Unemployed in Des Moines

Harry Urschel has over 20 years experience as a technology recruiter in Minnesota. He currently operates as e-Executives, writes a blog for Job Seekers called The Wise Job Search, and can be found on Twitter as @eExecutives.

Dr. Randall Hansen, CEO of EmpoweringSites.com and founder of Quintessential Careers, has been recognized as an “icon of the World Wide Web” and one of a handful of “trailblazers” to have a significant impact on career development and the use of the Internet in job-hunting. He is a nationally-known career expert and coach, author of more than 150 career-related articles and books, publisher of a biweekly career e-zine, Webmaster and publisher of the award-winning Quintessential Careers site, and a college professor.

Heather Eagar is a former resume writer who aims to help job seekers.

We know that writing a good resume is time taking. But it may help you lead a job quickly if written properly. A good resume give the aspirants a better prospect to get selected in an interview. Below are the five fantastic ways to write an effective and good resume.

1. Avoid Useless, Hackneyed Resume Buzz Language

Resume buzz words can be classified into two types – first type of buzz words are those which are exclusively used for a profession or industry like accounting, IT industry and so on. This group of buzz words is generally used to describe the specific work experience of the candidates. However, make sure to avoid the overuse of uncommon words. Second type of buzz words are those which are used to demonstrate the skills and qualities of the candidates. Again you must avoid the overuse of these buzz words. These second types of buzz words are nowadays used by almost every applicant so they seem to be meaningless now.

2. Choose The Appropriate Words To Describe Your Expertise

Add good and relevant words to illustrate your skills and expertise. The overused words may lessen the impact of your skills. Highlight the important words that suitably describe your achievements and accomplishments. Use the words which enumerate the percentage and date of the accomplishment.

3. Mention Your Winning Projects

If you are the one having a long successful career in past, do not forget to mention your achievements, but make sure that the whole resume is not chock-full of that single past project. Give a short and snappy but to the point illustration of it.

4. Give The Appropriate Subheading To Each Illustration

Keep in mind that the subheadings must be exactly relevant to the matter in the paragraph. Be specific in giving the subheadings and writing the matter.

5. Use Bullets And Numbering

Bullets and numberings make a resume readable; therefore it is important to use the numberings or bullets in the resume. It also makes your resume look neat.

6. Details Of Past Experience

The past work experience details also play an important role in the resume, however make sure that you are not criticizing your old employer and the colleagues. This will leave a bad impact on the interviewer.

7. Avoid The Use Of Pronouns

Using the words “I” “he”, “she” etc. in the resume does not leave good impact on the employers. It rather seems weird. Use of pronouns in the resume shows your amateurish and unprofessional nature. Actually there is no need to use pronouns as it is but obvious that the resume is about you.

8. Order Of Points

Write the latest work experience or education first, this include the degree earned, company worked with, college or university or any other academics. Similarly if you have won certain awards write the most recent ones first.

These are just a few of the major resume writing tips. Following the above mentioned tips will make you stand out in the crowd.

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Harry Urschel has over 20 years experience as a technology recruiter in Minnesota. He currently operates as e-Executives, writes a blog for Job Seekers called The Wise Job Search, and can be found on Twitter as @eExecutives.

Anyone who’s been using LinkedIn for their job search for a while understands the great value it can be. It’s tremendous for creating a profile in order to be found, for finding contacts at companies you are pursuing, and for preparing for an interview by learning about your interviewer and others at the organization.

However, people often miss another way LinkedIn can be used to help them greatly in pursuing their job search with a more laser-like focus… finding and defining your target companies and positions!

In a job search, many people have difficulty articulating the type of position they are looking for, a title, or specific companies they are interested in pursuing. LinkedIn can be a terrific resource for researching roles and finding companies to pursue that may have those types of roles.

Here are some tips that may help…
Search keywords to find job titles! If you are looking for positions that might utilize skills you have, however, aren’t sure of all the roles out there that might use those skills… use the “Advanced Search” function of LinkedIn. In order to find positions where those skills are used, do a keyword search of those skills. Start broad and narrow your search if your results are overwhelming. Start without narrowing your location in order to get a broad swath of results.

The people that come up in your search are people with skills listed that you search. Browse through those results to see the job titles and types of roles those people do. Read how they describe their jobs to see which ones look appropriate, realistic, and interesting to you. That helps you begin to define the types of positions you would like to target.

Search titles to find companies! Once you’ve narrowed the titles of positions you are pursuing, you can find companies that have employees with those titles. Simply do a search, within your geographic area, or more broadly of those titles. The people that come up each currently work, or previously worked at companies that hire those backgrounds. You will likely find large companies, small and mid-size companies, companies that are well known, and companies you’ve likely never heard of. That helps you begin to define your target list of companies you may like to pursue.

Use combinations to narrow your search. If you are pursuing a broadly used title (i.e. Business Analyst), you will likely need to narrow your results by using combinations of keywords of skills, title, and location. Even then, depending on the number of connections you have, you may get hundreds or thousands of results. However, by scrolling through quickly, you should be able to find the relevant information you are looking for.

Use the contact names you find as well. The results you find will help you define the target jobs, titles, and companies you would like to pursue, and will also provide you potential contact names at those companies! Each of the people you find could be a good contact at their organization, and may be able to point you to the best contact for you to present your resume or “Elevator Speech”. You can find multiple ways to connect to them. You can find some help by reading “I got a contact name… how do I reach them?”

Pursuing specific companies whether they have a position open or not is often the best way to gain a new job rather than competing with the hoards that are all responding to job postings and ads. You can gain more insight and help to do it well here and here.

Defining your target positions and companies well, will help you become far more successful in your search. LinkedIn is an ideal tool to help you do it effectively.

A couple weeks ago, I had the pleasure of being on Michael Libbie’s live-streamed Internet radio show, “Insight on Business”. He has dedicated every Monday to talking about happenings in the Des Moines Metro area which he calls “Metro Monday”. Take some time to check out the show – apparently Michael was overwhelmed with the number of comments on the live-chat and Twitter. We were talking about some pretty interesting stuff…let me know your thoughts…

Perry Newman, CPC CSMS is a nationally recognized executive resume writer, career coach, AIPC certified recruiter and SMMU certified social media strategist known for his ability to help his clients get results. You can view his sample resumes at http://www.perrynewman.com/, and email him your resume at perry@perrynewman.com for FREE resume critique.

With such a large pool of super talented candidates available for most top level positions today, the deciding factor in many decision makers’ minds is to hire the best person for the job, which does not necessarily equate to the most experienced or the best qualified candidate they have interviewed. So you ask what can make a seemingly less experienced or less qualified candidate a better choice. When I asked this question to a HR friend of mine she said “in my humble opinion it is The Credibility Factor.”

So I asked around a little more to see what other decision makers and HR types suggest you can do to establish a “Credibility Factor,” and here are a few suggestions I received:

1: Silence is Golden.
Many people feel the best way to show off their credibility when networking with others, when casually speaking to people in a business setting, and especially in a face-to-face or telephone interview is to speak more than the other person/s in the room. After all how will people find out how great you are if you don’t tell them?

This is all very true in proving that you may be the best qualified person or the candidate with the most experience for an interview or a job offer.

However, when it comes to building up your credibility as the “best person” for a job, I suggest you train yourself to be a better listener than talker. In the long run you will appear more credible by actively listening as others speak and asking insightful questions of others and listening to their responses.

Think of this as being at a cocktail party and two people in your field come to talk to you. The first person immediately wants to tell you how much you can learn form his vast experience in the field and the second person is more interested in knowing what you have to say about any given topic that comes up in discussion. I will bet that 85% of you may learn more from the first person, but if I asked you who you would prefer to be around and who you are more likely to want to befriend, work for, work with, or hire it would be person #2. The moral here is credibility is better built with your ears than your mouth.

2. Consistency trumps unpredictability.
One of my responders who hires sales/marketing people told me that a most important quality he looks for in a new hire is that the person be predictable. I asked him what that meant and how he could find this out. He said he asks people about their personal habits during an interview and discreetly confirms what they say is true. He asks questions like “do you catch the same train to work every day,” “do you have a consistent dress code for business calls”, and “do you frequent the same restaurants for client lunches or do you experiment with new places to eat with a new or established client.” His conclusion is that it is easier to judge future performance based on past history for people who have an established pattern of action, and that it is easier to come to trust and rely on a new hire if they are predictable. So try and be more consistent, if you are not there already. This is another way to increase your Credibility Factor.

3. Always tell the truth.
This should be a no brainer, but in a world dominated by grey areas instead of just black & white this can sometimes be a slippery slope. So my advice is to stick to the truth and let the chips fall where they may if you want to be taken seriously. After all if you lie – like so many politicians we read about, especially here in NYC – the truth is bound to come out sooner or later, and a lifetime of building up your credibility can be undone in less than 60 seconds.

4. Establish a reputation as a business “First Responder.”
Don’t you hate it when people don’t return your phone call, voice mail or email for days or weeks at a time? On the flip side don’t you love getting an answer to your question – even if it is not the one you want – ASAP?

Make it your business, especially in a job search, to touch base as with everyone who contacts you as soon as possible, even if they are pushy and annoying? The reputation you will develop is one of extreme credibility and I guarantee you this reputation will spread like wildfire.

There are several more good answers I got from my sources and perhaps at a later date I will get back to you in another blog post to complete this topic.

From the SimplyHired Blog…

The Situation: You’re in an interview that is going really well. But then the interviewer asks you what your salary requirements are. *cue ominous music* Give an answer that is too high and the employer may rule you out as a potential candidate. Give them too low of a number and you risk not getting enough compensation.

To be prepared for this question, you should research what typical salaries are for positions similar to the one to which you are applying. By using SimplyHired.com’s Salaries tool, you can find out what the average salary is for jobs in our database that match your keywords. *Some statistical approximations are used.

For example, say you are applying to nursing jobs in San Francisco, CA. With this tool, you will see that the average nursing salaries are about $65,000. You can search for salaries based on specific keywords, such as skills or job title. So say you are looking for social media jobs. According to our Salaries tool, the average salary for all jobs with “social media” anywhere in the listing is $93,000 (changing careers, anyone?).

Have a blog or website? You can take these salary graphs “to-go” in the Grab This Graph box to the right of the graph. Just copy and paste the HTML into your web page to add it to your site. You’ll be sharing it with the world in a few seconds.

Our salary tool is a great way to research appropriate salary ranges when faced that question in an interview, as well as a great way to research salaries in other industries if you’re looking to change careers. Find out your worth!

Harry Urschel is an independent recruiter with over 20 years of experience in the placement industry and operates as e-Executives in the Minneapolis, Minnesota area. His background has included over 7 years as a top producer world-wide as a recruiter and Director for the largest specialized placement firm internationally. He has hired and trained large staffs of recruiters and developed top teams. His experience has given him a strong understanding of hiring and job search processes, and writes a blog to help Job Seekers at http://www.thewisejobsearch.com/.

Check out this post by Des Moines’ own Joe Burklund! Nice job, Joe!

Judi Perkins, the How-To Career Coach, was a recruiter for 22 years, consulting with hundreds of hiring authorities throughout the hiring process. She’s seen over 500,000 resumes, knows how hiring authorities think and how they hire. As a result she understands and teaches what other coaches don’t: why the typical strategies in finding a job so often fail, what to do instead, and why. She’s been on PBS’s Frontline, will be in the May issue of Smart Money magazine, and has been quoted frequently in numerous articles for CareerBuilder, MSN Careers, Yahoo Hot Jobs, and the New York Times, among others. She’s also been featured as an expert in numerous career books. Sign up for her free newsletter at http://www.findtheperfectjob.com/

You just learned one of your previous employers has been giving you a bad reference. Count your blessings that you found out, because many never do. But what do you do about it?

Bad references don’t always prevent someone from getting a job. The key is how the issue is handled in the reference, and how you handle it prior to the reference being checked. So your goal isn’t necessarily to erase or debate the issue, only to reach agreement on its presentation.

When you phone, prevent them from becoming defensive by saying, “I’m calling to ask your help with something. I understand you have an issue with my performance when I worked for you, and I’m wondering if we might be able to reach an agreement on how it’s presented so that it doesn’t compromise my chances of employment. Would you mind sharing with me, please, what you weren’t happy with when we worked together?”

Your tone of voice must be respectful, polite, and convey your desire for information and understanding. If you’re angry, defensive, or whiny, or they perceive they’re being attacked, you’re not going to get what you want or need, which is information and cooperation. Creating an environment where they feel comfortable talking is more likely to open a conversation.

Don’t argue, interrupt or react defensively. Just listen. And when they’re done, tell them you appreciate their sharing with you. This relaxes them further and moves you closer to a win/win agreement.

Next ask them what – not “if” – the positive aspects of your performance were. Ask if they’d be willing to share that information also next time. Again, this is negotiation for a win/win, not an argument to win or lose. Make sure they realize you’re not asking them to remove the negative, but simply to frame it in a less harmful light and balance it with the positive. When you approach the conversation with the goal of resolving the situation and healing the relationship as best it can be healed, everyone usually wins.

As you continue interviewing, address this with a prospective employer before the reference is checked, but not until an offer is imminent. Assuming the issue is a valid one, acknowledge you’ve had some difficulty in the past, but since then it’s no longer relevant (if this is true.). Don’t make excuses or try to explain. Now you’ve defused the situation and removed the element of surprise.

If there’s no validity, you’ll need to address that too, but by presenting the supervisor as perhaps someone who was threatened, or new, or wanted their own person in your position, or whatever the case truly was, but be brief, objective, and balance it with a positive about the person as well. Trashing them reflects poorly on you and will backfire.

A wise word to every job seeker: contact your references before you start looking. Send them your resume. Tell them what you’ll be interviewing for. Ask them what they might contemplate saying and how they’d speak to your abilities. Ask their permission to use them as a reference. References are sacred. Their privacy and willingness to speak on your behalf is to be respected and appreciated. Then you prevent this problem from occurring.