No Market for Lazy Job Seekers

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AppId is over the quota

Summer is a season to relax, unless you're a job seeker.

Given the steep competition for jobs, people who are energized and organized -- and those who avoid lazy mistakes -- are the likeliest to land a spot.

Tim Goldman

"It's not all down to the economy -- it's often about how productive people are during their job search," says Richard Jordan, a staffing management panel member at the Society for Human Resource Management. "The Internet has made it really easy for people to get a sense of false security about how productive they are."

That means avoiding the "post-and-pray" technique in which job seekers apply to positions online, and then wait for the offers to roll in.

"Just applying through an online job search doesn't do anything other than throw your résumé into a pile with [those of] hundreds, if not thousands, of other job seekers," says Dan Ryan, an executive search consultant based in Nashville.

Another red flag: submitting résumés and cover letters with errors, says Holly Paul, U.S. recruiting leader at PricewaterhouseCoopers, a New York-based accounting and consulting firm.

"I see spelling mistakes, I see punctuation mistakes, I hit delete in two seconds. I don't even bother to continue reading," Ms. Paul says.

Here are five more mistakes to avoid:

Networking lets you tap the hidden job market of positions that are never advertised. To do it effectively, you should be in regular contact with the people in your network.

"The mistake a lot of people make is that the only times their network hears from them is when they have a favor to ask," says Charles Purdy, senior editor at jobs site Monster.com. "They don't think about how they can help the people in their network and build that goodwill."

Mr. Purdy recommends keeping up with the interests and projects of those in your network, and reaching out. "If you find jobs that sound interesting, but aren't quite right for you, don't ignore that job. Think if there is anyone who might be interested," he says. "I always remember very fondly and well the person who said: 'I thought of you when I saw this job posting.' That's a great way to build goodwill in your network."

Résumés need to be tailored to specific positions. "The old method of taking the same résumé and sending it to every job posting doesn't work anymore," Mr. Purdy says. "Customize it to the company you are applying to. Do the research."

But don't expect your résumé to do too much work for you. "It's easy to sit home and bemoan the fact that you are not getting any interviews, but sending out lots of résumés, coming up with one iteration of your résumé after another, writing a cover letter for every ad you see," says John Challenger, chief executive of outplacement consulting firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas in Chicago. If that's how you're spending most of your time, "it's not lazy, but it is misguided."

Job seekers might tweet or post a note on Facebook about looking for a job, but real networking is more involved.

For instance, use social networks to research the industry. "It's about following the companies you are interested in, finding out what problems the company is trying to solve," Mr. Purdy says.

Also, don't use the informal language of social networking in professional communications.

Job seekers can pay for services that distribute their applications for them, but don't go this route.

"You are not doing your own work, or putting your own care into really understanding what the company needs before sending your résumé," Mr. Purdy says.

He says "time and energy could be better spent in doing work that makes you a better employee. Do a mock marketing plan that shows what a creative thinker you are. You don't have to be getting paid for something for it to be a valuable piece of experience on your résumé."

Another red flag for Ms. Paul: Job applicants who send notes asking her to review their résumé. With 150,000 applicants for U.S. positions in a year, Ms. Paul and her team aren't interested in dealing with such job seekers.

"Job seekers come to me and say: 'I like your company, here's my résumé. Please do all my work for me, and tell me what would be a good fit for me.' I do not move forward with those sorts of applications," she says.

Ms. Paul says she looks for applications showing an investment of time and effort. "They are not just looking for a job; they are looking in areas of interest to them where they have some experience. It shows me that they have done a bit of work, and gives me the direction to steer them in."

It's also important to indicate which business unit you're interested in, she adds. "I'm looking for those applicants that have good experience, but can also relate that experience to what we do" at PricewaterhouseCoopers, Ms. Paul says. "It will give that job seeker a leg up because they have moved the ball forward."

Write to Ruth Mantell at ruth.mantell@dowjones.com

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Gloomy Tidings for Holiday-Job Seekers

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The outlook is dimmer than it has been in several years for workers hoping to get a part-time retailing job for the holiday shopping season, according to a survey of 21 store chains.

Getty Images Last year's gains in retail hiring seem to have stalled. Above, a New York store employee in December 2010.

About two-thirds of the chains polled by consulting firm Hay Group said they would add the same number of workers for their busiest sales period as they did last year, even though many said they expect better holiday sales this year. About 25% said they planned to hire fewer seasonal employees than last year.

The participants ranged from Macy's Inc. to crafts chain Michaels Stores Inc. and home-furnishings retailer Pier 1 Imports Inc. to Coldwater Creek Inc., which sells women's apparel.

The consultants who conducted the survey said they were surprised by the results. "We keep hearing that retailers want to create a more engaging environment for customers," said Maryam Morse, retail practice leader with the Hay Group. "That seems inconsistent with hiring fewer seasonal workers."

DSW Inc., which operates the Designer Shoe Warehouse discount chain, recently reported double-digit sales growth for the fiscal second quarter ended July 31, but it doesn't plan to increase its seasonal hires from last year. Instead, it will give its permanent sales force more hours, if needed, said Carrie McDermott, executive vice president of stores and operations. She said both part-time and full-time workers at the chain have been asking for more work.

Stores are trying to hold down labor costs as they head into the holidays, because they fear they can't pass on other cost increases, such as more expensive cotton, to their customers, said Craig Rowley, vice president and global practice leader for Hay Group's retail practice.

Retailers also point to a double-digit increase in Internet sales as a reason they don't need more in-store sales help. About a fifth of those surveyed said they were expanding their work force in distribution centers, which fill and ship Internet orders and often pay better than stores do.

During the boom that preceded the recent recession, stores routinely added hundreds of thousands of workers before Christmas to handle a surge of shoppers. At the boom's peak, in 2005, retailers added more than 600,000 temporary workers to their rolls. Though seasonal hiring waned during the recession, falling to a low of 231,000 workers in 2008, retail jobs have been a rare bright spot in the national employment picture. Retail jobs account for about 16% of total U.S. employment.

But last year's modest gain in hiring appears to have ended. On Friday, the Labor Department reported that the retail sector lost 8,000 jobs in August as overall U.S. employment remained flat.

Retailers posted mixed sales figures in August, a heavy back-to-school shopping period that often foreshadows sales prospects for the holidays. Hurricane Irene damped sales for the month, while inflation accounted for some of the sales gains.

Meanwhile, the stubbornly high unemployment rate, plummeting consumer confidence and a gyrating stock market have made it difficult for retailers to predict holiday sales. As a result, some retailers say they are still finalizing their seasonal hiring plans. Though Macy's participated in the Hay Group survey, a spokesman said it won't be ready to discuss its plans until the end of September.

Industry experts caution, however, that retailers might hurt their sales by cutting workers. If anything, sales personnel will have to become even more knowledgeable and savvy, if retailers hope to distinguish themselves from online competitors, said Leslie Hand, research director of consulting firm IDC Retail Insights.

"People like to shop, to browse and touch and feel things," Ms. Hand added. "If they can come in your store and get that personal shopper who helps them pick a wardrobe and does it well, there is value in that."

Asmore retailers control labor costs by scheduling their workers for the stores' busiest times, the percentage of retail workers working part time has risen. So far this year, 59% of hourly retail staff work has been part time, up from 53% in 2009, according to the Hay Group.

—Miguel Bustillo contributed to this article.

Write to Ann Zimmerman at ann.zimmerman@wsj.com

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Job Seekers Are Getting Tested

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As it turns out, your childhood misdeeds, along with whether you care about someone else's bad day and how much you read, may have an impact on how a prospective employer views you. Francesca Donner has details on Lunch Break.

And you thought vandalizing your high school's drama club room wouldn't haunt you in adulthood.

As it turns out, your childhood misdeeds, along with whether you care about someone else's bad day and how much you read, may have an impact on how a prospective employer views you.

To get a read on applicants, more employers are using pre-hire assessments, which can check personality, cognitive ability and competency, among other areas. About 56% of companies are using some sort of assessment tool as part of the hiring process this year, up from 48% in 2010, according to Aberdeen Group, a Boston-based research firm.

Proponents say assessments are a relatively low-cost tool to increase the odds of finding a good match. "Culture fit is an absolutely critical determinant of longer-term fit, and not easy to discern in an interview," says Jay Gaines, chief executive of Jay Gaines & Co., a New York executive search firm. "There are some short psychological tests that might provide reinforcement and support to observations we might make on candidates."

While senior-level workers may face in-depth assessments, workers at any level should be prepared to face an assessment. For instance, since August 2010, all applicants to Bethlehem, Pa.-based St. Luke's Hospital & Health Network have been taking an assessment that aims to pinpoint, among other things, an applicant's attitude about customer service.

Here's what job seekers should know about personality assessments and other hiring screens.

Honesty is the best policy. It might be tempting to fudge assessment answers to sound perkier, more honest or more diligent than you really are. But some assessments contain scales to detect such misrepresentations.

"When people try to fake, they try to fake in very characteristic ways, and it's really easy to tell when someone is trying to game the test," says Robert Hogan, president of Hogan Assessment Systems, a Tulsa, Okla.-based personality assessment and consulting firm.

Job applicants taking assessments may try to predict what the company is looking for and develop a profile they think fits the bill for a good candidate. Others may check the box on the positive end of the scale for every question -- a pattern that employers may look for.

"Sometimes companies will put in a kind of nonsense question to make sure people are paying attention," says John Hausknecht, associate professor of human-resource studies at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y.

Tests don't have the final say. "Bombing" a personality assessment won't necessarily lose you a job, experts say.

"For companies that manage their staffing system well, personality tests are going to be a small part of the process," Mr. Hausknecht says. With assessments, "there is no one magic bullet that works for all people and all jobs. Personality tests might be combined with an interview, plus some kind of a work sample."

Dana Landis, vice president for global search assessment with executive search firm Korn/Ferry International, says the firm has assessed almost 700,000 applicants over about 10 years. Rather than taking negative assessment results at face value, Korn/Ferry uses results to dig deeper, she says.

"We don't want to ignore the results, but we also take them in context," Ms. Landis says. "We often try to circle back to the candidate to ask follow-up questions."

Assessment results generally don't come into play until there is a short list of candidates. "When you get down to the last three, they tend to be really impressive, present well, have excellent track records," Ms. Landis says. "But one of those people is a better fit than the others, and it's at that point that we need the extra information."

Charles Wardell, chief executive of Oak Brook, Ill.-based Witt/Kieffer, which specializes in executive searches for health education and nonprofits, says he treats assessments as another reference. "If you do very well on tests, I consider it a very good reference," he says. "And if you don't do well, I look at it as OK, not everybody gets 10 great references."

They help applicants, too. While companies pay for assessment tests, applicants can reap some benefits.

"A personality assessment is like a two-way interview for the individual," says Michael Anderson, senior research scientist at CPP, a Mountain View, Calif.-based provider of assessment tools. "If you feel you have to stretch your answers on an assessment, then maybe it's not the position that's best suited for you." For example, while being conscientious might be helpful for most jobs, being extroverted may be predictive of success only for certain positions, he says.

Michael McDaniel, a human-resources and organizational-behavior professor at Virginia Commonwealth University, says applicants see certain tests as "fair" if they include questions that clearly relate to the job. He says these tests have "pretty good acceptance by applicants and are easier to explain to management."

But Mr. McDaniel adds that "for those who have been out of school for a while, the thought of taking a test can make one anxious. No one likes the idea of being evaluated and being found not to be good enough."

Write to Ruth Mantell at ruth.mantell@dowjones.com

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