Advice on finding a job in Indianapolis

July 20, 2009 6:52 AM

My son (college grad + Management experience with Enterprise) is desperately seeking a job in Indianapolis. His wife is a dental student at IUPUI and a baby is on the way. Any advice??
posted by Tayniksgranny to Work & Money (5 answers total)

Network.
posted by dfriedman at 6:58 AM on July 20, 2009

Has he had somebody ruthlessly critique his resume? A recruiter did that for me, and it was incredibly helpful. What it boiled down to was that my resume reflected all the things I was proud of, and not any of the things employers were looking for in the positions I was applying for. I figured, oh, they don't need to know those easy things, surely they know I can do all that. But they don't, not unless you tell them.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 7:03 AM on July 20, 2009 [3 favorites]

Is there a temp pool he could sign up with at the University? Might not result in top-paying jobs, but it could result in some work to tide him over and give him a good networking opportunity.
posted by Meg_Murry at 7:08 AM on July 20, 2009 [1 favorite]

Is there a reason he can't return to an Enterprise branch or get a job with another car rental agency? It sounds like the couple has an urgent need for income and maybe insurance. If I were in his shoes, I'd stick with what I know and defer changing career direction for now.
posted by vincele at 10:17 AM on July 20, 2009

Best answer: Your son's resume is a work in progress and will need to be updated regularly - the keywords for which computers search are constantly changing and almost all recruiters and many HR departments computer scan resumes these days. Ask a reputable recruitment agency what kind of things the scanning programme will automatically reject - most of the ones in use here will automatically reject any resume which contains images of any kind including borders.

Sign up for email alerts with as many recruiters as possible. Apart from anything else, the quality of the alerts you're getting will give you a good idea of whether you're using the right keywords in your resume. Also many alerts are sent overnight - if you apply in the early morning the vacancy is less likely to have been pulled than if you wait until later in the day. It's not unusual for major recruiters here to have pulled a job ad by 10am on the morning of advertising.

Talk to recruiters about the realities of the current job market. They may literally be getting thousands of resumes for every vacancy and you need to know how to increase the chances of yours surviving the first cut.

Practise phone interview and on-line assessment techniques. In many cases these will be intermediate steps in the recruitment process and people are often taken by surprise when a recruiter suddenly calls for a phone interview on the same day they've sent their resume or wants an online assessment done within a couple of hours. Assessment centres and face to face interviews are important, but you'll often have to survive a phone interview and online assessment to even progress to that stage.

As for feedback at every single stage, even if you're progressing - you want to know what you did right so that you can repeat it, and you definitely want to know what you coudl have done better.

Don't be "precious". I can't count the number of times this year I've seen candidates blow their chances in the final stages of the recruitment process by being too cocky and assuming that the job is theirs for the asking - unless you're utterly unique in your field you cannot afford to be high maintenance or have an "attitude" in the current job market.

Realise that soft skills and experience are every bit as important as formal qualifications - there's every chance that the candidates against whom you're competing will have degrees equivalent to or superior to your own, so don't rely on your qualifications alone to get you any job.
posted by Lolie at 11:48 AM on July 20, 2009 [1 favorite]