Tuesday, July 18, 2023

Being Put in My Place!! Thank You, God.

 Yesterday, I was sitting around minding my own business. As you know, I do that. I was working on my latest book, "Murder Book", and I was coming up with a way to do the cover myself rather than pay for it. I'm that way; I'm frugal. I was sort of thinking about my career path, and then someone emailed me right when I was thinking about what my next steps may be. I love it when God does that. He's always there.

    The email was from a group called First Source Team. They wanted to know if I had a minute to talk; I did. They're a good group of folks who not only find you the best possible career out there; they make sure you are chosen over all the other candidates who are applying for the same job. Think about it, one opening equals only one winner. There isn't room in the chair for two folks. You are you, they need to see who you are and if you are the one they're looking for. With Google and other companies like them getting more than 2,000,000 resumes each year for various positions, think about how many people are being rejected; let alone ghosted. Geez.

    I'm not going to try and work for Google, that's not my thing. I'm a Claims Adjuster now, and I've been applying for and being rejected by dozens of Insurance Carriers who, like Google, get far too many candidates and they need to weed through them. They don't use humans to do that anymore. Who knew? I guess I sort of figured it out when I was was receiving the same (exact same) letter of rejection from the same company as I was applying for the same position over and over again thinking to myself if they're still advertising the job they must not have filled the position. It was sort of like doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different outcome; not going to happen when their AI is set to whatever they were looking for. I didn't meet that criteria.

    The folks at First Source Team were telling us today on a group webinar, that less than 30% of the resumes shine, and they have a less than 3% chance of hitting the 90% needed mark or score in order to be processed to the next level. Companies with true and real human HR teams may not experience those numbers, but they too are told to look for keywords to "weed" out, to eliminate those who don't fit the bill to a tee. Not many people (if they tell the truth) are going to be 90% or greater in terms of a match, but you can revamp that resume to give you a boost; can't you?

    Today, after the webinar, I went over my own resume, and I changed not only the fonts and the style, but some of the keywords, the buzzwords if you will, and I placed the entire thing in a format that would read better should a human look at it. I'm told to revamp the thing for EVERY single application so I can add their buzzwords and their keywords into my resume; makes sense. My generic one is pretty good, but is it good enough? Maybe not.  So, thank you First Source Team for putting me in my place, showing me what I was doing was average at best, and why it wasn't cutting it in the real ugly nasty, and messed up recruiting world we live in today.

    I have a one-on-one with them tomorrow to go over more details and to narrow down my search to the companies that (a) I want to work with and (b) they want to work with me. I am only applying for Claims Adjuster/Reviewer roles, so that narrows it down significantly; but there are things I can do to make my resume pop and my LinkedIn profile more beneficial. Greater numbers of folks are hiring through LinkedIn now; professional people anyway. I changed my profile photo, added a better background, redid the lineup for my experiences and I changed a few words to reflect what it is I want out of a career. I want to review, examine, investigate, and estimate damage. I don't want to be a sales agent.

    With the way the world is turning to AI for everything; you gotta beat that game now to be seen. You gotta be in it to win it. If you don't, you'll be spinning the wheels and wondering why. It makes sense now why so many recruiters are ghosting us. They never really see us to begin with.


Photo Credit: The Economic Times


No comments: