How to Work a Job Fair
As this is the "season for hiring", let me share with this blog a "real" question from a "real" career seeker regarding "Career Fair Management 101." I hope you find the solutions helpful. ASK THE CAREER ENGINEER! http://www.thecareerengineers.com Francina R. Harrison, MSW
Q: I have attended area job fairs in the past and have felt totally lost. This may sound like a strange question, but what should you do exactly at a job fair?
A: When I attend job fairs I do the following:
1. Research the companies prior to the job fair. Most sponsors will advertise in advance to let the public know which companies are coming. Use your Internet sourcing skills to research company history/culture, current job postings, upward mobility and compensation programs.
2. Develop your market – have a Plan A, B, and C. Every company that attends a job fair may not meet your initial skill sets. So find those 10-15 companies that may be an exact match to what you are looking for (make those your Plan A companies). The remaining companies should be classified as your Plan B, C and so on. I recommend you go to every table to learn first hand about specific employment opportunities. Never assume you know…go find out.
3. Make a personalized cover letter, combined with your resume, for your Plan A companies and go to those companies first. This is something that I have done in the past and it helped me to stand out from the competition.
4. Meet the managers/recruiters and sell your skills and what you bring to the table.
5. Be prepared to deploy your resume at a moments notice. A recruiter should not have to “pull teeth” to get your resume.
6. There is a time for shyness…this is not it (blow your horn).
7. Interview the companies. Now is the time to ask questions that may make you feel uncomfortable in the interview chair like (salary, schedules, and how does the representative like working there).
8. Take all company literature and business cards for follow-up and future employment search activities.
7:41 PM 2 comments
How to work at home and love it!
After the birth of her daughter, Carrie Opara knew she didn't want to return to her old job as a mental health counselor. But finding a legitimate work she could do at home was no small feat. She tried a multi-level marketing plan and wound up in debt. She looked on the Internet and found plenty of scams. Finally, she heard about Palo Alto, Calf.-based LiveOps, a call center that hired people to work out of their own homes.
A couple years later, she's earning about $2,000 a month working 30 to 35 hours a week from her home in Columbia, Md. -- about what she was making as a counselor. Her shifts can be as short as 30 minutes, although she typically works five-hour blocks while her 5-year-old is in school, plus some nights and weekends when her husband, a CPA, can take over child care.
Opara, 44, said she still faces the challenges familiar to every working parent: How to work enough hours, spend enough quality time with her family "and still figure out how I'm going to clean my house, make dinner and do the grocery shopping." Not having to commute or pay for child care, however, are big bonuses.Credit card interest out of control? Find a lower rate.
"It's fit in perfectly," Opara said, "and we also like the flexibility."
Technology is opening up new opportunities for parents and others who want to work at home -- even as it allows the scam artists a wider reach. Finding and landing legitimate, profitable work still isn't easy, but here are a few venues to try:
A call center in your home
You hear a lot about companies routing their customer service calls to workers overseas, but a less-noticed trend is the growth in home-based call center workers. The number of such workers in North America has tripled since 2000, according to an estimate by research firm Yankee Group, with more than 670,000 phone agents in the U.S. and Canada now working at home.
Want more? READ: 4 real jobs you can do from home
8:43 PM 0 comments
Are Your Communication Skills Sabotaging Your Career? - Part 1
By Dee Piziak
Stop Talking Yes, you heard right. Stop talking and start listening. Most people are very poor listeners and even worse, they constantly interrupt the other person. Since everyone enjoys talking, it takes a real effort to break these very bad habits. But it is the only way you will ever become a successful communicator. A good rule of thumb is to let the other person do 75% of the talking and you only do 25%.
The Power of Listening The reason why listening is so powerful is because it builds trust. The more you listen to another person, the more he or she trusts you and believes in you. Listening also builds the other person's self-esteem. When you listen carefully to another person, you are in effect telling them that what they have to say is so important that you aren't going to say one single thing until they're done. People will seek you out because they will feel very comfortable in your presence. The more they seek you out, the further ahead you will get and you will be amazed at how quickly your career starts to move forward.
Ask for Clarification If you aren't 100% certain what the person is saying, never guess or assume. Ask for clarity because if you don't, you'll end up talking in circles. Then the other person will leave the conversation thinking "She doesn't get it." They never say "Gee, I'm a lousy communicator and I didn't explain it to her properly"; they always say "She doesn't get it." I know it's unfair but that's what happens...
The most effective method I've ever learned for getting more information is to ask "How do you mean?" It's such a mild and polite question that it's impossible not to answer. The other person cannot stop himself or herself from answering more extensively. You can then follow up with other questions and have a very productive conversation.
Use Open Ended Questions Avoid questions that can be answered with a simple “yes” or “no.” Open-ended questions encourage the speaker to expand on his or her thoughts and comments. And one question will lead to another. By asking open-ended questions, you can draw out of the other person everything that he or she has to say on a particular subject. Then you have all the information you need to respond intelligently.
Pause Before Replying This is a key strategy that the very best verbal communicators use. A short pause of three to five seconds is all you need to do. When you pause, you accomplish four things. First, you avoid interrupting the person if they had more to say. Second, you show respect by giving careful consideration to what the person just said. Third, what the person said will sink into your mind and your response will be much more on point than if you just blurted it out. Last, but not least, you come across as a very thoughtful and intelligent person.
I'll tell you right now that pausing is the hardest thing to learn. Even though it's only three to five seconds, it feels more like three to five minutes. At first, it's very awkward to do. Try a little experiment: start observing the executives and highly respected managers in your organization. You will see that they use this strategy all the time. It works for them and it will work for you too.
Body Language When you are speaking to someone, maintain eye contact at all times. Don't scan the room, looking for other people. That's rude. Don't look down at the conference room table or the floor or past the person. That shows your lack of self-confidence. Never cross your arms or hang out in the chair as if it's your personal Barcalounger. Carry yourself in a relaxed yet professional way. If you are comfortable, you'll make the other person feel comfortable too.
Ask someone (who you think has a very professional style) to critique you on your body language just as soon as you are done reading this article. I'm not kidding. This is one of those silent career killers that nobody will tell you about because it's embarrassing to talk about.
Use These Strategies All the Time Don't just use these strategies for meetings or when you talk to managers or high level people. Use them all the time. By doing so, you will quickly break old bad habits and completely turn your verbal communication skills around in no time at all.
But the most important reason is that when you use these techniques, you are giving out a high level of respect and consideration to whoever you come in contact with. And everyone deserves to receive that, regardless of whether they are the CEO or the janitor. It's the right thing to do.
Dee Piziak is a manager for a Fortune 500 company and a university instructor. Her consulting firm, Acadia Communications, specializes in professional coaching, career development, and resume writing. Visit her website at http://www.acadiacommunications.com and sign up for her FREE monthly career coaching newsletter.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Dee_Piziak
25 words that hurt your resume
Often, when job seekers try to sell themselves to potential employers, they load their resumes with vague claims that are transparent to hiring managers, according to Scott Bennett, author of "The Elements of Resume Style" (AMACOM).
By contrast, the most successful job seekers avoid these vague phrases on their resumes in favor of accomplishments.
Instead of making empty claims to demonstrate your work ethic, use brief, specific examples to demonstrate your skills.
In other words, show, don't tell.
READ: 25 words that hurt your resume
11:52 PM 0 comments
Hosting Your Resume Online- A Path To Success
These days, unless you're an IT engineer the first place you're likely to go to look for job opportunities is the web. Monster is just the biggest example: there are dozens of job listing sites focused on industries, career types and on geographical regions. Many of the general career websites provide an opportunity to file a resume in their database, made available to companies seeking employees. Most have fairly sophisticated search techniques that allow you to search their database of available jobs by area, career type, salary range, industry, company size and so forth.
What many job seekers don't recognize is the value of the internet in presenting themselves - an online resume, so to speak. But people who use websites to provide their employment background have found many additional features that will optimize the presentation of their skills and experience.
Every online job inquiry requires at least the submission of a resume. The career web site or the HR department requesting the resume may well request a format, and they inevitably vary. Some want an attachment in Word, some won't accept attachments, insisting on an email inclusion. In both those instances, you can never be sure that the document you send will look the same when it's opened by the recruiter as it looks when you send it. The appearance of the document is never an issue when all you are sending is a url to be clicked.
Your resume will look just as you want it to look, every time. And the value of a website does not end with just providing consistency in the appearance of your basic document. Some job listings ask immediately for samples of your work, whether it's in written or graphic form. Prospective employers want to see your writing skills, whether it's for white papers or advertising copy or business plans or operational proposals. If you're in the graphics field, of course you've got to have a "portfolio" - if you're in advertising, they'll want to see your "book."
You can design your website to include samples of your work. Further, you can set up your web site to present different sets of samples for different job applications. All this requires is grouping types of work samples and providing a password to access them. Send a url and a password, and you've accomplished a couple of things.
The first and most obvious is that you can make the most professional presentation possible by using the tools available with HTML. The best an email response can be is a one dimensional document with a dull font and no highlighting. It is equally possible that a resume sent via email will not present properly; margins and tabs will be out of line, and so forth. Attached documents may also be askew if your software and the software of the reviewer don't match up.
The second, and equally important effect that a resume on a website provides is ease of access. All that is required is a click, and your resume or CV is presented in browser format. Many freelance writers feel that this approach gives them leverage in replying to job placements; a url is less likely to be discarded or overlooked than an email or a word processor attachment.
Those ironclad rules about one page resumes aren't so threatening when there are no pages involved, but just a little scrolling through a polished, graphically enhanced HTML document. At first glance a website when you've got no current income seems like an unnecessary luxury. But with many website hosting plans starting at less than $10 a month, such an investment seems insignificant considering the possibility of shortening your job search substantially.
About The Author: Madison Lockwood is a customer relations associate for http://www.apollohosting.com. As a small business consultant, she helps prospective clients understand how a website may benefit them both personally and professionally. Apollo Hosting provides website hosting, ecommerce hosting, & vps hosting to a wide range of customers.
12:48 PM 1 comments
Need work? USA added 193,000 jobs last month
Need work? USA added 193,000 jobs last month
A War Story
After being laid off from his last job, George Brown knew exactly which company he wanted to work for next, but every time he called, the Personnel Department told him the company wasn’t hiring. So George sprang into action, and another Guerrilla job-hunter was born.
George printed business cards that were round, slightly larger than normal, and very colorful. On the front was a picture of a pizza with a circle-shaped message: “Win a Free Pizza”. The flip side of the card gave his name, email address and telephone number along with the promise of a pizza for the first person to get him an interview with the company.
Dressed for an interview, George stationed himself at the entrance of the company and handed out cards to anyone who would take them. He kept this up for a couple of days and became the topic of conversation at the company. One manager figured that anyone who would go to so much effort deserved an interview. One extra large pizza later, George Guerrilla Marketed his way to the job of his dreams at very little expense, and the company is more profitable because of it.
Compliments of
#11 of 50 Ways to Find a Job Today
Use personal letterhead and envelopes
If you want to increase the pull of your direct mail campaigns then consider putting together matching letterhead and envelopes that have your picture on them. I use the head and shoulders shot below with quotes from clients to increase my mass mailings. You can do the same thing. I recommend you do this with your second and third tier prospects because the direct one-on-one approach will work better. This is a great idea for marketing and sales people who want to change industry and need to generate a large quantity of leads quickly.
♦ Use a good quality head shot.
♦ To save money ask a friend to use their digital camera. Make sure it’s set on the highest quality. You’ll need a 400 dpi resolution jpeg to ensure a crisp picture.
♦ Wear a good suit and tie.
♦ Take off your glasses so the flash doesn’t reflect off them.
♦ Use a lig
6:38 AM 0 comments
