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If You Were the Hiring Manager, Would You Hire You?

By Rebecca Metschke

Seriously.

Take off your candidate's cap and put yourself in the role of hiring manager.

Start with your submission materials - your cover letter and resume. Try to look at them objectively - as if you're seeing them for the first time. As if you are unfamiliar with the candidate.

Is the person you're describing someone you'd want to interview?

Do you sound interesting? Unique?

Simple Guide to Telling Your Career Story in a Resume

By Julia Erickson

Story telling is a proven method for conveying key messages, usually by teachers, leaders and journalists. It is a technique that also can work for job seekers, especially at a mid- and senior level. It's a way for you to highlight key accomplishments, and indicate the scope and impact of your work.

Telling a story is more effective than making a laundry list of your skills and projects, as is often done in a functional resume.

What Does Google Say About You?

By Cheryl Palmer

"In a(n)... ExecuNet survey about reputation management and Internet presence, 86 percent of executive recruiters say they routinely scour online sources for information that goes beyond a candidate's résumé. Nearly 7-in-10 search firm consultants say that executive job candidates' prospects improve when positive information is found online." (2008 Executive Job Market Intelligence Report from ExecuNet)

A logical place for recruiters to search for information online about candidates is Google. Google is one of the largest search engines on the Internet. When recruiters search for you, what will they see?

Finding a Job IS a Job

By Kevin Sutton

I looked up the definition for advice and training in two different dictionaries. I used the Google Dictionary and Dictionary.com.

Advice:
1. If you give someone advice, you tell them what you think they should do in a particular situation.
2. An opinion or recommendation offered as a guide to action, conduct, etc.

Training:
1. The process of learning the skills that you need for a particular job or activity.
2. The education, instruction, or discipline of a person or thing that is being trained.

Everyone that has held a job, regardless of the type of job, had some type of skill training.

It could have simply been being shown how to perform specific tasks up to years of formal education and intensive skill-based training. The point is; the profession or position you chose required some training in order to perform very well.

Capsule Profile – Mature Workers Marketing Strategy

By Trish Johnson

Given that all indications are that the ‘mature’ worker will be making up a large percentage of the Canadian and US labour force in the near future, one would logically conclude that obtaining full-time, challenging, and fulfilling employment would be relatively easy for this group, even in our current job markets.

One of the difficulties facing mature workers is the frustration of trying to design a resume that truly represents the experience and expertise they have to offer a new firm, without detailing positions held over the past 20-35 years. Doing so makes the reader lose interest quickly, as the resume then becomes too long and ‘cloudy,’ and does not typically or efficiently capture career advancements and accomplishments.

Is Twitter For the Birds?

By Cheryl Palmer

It may seem farfetched that you can find a new job in 140 characters or less, but apparently recruiters think so.

"Jennifer Leggio, in her ZdNet blog, reported that Jobsite, a recruitment solutions provider, issued the results of its second annual Social Recruitment Survey. The data shows that employers are more and more extensively recruiting on social networks, such as Facebook and Twitter. It also shows that the companies appear more satisfied with these types of recruits versus the ones they find solely from job boards. According to the survey, due to these satisfaction levels companies are likely to invest more in these type

Don't Forget to Say Thank You

By Robin Galante

Thank-you notes are old-fashioned. Maybe you're like me and your parents made you write one for every family member who gave you a birthday present. And, like me, you often feel guilty for not sending them now. But in this age of 2-minute emails and 1-second texts, this quaint gesture is surprisingly powerful.

What A Thank-You Note Says About You

When you take the time to write a thoughtful note to the interviewer and all other potential coworkers you meet during an interview,

Job Search - Some Tough Interview Questions

By Trish Johnson

interviewingcrak As the job market opens up, and firms begin the hiring process once again, there is much competition for each job available. This means that you have to use every possible avenue, and your creativity, in order to be noticed, and contacted for an interview. How will you stand out from the competition?

In follow-up to my earlier article inter-viewing-techniques/, I would like to explore some of the questions you can anticipate hearing in your interviews during the course of your job search.

Assuming you have conducted all of your research thoroughly prior to your first interview with your potential new employer, you may want to consider the questions that will be asked of you during phase one of the hiring process.

Finding Yourself in a Job Search

By Douglas Beabout and K. V. Sutton

Conducting a job search is often fraught with disappointing results and devastating feedback. It can begin with hopeful optimism and end up in discouragement. One can very quickly succumb to the emotional effects of these results. You can begin to feel that perhaps you did not deserve the job you sought or, in some cases, the one you are now in or just lost. These reactions can lead to a state of hopelessness, even depression. This can also affect those close to you which could lead you even further down the path to defeatism. Obviously, the most important element in this entire transformation is you.

For others, perhaps the truly confident individual, the aforementioned pitfalls simple serve to embolden you further and you forge ahead even harder with a "never say die" attitude. You see the rejection as a loss to the potential employer, not your loss. Instead of becoming defeated you become more aggressive or even angry with an "I am going to show them!" objective. You are determined to let nothing get in the way of getting what you want.

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