List all of your previous positions. As an older employee, extensive experience is your greatest asset, and it is an area in which you have an indisputable competitive advantage over younger workers.

Many job seekers drop from their resume positions held early in their career. When I ask candidates about early jobs, I often find gems that add to the candidate’s qualifications. Sometimes a position the candidate considered irrelevant may be quite relevant, but for reasons not anticipated by the candidate.

For example, a history of several short-tenure jobs will be viewed negatively by prospective employers. Including on the resume early work experience showing long tenure with one or more employers will help counteract the impression of job instability. While the candidate may view the early experience as irrelevant to the type of work they now do, an employer may view it as quite relevant to judging the prospective employee’s overall fitness.

Another example: a senior-level management position is being filled. One applicant omitted his first job in an unrelated field (banking) from his resume. The position is currently held by a highly-regarded individual who, as it turns out, began his career working for a bank—experience which he views as having bolstered his budget management skills. Had the applicant included the banking experience, his resume would likely have been viewed more favorably owing to the similarity with the work history of the current manager.

When listing early career positions, it is not necessary to include the same level of detail as more recent positions. Dates of employment, position held and employer’s name should be adequate. Including outstanding achievements or accomplishments is always a good idea.

Michael G Smith

Shocking as it may seem, employers rarely read cover letters. Yet many job seekers believe that elaborating on their experience and skills in a cover letter enhances their chances of getting an interview.

Hiring managers have limited time and nearly unlimited resumes to screen. The most efficient way to screen resumes is, well, to screen the resume and not bother with the cover letter. A quick review of a resume is all that’s required to place it in one of three categories: not qualified (the vast majority of all resumes); possibly qualified; and, almost certainly qualified.

In most cases, the number of almost certainly qualified candidates must be reduced, so the employer will take a more detailed look at each of those resumes and possibly read the cover letter. If the letter is long-winded, contains stupid comments ("out-of-the-box thinker"; "I'm a people person"), contains some otherwise benign detail that is viewed negatively, or any one of a thousand other problems that the job seeker may not anticipate, the resume will move out of the "interview" pile and into the "not now, maybe later" pile.

Since one cannot know with certainty how the person reading the cover letter will react to any particular bit of information, packing a lot into the cover letter can backfire. It is best to let your resume carry the full load of securing an interview and avoid the risk that your cover letter will undo what your resume may have already accomplished. The ideal letter may simply say, "Please consider me for the position you recently advertised".

Nevertheless, if you feel obliged to write a cover letter, do not use a "boilerplate" letter that is not specifically tailored to the job for which you are applying. Nothing is more frustrating than reading a page-long cover letter in an effort to learn about the candidate's interest in a position, only to find vague generalities with no tie-in to the position being filled.

To sum up, I prefer candidates who respect my time by keeping the cover letter mercifully short. If the candidate has something important to say, the resume--where it will be seen--is the correct place to say it, and not just in the cover letter. The letter may exceed a paragraph if the candidate is providing answers to the following questions: How does the candidate's work experience satisfy the specific requirements stated in the job posting? Why is the candidate interested in this job?

Michael G Smith

Question: I am older (50+) with a career spanning 30 years, the past 20 years as a self-employed owner/operator of small companies. How do I go about rejoining the workforce in a management position?

Answer: Many believe it is difficult to find a job after a long period of self-employment. Yet, I have reviewed thousands of resumes which often show that individuals find desirable work after a long period of self-employment. Therefore, I have concluded that it’s probably no more difficult for the self-employed to find career opportunities than those who have not been self-employed.

That’s not to say there are no challenges, but 20 years of self-employment confers significant and unique advantages on a job seeker.

First of all, most job seekers today have resumes characterized by job instability: too many jobs that lasted for two years or less, and too few jobs that last for more than four years. Aside from not meeting the position requirements, job instability is the chief reason candidates are rejected, and the more senior the position to be filled, the more heavily it weighs. So twenty years in any job–self-employed or otherwise–is a strong asset.

Next up for consideration is the match between your work experience and the particular position you may be seeking. Every employer has certain qualifications in mind when filling a position and these may be categorized as: 1. industry experience, 2. work experience, and 3. responsibility experience.

Industry experience refers to the knowledge and familiarity with normal expectations one acquires from working in a particular field or industry. I still recall much of what I learned in the first few years I spent in the printing business, but I would be quite lost in a modern graphic arts facility due to technological advance.

Work experience is “on-the-job-training” from which we learn to perform a range of tasks and projects appropriate to a specific job and industry. Up to a point, greater work experience increases efficiency and decreases “spoilage” or bad outcomes.

Responsibility experience refers primarily to experience in management, including the management of staff, budgets, facilities, resources and, in some cases, profit and loss. When filling management positions, employers typically consider both the scope and extent of experience in each of these categories.

Hopefully, you can see where this is leading. You must inventory your work experience in each of these three areas; list everything, not just the big stuff. For example, experience using Quickbooks accounting software is a marketable skill and should be on your list. Order the list based on the amount and recentness of your experience, since the passage of time depreciates its value, particularly in the case of industry experience.

This list will serve as your guide for three purposes. First, you can use it to brainstorm the types of employers and positions to which your experience and skills may be applicable. Second, it is a checklist of essential assets that should be mentioned on your resume. Third, it will aid in marketing your experience to potential employers.

The first and third points require further explanation. The applicability of your experience to certain fields or types of work will be immediately obvious, but with some reflection and creative insight, you may recognize that your experience is quite applicable to other fields as well. The logic supporting the applicability of your experience to a seemingly unrelated field must be honed and internalized so you can easily demonstrate the connection in a cover letter and interview.

Now you should see that several key factors (job stability; industry, work and responsibility experience; and applicability of experience and skills to the open position) constitute the basis for hiring decisions. These factors have little or nothing to do with whether one is currently self-employed.

If you understand the depth and breadth of your experience, and can quantify and communicate an accurate description to a prospective employer, you are ready to go job hunting. If you pursue jobs that fit your experience, you will actually have a competitive advantage in the job market.

Michael G Smith

The most common mistake, surprisingly, is that job seekers don't anticipate that hiring managers will perform an internet search to find out more about them. This oversight can result in two different problems: 1. negative information that comes to light; and, 2. positive information is available, but not found.

It is always prudent to consider the potential career consequences of our actions, but with an increasing amount of real-time and historical information available on the Web, the likelihood is now much greater that missteps will be discovered by potential employers, even many years after the fact.

Some sources of information are obvious: photo posting sites, forums, blogs, and social networking sites. But less obvious sources are just as important. Google, for example, keeps Web pages cached and available to searchers. So even if a page has been taken down, it will come up in a Google search and can be accessed by clicking on the “Cached” link in Google’s results. ZoomInfo.com permanently stores Web pages that mention individuals by name and can be retrieved from their cache at any time.

In addition to your name, employers will Google your phone number, email address, former employers, and anything else on your resume that might produce a “hit” when combined with your first or last name, city or state. Before you send out a resume, perform each of these searches so you know what potential problems await you.

There are sources other than Google that employers may check; the most intimidating, perhaps, is Lexis-Nexis, which can search and retrieve nearly every newspaper, magazine, radio or TV story from the last twenty years, or more. Though not as extensive as Lexis-Nexis, public and university libraries offer full text access for written and transmitted stories.

Finally, there are many ways in which “legal” records can be retrieved at little or no cost from online databases. If you have a corporation registered in your name, marriage, divorce, bankruptcy, tax delinquency, civil or criminal court proceeding, or any type of state professional license, the records are generally available. Even traffic and parking tickets can sometimes be retrieved.

Information that enhances your reputation will aid your job quest. Attention must be paid, though, to assuring the information will be found. A Google search may miss something if it is associated with a less common variation of your name. I consistently use “Michael G Smith” as my name online, since anything associated with “Mike Smith” or “Michael Smith” will be listed so far down in Google’s results they won’t be seen. It’s important to decide what your name is and then stick with that exact form. “Kate Smith” is not the same, in Google’s eyes, as “Kathleen Smith,” “Bill Board” is not the same as “William Board,” and “James R Towne” is not the same as “James Towne.”

Finally, sites where individuals create and edit their own records are of critical importance. You have no control over much of what comes up in a Google search, but the employer knows you alone control the information at sites such as Linkedin, Facebook, MySpace, Flickr and so on. Content you post can be a liability if it is inconsistent or potentially embarrassing—your resume and your Linkedin work history, for example, had better agree. On the plus side, if you anticipate that potential employers will view your profile, then you can emphasize your accomplishments and achievements in order to make a good impression.

You must decide what your purpose is in having a presence on these sites. Your profile on Linkedin—currently, the most important business networking site—should not feature activities that detract from your “day job,” as that will give the impression your focus is not on work. If you are a fundraising professional and have a political blog that is compatible with the outlook of the organization you work for, that’s fine. But if your profile emphasizes a personal business you operate on the side, a reasonable person will conclude you are stretched too thin and your attention is divided.

Michael G Smith