Well, the search continues. I had a phone interview today and think it went terrible. Phone interviews are tough. There were five people in the room listening to me answer questions on the phone. No facial cues, no body language, no nodding heads that I was saying things that they wanted to hear...For all I know they were asleep during the enitire phone call. Tim was the committee chairman and the only one to speak during the interview. The other four people introduced themselves, but that was it. As with all phone interviews, I think I did terrible and will now send off three or four new applications to make up for the fact that I have no chance with this job.Anyway, my new approach. I have made contact with a local CIO through LinkedIn and I asked if he could review my resume and give me some feedback. The two things that he mentioned and I took to heart was to increase the white space on my resume and to tell a story with my cover letter. He said that my resume was crammed full of everthing that I have ever done and made it look like I was trying to hard. I used a small font which either let the reviewers know I was trying to cram as many words on to one page as was humanly possible or that they were getting older and needed reading glasses. Neither of those things were good.
The other advice that I thought was interesting was that I should tell a story about my past, my qualifications, and how I came to see this job as my next career step. he said that he reviews an average of 50 resumes with each job opportunity and having a perfunctory cover letter with the basic information was an opportunity that i was losing to stand out from everyone else.
So, I have started re-doing how I apply to jobs and I have had three interviews in the last four weeks. Good results, now i just need to figure out what to say to have people offer me a job. The first interview they said that they interviewed several candidates and didn't find the right candidate for the position. I know that is possible, but i felt it was a nice way to say, "you were #2 in a 2-horse race". The second interview, at least told me that I did a really good job in the interview and they liked me and they thought I would be a great fit, BUT...there was one other candidate who had previous experience working with emergency responders. That one was difficult to disagree with, but still disappointing.
So the search goes on with a slightly different tack and hopefully better results. I am supposed to hear about the interview today by early next week. Think happy thoughts for me...
