Keep contact details in resume updated
Maryann Haggerty

Don Veazey, an information-systems specialist, wrote, “I am reentering the workplace after tending to my father’s extended illness. I’m finding that most employers are reluctant to hire someone without a current job.”

“Having worked successfully for more than 25 years with job seekers who were unemployed, I knew the second statement was not true,” says Thomas W. Morris III, president of Morris Associates Inc., an outplacement firm and author of the book “Career Mechanics I: Solutions to Common Career and Employment Issues,’’ scheduled for publication next month.

He wanted to chat with Veazey, so he called the phone number on his resume. It had been changed, with no forwarding information. And there was no address on the resume either—just an e-mail address.

Rule one, according to Morris: “If you send resumes out, make sure it’s easy for employers/recruiters to reach you.”

Eventually, they talked. “He’d sent ‘about 50’ resumes out in response to ads during the past year. (A resume a week hardly constitutes a significant search effort ). Nonetheless, he said he’d had about 10 calls plus three face-to-face interviews. He wasn’t too sure why the calls and interviews didn’t go forward. We talked about this further and he did recall that in a few instances, people did seem concerned that his computer skills were not current.”

“As a career coach, I hear this complaint frequently— ‘No one wants to hire me because of my age/my sex/my whatever,’ when in fact the real issue is how the person is approaching the search.”

—LA Times-Washington Post