Lacking Skills? Become an Intern.

One of the biggest problems when securing a job for graduating students, career changers, or even professionals with upward mobility is lack of actual work experience in the position of choice. Prospects often rely on their educations as the only way to substantiate them as better employees against their competition. However, this has often proved a fatal mistake.

When employees choose to wait for employment until AFTER graduation or attempting to make their career move, they are often faced with rejection. Why? Employers understand the difference between street smarts and book smarts. If you do not have enough real world experience, an employer will not be interested in training you in the actual day to day activities of the job, only to find out that the straight-A student has proven to be incompetent in the actual field.

In order to avoid being in this group of the “intelligent unemployed”, a lot of employees are now turning to internships to help secure their professions. So should you. But be forewarned, this year, more and more employees are seeking internships to help secure employment and therefore are finding it ever more difficult to find placement or even find tasks to complete once they become interns. In fact, in today’s New York Times the article, Internship is secured, but a seat? That’s tricky., focused on interns interested in Law receiving internships, but then remaining unassigned throughout the course of their internship.  This problem will probably remain prevalent until our economy is more stable.

To avoid wasting your internship, there are three things you should continuously do to help you secure employment after your internship:

1. Network. Remember the key to any business is never “what you know, it’s who you know.”  So if you have the opportunity to intern with the company of your choice, you should not waste your time doing crossword puzzles or choosing to create a fraternity of interns.  Instead, all of your time should be used in getting yourself noticed by the higher ups.  Staying late to help with assignments, arriving early before the other interns to talk one-on-one with the actual employees, offering to get lunch or have lunch with the decision- makers – are all ways to stand out amongst the crowd and get you noticed.  At the same time, you should also go to networking events within the field, so you can meet others who are in your industry who may be able to advance your career if your internship fails to land you a position your interning company.
2. Present the professional in you. Not being an employee does not give you permission to come to your assignments looking sloppy, being late, or otherwise being unprofessional.  Give off the impression that you are a qualified candidate and you BELONG at this company.
3. Apply early. Typically, before the last two weeks of an internship is when interns begin asking for employment.  Be ahead of the pack.  Submit your resume after getting a feel for the environment and determining what qualifications are most important to the hiring manager.  You will be amazed how this one step can get you results without any extra work.  The employer will be happy to know that you are already eager to work for the company and if there are qualifications that you seem to be missing, he may be able to tell you what holes need to be filled in.  This gives you the remainder of the internship to work on those skills and then apply again. If your internship does not have a noncompetitive clause, banning you from contacting companies within the same industry, you should be applying to these companies as well.

Remember the key to securing employment is to always be consistent. If you start off strong and keep up the same pace throughout your entire internship, you will have gained valuable work experience that can now be placed on your resume, landed some great references that can help you land employment anywhere, and a resource of contacts that can help propel and guide you as you journey throughout your career.

As always, good luck with your job search.

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*** Also be sure to go to Ayesha Writes 4 You’s website and schedule your Free Resume Consultation. From now until August 15th, you can take advantage of our Summer Discount and get 15% off any resume package. So go to www.AyeshaWrites4u.com to get started now!

California Man Cuts the Crap, Gets Hired

Last Thursday, I posted the article Get Interviewed about tactics you can use when your resume  fails to get you the results you deserve.   The following Friday, I saw a video created by Kevin Donlin, co-creator of The Guerrilla Job Search.  I was so impressed with Kevin’s innovative ideas of using the same tactics as guerrilla marketing for your own job hunt that I asked him to share some advice as a guest blogger.  He agreed and below is his first post.

Be sure that after you read his post, you click on the link below to view his FREE video.  This video plays out step by step some of the ways you can begin your own Guerrilla Job Search.

As always, good luck on your job search.

Ayesha Long

www.AyeshaWrites4u.com

California Man Cuts the Crap, Gets Hired

By guest blogger, Kevin Donlin

The shortest distance between two points is a straight line, right?

And the shortest distance between you and your next job may lie in your making straight for the hiring manager.

In other words, if you decide to cut the crap, stop jumping through hoops and just go meet your next boss, you may get … hired.

That’s what happened to one “Guerrilla Job Hunter” who shares his story below.

Matthew Ringue, a Career Services Advisor for Heald College in Concord, Calif., got hired by his current employer after doing something unexpected.

“I saw an ad online for a position as an admissions advisor. I submitted my resume but I normally didn’t get a response from doing that, so I decided to walk my resume in. I found the college, went up to the receptionist, and said: ‘I applied for a position online and I was hoping there was someone I could talk to about it.’”

The receptionist’s reaction?

“She said, ‘Oh. Let me see if someone is available,’” says Ringue.

It turned out that nobody was available.

But the receptionist suggested Ringue come back the following Tuesday. Upon his return, he was again unable to meet anyone. So he politely asked for and received an appointment. On his third visit, Ringue got the meeting he wanted with a decision maker.

How did it go?

“Very well. The hiring manager said, ‘I really appreciate your being persistent. I think it’s great that you came in a couple of times and pushed for an interview,’” recalls Ringue.

He was eventually hired, but not for the job he first applied for. It turns out that the college no longer had an opening for an Admissions Advisor. But executives were impressed enough by Ringue to hire him for another position, the one he now holds, Career Services Advisor.

Your takeaway lesson: Always try to apply in person at an employer, even if they don’t expect you.

You can take the direct approach by walking up to a receptionist and asking for a meeting, or you can get referred by an employee first. In either case, persist until you get a meeting.

However you do it, know that every time you meet with an employer, you’ll have no competition from ordinary job seekers, who are content to sit behind a computer keyboard and fire off resumes electronically.

Also, know this — asking to meet an employer is not pushy or aggressive, unless you are.

Remember why an employer buys online job postings in the first place: To hire the right people. And before anyone can hire you, they have to meet you. So, by meeting with employers — whether they expect you or not — you demonstrate initiative, persistence, and a bias for action. Who wouldn’t want those traits in a new hire?

Put another way, it’s perfectly reasonable to take the ordinary approach and not apply in person for a job posted online. But how has “ordinary” been working for you?

More “extraordinary” job search tips like this in our free Guerrilla Job Search audio.

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Get Interviewed!

Okay, we’ve all been there!  You have a great resume.  You have an even better cover letter.  You have the qualifications.  But your phone just keeps on failing to ring.  Oh, you’re getting phone calls from friends and family – but the phone call you’ve been waiting for, the one that comes from the employer of your dreams, is just not happening.

Day in and day out you resend your resume to another company thinking this one MUST be the company that will call you and get you out of your rut of a job.  But what if that doesn’t happen?  How do you ensure that your resume will be viewed and will result in an interview?

Attack! Consider yourself a marketable good and think of creative ways to present yourself to an employee as an exclusive commodity.  Don’t just send out your resume or worse yet, click send an application on your monster account and wait for the phone calls to start ringing.  You have to really put yourself out there.

What does that mean for your job search?  Well for starters, you can forget about applying to every job that catches your eye.  This is a waste of your valuable time.  Instead, what you are going to do is choose nine companies, nine positions and stick with them for the next two weeks.  During that time, you are going to do the following:

• Make initial contact – If there is a company you are interested in, whether they are hiring or not, you are going to make a friend.  This does not mean you are going to be shopping buddies.  No, you are going to contact someone who is in a similar position or who is in the same department as the one to which you are going to apply.  You are going to call them and schedule an informational interview (see Importance of Networking).  During the interview, learn as much as you can about the prospective company and be sure to ask the person if it is okay to mention them during an interview or on your cover letter.
• Go straight to the head – Call the company and see if they are hiring.  If you’ve already seen a posting advertising a position, then you are going to respond to that posting.  But first, you are going to find out who is responsible for the hiring process and send your resume and cover letter directly to that person.  This first resume will be sent in TWO formats – the ASCII format which is an non-formatted resume that can be pasted directly into an e-mail and will be able to undergo an employer’s keyword scan.  The second resume will be formatted and sent through snail mail.
• Follow Up! Follow Up! Follow Up! – Here is where things get tricky.  Depending on how badly you want the position, your follow up can take a number of different formats – sending a follow up letter, making a follow up call, having your inside contact recommend you, or finding out a secret indulgence the HR manager has and feeding into it.  For example, if you know the HR manager loves chocolate, you can send a box of chocolates every day with your business card demonstrating to the HR person that you are eager, a go-getter, and know exactly what you want.  Now this strategy may not work for everyone.  Only you know what your limits are to being determined versus being pesky.  Either way, you must take some form of follow up measures to let the employer know you are a serious candidate and not arbitrarily sending out your resume to everyone (See Most Common Resume Mistake).

If you utilize these strategies, along with maintaining a professional image through your paper choice, resume and cover letter formatting and words, finding a job should be a quick, painless process.  Remember the key to finding a job is casting a wide net through networking, but being selective about which fish you actually want to bring home with you.

As always, good luck with your job search.

Sincerely,

Ayesha Long

www.AyeshaWrites4u.com

Stepping up to a Better Career with Professional Career Documents

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Catch an Employer’s Eye Immediately

When you send out your resume, you have less than 30 seconds to catch the eye of your potential employer.  There is one sure fire way to do this – have an objective!

When most people hear the word objective, they think back to the old two column style resumes where the objective would be a simple one-liner such as “Seeking system operators position in a fast-paced company to utilize programming and communication skills.”

This objective has one mistake – it’s all about you, you, you!  The position you want.  The type of activities you would like to partake.  The kind of company you’d like to associate with.  And as the employer is reading this and about to toss it into the garbage pile, he’s thinking, “Who cares?”

We will not make that mistake!

An objective is simply an employer’s way of knowing that when you sent out your resume it was meant for the position being advertised.  It lets the employer know you are focused, professional and not just arbitrarily sending out your resume to every opening posted on Careerbuilder.com.

So how do you create an objective?

It’s quite simple.  In this case, your objective has nothing to do with what you are seeking and more to do with what qualifications the employer needs.  Your objective will be transformed into what is sometimes called your headline.

Example headlines:

Ten year elementary educator experienced in collaborative planning and cooperative groupings.

Five year award winning human resource professional proficient at research, recruiting, and analysis.

These headlines are eye-catching because they immediately let an employer know:

• The employee’s experience in terms of years and position
• The employee’s top selling credentials
• The employee is not self-centered and is not focused on his needs, but on the needs of the employer

So who do you think will get the job?

Obviously, those of you who create employer based headlines over employee based headlines.

As always, good luck with your job search.

Sincerely,

Ayesha Long

www.AyeshaWrites4u.com

Step Up to a Better Career with Professional Resume Services

Graduates Need Apply…

Are you graduating this fall?

Have you worked or volunteered in fields not related to your desired field of employment?

Scared of the current employment statistics and where that puts you, the new person on the totem pole?

Don’t fret.

If you are in the educational, medical, or law fields, you HAVE had field experience. Serving roles as assistants, observers, or clinical students, you know the ins and outs of what a typical work day will be. It is your job as a new job seeker to use this knowledge to make yourself sound knowledgeable to a potential employer.

How do you do this?

Typically, when I consult with clients who are recent graduates or more popularly, transitioning employees, there are two resume sections that serve their purposes best…

Highlights of Qualifications, also known as Summary of Qualifications or simply Summary puts your key accomplishments at the very top of your resume.  While every resume should have a Summary of Qualifications, for new graduates, the information that goes in your summary is a little different.  You will lead with the following:

• Awards and Honors as a Student, i.e. 3.0 GPA’s or higher, scholarships, etc.
• Specific industry successes through fieldwork experience, i.e.

-     A graduating Phlebotomy technician might write – Expertly administered 120 venipunctures for 96 patients.

-      A graduating Educator might write – Demonstrated cooperative learning techniques by teaching 3^rd grade math unit utilizing enrichment, ELL differentiation, and remediation.

-      A graduating Lawyer might write – Supported litigation of 10 family court cases through effective mediation techniques.

• Personal accomplishments that demonstrate your work ethic, i.e. Served as Student Government President; Conceptualized and organized mentorships between 150 entrepreneurs and 300 students.

A Professional Experience section should follow your Summary section, unless you are working for a career that requires certification or a certain level of education.  In your Professional Experience section, it will be broken into two subsections.

• Experience related to your desired profession, i.e. Teaching Experience for educators, Nursing Experience for new LPN’s, Law Experience for graduating lawyers.  In this section, you are boasting of the new skills practiced during your externships and/or fieldwork experience.

• Work Experience for all other employment held outside of your career.  In this section, no more than two or three bullets per job are necessary unless you have had substantial success that will be able to carry over to your new career.  Otherwise, a few simple sentences explaining your responsibilities or the fact that you worked the job while juggling a full course load will suffice.

As always, good luck with your job search.

Ayesha Long

Ayesha Writes 4 You

Step Up to a Better Career with Professional Resume Services

www.AyeshaWrites4u.com

(866) 620-2741