Do you believe everything you read or hear on the Internet?  If not, how do you really know or decide who is qualified to give you the information you are seeking? After all, anyone can write an article nowadays. If you are a person who is seeking career advice, especially job search advice, online (or elsewhere), how do you know what type of work experience qualifies someone to give that kind of advice?

For the most part, I am not sure the average person would know, but I cannot stress enough how important it is to scrutinize the source of the information and the advice.

So many so-called ‘experts’ are out there giving advice despite that they may not really have the knowledge to provide good and accurate information or don’t seek it out. Some of these people are people who were laid off from unrelated jobs and have simply decided to become a career expert.  There are also many scammers who are out there zoning into the large market of unemployed persons in an attempt to make a quick buck.

For the most part, I believe that most career advice gurus are not acting with true malicious intent. But some aren’t exactly qualified to do this kind of work nor are they unqualified; typically, they just don’t have the experience working in the type of environment in which they are providing the advice. It seems quite innocent but it’s actually very dangerous to the personal livelihood of those who are reading or listening to it and rely on it to be true.

I struggle with this concept because I firmly believe that this is the one of the last industries that can afford to have inaccurate information floating around the Internet in quantities almost equal to the amount of accurate information that is out there.  Typically, jobs provide people’s livelihoods and providing true and accurate career advice is critical because the consequences for following the wrong advice is far too damaging and can leave someone unemployed for years or even indefinitely!

These are the top three ‘tips’ that I hear the most often and find to be dead wrong:

1. You do not need to send a cover letter – nobody reads them

2. You should not bother trying to build a relationship with anyone who works in HR or recruiting, (inside the company), as it’s pointless to direct your efforts towards people who have no say in the hiring process. Find out the name of the hiring manager and apply directly to that person. Avoid HR and internal recruiters as much as possible.

3. Getting referred to a company by someone you know, is meaningless because all resumes go in one pile.

There are many more than these three but I picked these three out because if followed by job seekers, they can cause the most damage.

Just the Facts

1. Yes, the percentage of HR or hiring managers who read cover letters is less than what it used to be.  It’s currently around the 30-35%ile – depending on who you ask or what survey you read. But the facts are, if/until that number is 0% how can you ever know who wants one and who doesn’t?

If someone wants one and yours isn’t there, you will get tossed out of the candidate pool immediately.  No one ever gets tossed out for sending a cover letter when it wasn’t needed.

The only time you should not send one is when you are told or you read “don’t send a cover letter”.

2. It is dangerous to assume that HR, or company recruiters, do not have a say in the hiring practices of a company and to bypass them entirely. I believe that advice can be true but is based on nothing other than the fact that there are some or even many (but certainly not all) companies where this is true.

I would be very leery of anyone who makes a blanket statement that describes how all companies hire people. In the last two companies I worked in, if you skipped over me (I was the HR Manager or Director of HR),  you wouldn’t have had even the slightest chance of getting hired since I arranged and conducted all the first interviews with the hiring managers.

If a job posting says to send the resume to a certain person, I would send it to that person. I would not skip that person simply because he or she is in HR. You really don’t know the role that person is playing in the process.

If I had posted the job and was setting up and conducting interviews and asked that resumes be sent to me, and you went around me, you wouldn’t get an interview even if the hiring manager gave me your resume. My reasons for that would be that I asked that resumes be sent to me and you didn’t follow the directions.

I think it goes without saying that every company is different and every HR department is different.

Generally speaking, that statement is more likely to be true in larger companies and not true in smaller companies but even that is not guaranteed.

I would advise to send an additional resume to a hiring manager as that is a far better practice than skipping the contact person altogether.  If you can, I would advise you to try to find out what role HR and the internal recruiters play in the hiring process, before you act on what may or may not know to be true.

3. Employee referral bonus programs may not be a real initiative and may only be in place to simply try to show that the company has fair hiring practices – in some companies.  In that case, the resumes collected through it may mean nothing more than any other resume that is received. But that is also not true across the board. Many companies, including international Fortune 500 companies, truly value and want employee referrals. They find them to be a far better way of getting valuable employees than going out to the general public.

If you opt out of using networking contacts to get into companies, you are missing out on one of the best ways to get hired.

So, who do you listen to?

I believe a good career expert has been an HR professional, recruiter, or hiring manager themselves and has actually worked inside the type of business environment they are providing the advice for – or – has researched it so extensively that they gained extensive and solid knowledge. In the end, though, nothing can really replace having work related personal experiences to draw from.

Although, I have 15 years of HR experience in corporate America, I honestly do not trust myself to coach someone in job search strategies if they are seeking work in specialized industries. I typically do not give that advice to health care professionals seeking employment in hospitals or doctor’s offices or to teachers/administrators seeking employment in schools.

I choose not to do that because I have never worked in those environments and do not know how similar or different the hiring practices are compared to my own experiences.

This is why it concerns me that many others don’t think this way and just say what they might think.

And this is why I think it’s critical to use a person’s background and work history as your guide, and always remember to consider it before you follow any advice or implement big changes to your job search plan. Reserch these people on LinkedIn. From there, developing relationships and asking questions is always a good start when you are unsure.

Remember, anyone can write an article and post it on the Internet. And for that matter, anyone can call themselves an ‘expert’. It’s your job to do your due diligence and learn where to go to find the truth.