Control What You Can
Kent R.
You’re viewing an archived post. This post was originally published by The Change Laboratory, which is now part of No Vacation Required — our platform for Everyday Fulfillment. While this content is archived, it’s still full of solid advice and timeless insights.
I recently had a client request that the resume and LinkedIn profile we develop together get him higher quality offers from recruiters. There is nothing unusual about that request. What surprised me was what followed. He wanted the resume and LinkedIn profile to also reduce the number of low quality offers he received.
Of course it makes sense to want fewer low quality offers. This particular client has some fairly rare programming expertise, so he is inundated with offers. Not a bad problem to have. Unfortunately, a large chunk of those offers are for positions that are either significantly below his “pay grade” or totally unrelated to his area of expertise. These offers are annoying.
The problem is that trying to reduce the amount of spam “opportunities” means you are making an external failing an internal problem. There is simply no way to make a resume that, miraculously, makes ineffective recruiters more thoughtful.
As I advised this client, you can only focus on what is in your control. Instead of trying to reduce the bad offers he receives, we put our energy into building a resume and LinkedIn profile that is discoverable by – and piques the interest of – recruiters with high-quality offers in his desired field. These new job search tools may do nothing to dissuade bad recruiters or stop the deluge of spam job offers, but they should increase the number of the desirable opportunities that make it to his email box.