All Articles Tagged "finding a job"
Can You Afford To Switch Jobs? 7 Things To Consider
peaceloveandprettythings.com
Thinking about changing careers? Great! This could mean you have guts, that you value your skills and think you deserve to be as happy as can be. It could also mean you’re just having a bad day, a bad month, or a bad breakup. Sit down and go over this list before marching to your boss’ office to resign.
Top 10 Strategies for Job-Search Success
by Benjamin Roussey
Searching for jobs has become an art. These are 10 strategies that can make your job-search a success from the very start.
1. Knowing What You Want
It is of utmost importance that you understand what you are good at, where your skills lie and what it is that you want from a job. Your job search needs to start with you searching yourself and scrutinizing your motivations.
2. Best Step Forward- A Good Resume
The importance of an effective and impressive resume cannot be stressed more. There are many online resources that can help you nail or fabricate the ideal resume. Remember this is the first thing that the employer associates with your application.
3. Personalizing the Cover Letter
When it comes to creating an appropriate cover letter, many people fall into the trap of drafting a generalized one and then simply changing the name of the company you are applying to. Personalizing the cover letter with why you will be an apt candidate for THAT position in THAT company will stand you in better stead.
4. Use Your Resources
Most people look for job posting and vacancy notifications on online job portals. While this is a good idea, there is no need to be limited to what the job engines choke out for you. Use all your resources in terms of friends, family, and colleagues. Cold submission of resumes may or may not be an acceptable practice in the organization you are hoping to be associated with. It will be infinitely better if you can urge a friend or acquaintance to submit your resume for you.
The 9 Most Available Jobs That Are Hard To Fill
Matching potential employees to jobs on the marketplace is more than a matter of just numbers, which is why there are 3 million job openings in the U.S. and more more than 14 million people out of work. CNN Money put together a list of nine hard-to-fill jobs to illustrate just how hard it is to match skills with job vacancies.
Advanced Manufacturing Engineers
Requires: Bachelors degree + 5 years experience
GE is challenged with the task of hiring Advanced Manufacturing Engineers in Greensville, SC. It takes them over 6 months to fill those positions because of the specific criteria involved.
You’re Unemployed, Now What? Lessons From 'Landing on the Right Side of Your A$$'
by Alexander Cain
With unemployment continuing to climb to historical highs, people are facing a new frontier that they may be unfamiliar with: unemployment. Even those with exceptional qualifications are receiving the pink slips as organizations cut expenses due to a tough economic landscape. The book Landing on the Right Side of Your A$$ by Michael Laskoff offers a real perspective on being unemployed and how to move onto your next job in the best way possible. The book’s author, Michael B. Laskoff, writes the guide speaking from his experiences of being fired and re-hired for numerous jobs no matter what the fallout with former employers. No matter what stage you are in with your unemployment, Landing on the Right Side of Your A$$ is a real survival guide for picking yourself up and getting back out, and winding up with a job that’s better than the one you lost.
Let’s face it whether you have been fired or recently quit a job, it sucks. Now you are facing a multitude of thoughts and emotions as you try to navigate through the unknown. You should naturally be angry at the situation and not act as if everything is OK. While some self-help guides tell you to initially let it go or relax, the author goes in a completely different direction.
Binge and Purge. Whatever activity you need to do in order to let your anger out, DO IT! Kick, yell, scream, lift weights, run until you grow a beard like Forrest Gump, do whatever is necessary to get out all of your anger and frustration. This initial rage period is to prevent you from blocking your emotions and crumbling at a time and place not of your own choosing.
The question now becomes how long does this anger phase last. If you are still giving one-hour sob stories about your manager being unfair, you might want to continue to let out the emotion.
Admit It’s Your Fault. The biggest tragedy a recently unemployed person can make is not to learn from his mistakes. While this might be a tough situation critiquing yourself, it’s a necessary evil in order to be successful in your next career. Still think you were completely in the right with your former situation? If you did nothing else, you agreed to accept the job in the first place which set you up for failure from the start. Really think about some of the mistakes you made with your previous job and be sure to write them down to keep in mind as you go about your next job search.
Get A Non-Professional Life. Go back to when you were working and think of the activities you always wanted to do, but didn’t have enough time to do. Whether it was volunteering or picking up a new hobby, now is the time to pick up that activity. This is good for two reasons: 1) to prevent you from smashing your computer due to frustration of looking for a job 24/7, 2) during your next interview you have something to talk about if asked about your employment gap and a hobby to show that you are a well-rounded person. There is never a better time to pick up an activity when you have all the free time of being unemployed.
So now you have gone through the heartache of being recently unemployed and after venting you feel ready to begin searching for jobs, Part 2 of the book Getting Ready provides you tips and tricks on how to be successful on your job search.
Updating Job Search Skills for 2011
(CNNMoney) — Good news: The job market is improving and employers are starting to hire again. But the rules of landing a job have changed. There’s still a lot of competition out there. If you want to get a foot in the door, you’ll need to use every tool available to you. If there’s one thing that’s different in the post-recession job market it’s this: “Submitting your résumé and cover letter is not going to get you a job.” That’s according to Jennifer Becker, managing director of Ajilon Professional Staffing, a division of Adecco Group, the world’s largest staffing firm. So what works? Experts say making connections, adapting to each potential employer and promising results are the only ways to get hired.
Making connections: “Networking is the only game in town right now,” said Ford Myers, executive career coach and author of the book, Get the Job You Want, Even When No One’s Hiring. “Everything is built on personal connections, nothing else works.”
Out of Work? Try Church
(Wall Street Journal) — Until August, Brian Weyandt was having a great 2010. Two of his children got married, a granddaughter was born and he started a new job at AT&T. But the 57-year-old IT project manager from Atlanta was unexpectedly laid off. Mr. Weyandt spent the next five months searching for a job. He also joined a career support group that was being hosted by a Methodist church in nearby Roswell, Ga. “It was very comforting to find a network of people like me who shared my faith,” says Mr. Weyandt. The group has kept him motivated, which helped him land a job in March as a business analyst at FiberLight, an Alpharetta, Ga., provider of fiber-optic services.
