Job Search Advice

Stepping Up to a Better Career was created to help job seekers nationwide find fulfilling employment by providing advice on resume writing, interviewing, job searching and more.  For the past year, I have upheld that goal by creating topics that I felt would be interesting to the 100 loyal readers I have each day.

Now I feel it is time to turn over the reigns.  I want to hear your specific questions and concerns and provide you with advice that will aid you in finding fulfilling employment and fast.

Have a question about transitioning careers? Looking for employment while keeping your old job? Networking to find employment? Moving from nonprofit work to the business sector?

Explaining laid-off or fired status? Job searching on the internet? Keeping a job after your company has been bought out or your department is being phased out?

Creating a resume? Formatting a resume? Specific resume samples? Types of resumes?

Following up on an interview? Negotiating your salary? Creating a cover letter?

If you have any questions about your job search…

Contact me!  You can choose to comment directly on this blog or you can e-mail me your questions at Resumes@AyeshaWrites4u.com and see your question appear in my next post.

All I ask is that along with your question(s), you send your first name and an e-mail address where I can contact you to let you know that your answer is being posted on the blog.

As always, good luck on your job search.

Ayesha Long

www.AyeshaWrites4u.com

The ASCII Resume

For any serious job seeker, an ASCII resume is a necessary part of your job searching arsenal.  An ASCII resume, which is pronounced (as-KEE), stands for American Standard Code Information Interchange.  This is the unformatted version of your resume that you can post onto job searching sites, send into e-mails, and onto job forms that require you to cut and paste your resume.

It is also referred to as a plain-text resume, text only, scannable resume, internet resume, and electronic resume.  If an employer asks you to send either of these documents, he is referring to the ASCII resume.

ASCII resumes are  preferred over formatted because the special symbols and tabs used in formatted resumes will alter the flow and be incapable of passing through any applicant tracking system. Also, regardless of the employers computer capabilities, all computers can download and read ASCII resumes.

Even when you are sending your resume by fax, you should use  the ASCII resume.  Why? Because some fax machines cannot handle all of the special characters used on a formatted resume and may not be able to print the document correctly – making it messy and too much of a hassle for an employer to sift through.

So how do you create an ASCII resume?

Most word processing programs allow you to convert your document to text (.txt) or rich text format (.rtf) format.  When you recreate the resume using this format, it will eliminate all of the headers, tabs, and special formatting used within your original resume.  However, before sending out your document, you must ensure the following:

• Special Characters have not been altered into unreadable WingDing formats that will look funny and distract an employer.  Instead, opt for eliminating the special characters or replacing with an asterix (*) or dash (-).
• Tabs have been replaced by space bars.
• Wrapped text makes sense and has not altered the format.
• Each line has no more than 65 characters for both letters and characters.
• The format has absolutely no indentations, shading, borders, italics, or bold.
• Font is sans-serif, such as Arial or Courier.

After creating your ASCII resume, you must ensure that every time you cut and paste it onto a job board or an e-mail that you have fully proofread it and that it has pasted properly onto the website.

As always, good luck with your job search.

Ayesha Long

www.AyeshaWrites4u.com

Step Up to a Better Career with Professional Resume Services

*** 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!

You’re too old to be hired???

One of the most ironic things about finding employment is that experience is always considered an advantage when someone is seeking employment.  Yet if you have too much experience, those same businesses from five years ago that were banging on your door asking you to work with them are now too busy to even interview you.  If you have over twenty years experience in your field and are not a C-level executive, experience becomes a barrier.  More factually, it’s not the experience, it’s your age.

Something about being older than most of your cohorts will turn employers off from employing you.  Unfortunately, they have biases due to increasing health issues and stubborn attributes that are often associated with older employees.  So how do you fight age discrimination?  How do you get an employer to look at your age and experience as an asset as opposed to a liability?

Our guest blogger, Kevin Donlin answers this question in his article, “How to Get Hired Faster by Overcoming Obstacles Like Age Discrimination”.  Before turning over the realm to Kevin, I want to point out that many of us know these answers.  It will be the same time and time again.  You must always sell the positive and forego the negative.  If you are unsure how to do this, hire a professional.  If you want to attempt to do it yourself, be sure to click on the link for The Guerrilla Job Search DVD at the end of Kevin’s blog post.

As always, good luck on your job search.

Ayesha Long

www.AyeshaWrites4u.com

Step Up to a Better Career with Professional Resume Services
*** 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!

How to Get Hired Faster by Overcoming Obstacles, like Age Discrimination

By Kevin Donlin

I got an email last week from Jim S. in New York. His job-search question may not apply exactly to you, but the mind-set I suggest to solve it should.

So, if you give me two minutes here, I’ll show you two ways to get hired faster, by playing to your strengths, and offering employers the equivalent of “found” money.

Ready?

Jim writes:

“I have been a self-employed residential general contractor with some commercial supervision experience for 35 years. Last fall I had heart surgery and as a consequence, I am no longer able to meet the physical demands of the job. How do I best convey this situation to a potential employer and still get in the door?”

When Jim asks, “How do I best convey this [health] situation to a potential employer and still get in the door?” what he’s really asking is: “How can I bring up my health problems and still get an interview?”

This is common, backwards thinking.

Instead, of worrying about how to confess a negative, Jim should build a case for his strengths until they overcome any resistance in the minds of employers.

Here’s the question that Jim (and you) should ask instead: “How can I appeal so strongly to an employer’s self interest that any issues about my physical condition won’t matter — they’ll want to hire me for my brains and not my body?”

Put another way, there must be some management function Jim can perform in construction that can leverage his 35 years of industry experience and knowledge, without requiring hard physical labor. He should examine his work history until he can picture a suitable job.

Better yet, he should call past supervisors, vendors, and clients, remind them of the good things he did for them, then ask: “Given my knowledge and experience, what leadership role do you see me playing for an employer?”

This is one way to overcome obstacles of physical condition, age, etc.

To learn more about how to use Guerrilla Job Search tactics in your job search, click here.

Let Your Resume Shine WITHOUT You

In a world where individualism, self-criticism, and  self-reflection are encouraged, there are still places where you are not important.  Your resume happens to be one of those places.  When your resume focuses only on you and not on an employer, your previous companies, or the achievements a compnay has received by hiring you, then you will NOT get hired.

If you have ever written a resume before, you know the basics.  Pronouns do not belong on a resume – so there should be no I, you, we, he, she, or they on the resume.  Instead, your resume should begin with strong verbs that demonstrate your capabilities as an employee.  Here is where the fine line is drawn.

How do you know how much of yourself to include and how much of your previous employers?  Simply look at the classified ads and look to see what qualities your prospective employer is seeking.  Then look at your resume and ask yourself if the qualities you project on your resume demonstrate you as the right candidate for that position.

Here is an example.  I once worked with a client.  Let’s call him Jeff.  Jeff had worked in the Human Resource field and had listed every detail required of his job as an executive recruiter.  Jeff, painstakingly described how he went into the field, came up with campaigns to generate candidates, and coordinated with the hiring companies.  Yet, Jeff was trying to transition into a mangement position.  No where on his resume did he demonstrate his capabilities as a manger.  He was perfectly qualified.  In fact, on his resume he was perfectlyqualified as well – to be an executive recruiter!

The problem was that Jeff was more concerned about his past achievements and wanted to show off his success as an employee  – which is something that all employees should do.  Yet, he forgot about the most important aspect of any resume – it is not about you!  Employers do not care about your past achievements because they are well, in the past.  What they do care about is that everything on your resume demonstrates that the achievements you had were stepping stones to ensure that you are capable of handling the job that they are going to hire you to do.

So after six months of using his own resume, Jeff hired me.  Together, we looked at the classified ads of companies looking for Human Resource Managers and were able to find the qualities Jeff was lacking on his resume.  I constructed a job-winning resume that demonstrated his managerial skills, while still leaving his best accomplishments as a recruiter.  Within two weeks, Jeff had received three job offers.

Learn from Jeff.  Look at your resume and make sure that every accomplishment you post is not about you, but is about the needs and desires of your prospective employers.

As always, good luck on your job search.

Ayesha Long

www.AyeshaWrites4u.com

Step Up to a Better Career with Professional Resume Services
*** 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!

The Missing Component to Your Successful Resume

If you have ever written a resume before, you already know the basic elements needed for most resumes.  A resume typically has the following:

• Your name and address
• Summary of Qualifications
• Professional Experience or Work History
• Educational Experience
• Additional Criteria, such as extracurricular activities, volunteer experience, or skill sets

While this is the typical criteria used in creating a resume, a successful resume takes it one step further.  A successful resume always has keywords.

KEYWORDS

Keywords are listed as the last section on the resume or are integrated throughout the skill section of the resume.  They are words that describe the most common attributes an employer would use to find an employee when using big career sites such as Monster or Careerbuilder.  They are also useful when employers use technological software to scan resumes.  Even more importantly, when an employer stops to scan your resume, these words jump out at the employer and saves him time to have to go on a scavenger hunt to determine if you are qualified.

If you are a serious candidate and you want an employer to know you are a serious candidate, you should not only have keywords in the Keyword and Skills sections, but they should also be used throughout your resume.  For example, if you are a physical therapist and you know that typically a physical therapist must use whirlpool baths, infrared lights, and ultrasonic machines, these are all words that should be used throughout your resume – in the summary of qualifications, professional experience sections, and also in the educational section if you are a recent graduate and do not have much work experience.

Most employees assume an employer knows their job description.  So instead of outlining their duties using keywords, they give general job descriptions and leave off the most important and specific attributes to an employer.  You will not do this.  You will find out what attributes are most important to your employer and distribute these attributes throughout all of your personal branding materials.

While people in your position should do the same things, often times they don’t.  If you have ever made a lateral move in which you had the same job title but moved to a different company, you would experience this first hand.  In some companies, there is more support, so you may perform the duties necessary to only fulfill your role.  If , however, you work for a smaller company or a start-up, you will perform not only the duties typically performed for your title, but will also be responsible for several other jobs as well.  Therefore, it is always important to be specific when giving your job description.  It will let the employer know that you are perfectly capable of handling the tasks  he expects for you to take on in your new role as compared to the less specific person in which he has to guess their capabilities.

So what keywords to use?

Most people when researching keywords will quickly become overwhelmed.  It is hard to decipher which words are most important to use on your resume.  Typically, the best keywords are those that you have not already used on your resume.  For example, if you are a teacher and you already put that you “effectively planned and implemented cooperative lessons integrating the arts and technology”, then it is unnecessary to put “art and technology integration” in your keywords.  If however, you did not put a description that uses the most basic elements of your job in your professional experience, then you can use keywords to fill in the blanks.

It is also good to use keywords to provide alternate labels to your job description.  For example, many administrative assistants work under different job titles and also perform different duties according to these titles.  However, most Hiring Managers fail to make these distinctions and may only put secretary in his search engine.  If an employee fails to use the alternate title secretary, she may be overlooked for the job simply because she didn’t use the right keyword.

How do You know you used the right keywords?

As an employee, you have the advantage of knowing what duties were considered most important for your job description.  You should lead with that knowledge and then research the rest.  If you are unsure, then you should hire a professional.  Professional resume writers should have access to job profiles, have a list of keywords according to profession, and also have alliances with employment agencies that can assist them in ensuring your resume will fit the needs of the average employer in your field.

As always, good luck with your job search.

Ayesha Long

www.AyeshaWrites4u.com

Step Up to a Better Career with Professional Resume Services
*** 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!