Not getting Interview Calls
My wife has 8Yrs of experience in Recruiting/HR/Project Management (implementation of HR systems). She is PMP certified. She had to take a 4Yr career break due to maternity/Visa issues when we moved to US from Auckland, New Zealand. She is trying to get get a job for past 1 Yr, she has applied to 100s of Jobs but no interviews. In a very few occasions recruiters have called her to say that the gap in her career is too Big. She is now very depressed and feels her career is over. I just want to say, Come on you all hiring managers and recruiters, just give people a chance, we have all been there, startups were zero once and someone trusted them and gave them a chance. she is more motivated to perform than a lot of candidates. I will sincerely appreciate if anyone can help. Thanks
Is there a chance she could work contract or temp to get recent experience on her resume? Just having something recent would help open doors I'm sure.
She is open to anything, trying both contract and FT roles
Try applying to startups - they won't mind the gap. Where are you finding the jobs from? Try Glassdoor, LinkedIn, Craigslist, and just plain old Google search. Also go to meetups and make contacts, in my experience those are way more helpful than going through recruiters. Also leverage LinkedIn contacts and referrals.
Trying startups, but not helping a lot. Meetups is a good idea
PM me for Yahoo
Is it possible that recruiting practices in the US are different than New Zealand? As a recruiter myself, it strikes me as odd that your wife isn’t sure about how to go about standing out in the hiring process. I’d recommend that she spends time on various US based hiring/hr blogs (askamanager, ere, mashable, evilhrlady,etc) to get a better understanding of the norms in the US. Perhaps then she can rewrite her resumes and cover letters to reflect those practices.
She has been doing that for the past year. I have also helped her. The main reason I feel is that people see a 4Yr break and don’t want to take a chance with her when they have other candidates. As a recruiter yourself, can u help by forwarding in your organisation and possibly help in getting her at least a phone screen
PM me, we might have something that is a fit!
Would she be open to a program such as Path Forward? It’s designed to help men and women with 5+ years of experience return to work after having taken 2 or more years off to be a caregiver. They have participation from quite a number of tech companies in Silicon Valley.
It’s best to start contracting jobs. She can slowly build a network and then become permanent
Zero US experience in this field is like starting from scratch. It almost does not matter how much experience you had in the past in your country. From my wife’s experience you have to get at least 1 year of US work experience in order to be somehow attractive for US business to hire you.
Thats a chicken and egg problem she has been facing
You’ve asked for advice so here’s what I think. (1) She needs to be referred into companies. She has no US experience, a career gap, and probably went to a college in NZ no one had heard of (so cannot assess quality.) The way it works in the US is that she needs someone to refer her in for the recruiter to notice her
PM me we might have something!