This was originally posted on The Recruiters Lounge, but I thought that the readers here might receive some benefit as well. (Hope so - Smile.)

Jim Stroud

***

I don’t get out as often as I could (or as I should) I suppose, so when I do venture my head out of my laptop, I like to make a show of it. (I think those who attended SourceCon2007 know what I am talking about.) Well, I was invited by Debbie Rodkin to chat to a group of jobseekers and offer them tips on how to better position themselves online so recruiters (and sourcers) can find them. Well, I gave a few tips that I thought were common knowledge. Judging by the reaction of the crowd not everyone was hip to my jive, which made for a most interesting session.

The biggest takeaways from my session were:

• If you want Recruiters to find you online, placing your resume on Monster is a good start, but not the finish. Use free web hosting sites (like Geocities, plus I gave them a list) to put your resume online for free. (And if you can get a domain name related to what you do, that would be even better.) Here are a few people that took my advice and did just that: Atlanta Brand Consultant, Ellen Miller and Landa Flowers
• Use Google Adwords to promote your resume online. Its cheap to join, you set your own budget and its HIGHLY effective.
• If you have your resume in Monster, Careerbuilder, HotJobs and others, edit your resume once a week (or more). It does not matter if you change a comma or a paragraph; editing it will convince the system that your resume is “fresh” and as a result, it will bring your resume higher in the search results. (wink)

Debbie “paid” me for my time with a delicious cake that I took great pleasure in. (Smile) Yummy! Below are a few pictures from the event. Please ignore my growing gut, I will be working out more this week. (Especially since Debbie’s cake is gone.)

This is Debbie and I flexing our muscles.

And these are our “Supermodel” poses. (I think they need work.)

This is me explaining the Google AdWords thing and how it could benefit them.

Here is another one of me saying… something. (I don’t know.)

This is me smiling for the camera. (I’m such a ham sometimes.) You would think I was running for office.

Oh! Almost forgot (embarrassed face), I want to give a shout-out to my friend David Wright who was also there. David has written a VERY good book called - “The Get A Job Book” and was gracious enough to give a copy away as a door prize. Although I created a blog called - The Job Search Strategist, David does most (pretty much all) of the writing for it. Click here to check it out!

Hope my pics did not scare you too much.

E’ you later!

Jim

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Here’s a useful resource for your career and your job search. The US Government Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics compiles information on job markets, job types, job titles, salary information, job outlook, and more. They make this information available to anyone who wants it. It can be a great way to get an overview of current statistics for nearly any career, as well as what is expected for the future trends of employment in a large number of fields.

Occupational Outlook Handbook

The Government’s premier career reference book on occupations and tomorrow’s job market. For nearly 60 years, this versatile volume has proven useful to both career counselors, students, and other job seekers. Completely revised every 2 years, the Occupational Outlook Handbook is a comprehensive, up-to-date, and reliable source of career information. Useful for looking up information on particular occupations, or just browsing through possible careers, the Handbook discusses hundreds of occupations that in 2006 accounted for about 7 out of every 8 jobs in the United States. For each career, it describes work activities and environment, earnings, number of jobs and their location, and types of education, training, and personal qualifications needed to have the best prospects. BLS projections of employment to the year 2016 are used to assess what kind of job opportunities future entrants to each occupation should encounter. Available in paper, hard cover, and CD-ROM.

You can order a copy by clicking on the image above, this link, or you can most likely find a copy at your local library that you can access for free!

To your success,

David B. Wright
Author, Get A Job! Your Guide to Making Successful Career Moves
www.thegetajobbook.com

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Nearly everyone has some sort of gap in employment at some point in their career.  The days of “lifetime employment” are all but extinct.  While most gaps are relatively short, up to a few months, sometimes they end up being much longer.  Or perhaps it’s not really an employment gap but a career gap - what do you do if you’re seeking to re-enter a career after an extended time doing something else? 

Susan Ireland addresses this question well here:

Career Gap on Resume

Question
I was a Landscape Architect with over a 15 years experience, licensed and educated with a degree in the field. (It is a fairly narrow profession). I faded out of that career in 2001 and became a self-employed, on-line bookseller with every intention of not going back into L/arch.

However, I have changed my mind! I am eager to re-enter the profession because I miss the challenge, the people and working on creative projects.

My question is: Do you think I should “expose my gap” in L/arch in the cover letter, in my resume or at the interview?? There is no way I can hide this fact, nor do I want to… In the architectural field we usually show a portfolio at the interview and I have nothing to show after 2001… Being a bookseller does not mean I was unemployed, it’s just that most of these firms will want to know who I am presently working for and what projects I am working on. Personally, I do not consider it a working gap, but a career gap. What do you think? — Cliff

Answer
Cliff, you are right to consider this a career gap, not an employment gap. Here’s what I suggest you do:

Use the chronological resume format. As the first entry at the top of your Experience section put:

2001 - present, Freelance Landscape Architect (concurrent with online sales venture)
- Mention a few landscape projects that you’ve done during this time (I’m sure you didn’t keep you hands out of the soil or off the drawing board!) The projects can be ones at your own home or ones you volunteered for in the community. Don’t forget to include interesting projects you consulted on like that hillside landscaping in your neighbor’s backyard, the redeign of your aunt’s rock garden, and other projects you gave advice for.
- Briefly refer to administrative aspects of your online business that are relevant to working for a landscape company. Maybe you designed marketing pages, used your database skills, or your customer service talents to enhance business.
- If your online book business specialized in selling landscape-related books, include something about that.

For the rest of the article, go here

To your success,

David B. Wright
Author, Get A Job! Your Guide to Making Successful Career Moves
www.thegetajobbook.com

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Here’s a useful post from Lavie Margolin’s blog, Lavie’s Job Advisement

How do I answer the question, “What is your greatest weakness?”

“Remember an interview is your chance to continue to ‘sell’ an employer on your appropriateness for their job opening. Every answer that you give should make your candidacy stronger.

“I suggest explaining a challenge/problem that you may have had, what you went about doing to solve it and what the end result was.

“Try to keep it in the realm of the industry for which you are applying.

“Here is an example:

“ ‘Most of my computer skills were strong but I knew my Excel knowledge needed some work. I have been working diligently to practice in the evenings and learn all the unique features about the program. I now feel much more confident in my knowledge of the program and I continue to learn more everyday.’ ”

“An interviewer wants to get insight into how you will deal with challenges on the job. Show them how you approach a situation and can be successful no matter what the challenge.”

Good post, Lavie!

To your success,

David B. Wright
Author, Get A Job! Your Guide to Making Successful Career Moves
www.thegetajobbook.com

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We all know that when you’re between jobs, planning to look for a job, semi-employed, or self-employed, every dollar counts!

One very easy way to earn some extra money is to leverage customer acquisition programs. Many companies, such as some banks, will actually pay you to refer them customers. Why do they do this? Well, customer acquisition costs are some of the largest costs that companies incur as a part of growing their business. From a macro view, this includes advertising, marketing, paying their sales staff, sales management, paying for the tools to get new customers (such as CRM and Sales Force Automation software), and so on.

Basically, it’s nearly always cheaper to keep an existing customer than to acquire a new customer, but without acquiring new customers a business simply can’t grow as much or as fast.

Many companies have found that referrals and word-of-mouth is one of the best, and cheapest, ways to get new clients. So what does this mean to you?

Well, some companies will pay you to refer customers to them. This is called a customer acquisition program. You’ll see this in many banks and other types of companies. Many banks will pay you if you refer a new account holder, and some will even pay new account holders just to open an account.

One of these companies is called MoneyExchange. They are emerging as an alternative to PayPal and PayDotCom, and can be used as an easy way to send and receive payments without disclosing your credit card number. This addresses the serious concern of identity theft - people are often wary of sending their credit card number to make online purchases, or sending routing numbers and checking account numbers for online payments.

So how does this equate to extra income for you? Simple. You sign up for a MoneyExchange account before April 15, 2008, and they will deposit $25 into your account, no strings attached. You can then do what you want with this money - buy something, transfer it to another account, etc.

You also get paid for referring other people to open an account with MoneyExchange - under their current promotion, they pay you $10 for each person that you refer who opens an account, up to $500.00. Now $500.00 isn’t all that much in the grand scheme of things, but it can certainly pay a few bills or a few tanks full of gas!

If you’re interested in signing up, click on the button below.

To your success,

David B. Wright
Author, Get A Job! Your Guide to Making Successful Career Moves
www.thegetajobbook.com

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I saw a post on a job search group in Yahoo! Groups and sent an email to the job seeker with several suggestions.  I’m not including the original post here but am including the text of the email I sent her, in the hopes that someone else can also benefit from this.  In case you’re wondering, the title of this blog entry is “inspired” by the subject of this person’s email. The person is an MBA candidate seeking an “an Entry to Mid-Career position in Project Managment/Business Analyst.”(sic) While this is Atlanta-specific, the advice can be tailored to any metro area.

1) Use spell-check and grammar check.  You have a lot of errors in that short post, making you substantially less attractive to a prospective employer.  Even the title of your post has a misspelled word. 

2) Be more specific - are you looking for an entry level or a mid-career position?  Companies want people who know what they want and that can clearly explain how they can contribute to a company.  Companies don’t want just any employee, and they aren’t looking for employees who want just any job.  Have you come up with a list of companies you want to work for, and why you want to work for them?  The Atlanta Business Chronicle’s Book of Lists can be a good place to start.

3) Get my free report on the Top 7 Resume Mistakes at http://www.thegetajobbook.com.  My book can also help you, as can the Job Search Strategist blog at http://jobs.jimstroud.com. 

4) Attend Project Management Institute meetings - PMI-Atlanta is one of the largest PMI chapters in the world and is a great organization from both a networking and a learning standpoint.  Their URL is http://pmiatlanta.org/ and they also have Project Management job postings on their site.

I hope this is helpful and I wish you the best of luck in your job search. 

To your success,

David B. Wright
Author, Get A Job! Your Guide to Making Successful Career Moves
www.thegetajobbook.com

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No, I’m not talking about your favorite team, or even a sport at all.

A company called Scorelogix has come up with a statistically valid way to predict the probability of an individual losing his or her job.

“Job Security Score™ is an innovative, proprietary score from Scorelogix which predicts the probability of an individual losing job and income based on his/her personal profile and economic factors impacting his/her job. Find out what is your Job Security Score™ and where you stand!”

If you’d like to know where you stand, within a reasonable margin of error, you can get your Job Security Score™ here.

And more from their site:
“About Job Security Score™
Job Security Score™ is a proprietary score developed by Scorelogix® that predicts an employed person’s probability of job loss, or job security level, using a patent-pending unemployment risk scoring model. It is based on employment, unemployment and economic trends and forecasts, which are continuously updated through Scorelogix’s own primary research and analysis of economic data culled from numerous online and offline sources, including a number of govt. sources such as the Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Census Bureau, U.S. Dept. of Labor, etc.

Scorelogix® markets its Job Security Score™ to financial institutions to help them predict consumer income risk and associated credit risk more accurately. Since job loss is a key driver of bankruptcies, losses, and delinquencies, Job Security Score™ has significant applications as a credit risk predictor, both as a supplementary credit score and a primary credit score when conventional credit scores are not available or are unreliable.

Job Security Score™ also helps employed individuals understand their personal job security level and find jobs that offer the highest job and income security for them. Scorelogix Re-employability Score™ is a specially created product for the unemployed job seekers and helps them find jobs that have the highest re-employment prospects consistent with their profiles.

Scorelogix’s Job Security Score™ has been validated for its accuracy by an independent, outside consultant – a Maryland-based provider of statistical modeling and analytical research services.”

Pretty interesting…the website says it can be used to plan and pursue better career strategies, which is a definite plus.

To your success,

David B. Wright
Author, Get A Job! Your Guide to Making Successful Career Moves
www.thegetajobbook.com

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Having a bad day or week at work? You may have read this joke before as it has been widely circulated online, but I thought I’d post it in case you could use a good laugh…and a reminder that even if you are having a really bad day in your dry, room-temperature cubicle, it’s probably not as bad as it could be.

Next time you have a bad day at work think of this guy.

Rob is a commercial saturation diver for Global Divers in Louisiana . He performs underwater repairs on offshore drilling rigs. Below is an E-mail he sent to his sister. She then sent it to radio station 103.2 FM in Ft. Wayne , Indiana , who was sponsoring a worst job experience contest. Needless to say, she won.

Hi Sue,

Just another note from your bottom-dwelling brother.

Last week I had a bad day at the office. I know you’ve been feeling down lately at work, so I thought I would share my dilemma with you to make you reali ze it’s not so bad after all .

Before I can tell you what happened to me, I first must bore you with a few technicalities of my job.

As you know, my office lies at the bottom of the sea. I wear a suit to the office. It’s a wet suit. This time of year the water is quite cool. So what we do to keep warm is this: We have a diesel powered industrial water heater. This $20,000 piece of equipment sucks the water out of the sea. It heats it to a delightful temperature.

It then pumps it down to the diver through a garden hose, which is taped to the air hose. Now this sounds like a darn good plan, and I’ve used it several times with no complaints.

What I do, when I get to the bottom and start working, is take the hose and stuff it down the back of my wet suit. This floods my whole suit with warm water. It’s like working in a Jacuzzi.

Everything was going well until all of a sudden, my butt started to
itch. So, of course, I scratched it. This only made things worse.
Within a few seconds my butt started to burn . I pulled the hose out from my back, but the damage was done. In agony I realized what had happened.

The hot water machine had sucked up a jellyfish and pumped it into my suit. Now, since I don’t have any hair on my back, the jellyfish couldn’t stick to it However, the crack of my butt was not as fortunate.

When I scratched what I thought was an itch, I was actually grinding the jellyfish into the crack of my butt.

I informed the dive supervisor of my dilemma over the communicator. His instructions were unclear due to the fact that he, along with five other divers, were all laughing hysterically.

Needless to say I aborted the dive. I was instructed to make three agonizing in-water decompression stops totaling thirty-five minutes before I could reach the surface to begin my chamber dry decompression.

When I arrived at the surface, I was wearing nothing but my brass helmet. As I climbed out of the water, the medic, with tears of laughter running down his face, handed me a tube of cream and told me to rub it on my butt as soon as I got in the chamber.

The cream put the fire out, but I couldn’t poop for two days because my butt was swollen shut.

So, next time you’re having a bad day at work, think about how much worse it would be if you had a jellyfish shoved up your butt.

Now whenever you have a bad day, ask yourself, is this a jellyfish bad day?

May you NEVER have a jellyfish bad day!!!!!
To your success,

David B. Wright
Author, Get A Job! Your Guide to Making Successful Career Moves
www.thegetajobbook.com

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…and steps you can take to identify if your job is at risk, and protect yourself if it is.

There is an excellent article called “Lay-Offs — Are You Next?” on George Lenard’s Employment Blawg.

“How can you tell if you are one of the predicted millions of employees who will be in danger of layoffs this year?

Well, the good news is that companies have gotten very good at telling their key employees they are safe and will be protected should anything happen.

The bad news is that your boss will never tell you if you are one of the ones in danger, so if you haven’t been pulled aside and told you’re safe, you’ll need to learn how to read the secret signs of a job in jeopardy. ”

So what are the signs? Read the rest of the article here.

To your success,

David B. Wright
Author, Get A Job! Your Guide to Making Successful Career Moves
www.thegetajobbook.com

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 A job like this will make you appreciate your desk job.

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