Getting your player ready...
Dear J.T. & Dale: A year ago, my manager left and I was promoted to manager of the purchasing department. I don’t have any staff, and the company is cutting down, so I don’t think I will be getting any soon. I recently had an interview with a larger company, and the HR manager said that my background was good and my resumé was impressive. She asked me about my staff, and I told her that I do everything by myself. Because of that, they doubted my managerial skills, and I didn’t get the job. What can I do now if I want to find a new manager’s job? Should I lie and say I have an assistant? – Jonah
J.T.: I wouldn’t suggest lying. It always catches up with you. DALE: Instead, establish a new truth to tell. Even though you don’t have direct reports, you can still demonstrate leadership skills. For instance, you might create a team to study cost efficiencies, perhaps one built around the process called Lean. This would make you a hero to your financially challenged company while giving you a great story to tell in the interviews. Heading a company-wide team might even trump having employees. J.T.: Let me also suggest a creative way of getting an assistant: Go to your company and ask if it would be willing to let you host an unpaid internship. If so, contact the career centers in colleges in your area and ask for guidelines to create an internship that will give the student school credit in exchange for working for you. That would get you some help in your department while giving you experience as a manager. Dear J.T. & Dale: I am an IT professional with more than 20 years’ experience. I took a career break in 2005 to care for my mother and eventually wind up her estate. In all, that lasted 30 months. I then returned to look for work in 2008, just when the job market hit rock bottom. Since then I have been unable to find work. I would like your advice on how best to word this in my resumé. – Tony DALE: Well, Tony, I hate to say it, but we need to face facts: There is no best way. No unsolicited resume showing that you’ve been out of the work force since 2005 is going to make it into the “To Be Interviewed” stack. In IT, perhaps more than any other field, being out of the work force for even half a year can be a major concern for employers. They worry that your knowledge and skills will have fallen behind. And that is no idle concern – I just looked at a chronology of tech events and saw that the last year you were employed, 2005, was the year that the first YouTube video was uploaded and Pandora was launched. You already were out of the work force when the first tweet was tweeted and when the HD DVD, the iPhone and the Wii were introduced. And I’m looking at just consumer products, not all the deeper IT transformations. J.T.: I hate to say it, but even if you’ve been keeping current, hiring managers are going to have doubts, and you are going to have to sell against negative assumptions. The answer, as it is so often, is networking. The more conversations you can have about current technology, the better the chances they’ll see that you are up to speed and are capable of handling the job. I suggest you start by going back to former employers. Reconnect with managers and peers to see what they’re working on now.
