and what are they asking to allow them to arrive at the go/no go decision of whether to invest even more resources by inviting the job seeker to an interview at the office?

When the employer gets the CV, either pre-screened by a recruiter or directly from a job candidate, they do their own evaluation. Certainly the processing is different depending on whether the candidate was pre-screened by a trusted agency or is not filtered at all.

At the end, though, from the oftentimes large quantity of initial CVs, the company whittles the number of candidates down to a more manageable size – those that may meet their candidate profile. What comes next is the process that the company has created to go from “may meet the candidate profile” based upon the contents of a one-dimensional CV to a more confident understanding that this person has the skills and motivation to do the job and fit the company.

Of course, each employer has their own philosophy for the entire recruitment process, and the initial phone conversation is only one aspect of this. Still, it might help the job seeker conceptually to place an employer in one of three categories regarding how they view the call:

1. Scheduling - This initial telephone call is designed to set a time for the job seeker to come to the employer’s offices for an interview. I mistakenly thought at first that this was the only way that companies viewed this conversation, but I now realize that the majority of employers use this first encounter as something much more than simply scheduling.
2. Mini-Interview - The hiring manager/HR person knows that it is impossible to get a clear picture of the candidate from the CV, nor for the candidate to have a full comprehension of the company/position from the job listing, so the call is used to narrow the gaps. Details on the CV are discussed/elaborated upon, and additional relevant information not contained in the CV may be requested. Also, it can be used for the employer to provide additional details about the job in order to allow the candidate to understand better the specifics and respond with their level of interest. Can be 5-15 minutes in length.
3. Full-Interview - The call is the equivalent of an in-person interview, simply conducted by telephone. Oftentimes 30 minutes or more.

I have come to the conclusion that from the perspective of the job seeker, unless you know otherwise, you should be planning that the initial telephone conversation will be a short or long variation of a traditional interview, and prepare yourself accordingly.

First things first... Since this call is generally not scheduled in advance, you can’t know when it’s coming and fully prepare in the same way you would for a more traditional planned interview. So, when the company calls, make sure that you are in a situation where you can concentrate and make a good impression. If you are driving, stop the car! If there is a lot of noise or bad reception, try to find a more suitable near-by location to talk. If you are taking care of an unhappy child, or are in the middle of something that you simply can’t interrupt, politely ask if you can reschedule the conversation. There is a risk in asking to reschedule, as the company doesn’t always call back (quickly) and you may lose your chance to be one of the initial candidates, but generally they will get in touch in a timely fashion.  Having the conversation when you are not at your best is a recipe for disaster. And if you are not available to take a call while you are in the job search process, make sure you have voice mail associated with your telephone, and don’t forget to listen to your messages regularly.

As the conversation begins, keep these points in mind:

• When the company asks for clarification, you should be happy that you have the opportunity to provide additional information, rather than have the company make assumptions that don’t serve your purposes. It doesn’t matter if the answer to the question is already contained your CV – responding intelligently and articulately makes a positive impression.
• Don’t be evasive/defensive. When a company asks why you left your previous job, why you have a hole in your work history, or what your salary expectations are, answer the question clearly. Of course you should be prepared in advance for such questions, in the same way you would be for an in-person interview, and provide pre-planned responses that serve your interests. For more details of interview questions, see this article.

Getting a telephone call from a perspective employer is an excellent sign. You have passed the initial CV review stage, generally something that very few achieve. Preparing yourself for the telephone conversation in the same way you would for a face-to-face interview will give you the best chance to move forward in the recruitment process.

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!

Discrimination in Israeli Employment

Two issues have come to my attention in recent days related to discrimination in the workplace, so I thought others might benefit from considering them as well.

First is an article recently from the Jerusalem Post: http://www.jpost.com/Magazine/Judaism/Article.aspx?id=247862. The issue here is whether it is acceptable, legally, morally or otherwise, for companies to discriminate against job candidates because of race (in this case, Arabic).

The second time was a question raised by a reader to a job that appeared on our website, Israemploy. The job was for a religious organization, and specified that the employee must be male.

What is allowed?

In Israel, we have the Employment (Equal Opportunities) Law, 1988. This law forms the main legal basis for prohibiting discrimination in the workplace, both in the public and private spheres:

Section 2.(a)

Employers shall not discriminate between their employees or between candidates for employment because of their sexual orientation, because they are parents, because of their age, gender, race, religion, nationality, land of origin, opinion or party, in any of the following:

- hiring;
- working conditions;
- promotion;
- professional training or studies;
- discharge or severance pay;
- benefits and payments provided for employees in connection with their retirement from employment.

Yet, there may be certain exceptions in which discrimination of a sort may be permitted:

a) In relation to women, the most important of these are 'genuine' occupational qualifications, which include:

- Reasons of physiology (not enough physical strength)
- Reasons of decency or privacy
- The provision of personal services promoting welfare or education; and jobs affected by legal/religious restrictions, where customs are such that the duties could not, or could not effectively, be performed by a woman (actually, this can be relevant for men as well – for instance, mikva attendant role)

b) In the case of ethnic minorities the exceptions are:

- Dramatic performances, where the dramatis personae requires a person of a particular racial group.
- Artists or models for advertising purposes, for reasons of authenticity
- Where services are rendered for the welfare of the particular group

So, what does this all mean?

Certainly, in the case of a religious organization where the requirements of the job are such that only one particular gender can fulfill it, this type of limitation is allowed.

And what about the newspaper article example, restricting a race from jobs for non-employment specific reasons (rather nationalistic objectives)? Well, I am not a lawyer, but it seems to me that the equal opportunities law was created in part to specifically restrict such instances.

Is Your CV Perfect?

Job seekers focus their precious time resources way too much on re-working their CVs/resumes.

I have a theory about why this is true.

In the recruitment process, many elements are beyond the control of the job seeker. You send your CV in response to a job listing and then must wait to hear back for an interview request from the employer that in many cases never arrives. You identify and reach out to professionals as a part of your networking efforts, and hope some of them will agree to begin meaningful conversations with you. You go to an interview, and then wait to hear back from the company whether a job offer is on the way.

Sure, you do decide some things, such as which jobs to apply for, which companies/people to target for networking, whether to accept a job offer… , but when you think of your day-to-day job search elements, it is normal for everyone to periodically feel a lack of progress, that your efforts don’t seem to be paying off in the short-run.  This missing control and constant waiting on others is something that can be difficult to live with.

So, to solve this problem, job seekers invariably concentrate on an obvious thing that seems to return control of the process to them, a component of the initial stages of the recruitment process with employers, and oftentimes something that is sent at the early stages once a networking conversation is begun: the CV/resume.

Other reasons for the never-ending focus on the CV:

• Job Application Average Response Rate – The average response rate for applications to jobs from Internet sites is 5-10%, meaning that between one out of every 10-20 CVs you send out will generate contact back from the employer. So, the fact is that on average 90-95% of your CVs sent in answer to employment advertisements will enter into the dreaded job seekers’ black hole, never to be heard from again. With such a high rate of “failure”, it is natural to investigate where you can improve, and invariably the focus falls on the CV.

• Job Search Professional Marketing Efforts – Professional CV/resume writers are plentiful, taking advantage of the above conditions to send the message that by following their advice for CV creation, your response rate will markedly improve. Or, take a look at the cover of this book:

or of many others you can find in the career section of bookstores. In my opinion, to turn around the book title above, you would be a complete idiot to think there is such a thing as a perfect CV. :>) If you ask 10 experts for their opinion of your CV, you will receive 10 very different responses, so the concept of perfect and or even correct has no place in your thinking.

Am I saying that all CVs will serve the same purpose for you? Certainly not! There are many things you need to take into consideration when creating your CV. My point though, is that the goal should not be to create the “perfect” CV, but rather to create a CV which serves your objectives and gives you a proper chance to get to the next stage in the recruitment process. Sure, this is less sexy and will never be the title of a book, but it is a more effective strategy nonetheless.  And once you have done this, you can confidently move on to other aspects of your job search.

Remember these quick facts of CVs, illustrated by various studies:

• Average Amount of Time CV is Read: 20-30 Seconds
• First Place the Eye Falls on the CV: Top of the First Page

You must keep these factors in mind when building your CV, together with Israel-specific characteristics:

• Israeli CVs are short – one page is great; two pages is maximum
• Israeli CVs are focused/narrow – if you are targeting different professions, you will need to create different versions of your CV

To summarize my outlook in one sentence, much more important than the contents of your CV is whose hands you put it into.

For those of you that want to learn more about how to create a CV for Israel, you are welcome to read the following articles:

• A CV/Resume is not an Obituary
• CV/Resume – Chronological or Skills Based?
• Will Including “Good Team Player” on a CV Help Get You Invited to an Interview?
• Women Should Not Include Their Picture on their CV/Resume!
• CV/Resume File Type – Is it Important?

Job Seekers in Israel – Favorable Conditions Abound

The holidays are over, so employees are back from their holidays, and companies are operating full steam ahead, including recruitment departments.

The Israel unemployment rates are at historical lows (5.4% as of July 2011). Compare this with the US (9.1%), UK (8.1%), and France (9.3%).  And, the average gross national salary is NIS 8,900 as of July 2011, never higher.

This is a wonderful combination for jobs seekers in Israel, whether you are unemployed or looking to change jobs.

I have updated the Job Search in Israel site to make older articles more accessible. You are welcome to visit the new pages, which contain articles for the most popular job search topics:

• CV/Resumes & Cover Letters
• Networking
• Recruitment Process
• Sectors/Professions
• Complete Job Seeking in Israel Archive

Best of Success!

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?

Age Discrimination – Stanley Fisher, et al

Stanley Fisher is the president of the Bank of Israel. He has held this position for 6 years, encompassing a very difficult global financial period. Israel has a small domestic economy, and is heavily dependent upon exports as well as tourism – so when the world economy tanks, Israel is very directly impacted. Most Israeli experts seem to agree (and it is very rare to find economists that agree, let alone Jewish economists ;>) that Israel has weathered this economic period quite well, and the international community seems to concur in general. Although Stanley Fisher is not solely responsible, clearly he has a strong impact on Israel’s current enviable economic situation.

Recently the position of Head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) became available, and Stanley Fisher, with his impeccable credentials, was interested in being considered for this post. Very early in the process, he was dismissed as a candidate because he was too old (the maximum age is 65 and he is 67).

I have a friend who is a doctor in Israel. At the hospital where he works, he will have to retire well before the age of 70. His father is a doctor in the US and is still working each day at a hospital – he is 85 years old!

At least in the case of Stanley Fisher, we can assume that not being allowed to head the IMF will not cause him financial hardship (after all, he continues to hold an excellent job), something not true for everyone that approaches retirement age. As baby boomers advance in age, with looming high health costs and less than expected savings, the question of when to stop working becomes more difficult. At least in Israel, with basic universal health coverage, these costs are less of a factor in this decision.

For most people seeking work though, official retirement age is not the main roadblock, rather the difficulties in getting a job while still at pre-retirement age. Employers have a profile of their ideal employee, and age range is often (sometimes unconsciously) part of this vision. If the job seeker falls outside that range, the person reviewing the CVs may well stop reading when they get to the birthdate entry.

From the legal perspective, things in Israel are clear. It is not allowed to make a negative hiring decision based upon age. However, as with all things in Israel, there is the law and there is the way that it is implemented. For instance, I was living in Israel for many years before I understood that the traffic laws in Israel and the US are very similar – the difference is only in the enforcement. However, this enforcement difference, meaning that the traffic laws in Israel are enforced much less than they are in the US, leads to an outcome where drivers in Israel don’t fear penalties and drive recklessly. Most drivers simply don’t appear to take the law into account when driving.

Age and job seeking is quite similar. It is standard for a job seeker to include their age/birthdate on their CV in Israel. If age is not supposed to be a factor, why would a job seeker do this? The answer is clear - because potential employers expect it. The fear, and justifiably so, is that if a person submits a CV without their age listed, this raises red flags to those reading it – essentially inducing the question “what is this candidate hiding?”. If the person is particularly relevant, the company may contact them and ask them some questions, including age, but in many other cases the job seeker will simply be eliminated from contention. Of course, not all companies operate this way, but it is a calculated risk to take such a chance. Most people that are “young” simply put their age, as it would generally be considered a positive to perspective employers; job seekers that are in their 60s (or 50s [or 40s]) must constantly decide what to do.

In my work at Israemploy, I am in touch with many companies in Israel seeking employees. I always try to understand what the profile is of the candidates they seek, and age often plays a role. Although companies are never going to make a straight statement that violates the law, it is possible to learn a lot from what they do say.

Each company and hiring manager’s philosophy is different. Some will state that age is not relevant, a factor absolutely unrelated to the recruitment decision (from my experience, this is a rare statement to hear, and even more rare when it is true).

Generally most job seekers assume they come across age limitations only at the higher end of the working-age spectrum, but in fact there can be lower age limits as well. Some companies have had bad experiences with young employees, those that may lack responsibility/stability. In this case, they prefer workers above a certain arbitrary age, for instance 25 or even 30. Other companies have a work-force with an average age of 20s, and have found that introducing someone significantly older than this is a mismatch.

Nothing is absolute, age preferences are flexible, and can become relaxed based upon the urgency of filling an opening and/or the expected difficulty of identifying a candidate that meets the requirements. If a company needs to find an employee quickly, then their optimum age profile becomes elastic. And for a company that is seeking a hard-to-find person, such as a Swedish speaker, age issues become less critical by necessity.

It would be wonderful if it was possible to educate employers to eliminate or at least reduce their false prejudices, whether they are related to age, gender, race, religious affiliation… Especially in the case of not considering “older” employers, it is not difficult to create a list of the advantages for an employer of hiring a mature worker, including:

• No young children at home that require attention, meaning availability for longer work hours
• No military obligations for men, no pregnancy leaves for women, translating to more days available to work
• More experience, higher capability to do the job [this I have found to be a two-edged sword in the eyes of employers, as often they tell me that they prefer a person without too much experience, as those with long work histories are many times set in their ways, and not open to learning/considering a new way of doing things]

The truth is, though, that attempting to have a rational discussion about such issues typically doesn’t help if the preconceived notion itself is not based in logic. Job seekers tell me that there should be more efforts made by the government at enforcing the law, but it is unclear whether this would lead to an improvement “on the ground”.

In the short-term, I tend to believe that job seekers that are outside the typical employer ideal profile range would be better off investing their resources in identifying and pursuing opportunities that are more suitable. Of course this is easier said than done, but focusing on smaller companies that don’t have an existing large workforce of young employees, or speaking with others to find companies that already do employ “older” workers, or looking for companies that market their product/services to the greying population – all of these may help you uncover new possibilities.

And please remember, as you do integrate into the Israeli work force and arrive to a position where you impact hiring decisions, remember when you were looking for a job and the difficulties that you encountered, something that is bound to make a cumulative positive impact on the overall Israeli recruitment process.

Salary Expectations - Be Prepared

I grew up in America, and made aliyah when I was 31. I have a technical background, not sales/marketing. I don’t remember engaging in many financial negotiations before I arrived in Israel. Things were simpler – there was a price tag in the store – you paid this amount if you wanted the product. A newspaper subscription, telephone service… there was a listed price and you only had to decide if this was acceptable for you. In fact, the only negotiation I remember was the time I purchased a new car; this is the one situation I encountered in the US where haggling is expected, and as a novice I left that encounter with the car, but also with a very bad feeling that I performed poorly and got taken advantage of (both were true).

Now, after living in Israel for more than 10 years, negotiation has become second-hand. Not that I claim to be an expert or even good, but at least I am aware of it and am not intimidated to start the process/game. Strangely enough, when I arrived in Israel and decided to buy a new car, I found that this is about the only instance here when negotiation is NOT generally possible. On one hand, it was a relief (as I couldn’t be taken advantage of compared to others), but when the price of a car in Israel is approximately twice the price of a car in the US, this feeling is a mixed blessing.

Each employer has their own philosophy regarding when to check candidate salary expectations. Sometimes this query will arrive as a request in the job listing itself when you are submitting your application, other times it will be raised in an initial telephone interview, and it may also appear much later in the interviewing process. There are also employers that don't raise this issue directly at all, they simply make a job offer and wait for the reaction. 

I have heard many people complain because companies don’t list the salary for the position in the job listing itself. From one perspective, this would save the job seeker and the employer a lot of time, as it is more likely that unqualified people would not apply. Typically companies in Israel will not publicly announce their salary structure, but if they ask in the job advertisement or in an initial phone interview for the candidate’s salary expectations, then they are trying to accomplish this initial screening.

What is the best approach for the job seeker to take when the questions is posed to them in one form or another?

There are three (3) possibilities in how your response will be processed:

• You come in lower than their salary range – in this case they may either consider you under-qualified OR see that they have an opportunity to get a good person lower than the range they had in mind OR they will understand that you would certainly be open to the range they have in mind
• You come in within their salary range – good match
• You come in above their salary range – they may consider you overqualified/mismatched OR they may try to see if you would be open to work in their salary range OR they may say for someone this good they are willing to consider raising their range

All of this is generally academic, since you as the candidate cannot have confidence that you know their range. However, if you do know the actual salary range within the market in Israel in general, then this is an excellent starting point. It is absolutely critical for the job candidate to try to determine the average salary range for their target job. If you don’t know this already, then speaking with people that work in the same profession is a good way to get to this information.  Sometimes you can find salary surveys online (most are in Hebrew), but is not clear to me how accurate they are.

Giving a range rather than a flat figure is usually a good idea, as it gives you a better chance to overlap into the range of the employer.

Many people are flexible in their salary expectations, especially people new to the Israeli employment market. So for instance, in order to guard against coming in too high, you can add to your salary expectations response that you are flexible and open to discussion.

Other companies take the approach that they want to get to know the candidate and understand their capabilities, and only then to raise the issue of salary. The idea here is that if the company decides that they want the candidate, they can oftentimes find a way to make the compensation work. In this case, your response will typically be the beginning of the compensation negotiation.

At some point or another you can expect that if the employer is interested in you, they will ask for your salary expectations. You as the job candidate should do your homework beforehand and not be caught unprepared.

Want to Get a Job – Maybe You Should do Something about Your Hair

Songs from the musical Hair have been going through my mind recently. Yes, it’s an oldie, and not even one of my favorites, but it is unavoidable. I try to keep current on job search literature, and for some reason, the topic of hair has come up a few times lately.

So, what does hair have to do with finding a job?

In terms of your CV, a big debate exists regarding whether it is a good idea to include your picture: http://jobsearchinisrael.blogspot.com/2010/11/women-should-not-include-their-picture.html.

Clearly, in the context of an interview, the job candidate needs to present a clean and professional image, and your hair is part of the picture that you create. An interview is generally not the time to make a fashion statement about uniqueness – except for in the rare instance, your objective must be to portray a person that will fit in – and unkempt hair, wrinkled clothes, or an overabundance of rings hanging from various parts of your face generates a less than desirable impression.

Regarding hair specifically, what’s better though, curly or straight, up or down, long or short, facial hair or clean shaven? Search the web, and you can read for hours on this subject.

For people that fit into the “elderly” end of the job seeking crowd, removing the gray from your hair and/or updating the style is one of the suggested ways to come across stronger, or at least younger and more vital. I am probably less style conscious than the average person walking down the street, but for the life of me I can’t imagine how one style of hair can make a more positive impression than another (assuming the length is within the norm and it is evenly cut), but apparently there may be something to this. I spoke to my three sons, ages 15, 13, and 10 about hair styles, and I was subjected to long explanations about “moikan”, “spitzim”, and “modregote “ – it seems their strategy is to get the strangest haircuts that they can without crossing the line and getting kicked out of their religious schools. Needless to say, if you want to try to understand this subject better, I suggest that you should look for assistance outside the Machol family males.

Now I come to the part of this article that is not for the squeamish: woman’s hair styles. For some time now at Israemploy, I have a part in translating some job listings from Hebrew to English. I am not sure how many men are aware of what seems to occur in a woman’s beauty parlor, but if the job descriptions are anything to go by, there is a lot of waxing, pulling, and twisting going on. As a small example, you can read this article which discusses a new beauty procedure and its relation to employment: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704461304576216470789970688.html?mod=dist_smartbrief. I turned to my wife for this part of my research to try to get a better understanding. She is someone that makes me skip over the violent parts of movies. Yet, after hearing less than a minute of her describing what she has paid people to do to her in such a salon, the music from Hair is immediately replaced in my head by the much more appropriate sounds from Little House of Horrors!

I heard an interesting story recently which describes a particular hair and job interview combination which must be unique to Israel. Someone told me that a young religious friend of hers went on a number of interviews with a head covering, and she was consistently asked how many children she intended to have (nor was she getting called back for a second interview). So, this friend decided for her next interview to wear a wig instead, and voilà, no question about the number of planned offspring and ultimately a job offer was extended to her.

I guess that hair can have a real impact in the recruitment process in some cases. I now consider myself lucky that I was born with curly hair that looks the same before and after combing. For those of you not so fortunate, maybe applying some Grease will solve the problem – as long as it doesn’t make you look like a throwback from another age.

Technical Writing

Most of the technical writers in Israel have a mother tongue of English. So, this is clearly a profession of significance to immigrants. I am pleased to introduce this article describing the technical writing profession in Israel, contributed by Lynn Kolber.

Immigrants to Israel have to deal with a multitude of cultural shocks and adjustments, not least of which is finding work in an unfamiliar job market, in a foreign language. Many immigrants struggle to find work in their original professions, and even when they find jobs these are often at a significantly lower level, or very different from the same position abroad. Professionals struggle to adapt to local work conditions. This results in frustration and may lead to the person returning to their country of origin. The technical writing profession offers a unique opportunity to help prevent this potential loss.

Technical writing involves preparing a broad range of documents for companies in the hi-tech, telecom, military, security and bio-tech fields. This means that a candidate’s background in their first career can be an advantage when they are preparing technical documentation. We have employed and placed writers from almost every profession including rabbis, lawyers, engineers, doctors, dentists, plumbers, pilots, cabin crew, psychologists, scientists, social science graduates, linguistic majors, software developers and engineers, teachers, mathematicians, court stenographers, reporters, accountants, and more.

Technical writers convey factual information and prepare a broad range of documents including User Guides, Installation Guides, Maintenance Guides, Administration Guides, APIs (Application Programming Interfaces), SDKs (Software Development Kits), Product Descriptions, Technical Datasheets, Product Specifications, Release Notes, and Online Helps. Additional career options in writing include working as a marketing writer or a proposal writer. Technical writing involves documenting facts and does not require much imagination, although there is a creative component including writing introductions, UX/UI reviews, white papers, and so on. If you can make something boring sound interesting, you should perhaps consider a career in marketing writing.

Reva Dykan, Documentation Manager at NICE Systems, when asked about the core key skills that she looks for when recruiting a technical writer, noted: “I think that the best way to learn technical writing is via an internship. I look for someone with strong writing ability and an interest in lifelong learning”. Other skills that are important are organizational and project management skills, knowledge of technology, strong detective skills, assertiveness, people skills, flexibility and the ability to cope with change. An analysis of why 20 writers were fired (not laid off) showed that 19 were fired due to lack of interpersonal skills. Only one was fired because of the quality of their work. The opening line from many recruiting managers and HR staff is “Please find me someone with good interpersonal skills”. About 5% of the technical writing jobs have specific technical requirements, such as a background in engineering, IT support, finance, and so on.

There are several ways to enter the profession. Although some candidates are fortunate enough to be offered a job without any formal training, it is beneficial to take a course or an internship. On an internship, candidates not only undertake theory and tools training, but gain the critical practical experience required in order to seek employment. Several of the hosting companies use the internship as a way to assess the intern as a potential employee.

A question often asked is whether candidates need to speak Hebrew. Conversational Hebrew is a requirement in about 15% of the technical writing jobs. Whereas engineers and developers are usually willing to speak English, lack of fluent Hebrew is often an obstacle when interviewing with the HR person at a prospective employer. An internship provides candidates with the opportunity to work in a company and prove themselves without having to first pass an HR interview or psychometric exam. This also increases their chances of employment.

Salaries for technical writers are competitive. Career path opportunities include developing specialized writing skills in a particular technology or working as a team leader or documentation manager. Technical writing offers immigrants an important opportunity to embark on an interesting career that pays well.

About the Author

This article was written by Lynn Kolber, General Manager, OnTarget Communications, http://www.ontargetcommunication.com/. OnTarget specializes in training and placing technical writers in projects, contracts and fulltime positions. The OTC internship creates “can do” writers who are employable. Graduates of the program are employed at a multitude of hi-tech companies including HP, NICE Systems, Verint Systems, RSA, EMC, RAD, Radvision, Comverse, Amdocs, Precise, RoboGroup, NiceVision, Actimize, NTrig, BMC, StarHome, Logic, dbMotion, Gilat Satellites, Mobixcell, Visonic, SafeNet, and many more.

Use the Power and Simplicity of Email for Employment Networking

One of the best ways to focus your job search is to target employers that are most relevant for you, and then make efforts to contact people in the companies and start conversations. Here is an article which describes this approach: http://jobsearchinisrael.blogspot.com/2010/06/employment-networking-target-companies.html.

What do you do when you have this list of 10-20 companies? A part of the action plan can be to do searches on LinkedIn for people that work at the company now (or in the past), and then introduce yourself.

I just heard of another technique that I wanted to share with you.

Create an email for the purposes of employment networking, and send it to the people that you know. The contents of the letter can contain something like this:

==================================

I’m looking to make contact with someone at one of these 15 employers:

• Teva
• Checkpoint
• Amdocs
• Strauss
• …

Do you know anyone in these companies that you could refer me to?

What would you do if you were in my shoes?

Would you mind passing this on to 10 of your friends as well?

Thanks for taking the time to consider this.

==================================

You are asking a question about specific companies, so the recipients of your email know exactly what they can do to help. In addition, you are asking them to help take ownership of the process by inquiring what they would do in your place, something that can encourage them to invest themselves. And some of them will pass your message on to others, immediately increasing your visibility outside of your own contacts.

Adding this strategy to support your efforts to target companies may be just what you need to get to new and critical people.