The Voice of Job Seekers

Mark Anthony Dyson ★ Career Writer ★ Speaker ★ Thinker ★ Award-winning Blog & Podcast! ★ I hack and reimagine the modern job search!

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5 Ways Your Customer Service Mojo Can Get You Noticed and Hired

5 Ways Your Customer Service Mojo Can Get You Noticed and Hired

5 Ways Service Mojo Can Get You Noticed and Hired

People love a customer service agent who is confident, knowledgeable, happy, and want nothing. When you receive service like that, it’s refreshing, and exciting. You’re appreciative, and motivated to savor the product or result you wanted.

Wouldn’t be terrific, if an employer felt that way about you?

If that is the impression you exude with networking contacts and hiring managers, it increases your chances for job search success.

1. Customer service agents overflow with I’m sorry. Thank you. How can I help?

You can never say these words enough. It comes across endearing and caring, and that you want to talk to this person even more. Remember you provide a service that people want as a coworker and a customer.

2. Tonè. Tòne. Tonē.

The tone of a friendly voice is attractive to many hiring managers, new contacts, or anyone who is helping you.  A hiring manager loves a candidate that overflows with pleasant and enjoyable banter. No matter the medium, email, phone, or smoke signals, people look forward to communicating with you.

3. Follow-up with HIRE in mind.

In most cases, the burden on proof is yours to present. Kindly calling to see if a company has received your résumé and cover letter, application, or a previous call will make you a more attractive candidate.

4. From candidate to resource
A candidate wins when an  employer sees  your value as a resource and a solution, not just another candidate with a plethora of credentials.

5. Responsive

It is imperative for candidates to be direct in providing solutions, and thoroughly answer each component of multiple questions. Listening is as essential to responsiveness than giving an adequate answer to an equation.

Not all issues and concerns are not always presented as a question. When you hear concerns, are you looking for the larger issue? Trained customer service agents  anticipate and understand several issues from one problem presented.

About Mark Anthony Dyson

I am the "The Voice of Job Seekers!" I offer compassionate career and job search advice as I hack and re-imagine the job search process. You need to be "the prescription to an employer's job description." You must be solution-oriented and work in positions in companies where you are the remedy. Your job search must be a lifestyle, and your career must be in front of you constantly. You can no longer shed your aspirations at the change seasons. There are strengths you have that need constant use and development. Be sure you sign up to download my E-Book, "421 Modern Job Search Tips 2021!" You can find my career advice and work in media outlets such as Forbes, Inc., Fast Company, Harvard Business Review, Glassdoor, and many other outlets.

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Wave Goodbye to Resume Clichés

Wave Goodbye to Resume Clichés

Resume Clichés and Vagueness Are Red Flags That Wave Goodbye

Have you noticed the chasm between your proven track record and excellent communication skills that your résumé proudly touts yet does not stand out? Since your responsibilities do not include measurable, identifiable, or understandable skills, your résumé says everything, but “Hire Me!”

Sure you possess outstanding oral communication and writing skills. People may have told you that you can write, but you spelled communication with one “m!” The potential employer that is screening hundreds of potential candidates can attempt to talk to everyone that says you can write. Then again, the proof is right in front of him. Don’t worry, UPS is hiring for Christmas.

Perhaps you provide exceptional customer service, and everyone loves you so much that they don’t write you letters of appreciation, and never tell your boss how impressive your service was. How would an employer know other than to take you at your word?

A résumé that has typos like everyone else among 1000 resumes for 1, 2, or 3 positions would just be a lottery pick. Great for the state lottery, and the NBA draft, and for a job, right? Of course, the HR manager would rather file through lame resumes than circle the Bermuda Triangle or remain entangled between the Scylla and Charybdis.

Just to pick anyone who is generally qualified, your possible, potential, and dream employer will pick the résumé that had a clear focus combined with begging, pleading, and whining. The mixture of nonchalant-desperado-attitude-kind-of-employee would be a perfect fit.

I am impressed that you are the boss when the boss is gone! Tell me, how hard is it to decide to pass all difficult customers to…your boss. Or your boss’s boss? Or your boss’s, boss’s, boss? After all, all the those calls are appropriately transferred to upper management, and we can only guess they were 10, 100, 1000 a day.

All of this sounds good.  Will employers pay you enough money since you can change water to wine? That is gleaned, guessed, and extracted from the vagueness provided from your document.

No other words on a resume fit better than provide, manage, handle, ensure. How many keywords can really fit for the career that you want?

Don’t worry, numbers don’t matter. Quantity, quality, cost/time results or measures are only for those CEO positions. When you write on your résumé you were a leader, or a manager, and neglect to mention who you led or how many, a hiring manager see that you have done the job already. If you were a little more misleading and vague, applying for Czar, Pope, or King of the Jungle would be a great idea.

Resumes that trigger more questions than answers will get you that interview. Hiring managers supposedly have a high tolerance for ambiguity. That’s how they earn the enormous bucks, by their proven track record of circular filing your excellently communicated resume.

Got an opinion? Comment below.

About Mark Anthony Dyson

I am the "The Voice of Job Seekers!" I offer compassionate career and job search advice as I hack and re-imagine the job search process. You need to be "the prescription to an employer's job description." You must be solution-oriented and work in positions in companies where you are the remedy. Your job search must be a lifestyle, and your career must be in front of you constantly. You can no longer shed your aspirations at the change seasons. There are strengths you have that need constant use and development. Be sure you sign up to download my E-Book, "421 Modern Job Search Tips 2021!" You can find my career advice and work in media outlets such as Forbes, Inc., Fast Company, Harvard Business Review, Glassdoor, and many other outlets.

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Make Career Defining Choices Like a 17-Year-Old

Make Career Defining Choices Like a 17-Year-Old

Make Career Defining Choices Like a 17-Year-OldAdults make career defining decisions often think about benefits, and salary, but  rarely happiness. Everyone does things that they don’t want to do in their career. Would you do something that was considered horrible?

My son, “Boy Wonder” is 17 years old, is pretty level-headed for his age. We have lots of conversations about college, his future, and women (although mostly theory at this point). He works at the world’s most famous food chain, and has sustained employment for a year.

To digress momentarily, working teens stimulate the economy, and the household. He has to work because it builds character and responsibility. Most of all, working for “Boy Wonder” provides training opportunities for him that my wife and I offer.

The one lesson that we did not teach him  is to make assessments in understanding the breadth of his current job.

He is 17 years old. He still plays jokes on friends and coworkers, wants to spend his money frivolously, and would rather eat candy and oatmeal  raisin cookies. The eyes are on the prize, and he understands that the 2016 Escalade will not be paid by his parents.

However, he thinks the way beyond his dream car. He wants to be a nurse.

He understands the sacrifice, and the intensity of the work that is ahead to get into nursing school. However, he is trying to understand how this experience will compare to his experience as a nurse.

Last week, a homeless man vomited in the bathroom, and left a rainbow (use your imagination here). He had  to clean it all up. It was awful for him. It was good for him, as it is hard for him to put trash in the garbage can at home.

Character. Responsibility. The irony.

  1. He has to remain temperate no matter how unstable the social culture changes. Customers his age want to challenge authority and be served appropriately.
  2. His bosses rarely gave  him the schedule he desired. He had to learn to approach one time to see if it could be change with respect and tact. After that, successful or not, let it go.
  3. Although he has impressed the owner repeatedly, he is still just an employee. No benefits, vacation time, or sick days to reward him for missing one day of work out of a year.
  4. A nurse will make much more money, will always have a job, and retain benefits. However, the transferable issues remain the same. Undesired responsibility is painful no matter how old, or professional you have become.
  5. Jobseekers wait too long to as the question, “What is  the worse that could happen to me?” In some way, “Boy Wonder” understands that he will do nasty and dirty tasks, be hot and sweaty, maintain self-control, be patient, and be content with undesirable circumstances. All in the name of saving people’s lives.

As adults, we can ask those questions in interviews, networking situations, or find online information. The average job seeker can research jobs before pressing the apply button.

You can find out, without prior notice, that you are cleaning a rainbow in the bathroom.

About Mark Anthony Dyson

I am the "The Voice of Job Seekers!" I offer compassionate career and job search advice as I hack and re-imagine the job search process. You need to be "the prescription to an employer's job description." You must be solution-oriented and work in positions in companies where you are the remedy. Your job search must be a lifestyle, and your career must be in front of you constantly. You can no longer shed your aspirations at the change seasons. There are strengths you have that need constant use and development. Be sure you sign up to download my E-Book, "421 Modern Job Search Tips 2021!" You can find my career advice and work in media outlets such as Forbes, Inc., Fast Company, Harvard Business Review, Glassdoor, and many other outlets.

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I was interviewed on Scripps News show, “The Why!” 4/13/2023

I talked with John Tarnoff and Kerry Hannon of “The Second Act” podcast about job searching after 50 in October 2022..

I was on “The Career Confidante” podcast to talk about “boomerang employees” and “job fishing” in June 2022.

Making Job Search a Lifestyle With “Dr. Dawn Graham on Careers,” SiriusXM Ch. 132, Wharton School of Business May 2021

In May 2020, I talked with LinkedIn’s Senior News Editor Andrew Seaman on “#GetHired” Live.”

Beverly Jones, host of the NPR podcast “Jazzed About Work,” invited me back to talk job search in May 20202

WOUB Digital · Episode 132 : Mark Dyson says “job search is a lifestyle” and connecting with others matters