Why You Can’t Get a Job — Intro
From time to time here on PhilFAQS, the destination site for information about living in the Philippines, I actually try to give useful advice.
One query I get often, both in personal contact and via searches that lead people to this site via Google and other search engines is: Finding a job in the Philippines.
Another top topic here and among a large percentage of Filipinos I know who are looking for work is resumes and job qualifications. So this post series is going to apply opretty much eqyally to foreigners wnating to find a job in the Philippines and Filipinos wnating to find a job … well, anywhere I guess 
photo credit: markhillary Both of these issues center around one fact pf business life … you are typically one of many applicants and a lot of the initial screening process is done via resumes. If yours gets tossed in an initial review the people higher up in the hiring company will never know you even exist.
So one issue then is vital … get your resume at least into the pile that gets read the second time around.
I read thousands of resumes in the past 20 years. I worked in a government office where we managed large contracts and typically reading resumes to determine of the proposed staff that would execute the project was adequate to the government needs. After that job I worked for a small tech company where we had to rapidly hire some software engineers and I worked directly in the process receiving (and filing) all resumes.
For all I know your resume might have been one of the ones I threw in the ‘circular file’. Want to know why?
I was never in a position to hire a senior vice president or top level manager. I was trying to evaluate or hire mid-level technical folks who would actually be productive. If you truly fit into one of those senior level positions, you’re reading the wrong blog … go find one that deals with calling endless meetings for other endless meeting callers, here we are all about the ‘worker bee’ level
Was their education important? Of course. But was their education what I looked at first? Hardly If you are applying for, let’s say, a software engineer position, I’m going to assume you have a bachelors degree in software engineering or a closely related discipline I will check into that after I move resumes to a ’short list’ pile that consists of people I think can produce, rather than manage, impress and obfuscate.
When I first drafted this post I thought it would be short and to the point (haa, right, Dave, when did that ever happen). But I now realize just how many useful tips can be covered here and how many people can benefit from my7 experience, not only with finding a job here in the Philippines but in finding a job back home, perhaps, where I hear the unemployment figures are a tad on the grim side.
I’ll write more then, same subject, next time. Meanwhile I want you to read this post from Joel Spolsky, a long-time blogging associate of mine who successfully built his own software company from the ground up in New York. It is written to software developer candidates but it doesn’t matter what your field is, just translate the software-specific tasks and metrics into the special items in your particular field.. His post is well worth reading, but if you wont/can’t get over to read the whole thing, remember the gist of it … successful resume4s are resumes that showed the candidate got his or her hands dirty. Have you gotten your hands dirty?
Are you a software developer applying to a small company?
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