Career Coach Office Hours: March 25 2025

By Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter

I answered your questions about #jobsearch.

This is going to be the final live episode for now. I will be uploading a few episodes from the archives while I take a break

See you soon at JobSearch.Community

9 Ways People Sabotage Themselves on Interviews

00:00 Intro

03:16 Are job interviews done by phone usually easier or harder?

04:27 Can an employer track if you have used the same resume and cover letter for multiple job applications?

06:48 What is the significance of an interviewer saying they are still interviewing other candidates and will get back to you soon? 08:19 What are the key indicators of a strong resume versus a weak one?

09:09 Is it rude to ask for an update on a job application?

09:57 Commercial 11:09 Is it necessary for your LinkedIn profile to be different from your resume and cover letter, or can you simply copy and paste the same information into each document?

12:34 How should one respond to an interviewer who asks, “Tell me about yourself” or “Walk me through your resume”? Is it appropriate to say “no?”

14:13 How far back should your work history be on a resume or LinkedIn profile?

16:10 Is it appropriate to follow up with an employer to confirm receipt of my resume and application materials?

17:36 What are ways to find out about career growth and collaboration?

21:12 What are some ways to determine if an employer is a good place to work for before applying and potentially getting rejected?

22:41 Please share about interview and feedback process

24:21 What excuses can I give to take leave to give an interview for a new job?

26:50 Do employers ask weird personal questions during interviews for a specific reason, or is it just for fun?

28:37 Outro 

Increase Your Chances of Getting a Response to Your Application

Hi, it’s Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter. And welcome to what for now is going to be the final episode of Career Coach Office Hours. For several years, for more than 200 episodes, I’ve been taking questions from job hunters throughout the world, because I believe that the skills needed to find the job are different from those needed to do a job.

And what I know from my experience in recruiting is that most of you are amateurs. You don’t do much that’s right. You do some things, but most of you are amateurish in what you do.

So what I have been doing now, since before COVID, and a couple of years before COVID, actually, is answering questions from job hunters. And if you’ve got a question for me, I want to encourage you, put it in the chat so I can answer a lot. I’ll continue to field questions from people on LinkedIn.

So if you message me on LinkedIn with a question, I’ll turn it into a video. I’m not going to respond instantly. But when it comes out, it’s going to come out and I’ll answer your question.

But in the meantime, today is the final episode. And it’s been a pleasure to be of service to all of you. I’ll just simply also say, you know, connect with me on LinkedIn at LinkedIn.com forward slash IN forward slash TheBigGameHunter.

I’ll get that into chat in just a moment because I’m running a little bit behind on things. And I’m going to clear up the backlog of questions I’ve had for the last week or two. See, there’s the LinkedIn profile URL.

So I’m going to clear up the backlog of questions today in my final episode. So that this way, any of you who’ve sent me questions up until this point, we’ll have them answered today. So I received a number of them.

I’ve been carrying forward some of these. It’s hard. It’s hard to get everything done on this show.

But I’ve tried for a long time. Now, again, I want to encourage you, if you’re interested in my coaching you, come over to JobSearch.com. If you hire me to coach you, and again, I have like five tiers of coaching service available to you. You also get access to all my video courses, books and guides that are available on the site.

And I’m going to be adding a few more over the next few weeks. So again, come over to JobSearch.com. Click on the button that says become an insider. And I’d be happy to coach you.

I have one tier, which is the insider tier, where what you get is access to the video courses, books and guides. If you can send me questions through the site, and I’ll answer them that way. But in terms of one to one work with you, five tiers from Insider Plus all the way through Insider Premium, where I work with you personally.

So, again, I’ve received a lot of questions from people. Let’s get going. And the first one is, are job interviews done by phone usually easier and harder? The answer to the question is yes, they are both easier and harder.

They are easier in that they can’t see that you have your resume out. They can’t see that you have any notes out. And, you know, they can’t see how good looking you are and what a great outfit you have on.

And that makes it harder. All they have is your voice to go by. All they have is that to influence you.

And that all influence them. And that’s what makes it harder. They’re not influenced by appearance.

All they have is your voice. So if you know how to use your voice, frankly, phone interviews are easy. But if you don’t know how to use your voice, if you don’t know how to draw people in, in a conversation, it becomes harder because you rely . . . we all tend to rely upon our appearance and our manner and what we wear and how we influence others and create an impression.

So, the answer to the question is both easier and harder. Let’s go to another question I received from someone. Can an employer track if you have used the same resume and cover letter for multiple job applications only on their website? And the reality is, why would you do that? After all, the positions aren’t the same.

So your resume shouldn’t be the same. You should be tailoring your resume and custom or customizing it for the individual position you’re submitting it for. And there’s no excuse not to.

You can use AI to help you. So, you can go to chatGPT, for example, or Genesis or Claude or Perplexity or whichever site you prefer. And you can say to it, I want to submit my resume for this position.

And you give it the I want to submit my resume for a job. That’s the way to do it. This is my resume.

You upload a resume without your contact information or name on top of it. I want to submit my resume for this position with this firm and you give it the company name and you upload the job description and the company name and you give it the website address as well. I’d like you to customize your my resume in order to demonstrate that I’m a strong fit for this role.

Make the changes. And it will give you a response back that will either, depending upon the platform, rewrite your resume for you for the job or tell you the things that you’ll need to emphasize in order to make it a stronger fit for the role. You can do the same thing with a cover letter and basically ask it to write a cover letter for you.

Four paragraphs, no longer. 250 words, no longer. And from there, you can edit both to make it even tighter and to put it into your voice.

So, the long and the short of it is, they can only track it if you are sending it to their website. And you should be tracking your resume submissions consistently, so that you’re not running into this problem. But on the corporate applicant tracking systems, usually, they can’t do that.

Okay. Now, we have more questions. What is the significance of an interviewer saying they’re still interviewing other candidates and we’ll get back to you soon? Basically means they’re not ready to indicate they want to get married to you.

You know, they’re still dating other people and they’re giving you the courtesy of letting you know that. We’ll get back to you. And thus, the response to that should be something along the lines of, I understand you’re not ready to make a commitment to me at this point.

If I haven’t heard from you, by when should I follow up? Oh, we’ll be in touch. So what you’re basically saying, I shouldn’t hold my breath, that you’ll be back in touch with me being chosen. I’m not saying that at all.

So tell me, when are you finishing this round of interviews? And notice how calm I am with this. So when are you finishing this round of interviews? Because I don’t want to chase you. And I don’t want to sit back passively as though I’m not interested in the role.

I am interested in the role. When do you finish this round of interviews? And that will normally prompt them into telling you the truth. Okay.

I’ll translate it into a different slang. Don’t call us. We’ll call you is what they’re saying.

But your job is not to accept that. Your job is to make them talk under the premise that you deserve to be told because you’ve invested time and effort into their role. Okay.

What are the key indicators of a strong resume versus a weak one? That’s easy. A strong resume gets you interviews. A weak resume doesn’t.

How more simple can it be? Now, you send that 20 resumes, you get zero interviews. A weak resume, you send that 20 resumes, and you get two interviews, 10% hit rate, not good enough. It also tells me that you’re thinking in terms of submitting generic resumes, which is definitely not good enough.

Job Hunting and The 10,000 Rule.

Again, tailor your resume for individual roles so that in this way, you’re making your fit more obvious to them that you’re qualified to do this job. Right? We’ve got more. Is it rude to ask for an update on a job application? No, it’s not rude.

But I wouldn’t say something along the lines of, Hi, I just wanted to make sure you got my resume. Because, of course, they received it. Who do you know has not received the resume, especially in that field? I’m sure they have filters set up to make sure it gets into their inbox.

But what you can do is message them and say, I forward my resume. I’m sure you received it. I don’t know if you’ve had a chance to review it.

If you haven’t, you’re not interested. That’s okay. My feelings won’t be hurt.

Just let me know. And if you haven’t, you are interested, when might I expect to hear from you? That’s a pretty simple way of addressing it, wouldn’t you agree? And again, come over to JobSearch.community, have me coach you. Not a lot of coaches have developed the video courses, books and guides that I have.

Ask them, you know, what kind of video courses do you have that will support my coaching? You’re coaching me. And most of them will stammer and make excuses. But what I’m trying to do is to make sure you can learn asymmetrically.

You can learn at three o’clock in the morning when I’m asleep in bed, or just in the process of waking up, depending upon whether it’s a bad night or not. But I want to make sure I can help you. And thus, I have video courses, books that I sell individually on Amazon, guides, there’s a lot of great content available to help you.

So, again, as I mentioned at the top of the show, hire me to coach you. Become an insider. Only one tier only gets the courses and that’s the insider tier.

All of them have me coaching you and having access to the content so that in this way, you can learn at your convenience and ask me a better class of question going forward rather than just basic stuff. Okay? Is it necessary for your LinkedIn profile to be different from your resume and cover letter or can you simply copy and paste the same information into each document? You can. And with a your LinkedIn profile should be congruent with your resume.

Your resume is not going to have the five skills that you’re going to need per employer and for the about section. Your resume is not going to have the headline page there, a headline section underneath your name. That’s what those 200 and some odd characters of description of your background are.

It’s called the headline. And those are the lines that appear underneath your name. Those are the first things that people see in terms of the about section.

Even if you use a summary, that’s not going to be the same as the about section of a LinkedIn profile where you have a ton of space to work with. So you want your information to be congruent. It doesn’t need to be identical.

It just needs to communicate the same types of information as your resume does. So then this way, people believe that you have that experience and that you’re not trying to be it. That’s really it.

More questions. How should one respond to an interviewer . . . Let’s see now. My apologies.

There we go. Wrong one. There we go.

How should one respond to an interviewer who asked, tell me about yourself or walk me through your resume? Is it appropriate to say no? No, it’s not appropriate to say no. What you . . . the correct response is to understand what the job is, and to then start off by giving a high level overview of your background that lasts about 20 to 25 seconds, such as, I’ve been in the field now for whatever many years it’s been. For the last two years, I’ve been working for so and so, this and that.

And before that, I worked for such and such firm where I did this sort of work. But what’s probably most relevant to my background for this role is my experience with and then from there, you start to talk about your resume and your experience that’s relevant to the job they need to have done. Your job is to always connect the dots between your background and what matters to them, so that in this way, you show that you fit their qualification needs.

More questions. Let’s see now. Nope, gotta keep scrolling.

Nope, same question I answered earlier. I wound up being here twice. My apologies.

How far back should your work history be on a resume or LinkedIn profile? Let me get that at the chat, so I can put it up on the screen. And there we go. How far back should your work history be on a resume or LinkedIn profile? I’m going to say you emphasize the last 10 to 15 years of experience.

Before that, you minimize it. You don’t need to discard it. It is part of your background.

But on a resume that’s a page and a half to two pages, what you should be doing is emphasizing 10 to 15 years of work experience, no more. I’ll use myself as an example. I graduated school as an undergraduate in the last century, like 29 years before the turn of the century.

I’m obviously not a young man. And as a result, who cares what I did during the last century? Seriously, who cares? Instead, focus on the last 10 to 15 years. And I say that, in order to demonstrate to you how important it is to feature that experience, because that’s what they’re really going to care about.

Focus on that period of time more than anything. Now, we got a question here, how to articulate a professional manner for career growth. I’m not sure whether you’re talking about that you want career growth, or you’re coaching someone who’s looking for career growth.

Or you’re, again, give me some clarity, coach, so that this way I can answer your question because it’s, it’s a little fuzzy for me. Okay, take another cut at it. I’m going to go to the next question.

I’ll come back to you as soon as I have something in chat. Okay. Is it appropriate to follow up with an employer to confirm receipt of my resume and application returns? No, not that.

But because they received it. They received it. That’s the reality to it.

So, you know, what you want to be doing is saying to them, I’m sure you’ve received my resume. Question for you, have you had a chance to look at it? That’s the honest question. Have you had a chance to look at it? If not, when do you think you might? And you can continue on by saying, and if I’m, if you’re not going to talk with me, that’s okay.

Stupid Interview Mistakes: Overthinking Your Resume

My feelings won’t be hurt. Just let me know about that, as well. I promise not to hurt you.

And be very calm about it, so that in this way, they have a sense that you’re being respectful, you’re following up on the resume. Again, the confirmed receipt is the part that I find offensive, as though their tech doesn’t work. It does work.

These are firms that all used to, you know, it’s not exactly as though a firm doesn’t have technology that delivers email to them. So they have it. The question is, are they interested in you? And that’s why I’m changing the language.

So, coach, Princey Jane asked me, what are the ways to find out, I’m going to guess, about career growth and collaboration? The first thing that you’re doing is focusing in on demonstrating your fit for the job. It’s kind of like in dating. In dating, we don’t talk about in the first date, whether or not we’re interested in marriage and having children.

We’re trying to get to know one another. So focus on demonstrating how your background fits the role. There will come a point in the interviews where they’ll ask you, do you have any questions for us? One of the questions is, I’m sure you know, I’m not interested in staying in this role for the next 30 years of my life.

If I do quality work, what sort of advancement potential exists here? Could you give me an example of someone’s career path and how they’ve progressed within the organization who started off working for you and has moved on to other things or has grown within your group? That deals with the career growth question. For collaboration, give me a sense of the working environment here. Now, the truth is, I wouldn’t take anything that a hiring manager says at face value.

I’d want to meet with the team and talk with them about what career growth is like and how collaborative the environment is, before I would ever accept something from the hiring manager. The hiring manager is trying to fill a job. That’s all they care about.

And I hate to be this blunt, but I will be. What they care about is can you solve their problem? They don’t care about you and what you want. They may say to the contrary, but it’s the rare employer that really does.

So, the long and the short of it is you have to ask questions of people in order to find out what this firm can do to help you. And thus, in the question of career growth, I’ve covered that. With collaboration, it starts off and may start off with, you know, you’ve been here a lot longer than I would have been at the time I joined.

Question for you. You know, I’m used to working in a collaborative environment and not a dog-eat-dog environment. What’s it like here? No one will ever tell you it’s a dog-eat-dog environment.

They may start to hedge their answer about collaboration. And thus, through that indirect answer, they’re telling you they’re not a particularly collaborative environment. And that’s how you deal with it.

You talk to the staff, not the hiring manager. The hiring manager will embellish the truth, you know, lie. They will exaggerate because they’re trying to fill a job.

They don’t give a shit about you. So you have to get it from a secondary source. And they may not even say the truth, but you’re gonna have to read between the lines in their body language and in their manner in order to find out what the truth is.

Okay? Good luck with your client or with you in that regard. More questions. I have a few more here.

So it looks like we’ll be certainly before the half hour I normally do. What are some ways to determine if an employer is a good place to work for before applying and potentially getting rejected? Well, you know, I will say if you go to sites like Glassdoor, you’re going to get the two extremes in the response. Wow, what a great place to work.

This place is awful. Stay clear. But between the two poles, there’s a more textured answer.

Also, contact people who work for the firm through LinkedIn. I’m continuing. I’m interviewing for a job in such and such department doing such and such.

I want to get an idea of what it’s like to work for the firm. Can you point me to someone who works in that department? Who’s the job report to? I’m not exactly sure. I just saw a job ad.

And you can send them a job description and basically respond by saying, I don’t know who the job is with. But this is the position description. Do you know someone who might fit in on into a group like this? And thus, you know, you would answer it, or have them answer by elaborating a little bit more.

And it’s not just what they say, but how they say it, that’s going to make the difference. Okay. Coach, Princey Jane is back.

Please share view on interview and feedback process. I have a book on this. It’s 90 some odd pages.

I can’t do a full webinar, which I’ve got a video course at JobSearch.community on this that you can watch. But I charge for that course. So that’s going to deal with interview with feedback.

Somewhere in the course of the interview, you ask them, so when might I expect to hear from you about next steps in the process? They’ll tell you. And from their answer, you follow up by saying, so if I haven’t heard from you by, you mentioned two or three days later, is it okay if I follow up? And their answer will tell you something such as, sure, no problem, or wait, which means they’re not all that interested. Or they can give you a very specific answer like, I expect to hear early part of next week from us.

We’ll have HR contact you by scheduling it back to me for people, the more specific they are, the more, the better they think you did on the interview. So that really deals with the feedback that you might get. Okay.

Again, the book is called The Ultimate Job Interview Framework. It’s also available on Amazon, for Kindle, as a paperback, and as an audiobook. Buy it.

Expert Advice for Senior Leaders in Transition

It’s not a tough read. You know, I can’t cover 90 pages. I can’t cover a one hour webinar here and do this subject any justice.

More. Let’s see now. We’ve got more questions.

Two more, as a matter of fact. Oh, this one was a fun one. Let me come back to you, folks.

Yeah. What excuses can I give to take time off for an interview for a new job? A lot of things. I’m not feeling well.

I’m going to stay out. No, you can. You can always do that one.

I’m not feeling well. And if they call you and you’re in the interview, and you have your phone off, you should have your phone off, right? You can always say, I had the phone off. I was taking a nap because I wasn’t feeling well.

And then just when you call them back, don’t be in a place with a lot of commotion about you. So that, you know, they’re not hearing lots of loud noises that basically say, I’m not at home. I’m not in bed, sick, all that sort of stuff.

So what excuses can you give? The I’m not feeling well, excuse is always a good one. Not the death in the family. That’s bad karma.

Not ones that sound stupid. You can’t have a doctor’s appointment that you need to address. You can always say, I noticed something inside my mouth that was a little problematic.

So I need to make a . . . I have a doctor’s appointment to have it looked at. No one’s asked to open your mouth. Or it could be my wife, husband, partner’s in town.

We’re gonna have lunch today. Or, oh, I overslept. Oh, I need to leave early.

My wife, husband, partner got tickets for such and such. And we’re gonna go out tonight. There are lots of different things that you can do that are not particularly creative, that will give you the opportunity to take time off your interview.

Let me just . . . one last question. I’ve gone through a lot so far. Bear with me, please.

Coach, I’m not sure what was funny here. But tell me. Put it in the chat so I know what you thought was funny.

Okay. Let’s see now. And this is my last question for the show.

Okay. There we go. Do employers ask weird personal questions during interviews for a specific reason, or is just for fun? I’m not sure what a weird personal question is.

Now, if you’re talking about brain teasers, that’s different. Brain teasers do serve a purpose. I’m not going to go into details about it.

I’ve done that in other places. I’ll just simply say, brain teasers are designed to see how you think. Personal questions, weird personal questions is where I’m hung up on here.

I’m not sure what a weird personal question is. So I don’t know how to answer this question. I will say, every question a firm asks has an intention behind it.

Think about it for a second. Why would someone ask that question? What are they trying to find out about you, in order to determine if you’d be a great fit for the role? That’s the magic behind it. And once you understand that, that’s the point that they’re trying to ask in every interview.

You want to be able to demonstrate how you’d be world class for them. World class, not half-assed. So I’ll just simply say, I don’t know what a weird personal question is, to be able to answer that part of it.

A weird question, one that you wouldn’t think is associated with the job usually does have something to do with the job. And thus, what you want to be doing is always showing how your background and personality would fit into that organization and culture. So I hope you found today’s show helpful.

I’m Jeff Altman. Come over to JobSearch.community.com. Become an insider. You’ll get coaching from me.

I want to help. Not only will you get coaching, you’ll get access to video courses, books and guides to help you, to help you, so that in this way, you’re getting a great experience, because the skills needed to find a job are different from those needed to do a job. So again, JobSearch.community.com is a place where I’ll help coach you.

And the coach asked, could I suggest some of the ways to get a promotion in a job role? Not today. We’re done. I’m wrapping up.

And again, it’s a lengthy question. This is a job search show. So I’ll just simply say, schedule a consult with me.

Pay me a little bit. I’ll answer all your questions. So, folks, come over to JobSearch.community.com. Hire me to coach you so I can help you.

Connect with me on LinkedIn at linkedin.com forward slash IN forward slash The Big Game Hunter. Let me know that you watch the show. I like knowing that I’m helping some folks.

Once we’re connected.

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