Employee Survival Guide® - Job Search Blunders: From An Employment Attorney

Episode Date: February 27, 2025

Comment on the Show by Sending Mark a Text Message.Are you struggling to land job interviews despite sending out countless applications? This episode dives into the critical errors that job seekers often make in their search for employment. From the pitfalls of blindly applying to positions without a clear understanding of job requirements to the persistent importance of networking, we discuss effective strategies to turn your job search from a frustrating experience into a successful endeavor.Our host shares personal insights and highlights common trends observed in today's hiring climate, demonstrating how many applicants overlook crucial details and fail to stand out among applicants. We emphasize the value of understanding the firms you're applying to, fostering genuine connections, and effectively leveraging your network to increase your chances of getting hired. The conversation delves into the nuances of communicating with potential employers and how to take your job search offline in an increasingly digitized-world.By the end of this episode, you'll have a refined approach to job searching, along with practical tips and strategies for making meaningful connections that resonate with employers. Join us and transform your job search experience—because a more personalized approach makes all the difference! If you find value in our discussions, subscribe, share with others, and leave a review! If you enjoyed this episode of the Employee Survival Guide please like us on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. We would really appreciate if you could leave a review of this podcast on your favorite podcast player such as Apple Podcasts. Leaving a review will inform other listeners you found the content on this podcast is important in the area of employment law in the United States. For more information, please contact our employment attorneys at Carey & Associates, P.C. at 203-255-4150, www.capclaw.com.Disclaimer: For educational use only, not intended to be legal advice.

Hey, it's Mark here and welcome to the next edition of the Employee Survival Guide where I tell you, as always, what your employer does definitely not want you to know about and a lot more. It's Mark and I wanted to talk today about how not to job search, like the wrong way. There is a wrong way, you need to understand this, and I'm going to say this from first hand experience because I'm in the job search mode, meaning that I'm trying to hire, and I wanted to give you my personal experience of that and what not to do. So here's at it.

I just felt really compelled to share this after a meeting I was having today with a friend of mine. The fellow's name is Nick Corkadilius. He's a guy, he's called Ask the Headhunter. He's got his own brand new website and he's been around for many, many years. And we got into a topic, we're just talking about job hiring and explaining my my issues with it and it just started to make me think like yeah I'm an employment lawyer and I

really haven't talked about this issue ever in terms of like job hire but this the current environment is absolutely insane in terms of what people have to go through so I'm just gonna share my experience of what people have to go through. So I'm just gonna share my experience of what I'm seeing. And I'll start with this. It starts with a premise of, you know, federal employees losing jobs left and right. And they've been just hammering my job at

bunch of lawyers who are just, you know, have a job at it or had one out there, like as of two days ago, for an employment attorney. And I was getting hits for people who were, didn't have any employment experience at all. So that's the first red flag. Don't apply to jobs that the job doesn't fit your

requirement, your qualifications. I mean, I was looking for an employment attorney and people were sending me applications. I'm like, but then I clearly rejected them because they didn't fit the requirement. So first thing to don't do, do not do this. Don't just randomly throw your application, your resume to the wind and see it's gonna stick

because that process doesn't work. So look at the ad and I'll tell you this, this happened to me twice so far. I posted this job in two different time periods, like over several months. The first time I posted it, I was getting the same type of reaction, and I edited the ad and I said,

in bold letters, don't apply to this ad if you do not have implement law experience. And guess what? People still apply to the ad. So I don't think people are reading the ads. And that was the one takeaway from my conversation with Nick today that people are not reading the ads or maybe they're hiring AI devices to screen, filter, whatever. That process is not working for you.

You're not going to get hired. Okay, stop. The next thing is just merely the quantity of people throwing their things to the wind. That process doesn't work either, okay, you're just, you know, sending a prayer to the wind and hopefully someone reads it. I'm a human being, I'm reading all the applications, there's no AI bot between the resume coming in. In this case, I was using LinkedIn. I was trying to use Indeed, but that's a fail.

As an employer searching for Indeed, that tool did not work for me. So, LinkedIn is a little bit better in terms of the, you know, there's a system there, but I'm a human being looking at every single resume that's coming in. It's hitting my feed and my email.

As soon as something comes in, I'm looking at it and I can immediately screen it and I can select reject. So as a human being reading it, I'm still seeing people without the right qualifications. And my job at ad was very specific. I went to the great lengths to explain what the job requirements were, et cetera, years of experience I wanted. If you were admitted to various jurisdictions like New York, Connecticut, and people still

were applying for it. And maybe because it had the word remote in it because my attorneys in my office do work remotely and also work in the office, but primarily remote. Remote works, by the way, folks. It's actually highly productive for us. Technology is king, so it works. But I was screening these myself and no AI bot was doing it. And I was just troubled with the lack of insight

or the inability for the candidates to look me up, what we do and what I was asking for. And I was just shocked that that's the level of engagement that, you know, people are not engaged and they're not investigating. So red flag, don't do that. Don't throw this the application to the job ad you see in LinkedIn. Do something different. What should you do, Mark? Well, do this. If you see a job ad, find out about the firm. Figure out first, is that the firm you want to work at? Don't get, I don't know, maybe people get money eyes and they see the salary range issue

and they just want to throw it at it or they're getting desperate because they're getting canned by the administration in Washington. They're just fearful they need a job. That's a red flag too, but somebody from D.C. looking for a job in Connecticut, you only do that because you lost a job and you wouldn't have otherwise approached my office in a normal state of circumstances

because you want to become an employment lawyer. It's like red flag, it's just people cannot see that. So the right thing to do is you see a job ad, some companies hiring, Care and Associations is hiring my law firm. What do you find, spend the time to research about that firm? If you're an attorney, you have access to court system and dockets,

you can actually spend a lot of time to understand that employer. Why do you do that? Well, because I want you to do that. I want you to figure out if you're a right fit for me and I'm a right fit for you. But so many people don't do that. I just came up there in a conversation

with my friend Nick today. Not one person who applied, there was like 80 resumes that came in over a short period of time. And not one of them took the gumption to call me or send me an email, you know, unsolicited. So I sent emails, I was doing that very proactively with them, but no one solicited me directly. You should be doing that. If I got a solicited email from somebody because I saw a job ad and they were saying things about, you know, the firm and what they saw in the firm, what the firm was doing, and they actually took

a look at it, I'd pay attention to that attorney, that applicant, because that showed that they had interest. So stop this script that you think you should follow that you can't contact the owners or the managers of the of the employer. Contact them. I mean that was actually Nick's advice as well and I agree. And years ago when I told Nick this story that when I started out and I just you know had no experience, this is now 28 years ago, I say a lot I'm a lot sorry I apologize because I'm trying to think through the thoughts, but I actually contacted a lot of known attorneys,

had more years of experience before, when I was just started, and they were receptive, and I wasn't asking for a job, I was just simply asking, hey, what is it like to be an employment lawyer? How did you go about it? What are you doing? And I knew who I was talking to, because I can look them up.

Back then, you had some semblance of internet. Yeah, very basic internet. And I even asked, you know, to come and talk to my friend Bob Mitchell, who's an attorney in Connecticut. He doesn't remember this meeting, but I do, because I sat in his office and I asked him, because I was young, you're impressionable, you remember this. And I learned a lot from him and through my conversations with similar folks who are attorneys who are already practicing many years in advance, and I encourage you to do that. Let's take a quick break. Hey, it's Mark, and we have a new product for you. It's called the Employee Survival Guide or Employeesurvival.com.

And it's a site that you can obtain PDF products that I've created myself. I was spending too many hours, way too many researching and writing about, for example, the performance improvement plan or beating them. And the second one about negotiating severance negotiation agreements, two of the most important topics that we see in terms of the web traffic and podcast traffic we have. So check out Employeesurvival.com and see if this can try to help you and you don't need an attorney to use it.

Thank you. Don't ask for, well, don't tell them you want a job, but say you want to network and do the old-fashioned way. That's the way it works these days. It's through networking. I heard stats that most people are getting jobs not through LinkedIn, but they're getting jobs through word of mouth or networking.

And that's, and my friend Nick shared this input with me because he was a recruiter and he's writing in that field. I was like shocked. I thought the other way around was happening that people were going through these massive data banks like LinkedIn, but that's not the case. The other thing we talked about was this, it's called algorithmic bias. And there was a case with Derek Mobley versus, I think it's Workspace or something and excuse me he applied for like a hundred jobs and was randomly you know denied because of discrimination he eventually sued them

was a court case I think I did a podcast about it so the AI bot is obviously screening from both angles, from the employee side and from the employer side, so there's no human there. And that's a problem because there's implicit bias within that algorithm, I guess, and you don't have to go through that process. You can bypass. You don't have to accept that's the way you have to do it. There's another way. Do your own individual research about an employer. Nick was sharing examples where people basically targeted three different companies

they really wanted to work for, and they just went out and talked to and contacted the people at these companies. And guess what? People were really happy to hear what they had to say and gave them some airtime. It takes some persistence, but do your homework about who you're targeting. Find out what it is they actually do. Don't just throw a resume at the situation.

And don't send a cover letter, please. It's really drives me insane. Don't send a cover letter that is You know, it tacitly touches upon what we do It doesn't really answer the question about you know, are you qualified for the job that the application? so people do that a lot and I think it's maybe out of fear or whatever it is if you If you want a job at a certain location and you really know what you want,

target the employer and go after it. Don't be shy. People, I would appreciate someone who had the gumption and the guts to reach out in a very articulated way to have a discussion about my firm, what I do, how I serve as clients, our business, whatever it is, and then not about you, but just have a regular discussion. Instead of this, I guess, this script of applicant and employer that people follow,

it doesn't work. And talking with Nick today, actually, it remember that you know that is not the way things are done. You have to really set yourself apart. I know you hear that a lot but you know I didn't have that experience and I had to I had to basically hire myself. That's not the common way of doing things but I will tell you as an employment lawyer I have've learned over the years that, you know, if people and I've hired many people, that the more genuine you are, the more transparent you are about what your goal aspiration is, try to figure out, and maybe I'll do it this way, that I'm looking for what I'm looking for a candidate, I'm looking for a fit. You know, yeah, you got to have a law degree. Yeah,

you got to have employment law experience, but you could be the worst candidate possible with a bad attitude. I'm not going to hire you. I'm looking for, and you need to figure out through questioning and have discussion, like, with people, what is the fit that this employer wants of the particular person? It's a personality. It's possibly, you have to learn and ask questions and probe the employer. Is it remote work? Is it working in a silo?

Do you guys get together? What's the culture like? In my shared experience in interviews, I talk about what is my culture, a lot. I actually go to the nth degree to talk about it. We have, you've heard me talk about it. We have employment contracts for for termination for cause we have you know lengthy Vacation time because I want people to take vacations away and so they don't burn out we pay for the gym membership And we you know use technology as most I'm sure most companies do,

but we use technology to bridge the gap between space and time to allow this person to work anywhere they want. I mean, I work remotely from a lot of different places, effortlessly, and I'm connected to my systems. So learn about what the employer is like, spend the time. It could nail you a job. I'll give you a trick that Nick shared with me today.

Thanks, Nick. He said he had done this in his own career, whereby he asked to meet with people, and he said, can you recommend whomever else I can talk to, et cetera, and he did, and he went off, and he didn't get any of those jobs, and then the person he asked, the original person, says, why don't you ever ask us for a job?

And he then said, you know, after he was hired by that employer, he says, well, that was a trick all along, I intentionally did that. So, and it took him a year to do that. So, you know, try different tactics to get your foot in the door, but have a discussion. But if anything you've learned from this episode is do not throw your resume into the pipeline of nonsense

that you see, and you can start there, but don't end there. Pick the phone up. Diligent, how about being persistent in a respectful way? Contact me, find out what I'm doing. Find out what core cases I'm working on that I'm trying to move and shake with. Anything to get a conversation going, because it's all public, it's out there.

I mean, if my situation is very easy, you can read about what I'm doing and invite me to have a conversation, but you gotta have the qualifications first. Read the darn job ad and don't just throw your thing into the job hopper on an ad post and think it's gonna stick. It's not. That's the wrong way to do it.

I was a human being rejecting things out of hand as soon as they came in because they did not have the basic requirements of the job. Read the job. Don't rely upon some AI bot to do it for you. Spend the time, this is involving your income. I'm shocked that people are actually doing this. They would literally risk the opportunity loss by a computer to screen them away from a potential job because these computers get it wrong all the time.

And if you're doing that, that's a huge huge mistake but I think what our culture today is is geared towards that and people don't know any better because people don't tell them so that was my messaging today was like let people know that's the wrong way to job search don't use the throw it to the wind or an AI bot or anything to mechanically drive your job search. Do it the old fashioned way. Where I'm a human being, I wanna be contacted. I want to know that you're seriously interested in what I'm doing as a mission at my office.

Any employer would demonstrate that you have the skill set. Demonstrate you have the skill set, demonstrate you have the drive and the ability to service the clients in the way that the employers doing that. But do not go about the job search through your computer like that and just expect any results. I mean you could end up like Derek Mobley who did exactly that and he got rejected. That was the lawsuit. He was being discriminated against

because he was an African-American male. And so, it's a great example, I'm sorry that happened to him, but these devices, this technology, it's fallible. And it's not, you need to be aware that there's a different way of doing this. is it's fallible and it's not, you need to be aware that there's a different way of doing this and that way of doing it is the old fashioned way putting your name to a communication of some form,

be diligent about it, persistence with it, it demonstrates that you wanna join the employer because you're trying everything you can. So if that helps you in your job search and gets you out of your wrong thinking, red flags, all day long thinking about using AI or throwing resumes out there because you're scared shitless to,

you need a job because the federal government just fired you, whatever, just get out of that mindset. Change your mindset. Go back to if I was an employer, how would I want somebody to contact me about a job search, even a networking that they were interested in, and do those things with that person.

Do it in terms of your job search. Get the attention of people. We're all busy, yes, we get tons of email, we're doing a thousand things every single day and we're exhausted at the end of people. We're all busy, yes, we got tons of email, we're doing a thousand things every single day and we're exhausted at the end of the day. But if you just take the time to communicate like a human being as a professional here in the case of an attorney,

you're gonna get reception to it because people listen to that. I mean, I'm gonna listen to somebody who's gonna say in a very articulated way that they're interested in what I'm doing. I wanna know that you're interested in what the mission statement is. So I'm repeating myself, but for a reason,

it's just incredibly disturbing to have to reject so many candidates because they commit the same mistake each time they did it. I mean, we're talking, I don't know, 80 times. I mean, they're all doing the same thing. They're all committing the same mistake. Not one of them reached out to me. And then I can just add this,

because I'm fresh off an interview, and I just want to share this with you. I don't do interviews like you think that I do them. And I'm not gonna ask you silly, stupid questions about what color is your parachute or whatever the nonsense that goes on in the real world. The right way to do an interview is, in my opinion, if I'm hiring, because I want to pay somebody

$200,000 a year, is I want to have a conversation. I'm gonna find out about you, and I'm gonna do it over a longer period of time. It's gonna bug you, but that's intentional. I'm trying to have a slow hire, because I'm gonna find out about you and I'm gonna do it over a longer period of time, it's gonna bug you, but that's intentional. I'm trying to have a slow hire because I'm gonna get to know you, all your quirks and all your things, and you're gonna get to know me, and you're gonna figure out whether it's a fit for you, whether it fits for me.

That's intentional. And that's the way that I do interviews. Now is it perfect? Well, it's definitely less stressful for both sides. I'm gonna check out whether you, how many cases you on the federal court docket and how many times you've done it or this, that, and try to figure out the baseline

and what I need to grow in terms of your work experience. I can do all that on my side, but I try to have a conversation with people so that they're not, so they're at ease and we're talking in a conversational manner that's designed to bring out like how you are as a person, you know, what makes you tick, personal experiences you have,

but it's very fluid, it's not based upon stupid questions that you may get wrong or any screening device that you gotta, I can't screening device that you've got to, I can't believe people have to do this. I think my kids had to do this where you get interviewed by a darn computer and there's a company out there selling this service to millions and millions of dollars to corporations nationwide and I forget the name of the software company, but that's insane. Like you can't even have a communication

about something so vitally important to your job, and you gotta do it with a computer first. That's crazy making. I do it all fashion way, you got the person on the Zoom call, have a discussion, I don't put a time limit on the call. And we just start to brainstorm conversations about various issues.

Obviously I'm working with a resume, but I'm also communicating what's happening in a very conversational style without pressure, because I don't want you to be stressed in my job interview with me, because I want to have you feel more relaxed. That's the way to go about the job interview. Some people may object, but you're not going to learn something from somebody who's under

stress. That never works and I don't want to, you know, put you through the paces of that and I want to have a more robust, colorful conversation filled with humor, filled with just natural reactions instead of you working from a stress sense of your presence there and you're under, you need a job or something like that or whatever that happens in a job interview. So the job interview I do is designed to bring out the person you really are, not the person that's sitting there in front of on paper that's kind of stale black and white you know print it's like there's a real person there and I'm trying to bring that out through conversation and people are really

receptive to that and I'll take my time because I want to make sure that you're working with me for a long time. By the way, employment lawyers and most employers cannot promise you lifetime employment. They can't say you're gonna be working here a long time. Well, it's illegal to do that because in the sense that somebody will sue you for breach of contract if you ever hear that, so just a little tidbit. But I'm looking for a longer trust building situation

from the get go and that conversation is designed to do that, my whole process is designed to do that. I think most employers don't do that because of the evidence of how much they're using AI. I mean where's the trust in that process? I mean, shit, there's no trust in that process. So there's a way to deal with this folks and it's not through a computer. Start with the computer to get your data in your input but write letters. You know, you'd be surprised at how creative you can get to get someone's attention. We're all busy, I get it, but if you think hard enough, you can

send a FedEx to somebody and they'll open it, potentially. Or just show up at their office or something to get their attention that you're seriously interested in the job at the employment place of work. So I just wanted to call that out. That was on my mind today. I had a conversation about this.

I wanted to share it. I don't normally talk about job interview stuff or recruiting stuff. Recruiting stuff, maybe I think I should in terms of, because I do see a lot of this material or this in the work that I do. We don't generally have cases where people sue people for failure to hire. It's kind of a hard case to prove. And I have been thinking about this aspect of

the other side of the category of employment is really job search and career coaching. I am kind of doing that through the podcasts and the episodes we're doing. I'll lean in a little bit more for you from what I see. I'm not perfect. I think there's a variety of ways to career coach, and there's I'm sure a lot of coaches out there, quote-unquote coaches, but you know, I just basically give you what I see in terms of the cases we're litigating, the cases we're dealing with employers, and they do have a kind of a

systematic pattern to them and you can kind of know it and you see it and you hear this pattern through my discussions with you. Likewise, I'm giving you a little pattern today because I'm job searching or at least trying to fill a position and a little feedback for you. And also, I listened to a lot of other people say in terms of my friend Nick's a recruiter for a long time, you know, he's asked that headhunter, he's a famous guy, so I'm a, you know, I enjoy speaking with him and I learn a lot. So I'm just giving a little feedback back to you.

Red flags don't do certain things, do do certain things about getting to know who your employer, on a personal level, we appreciate if you can reach out to us and take the extra effort. I mean, I'm not kidding. It would send a loud message that you're interested in that job.

So I'll leave it at that. Hope you enjoyed this episode of my thoughts about this. This really did bug the shit out of me. I wanted to share it with you. Sorry for the language today, but it does really bug me because people just do not listen or read what they're applying for. So please stop doing that and do it the way I suggested, okay?

Thanks. Have a great week. If you like the Employee Survival Guide, I'd really encourage you to leave a review. We try really hard to produce information to you that's informative, that's timely, that you can actually use and solve problems on your own and at your employment. So if you'd like to leave a review anywhere you listen to our podcast, please do so. And leave five stars because anything less than five is really not as good, right? I'll keep it up.

I'll keep the standards up. I'll keep the information flowing at you. If you'd like to send me an email and ask me a question, I'll actually review it and post it on there. You can send it to mcaru at capclaw.com.