This past week, I received several spam emails offering me free items that I knew were fake so I simply deleted the emails. You’ve probably received the same.

You’ve probably also received emails or seen offers for legitimate free things related to your career and wondered about the value.

Free resume critiques

Free job boards

Free answers to interview questions.

How much are these things worth? It certainly depends on who is providing the free things of course and they certainly might have some value (although in these cases the person offering the freebies is probably doing so to sell you something down the line.)

I also received another email this week which was rather bizarre. It came from a legitimate email address -or at least it looked like it came from one – and was a full letter signed by an HR rep (or at least he was claiming to be one) offering me a sales job and offering to pay me a number of things in exchange for working as a contractor.

The interesting thing about this email was that it didn’t really take the typical Nigerian scam email tone where it just looks fake from a mile away. This one looked quite legit…or course the “To” field of the email was blank meaning that this email had been fired off to perhaps hundreds or thousands of other people, but I digress.

The reason that I mention it is that several days earlier, I received an email from a fellow in India who said he’d been sent an email from a company in the UK wanting to interview him…even though he’d never applied for a job with the company.

Just like I hadn’t applied to the company I received the email from either.

He was pretty excited for the interview…he was just trying to figure out why he was getting the offer since he hadn’t even applied to the company in question.

Moral of the story: As usual, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

Today I received an email from a job searcher asking me about an email he’d received from an oil company that was indicating that they were interested to interview him and he wasn’t sure what to do. It was a bit difficult to make out exactly what the person was asking for because English wasn’t his first language but it seemed to me that he was trying to tell me that he was a bit worried about what he’d received.

I wanted to be sure I knew what he was asking so I figured the first thing I’d do is Google search the company that he referred to and that he’d suggested was interested to interview him. After typing the exact company name he quoted into Google and clicking the search button, the first thing I noticed was that quickly scanning the results section didn’t reveal any website incorporating the company name ie. the company’s name didn’t show up in the natural search results section even though I had typed the company name word for word.

This indicates to me immediately that they either don’t have a website – which is odd for any decent sized company and even a small company these days! – so I was already skeptical as to what I’d found.

I checked the first search result for the company name which produced a result seemingly indicating that the company had a job listing searching for new staff members so I clicked the link and it took me to a job search website that stated that the page didn’t exist anymore. That’s kind of odd as typically pages would get removed from the index if they no longer exist but stuff like this happens so I figured I’d go to the next search result and check that one out.

I then looked at the second search result and noticed that someone had submitted a question to Yahoo! Answers where they mentioned that they’d also received an email from this same company offering a job interview and they were asking if it was a scam. Someone had responded that indeed it was a well-known scam in the UK and that they should ignore the email.

So, the first two Google results for the company name don’t produce a link to the company’s website – which I couldn’t find anywhere on the first results page – but instead produce a job search listing that doesn’t exist followed by a question and answer from Yahoo! users stating that the company doesn’t exist and that the email was a scam.

That’s good enough for me!

Unfortunately, the job searcher who emailed me wasn’t able to tell me exactly about the situation – he didn’t mention if he’d applied to the job on his own or if he received an email out of the blue from this “company” suggesting that they wanted to interview him for a job he hadn’t actually applied for – but I’m guessing it’s the latter. Companies typically don’t email you offering you an interview when you haven’t previously applied to them! That’s just too good to be true or perhaps wishful thinking on the part of the job searcher.

The fact that the job searcher lives in India and the “company” was claiming to be in another country (the UK) should have been another hint!

Moral of the story: As we’ve spoken about scams abound so you need to watch out and ensure that you don’t fall for any of them. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

And if you’re getting unsolicited emails from people wanting to interview you for a job you haven’t applied for, that’s tends to scream scam.

I recently saw a copy of a professionally-written resume that was shown to me by the person who had paid to have it written for him. I’m not sure how much it cost but he did tell me “it cost me a lot to get it done” so I’ll take his word for it.

In a word, it looked fantastic. It gave me a great first impression…and that was before I’d even started reading it! It looked like it was written in some sort of template or perhaps was made into a PDF because the lettering was unlike anything you’d see in a regular Word document.

Each of the person’s previous jobs had a profile paragraph within a light colored blue box that really stood out from the page and caused my eyes to look right at the contents of the box. No doubt this was the goal and it worked.

As far as the writing of the resume itself, it was also very well done. The resume started off by showing in large bolded font lettering that the person’s career goal was a Key Account Manager position so right away I knew he was in sales even if I didn’t know anything else about him.

All in all, the design and actual written aspect of the resume was excellent. It simply stood out – for the right reasons – and demanded to be read. I suspect it would stand out from the many, many other resumes the average sales manager gets from sales professionals like this one.

Is paying someone to write – and in this case design – your resume a good idea? Depending on the cost and the skills of the person writing and designing it, the cost could certainly be worth it if it gets you in the front door of a company that eventually hires you.

Even if it simply accomplished the feat of getting you more interviews, that might be considered a success too.

“I’m applying for jobs I’m qualified for yet I’m getting ignored even by recruiters. I’m educated, have a degree, am very motivated and have a great resume! I don’t get it. Why aren’t I getting any responses? I don’t get it!”

Does this sound like your situation? Are you also finding it difficult to get an interview – or even an email back from a hiring manager – let alone a job offer?

In a good economy, it can be difficult for some people to get responses from recruiters and hiring managers and in a bad economy where many companies continue to downsize it can be even worse.

When I say some people the fact is that many people hold skills and have experience that either doesn’t come across as being outstanding in their resume (ie. perhaps their resume isn’t interesting enough or written well-enough to hold the reader’s attention) or perhaps there are many other people with their skills also on the job search market and employers can pick and choose amongst them.

In other words, these people are finding it difficult to stand out for the right reasons and attract potential hiring managers.

For the person who is applying to many jobs and getting no responses, the best thing to do is to fully understand what part of the job search process you’re failing in. If you’re getting interviews but no job offer, this is different to applying for jobs and simply not getting responses.

In the first instance, you’re impressing people enough to get the interview but are most likely failing during the interview process. Perhaps you are being outshone by the people you’re competing with and interviewing with for the same jobs. Maybe you’re bombing the interview and just don’t know it.

In the second instance, the fact that you aren’t getting interviews can be the result of a multitude of reasons ie. your resume is no good, you’re applying to the wrong jobs.

The point is that you need to figure out where in the process you’re failing and then figure out why. Then you determine how to fix it.

If you’re firing off dozens or hundreds of resumes by email and are not getting responses, it’s probably a combination of the fact that you are competing with hundreds of other people for the same jobs, and the fact that for one reason or another, your resume and/or profile isn’t doing enough to stand out from these hundreds of other people.

In other words you’re probably not standing out from your competitors for the right reason(s). When you turn the job search into a numbers game (and applying to jobs through job boards is clearly a numbers game) it can be difficult to rise to the top and separate yourself from your competitors. That’s why you’ll often hear people talking about getting yourself out from behind your computer keyboard and searching using other methods like networking.

While I’ve read many resumes that look great and make me think “I have to interview this person” the fact is that eventually you’re going to have to meet the people who could possibly hire you face to face.

The problem is that many times the traits you have that could impress someone enough to want to hire you are ones that only come to light in a face to face situation. If you’re simply firing off resumes to nameless faceless people through email and are not getting the response (or any response) you’re looking for, it might be time to get out from behind your keyboard and really start job searching.

On another website I run, I give visitors the opportunity to submit their own career objective to my site and have me (and other visitors to the site) critique it to help them improve it.

The topic “Career Objective” is by far the most popular topic on this website by the way… I’m not sure why but it is! If you’re interested, here is one of the most popular pages on the subject.

Today I received a submission from someone who sent me a very generic Career Objective and in the section where they can add their desired Job Title, they simply put “BBA.”

I have absolutely no idea what kind of job BBA is and I simply don’t have the desire to Google search it and try to figure it out and I suspect most people reading this guy’s resume won’t bother either. In other words, he’s already turned them off by using an acronym that some/many/most people don’t know the meaning of.

Using short forms should also be avoided especially in formal documents like cover letters and resumes. Last week, I received a Career Objective submission from a woman who referred to herself as a “Sr. Business Analyst” instead of “Senior Business Analyst.” Saving a couple of keystrokes and typing Sr. instead of Senior just doesn’t look good and really doesn’t serve any purpose. Spell it out properly in full.

In your resume, cover letter and other correspondence with people who can influence your career, watch out when using industry jargon that not everyone is familiar with. Remember that it could be an HR person, a recruiter or even someone in your chosen line of business reading your resume who doesn’t know the acronyms but can still have an important hand in deciding your fate. If you swamp them with acronyms, they may not bother wasting time figuring out what they mean.

Having multiple job offers to choose from is one of the best situations you can be in during your career. Mind you these days, just getting one job offer is probably something most people searching for a job would be happy with.

Sometimes, things work out where you have several job options to choose from and it can actually become quite difficult to figure out which job offer is best for you. I’ve seen plenty of cases where a person can’t find a new job, gets frustrated and having been looking for a job for a period of time, suddenly find themselves working through two or more job opportunities that end up resulting in them receiving more than one job offer.

These days, companies can take a lot longer to make a decision and can drag out the hiring process to the point where the start align and two or more companies make you a job offer around the same time.

If you have multiple job offers to choose from, here are some suggestions to figure out which one is best:

1. Get all job offers in writing. A job offer isn’t a job offer until you have a hard copy in your hands. You need everything that was promised in writing and shouldn’t accept verbal promises made by someone who might not be in the position (or even with the company) to live up to the promise in the future.

2. Look beyond the money when making your decision. If the job offers you are considering are different in terms of the compensation, remember to consider all aspects of the two job offers. Picking the highest paying position isn’t always best in the long term. Sometimes, other perks (ie. more vacation, better bonus, shorter commute, stock options, benefits) can more than make up for another company offering a higher salary.

3. Compare the pros and cons of each offer and each job opportunity. Sometimes it might be difficult to compare two job offers exactly since some components might not appear on each offer but do your best to remember which job will fulfill most if not all of your requirements.

4. Don’t string along the companies whose offers you are considering. In most cases you’ll be given a period of time to accept a job offer and while you want to take the necessary time to consider the offer, don’t wait so long that one of the companies pulls their offer, assuming you aren’t interested. I’ve seen this happen.

5. Be careful about playing one company against. With multiple job offers, the first thought might be to see if one company will increase their offer if you tell them that you are considering another offer and sometimes, this can result in you getting an improved offer from one or more companies. Or it could result in an offer being pulled away from you by a company who isn’t happy that you are trying to use them this way. Use discretion and common sense.

6. Make it official before resigning. Don’t reject any job offers until you have returned a signed copy of the job offer you are accepting and have confirmation from your new employer that they have received the signed offer in their hands. Job offers get rescinded…I know a woman who verbally committed to a job, told her current employer she was resigning only to have her new employer change their mind and rescind the job offer before she’d returned the signed copy.

Employers (and recruiters) have an increasingly number of good Internet resources at their disposal to scope out and learn more about potential employees using publicly available information that these job searchers are either putting out there themselves or that are available due to their connections and friends on various social networks.

In the old days before the Internet, if you lost track of someone you might look them up in the white pages of the phone book and maybe ask a few friends or colleagues “whatever happened to insert-person’s-name-here.”

These days, you – and other people who might be thinking of hiring you – can use your LinkedIn profile and other networks like Facebook, Twitter or MySpace to locate people who have worked with you in the past or who might be able to speak about you, your skills and experience.

People are increasingly turning to secret references or unauthorized ones where they contact someone who is not on your list of authorized references and get them to do a reference on you.

Personally, I’ve never done this. I find it sneaky and back-handed.

I’d be afraid that in addition to how sneaky it is, I’d end up calling an unauthorized reference who would then tell someone with your current employer that you’re interviewing elsewhere for a new job that would result in you getting a lot of grief.

I suspect if this sort of thing happened and the job searcher finds out about it, there would be a lawsuit filed by the job searcher against the person who started calling unauthorized references. I read an article where a lawyer had suggested that contacting people who are not on your reference list is not illegal, but if it results in your current employer finding out about your job search and making your life difficult, isn’t this going to cause you to look for someone to pay for causing you this trouble?

Plus, it probably won’t look too good on the company doing the secret references once word gets out in the job search community that they’re doing this sort of thing.

Having said that, if you’re going to link up with various people with online social networks that essentially offer public domain information where you understand that other people will be allowed to view it, perhaps nothing wrong is being done?

Still, I don’t like the idea of skulking around looking for people to contact behind a job searcher’s back to do a reference on them. If someone called me unannounced and unexpectedly to do a reference on a former co-worker, the first thing when I’d do when I hang up is call my former co-worker and ask them why this person just called me for a reference without my former co-worker knowing about it.

When linking up with various people through online social networks, I’d be careful to ensure the information and people I’m linking up with won’t come back to haunt me in the future.

Imagine you could choose between a job that you’d really like where you’d make so-so money, and a job that you’d hate but where you’d earn more money.

Although it’s easy to say, there is more to a career than the amount of money you’ll earn.

When you help people find new jobs as recruiters do, you end up meeting people across the spectrum who each have different motivations and personalities. In that regard, it’s interesting how over time you will meet with people who strictly want jobs that will earn them more money while other people will take the same money (or even less) to take a job that they feel will benefit them long term.

Ideally of course you’d probably like an opportunity that not only pays you more but also offers you a better long-term opportunity than what you have now.

I feel that people should plan for the long term when making career decisions. It’s hard to plan for the long term when you are talking about taking a job that you feel you’re going to hate. After awhile, I’ve seen people who pretty much give up and decide that they hate the job too much and that no amount of money is worth staying there.

You might not last long enough in that job to even worry about the long term if you hate it as much as you think you will and end up quitting to look for a job you’ll enjoy. You might find that earning the amount of money you’re expecting just isn’t worth it.

Will earning more money in this job be worth the fact that you’ll hate it?

Is there any chance that the job you’d like (but pays less) might end up being more lucrative than you expect?

At the end of the day, you’ll need to make the choice yourself but when making career decisions it’s usually best to look beyond just the money that’s involved.

You never know when the job (or the money) will run out or when its importance will suddenly not be worth the hassle.