How to Bounce back after losing your Job

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31
Aug 2017

There’s no other way to put it: losing your job is difficult on a number of different levels. It can rattle your confidence and induce anxiety and depression. It messes with your routine; your days are no longer built around your typical work hours, and instead of basking in all that glorious “free time,” you wind up squandering it because you don’t know what to do with yourself.

The Muse has a great step-by-step article on what to do each day following the day you lost your job. The author, Nathan Tanner, details that finding someone to talk to, as well as doing some personal reflection are among the first things someone should do when they lose their job. He also mentions that you may want to take steps to file for unemployment (Career One Stop has a tool that allows you to filter by state to see how to file for unemployment). Tanner leaves off on Day 3, advising people to update their resume because, inevitably, you’ll need to find a way of sustaining yourself in the near future.

In this article, we’ll pick up where Tanner leaves off, with the positive steps you can take to get yourself back in the workforce as soon as possible and as soon as you’re ready. Before embarking on this journey, however, we can’t stress enough how important it is to take a few days off to reflect on the situation, figure out how you feel about it, and confide in a close friend who will be emotionally supportive of you and offer advice if you need it. Once you feel calm and collected and ready to start something new, there are several things you can do to get your career on track again.

The most important thing to do when you lose your job—after taking care of your wellbeing—is to figure out how best to manage and take advantage of this free time you now have. Now that you aren’t buried in work from your previous job, you’ve got some time on your hands. Think of how many times over the last years you’ve thought to yourself, “If I only had the time I would [make new business cards / update my resume / go to this skill-related event to develop my skills.” Well, now is the time to do all those things that you never had or made time for when you were employed.

1) Update your resume

You can start by setting aside a few hours over the course of two or three days to get your resume in shape. Take the time to edit previous work experiences and job descriptions to make sure they really reflect who you are and where you come from professionally. We’ve written in the past about injecting more personality into your resume and phrases that will kill your resume. Now is the time to go through your resume with a fine tooth comb and make it perfect.

2) Get your networking game on

Once you’ve got your resume looking its best, it’s time to start putting yourself out there and meeting new people in the professional world. Make some glossy new business cards and try to find some nearby networking events in your field. Networking can really take place in just about any social situation. You never know who you’ll meet or be introduced to. Alternatively, you almost certainly will be able to find a networking event near you in your field. These days it’s easier than ever to connect with people professionally, once you start looking for events geared specifically towards networking, you’ll realize just how many people share the same desire to reach out to fellow colleagues in their field. This article by Bradley Will details “10 Websites to Find the Best Local Business Networking Events” and this one on JobMob details some helpful tools for finding networking events near you.

3) Write to people on LinkedIn

If you’re not the type to send emails and messages out of the blue, contacting people you don’t know and who you’re not connected to on LinkedIn may seem like a daunting, if not far-fetched, task. However, you may be surprised to find how many people are willing to talk to you. To start out you can check out some tips on “How to Write LinkedIn Messages that Actually Get Read.” You can reach out to people you admire or those who work at organizations you may be interested in working for. Another great place to start is with your alumni network. Find people who share your alma mater and who are in your field. Reach out to them and see if you can meet them informationally. Remember that people do not get to where they are professionally without the help of those who surround them. Even if you’ve never met the person, they may be more than willing to help you out by informing you of open positions or putting in a good word when you apply, for the simple reason that they’re paying it forward. Perhaps their lucky break came when they were in a similar situation and someone helped them out. The bottom line is that you never know what will happen when you connect with someone. The worst that could happen is they’ll ignore your message or will tell you they can’t help you. But they just might be willing to share information, positions, or advice. You won’t know unless you try.

4) Apply for jobs

Once you’ve got your resume updated and you begin networking and making connections, opportunities will begin to arise. Think deeply about what aspects of your job you would like to change or improve for your next career move. Losing your previous job doesn’t have to be all bad. It can also be an opportunity to redirect your career toward a professional path on which you’ll be more satisfied and successful. Do your research and open those doors for yourself. Check out our tips for How to Get a Job in 2017 and How to find your Dream Job.

 

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Resume Summary Statements and How to Perfect Yours

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23
Aug 2017

Your Professional Profile is one of the first things a hiring manager sees on your resume. Before we get into its function and importance, we’ll explain what it is, and other resume keywords you’ll need to know in order to understand the Professional Profile. If you’re new to writing resumes, to job hunting, or are just unfamiliar with the most current language being used to discuss resumes, it’s a good idea to review these key terms. There are proven ways to improve your resume, but in order to utilize the nuanced advice from expert resume writers, you’ll need to become familiar with the terms they use.

First, we’ll break down the sections in the top portion of your resume. We do so more in-depth in our “Anatomy of a Perfect Resume” module, but we’ll stick to some shorter working definitions here. The Header is the first section of your resume, and it contains basic information about you: your name, contact information, city and state, and often social media links. The Professional Profile is the section just below the header.

The Professional Profile is prime real estate on your resume. That’s why it’s crucial to thoroughly understand its purpose, so you can optimize the material you place there. We liken the Professional Profile to an “elevator pitch” of your professional self to hiring managers. Imagine you walk into an elevator to the top of a skyscraper, and you realize that the hiring manager recruiting for your dream job is standing right next to you. In the 30 seconds of face time you have with that hiring manager, what aspects about yourself do you want to highlight to them? The Professional Profile offers hiring managers a highly condensed glimpse of you, probably their only opportunity to see who you are on paper before deciding whether or not it’s worth it to meet you in person.

One component of your Professional Profile is the Key Skills section, which we’ve blogged about in the past. The section that immediately precedes the Key Skills section is your Summary Statement. The Muse defines the Summary Statement as, “a few pithy and strong statements at the beginning of your resume that help summarize your skills and experience in order for a prospective employer to quickly get a sense of the value you could offer.”

We at Resume Yeti generally believe that there are two ground rules to writing a Summary Statement:

1) Less is more

A Summary Statement should not be longer than a few sentences. As this information is highly condensed, including too much of it will be overwhelming and seem superficial to the hiring manager reading your resume. As The Balance puts it, a good Summary Statement should concisely answer the question “What can this applicant offer the employer?”[LINK TO: https://www.thebalance.com/resume-profile-vs-resume-objective-2063185  ]

2) Customize your statement to the position you’re applying for

Your summary statement does not have to be the same for each job you’re applying for. Sometimes you’ll notice that elements of your statement that seem essential to highlight for one position seem superfluous for another. Additionally, you may find that certain positions will require you to be more specific in your statement. For example, take a look at these two summary statements written by the same job applicant, for two jobs in distinct industries:

Marketing/Business Development/Promotions:
“Highly accomplished, creative and multifaceted marketing and business development professional with comprehensive, managerial experience in corporate sales, promotions, advertising, operations, strategic planning and brand management. Exceptionally focused and results-oriented, supporting complex deadline driven operations with high profile clientele. Extensive background in communications and project management.”

Events and Meeting Planning:
“Highly accomplished, creative and multifaceted event management professional with comprehensive experience in the planning, operations, and sales sides of the industry. Exceptionally focused and results-oriented, supporting complex deadline driven operations with high profile clientele. Detail-oriented with experience in creating and maintaining client and vendor relationships. Extensive background in marketing, communications and project management.”

The first Summary Statement is for a position in Marketing/Business Development/Promotions, and the second is in Event and Meeting Planning. We’ll break down the differences below:

The first difference is the type of professional the applicant is. The marketing summary focuses on her versatility and her extensive experience in marketing and business development. The event planning summary focuses both on her versatility as well as her skills in operations and sales. This would be important to point out in the Summary Statement because not all applicants to event planning jobs would necessarily have that experience in sales and marketing, as this applicant does. Including it in her Summary Statement will make her stand out to hiring managers.

The second difference is how the applicant highlights her professional personality. In the marketing/business development summary, she wanted to feature her ability to focus in complex situations, how she excels even under the pressure of deadlines and high profile clientele, which would be crucial for someone in marketing or business development. In the event planning summary, she wanted to highlight her knack for details and nurturing relationships between clients and vendors, skills that would be essential for event planners.

The last difference is in how she describes her background. The two sentences are identical, with the exception of one word: “marketing.” The marketing/business development/promotions summary does not include the applicant’s background in marketing, while the event planning summary does. This is because it is assumed that an applicant applying for a job in marketing would have a background in marketing. Since the applicant would want to keep the summary as concise as possible, including the word “marketing” in this Summary Statement would be superfluous. However, in the Event Planning summary, she needed to highlight her background in marketing because, again, many applicants for a job in event planning may not have had that experience in marketing. 

Now that you’ve learned more about the Professional Profile section of your resume and how to write an excellent Summary Statement, you can put your knowledge into action and begin customizing your resume. Prepare to see a difference in response from hiring managers once you implement these changes and tweaks on your resume!

 

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Rethinking Blue Collar Work in America

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16
Aug 2017

It is a well known fact that not all college graduates are able to find work in the field they studied. Many industries within today’s job market, such as finance and marketing, are overwhelmed with job seekers, with not enough positions to employ them all. Some college graduates end up taking trade jobs in other fields apart from that which they studied, but many take low-wage, part time jobs in order to earn an income while they continue to search for work in their field.

In a 2014 report for the New York Federal Reserve Bank titled, “Are Recent College Graduates Finding Good Jobs?” authors Jaison R. Abel, Richard Deitz, and Yaqin Su explore the rate of “underemployment” among college graduates. To examine this sample group of people, the authors write, “we construct two groups of non-college jobs: what we refer to as good non-college jobs and low-wage jobs. Good non-college jobs consist of those occupations—for example, electrician, dental hygienist, or mechanic—that paid an average wage of around $45,000 per year in 2012. While these jobs do not require a bachelor’s degree, they tend to be career oriented, relatively skilled, and fairly well compensated. At the other end of the spectrum, low-wage jobs paid an average wage below $25,000 per year in 2012, and include occupations such as bartender, food server, and cashier.” Since 2000, the number of college graduates in the “good non-college jobs” category has fallen sharply, while the number of college graduates working in the “low-wage part time jobs” category has increased significantly. This is problematic because more than likely, these graduates are facing staggering student debt in the wake of their studies, and part time, non-career oriented, low-wage work will not be substantial enough to begin paying off those loans.

Yet, a lack of these “good non-college jobs” examined in the study by the N.Y. Federal Reserve Bank is not the reason why college graduates take on low-wage jobs instead. In fact, there are vast numbers of these well-paid “blue collar” jobs that are hiring, it’s just that the positions are going unfilled. The Bureau of Labor Statistics defines Blue Collar and Service Occupations as those jobs that include, “precision production, craft, and repair occupations; machine operators and inspectors; transportation and moving occupations; handlers, equipment cleaners, helpers, and laborers; and service occupations.” In other words, blue collar workers can be considered as a class of laborers who earn wages and perform tasks usually associated with skilled trades and manual labor. While a certification or training course may be a necessity for many blue collar trades, an expensive 4-year liberal arts degree is not.

Last month on Marketplace, Kai Ryssdal interviewed Prashant Gopal on high-paying blue collar job positions that are going unfilled. Amidst a discussion on six-figure construction jobs at the company 84 Lumber, Ryssdal and Gopal touched on an important aspect of shifting social attitudes regarding blue collar jobs. Gopal says, “Everybody’s kind of pushing high school kids to go to college. I mean, the whole system used to be more of a track system until the early ’80s where you could work in what was called shop. You should learn about how to fix a car, or to be a plumber, or all those sorts of things, and that vanished. I mean, you have classes here or there, but it’s not really a program. So people come out of high school, most try college, half of them drop out. And they’re left with nothing to show for it but debt.”

Gopal articulates a valid reason as to why these “good non-college” or blue collar jobs are going unfilled. In general, the focus on early education in trade skills (high school courses like woodworking, home repairs/improvement, and shop) has tapered off. While many factors may attribute to the decline in shop classes and education in skilled trades, perhaps the one that is driving skilled labor education into extinction is that it is not a requirement to be admitted into college. For example, in “The Death Of Shop Class And America’s Skilled Workforce,” writer Tara Brown examines the dwindling number of shop classes in California. She points out that, “Shop classes are being eliminated from California schools due to the University of California/California State ‘a-g’ requirements.” These are essentially college prerequisites that high school students must complete before entering college, so that they can participate fully and have a shared curricular foundation with their classmates. While History/Social Science, English, Math, Laboratory Science, Foreign Language, and Visual and Performing Arts are among the California a-g requirements, Shop is not. Brown wrote, in 2012, that, “Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) with 660,000 students in K-12 has already eliminated 90% of shop classes.” While Brown’s focus was on one district in California, schools across the United States are also in the midst of eliminating their shop programs in order to place more emphasis on areas that are required for acceptance to college.

This trend in college preparation is a response to a shift in higher educational values. American academic institutions change their core focuses to mirror the structure and demands of the government, in order to churn out college graduates who are ready for work in today’s market. In an article for New Labor Forum, Sheila Slaughter and Gary Rhoades write that, “U.S. public higher education assigns markets central social value. Public colleges and universities emphasize that they support corporate competitiveness through their major role in the global, knowledge-based economy. They stress their role in training advanced students for professional positions close to the technoscience core of knowledge economies, in fostering research that creates high-tech products and processes for corporations, and in preparing undergraduate and community college students to be malleable workers who will fit into (and be retrained for) new information-based jobs and workplaces.” U.S. academic institutions are moving to formalize education in all areas that could be considered college majors. Students can get a degree in anything ranging from the traditional majors like Finance, Math, or Literature, but they can also pursue formal study of more abstract topics ranging from fine arts to human rights to “Keepin’ it Real” or “Happiness Studies.”

Yet the government structure and university system are not entirely to blame for the avalanche of emphasis that is being placed on formal academic studies for college acceptance and the formalization of of areas that were not previously considered to be academic fields. Parents encourage their children to pursue college degrees and achieve higher levels of education, so that they can, theoretically, obtain higher-paying jobs. But the myth that a student’s level of education is always correlated to their income is deceiving. There are simply not enough positions in the job market to catch up with the exponentially increasing numbers of highly educated college graduates that complete their studies each year. Even with an expensive liberal arts degree in English Literature or Communications, there are very few options for a solid career that a student can build upon after they graduate. The temporary jobs that are available, such as a job as an independent contractor at a literary agency or an internship at an art gallery or nonprofit, will not be enough to pay off student debt or begin saving money for later in life. While these students may have once been able to turn to a career path involving trade skills they were exposed to in high school, a student who was never exposed to a shop, home improvement, or woodworking program may just find themselves stuck.

Both parents and early education institutions must rethink their hesitance to teach skilled trades to youth in America. The decline in the number of high school shop programs is troubling because it signals that there will be a lack of skilled workers to execute the jobs that make up the fabric of society. The number of unfilled jobs in skilled trades teaches us that we should never undervalue the importance of learning how things work and how to fix things from a young age. Blue collar jobs are essential to the nation’s industries, and there is a lot of money to be made in pursuing a career in one of the skilled trades. It’s time to stop thinking of blue collar labor as “underemployment” for college graduates, or as “lesser” employment for non-college graduates.

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College Grads: Searching for Your Dream Job?

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02
Aug 2017

Many college graduates enter the workforce with the misconception that they will quickly find and be hired to do their dream job. Finding a good job is a long process, and finding a job you can do with both purpose and passion can be an even longer process, with many cumulative contributing factors. Your workplace experience, practice in different fields, and personal growth and maturation all play into what you consider to be your ideal job. We at Resume Yeti do not recommend that job hunters hold out until they find their dream job. Instead, we recommend that job seekers maintain as broad a range of job choices so as to potentially have more than one option when finally deciding to accept a job offer. We encourage those who are already employed, but still searching for their dream job, to constantly reassess their current position, future goals, and ever-changing interests at every stage of their career. Your dream job right out of college will most likely take on a different form than your dream job later in your career. People change, their goals change, and so does the job market.

Apart from identifying a job that you’re passionate about, based on where you are in life and what your goals are, there are several other factors at play while determining what you might consider your “dream job.” In this article, we’ll break down a couple different ways to help you establish what your dream job is, and how you can go about pursuing it.

What do you like?

It may seem quite obvious that your dream job will be something you “like,” but what exactly is it that you like about the work you do? We recommend that you begin your search by making a list of what you have liked about every work experience you’ve ever had. For those who are just entering the workforce post graduation, consider any college jobs you may have had, as well as tasks and assignments you had to carry out for classes.

When you’re working, what kind of workflow do you enjoy the most? Do you enjoy having autonomy to complete your projects, or would you rather work closely with a supervisor or team from start to finish? Do you prefer to work alone or with colleagues? Do you like to interact with the public (i.e. customers/clients) during your workday)? What kind of work setting allows you to be happiest and most productive? Do you like having a flexible schedule or sticking to routine business hours when you work?  Answer these questions and any more you can come up with based on your work experiences. Think about the times you were the most successful and the happiest at work. What workplace/process/situational factors contributed to your success and happiness. This exercise will yield a list of not only your best work environment, but also your unique strengths as a worker. Maybe you had never considered being a freelancer before, but if you find that you enjoy autonomy and a flexible schedule, perhaps it’s an avenue you could pursue. Maybe you’re in HR or customer service, but you really enjoy the instances that require technology or workflow problem solving. You might be better off working in IT or even in a management position in your current field.

This article on The Muse analyzes the benefits of playing into your strengths while searching for a job you truly love. Using data from Gallup surveys and the example of a sales-related job, the writer points out that a salesperson who realizes that their daily encounters with rejection really bother them, may ultimately be happier and more successful in a position that is sales-related—thus utilizing the salesperson’s skill set—but that is removed from the grind of making sales pitches. The writer proposes an alternative position in sales operations that may resolve the salesperson’s discontent with their current position in sales. Thus, by isolating what the worker liked and didn’t like about their job, it is possible to imagine a solution for the worker in which they are both happier and more successful in their work.

Where and how do you find your dream job?

A salesperson that might be better off in sales operations is a theoretical example to emphasize the importance of identifying your strengths and factors for success in your work. The real world is usually more complicated than that. And finding your dream job certainly may be more challenging than switching to another position in the same field, perhaps even in the same company. Thus, once you’ve made your list of what you like about working, it’s time to consider how and where you might find a job that encompasses as many of the items on the list as possible.

Late last year, we published a step-by-step guide to how to get a job in 2017. Perhaps the most important step in these guidelines is to keep a job search notebook or spreadsheet. We recommend including fields for company name, company website, important contacts at the company, and the status of your application. When you are searching for a job that meets very specific requirements that you choose (i.e. your dream job), you can add a field in your spreadsheet that makes a note of which positions and companies meet your various requirements. What will result is a list of jobs that visually points to the ones that meet the most aspects of what you consider to be your dream job.

In the Forbes article, “4 Practical Ways To Find Your Life’s Passion And A Career You Love,” writer Deena Varshavskaya makes several excellent points on how to prevent yourself from skipping over what could be your dream job. Among them are, “Don’t make money your primary consideration” and “Don’t set an artificial ceiling for yourself.” If you try to prioritize your success, your happiness, and your personal professional growth in your job search, you may find that in the past you’ve limited yourself from exploring jobs or career paths that were not as lucrative or as professionally recognized as the one you ultimately followed, the one that now makes you unhappy.

Most people think of the concept of “deal breakers,” with regards to relationships. However, the concept applies to finding a job, too. Deal breakers in relationships are dangerous because they lay down negative standards that an individual must “pass” in order for pursuit of a relationship to be considered acceptable. You end up scrutinizing every person you meet, searching for their flaws, rather than allowing their good qualities to shine through to begin with. Many people say they missed out on love and friendships because they set too many impossible “deal breaker” standards and ultimately ended up isolating themselves. The same concept applies with jobs. If you’re having trouble finding your dream job, then perhaps you need to reevaluate your expectations for salary, hours, location, workflow, company hierarchy, etc. When searching for your dream job, try to prioritize your happiness at work, rather than any deal breakers you have outlined for your career.

While these tips may seem simplistic, the point we want to underscore is that discovering and pursuing your dream job will rely heavily on your own introspection. Ultimately, by routinely evaluating your work-related processes, goals, and wellbeing, you’ll be able to detect when you need to make changes, what you need to change, and how to go about implementing them.

 

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Pro Tips for How to Send a Thank You Note After an Interview

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19
Jul 2017

Sending a thank you note after your interview or phone screening with a hiring manager is a crucial step in the hiring process. Apart from the general good etiquette of the practice of writing thank you notes, they are another opportunity to interact with the hiring manager while they screen other applicants and eventually make a decision about whom to hire for the position. Use our Pro Tips as a guide to writing a thank you note following your interview.

Pro Tip: Timing is everything

We at Resume Yeti recommend that you send a thank you note to your interviewer either the very same day or the day after your interview. You’ll want to give them the impression that you enjoyed the interview and that you’d like to move forward with the hiring process. Writing a prompt thank you note to the hiring manager is a great way to prove your genuine interest in the position and company. If a couple days have gone by and you’ve just realized you haven’t written a thank you note yet, you should still send one over. Sending a note a little later is certainly better than not sending one at all.

Pro Tip: Remind them why they should hire you

In your interview you probably made a case for why the company should hire you. When you write a thank you note to the hiring manager, you should summarize this pitch in one or two sentences, alongside expressing your gratitude for their time and consideration.

Pro Tip: Tell AND show

Often during interviews, you talk about successful projects you’ve completed yourself or that you’ve been a part of. Sometimes there is no way to quickly access a project in your portfolio in the moment when you’re talking about it with the hiring manager during the interview. If you discussed any past projects or items in your portfolio during the interview, your follow-up thank you note is a way to provide that access to the hiring manager.

In general, It’s important to have your portfolio uploaded and ready to be viewed online. It makes it convenient for you to share it easily on the spot if you need to. In your thank you note you can say something like, “I wanted to pass along the links to the projects we discussed during the interview. The first project ________ can be seen here [insert URL], and the other one, _________ is available here [insert URL].” Provide the name of the project and the year, as well as a link so the hiring manager can view the projects at their convenience.

If you’re stuck on formatting your thank you note, you can check out these different examples for various purposes. And before you hit “Send” on that email, be sure to read over these quick tips:

Quick Tip: Use your professional email address
In a world where it’s so easy to switch between accounts and be connected across multiple devices, sometimes you can accidentally send a professional email from one of your personal accounts. Do a quick double check to make sure your “sent from” address is the right one.

Quick Tip: Spell and grammar check.
It’s an obvious tip, but you’d be surprised how many people send grammatically incorrect emails with spelling errors. Spell/Grammar check is just as important in professional correspondences as it is in your resume writing.

Quick Tip: Check your valediction
Make sure to sign off cordially, using valedictions like “Sincerely,” “Regards,” or “All my best.”

Quick Tip: Update your signature
In addition to their name and phone number, many people include links to their social media, website, portfolio, current organization, or LinkedIn in their automated signature. Double check the links in yours to make sure they are up-to-date and functioning.

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Take it from the Stats! Proven Ways to Optimize your LinkedIn Profile

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29
Jun 2017

If you have ever been hesitant about using LinkedIn, allow the statistics to erase your apprehension. It’s no myth that LinkedIn has revolutionized the contemporary workforce, and has provided proof of the powerful interconnectedness of professional networks. It’s estimated that 106 million unique users visit LinkedIn each month, and that every second two new users join the network. It’s not just the number of users that’s increasing, either. From 2016 to 2017, the use of LinkedIn company pages grew from 24% to 57%. If those facts aren’t enough to make you consider creating a LinkedIn profile or using yours more, consider that as of now, 71% of professionals feel that LinkedIn is a credible source for professional content. That means that if you aren’t using LinkedIn, you should be.

Using statistics as a guide, we’ll discuss the ways that you can optimize your LinkedIn use and profile, or create one if you have not done so yet.

Pro Tip: Get Visual

FACT: LinkedIn profiles with professional photos get 21 times more profile views, and 36 times more messages.

If that’s not reason enough to amp up the visuals on your LinkedIn account, I don’t know what is! The simple act of adding a professional headshot increases your visibility by 21 times. On top of that, you’ll be much more likely to receive messages from contacts. 

Pro Tip: Flaunt your Skills, literally 

FACT: Listing your skills on your LinkedIn profile results in 13 times more profile views than if skills are left unlisted.

Recently, we blogged about the importance of having a Key Skills section on your resume, and how listing your skills can help you rank higher in Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS). Turns out it’s also proven that including key skills on your LinkedIn profile can increase your profile’s viewer traffic by up to 13 times. Remember, the more people see your profile, the more of a chance you’ll have of making productive connections.

Pro Tip: Talk the talk, so walk the walk

FACT: There are 19.7 million Slideshares uploaded to LinkedIn.

Slideshares are LinkedIn’s way of showcasing work portfolios and your past presentations (in the form of PowerPoint, PDF, Keynote, and OpenDocument). We’ve already mentioned how simply adding a profile picture to give your name a face can increase your visibility and interconnectedness on LinkedIn. Apply that same logic to adding visible examples of all the great things you write in your profile. Adding samples of your work makes your project descriptions that much more credible.

Pro Tip: Get Someone to back you up 

Fact: There have been over 10 billion LinkedIn endorsements

Endorsements are LinkedIn’s way of adding third party verification of your professional successes, talents and work ethic. People you’ve worked with can testify to how great you are. What better way to make other professionals want to connect with you and share opportunities with you than to have others give testament to your successes? 

Pro Tip: Get Creative

FACT: The most overused LinkedIn profile word continues to be “Motivated” – which also topped 2014 and 2015. 

We’ve blogged about phrases that will kill your resume. Among them are clichéd phrases that, when you think about them, seem very vague and don’t really describe anything about you. The same philosophy goes with LinkedIn language. If you use the word “motivated” in your profile, take it out and replace it with something else. Same thing goes for any other cliché words and catchphrases.

In closing, we hope you’ve now decided that you need to create a LinkedIn profile. If you’re looking for a job, know that LinkedIn now has 3 million active job listings on the platform. Out of LinkedIn’s 467 million users, you are bound to make some incredible connections that pave the golden way forward in your career.

All statistics sourced from “LinkedIn By The Numbers: 2017 Statistics.”

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Include Key Skills on your Resume to Beat Applicant Tracking Systems

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27
Jun 2017

The Key Skills/Core Competencies section is generally the second major section of the resume, placed right after your header – containing your name, email, phone number, and relevant social media links – and your professional profile. In Resume Yeti’s Anatomy of a Perfect Resume, we liken the Professional Profile and Key Skills sections to an “elevator pitch.” In other words, it’s a lightning fast way to create a portrait of your strengths. In a more technical sense, this section is also a way to clearly include keywords that will rank you higher in Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS).

You can read more about ATS here, but in short, the ATS is the first step of the hiring manager’s resume screening process. If the company uses an ATS in the hiring process, then before a person ever looks at your resume, it will be fed through the system in order to select only the applicants that are a “match” for the job description. The ATS only selects resumes that contain specific keywords that are relevant to the position. So, it is crucial to make sure that your resume contains the correct keywords to be selected out of the first screening pool and move on to the next step in the application process, during which a person would evaluate your resume.

You inevitably include many keywords throughout your resume, in your job titles and the descriptions of your responsibilities. However, the Key Skills section is a place where you can take the opportunity to showcase your relevant skills all in one place. Some people recommend not including this section, but there is no reason why you shouldn’t. The benefits of listing your skills far outweigh any disadvantages to including them. Here are some of Resume Yeti’s Pro Tips on the advantages of including a Key Skills/Core Competencies section on your resume, and how to do it right.

Pro Tip:  Including a Key Skills section will help you rank higher in an applicant tracking system (ATS)

As previously mentioned, an ATS is often the first step in screening applications for an open position. If your resume does not include enough content that matches the filters the hiring manager has set in the ATS, your resume will not be selected to move on to the next step in the process.

The use of Applicant Tracking Systems is on the rise. An article on Recruiting Daily states that an estimated 75% of big companies use an ATS. And with developments in the technology, it’s becoming much easier and more affordable for small companies to use the programs, too.  Advertisements for Applicant Tracking Systems boast that for employers, the use of an ATS is cost effective and saves extensive amounts of time in the hiring process. Since most companies are using these programs, it is likely your resume will need to be ATS friendly. Therefore, it’s best to prepare your resume so that if it is screened electronically, you’ll have enough matching keywords to move on.

Pro Tip: Your Key Skills should mirror the job descriptions that interest you

So now you know why you need to include a Key Skills/Core Competencies section on your resume, the next logical question is how to do it. The best possible way that you can prepare your resume for an Applicant Tracking System is to be sure that it includes many of the same keywords as the jobs you’re applying for. Hiring managers will often pull keywords from the job description itself to plug into the ATS filters. It’s a good idea for your Key Skills section to mirror the job description.

Apart from those listed in the job description, you can include additional Key Skills that are relevant to the industry of the job you’re applying for. Browse similar job postings, and take note of the desired skill requirements that are being solicited.

We at Resume Yeti make this task even easier for you by providing a Resume Keyword index. In this Index, you’ll find categorized lists of the most common keywords for over 150 different professions. In addition to your own research, including some keywords from this index may help your resume to rank higher in the ATS, and hopefully get your resume in front of human eyes!

Pro Tip: Include a maximum of 20 Key Skills in this section

Once you realize the importance of trying to match your resume to the ATS filters, it’s easy to get carried away and want to include everything you find, to be sure that your resume passes the first screening. But you also have to remember that once your resume does make it past the electronic portion of the process, the same document has to pass a human screening, too. Listing 3 pages of Key Skills might make you appealing to a computer program, but it’s likely to deter human interest in your resume. Thus, you’ll need to strike a balance between optimizing your resume’s keywords for the ATS and optimizing your resume’s other content (like Professional Experience, Education, Noteworthy, Accomplishments, etc.) and aesthetic. We recommend making an extensive initial list of keywords and selecting your top 20 for inclusion in your Key Skills section. Most Key Skills sections will consist of 2 or 3 columns instead of one long list to save space, so you’ll want to make sure these columns are balanced out as well.

 

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How to get Recruited for a Job

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22
Jun 2017

Recruitment for a job can come in many different forms. Traditionally, job recruitment has been limited to job boards, classified ads, and recruitment firms. Nowadays, job recruitment, like many other industries, has sprawled out across the Internet and takes place in a myriad of unique and unconventional ways. Digital job boards like Monster.com, Indeed.com, Idealist.org, and CareerBuilder.com have replaced traditionally published classified ads, and have become the “go-to” platforms where job seekers search for open positions. However, recruitment (in which hiring managers and recruiting agents seek out potential job candidates, not the other way around) is now happening at several other levels. There are many strategies job seekers can utilize in order to get noticed by recruiters and be ready to jump on exciting opportunities that arise in the ever-constant job hunt. While recruitment is certainly not something that job seekers can consistently count on, it is certainly an exciting way to open yourself up to opportunities that you might not have otherwise encountered on your own. What follows are Resume Yeti’s Pro Tips on how to ready yourself to be recruited.

Pro Tip: Keep your resume up to date, up to the minute.

Keeping your resume current is the most important element of job hunting. It’s an easy thing to let go of when you’ve been employed for a while or when you haven’t had to send your resume out in a long time. But it is absolutely crucial that you tend to your resume each and every time there is something new that you could add to it. If a recruiting opportunity arises and your resume is not ready, you will become overwhelmed by the process of updating and perfecting your resume, and in the time it takes to do that, you may miss the deadline to apply, or the recruiter might think you lost interest because of the lag in your response time. So, right now, before you do anything, get your resume up to date!

Pro Tip: Develop your skills to stay relevant

Almost as crucial as keeping your resume up to date, is keeping yourself up to date. Your skills, that is. As we mentioned above, today’s job market is seamlessly intertwined with the digital realm. Digital technology upheaves, updates, and revitalizes itself seemingly in the blink of an eye. This means that, at any given moment, your digital skill set may become outdated or obsolete.

To keep your skills relevant, it’s important that you’re constantly searching through job listings and job descriptions to ensure that the skill set that you posses is in line with what hiring managers expect of job candidates in your industry. If you come across something in your skill set that you need to brush up on or learn for the first time, you can keep yourself relevant by signing up for a seminar, class, or workshop to develop that skill. Attending skill development classes in your industry will also put you in contact with others in that industry whom you may not have met otherwise. Who knows, recruitment opportunities could arise for you simply by keeping your skill set up to date.

Pro Tip: Go to networking events and keep your own network current

Another way to be recruited, outside of digital job boards and attending skills development workshops, is to network your heart out. This includes regularly attending networking events within your industry. A quick Google search of “[your industry]” + “networking events” + “[your location]” will yield tons of networking opportunities for you, ranging from formal meet and greet events to more informal networking cocktail hours. Don’t forget to bring your business cards!

Staying on top of your networking game doesn’t only apply to expanding your professional network. It also applies to keeping in touch with your current network. Your contacts will be much more likely to reach out to you with an opportunity or help you out if you maintain your relationship with them past the time that you actually worked together. Keep in touch with them. Invite them to coffee or happy hour to catch up, see what projects they’re working on, what their next career plans are. That way, your relationship with your contacts is not purely transactional. It’s pretty transparent when an old work contact emails or calls out of the blue and asks for a favor. People in your network are much more likely to reach out or respond to you if you show them that you genuinely care about them outside of asking them for a random employment favor.

Pro Tip: Make yourself visible

Make yourself easy to find. One of the easiest methods of screening applicants or recommended job candidates is to Google them, and hiring managers do it. If you’re hoping to be recruited, you need to find ways to make yourself come up in a list of search results. There are so many ways to improve your visibility. The easiest and most practical way is to open your own professional social media accounts. Number one on this list should be LinkedIn. LinkedIn is a pool of about 250 million people in the modern workforce. Participating in this community increases your odds of being noticed by some of them. Making a LinkedIn profile in your name will also make your name appear in the results when someone Googles you. For tips on how to increase your visibility on LinkedIn, check out their article, “It’s Your Career: How to Get Recruiters to Notice You on LinkedIn.” Another way to increase your visibility in search engines is to make a website, if it makes sense for your work and your industry. Even if the “site” is just a landing page with some information about you, the most important thing is that your name and site would be another item that surfaces in a Google search of your name.

Again, being recruited is not a given. But if you test out these Pro Tips, you may find opportunities rolling in that were not made available to you previously. At the very least, by constantly readying yourself for job opportunities, you open yourself to be capable of applying immediately and confidently for outstanding positions you come across in your job hunt.

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How to Talk about your Weaknesses in Job Interviews

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19
Jun 2017

“What’s your biggest weakness?” is one of the most difficult questions to answer truthfully and genuinely in a job interview. It’s one of the most anticipated interview questions; there’s a strong chance you’ll be asked about your weaknesses. Yet many people feel that it’s uncomfortable and near impossible to answer this question. Why is it so hard to talk about our weaknesses?

No one wants to readily highlight their flaws to a hiring manager. But there is another motive behind inquiring about weaknesses. What the hiring manager really wants is to gauge is whether you’re aware of your own work habits and tendencies that could use some improvement. They also want to see if you know how to take the initiative to address your weaknesses.

Instead of viewing this question as the one where you throw yourself under the bus in front of your potential employer, think of it as an opportunity to show both your maturity and desire to grow as an employee. The key is to state what you believe your “weakness” to be, and then immediately acknowledge that you know how to improve upon it, and that when given any opportunity, you take the necessary steps to correct it.

Below are some examples of common workplace “weaknesses,” and Resume Yeti’s Pro Tips on how to improve these answers if the question comes up in your interview.

Your Weakness: “Sometimes I have been late on assignments because I take on too many projects at once.”

Pro Tip: I’ve always been a great multi-tasker, but sometimes I bite off more than I can chew. There are occasions when I misjudge the amount of time I need to complete a project, and that can throw off my whole workflow. I am working on my time management, though. Once I realized that I could juggle multiple projects, I started building in buffer time to my schedule so that if anything should come up during the course of a project, I have ample time to address the issue and still complete the project in time for the deadline.

Your weakness: “I can be disorganized”

Pro Tip: As a creative person, it’s always been hard for me to stay organized. I’ve been working on my organizational skills by implementing color coding in my calendars and files as well as exhaustive To-Do lists. These strategies are successful because they play into my creativity, and I’ve found that the secret to staying organized is staying consistent.

Your weakness: “I’m bad at public speaking”

Pro Tip: I think to a certain extent, everyone struggles with speaking or giving a presentation in front of a room full of people. Public speaking has always been a skill I’d like to improve, and I know one of the best ways to do that is to engage in it more often. Another way to improve is to make sure that I know the material inside and out. Each time I’m assigned with a presentation or a task that involves public speaking, instead of worrying about the speaking aspect, I pour all my energy into making sure I have everything practiced and memorized. I feel with each presentation my public speaking skills improve.

Your weakness: “I’m a procrastinator”

Pro Tip: When I was a student, I used to procrastinate on assignments. After college, this habit carried over into my work life too. However, I realized very quickly that procrastination hindered my workflow and I figured out a system to budget my time accordingly so that each project could be finished not just on time, but before the deadline.

Your weakness: “I prefer to work on my own because when I work with a team, there are always problems with the project’s final outcome.”

Pro Tip: Delegating tasks on a collaborative project has always been difficult. Yet teamwork is such a crucial part of any workplace and any workflow. To make delegating various aspects of the project easier, I started making spreadsheets to visually divide up the workflow. This visual aid helps to envision the breakdown of responsibilities on the project and also helps avoid confusion if collaborators have questions about what their specific tasks are. It also leaves room to include extra tasks so that if anyone finishes their section earlier than the other collaborators, they will know the next item on the agenda to push the project workflow forward.

Your weakness: “I’m a perfectionist”

Pro Tip: I strive to ensure that every detail on a given project is as close to perfect as I can make it. I know that perfectionism often comes at a price; to agonize over each small detail of a project can also put the project behind schedule because of the extra time it takes to go over everything multiple times. As I’ve grown as an employee, I’ve worked out a system so that I’m nearly satisfied with details the first time around, so I only must check once more before submitting the project to be sure that it’s perfect.

 

Out of these examples, the most important common element is that none of these explanations of a “weakness” are negative. The trick is to express a skill that you’ve been working on or you need to work on in the future, and explain how you plan to go about doing that.

Remember, the best way to have a successful job interview is to practice and prepare for any questions you anticipate. Make a list of questions you think you’ll be asked, and practice answering them in front of the mirror or with a friend. Another great resource is to check www.glassdoor.com/ and see if anyone has listed the interview questions they were asked at the company you’ll be interviewing for.

 

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Optimize your Resume to Avoid Age Discrimination while Job Hunting

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14
Jun 2017

If you are over the age of 40 and have been searching for a job, there is a strong chance that you have experienced age discrimination in the hiring process. As you age and continue to apply for jobs, you may notice that call-backs and interview requests are becoming increasingly rare for you. While hiring managers may not realize that they are discriminating against applicants based on their age, there are several age-related factors that could negatively affect how your resume is viewed, and those factors subsequently affect whether or not you are invited for an interview.

The Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967 states that employers shall not discriminate against job applicants or workers who are over the age of 40 throughout the hiring process or in the workplace. Employers declare themselves Equal Opportunity Employers, though treating each applicant equally is much more challenging in practice than in theory. Hiring managers may have the impulse to gravitate, subconsciously even, toward applicants who give the impression of being young. According to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, this practice is illegal. Yet it persists in the modern workforce because of the subtle behaviors we adopt from societal attitudes and stigmas, as well as the difficulty in enforcing equal employment opportunity laws.

Your resume projects who you are to hiring managers. As their first impression of you, your resume has the power to be the one thing that compels them to elevate you to the next step in the hiring process. There are several ways in which you can optimize your resume to ensure that you are not discriminated against based on your age. Below are Resume Yeti’s Pro Tips on how to optimize your resume for the modern job hunt.

Pro Tip: Focus on your most recent positions

In the “Professional Experience” section on your resume, you should emphasize only the most recent positions you have held. While it is crucial to include professional experience that is relevant to the positions you are applying for, any jobs outside of the past 10-15 years should not appear in the main “Professional Experience” section of your resume. Instead, you can simply list these positions in an “Additional Experience” section below your “Professional Experience” Section. The positions you list under additional experience do not need to include dates, though you may be asked about dates during an interview.

Pro Tip: Keep your resume short

No matter how many unique work experiences you have had, or how many years you’ve been working, your resume should ideally be two pages or less (three at the absolute maximum). Having an overly lengthy resume can indicate your age to hiring managers. Long resumes can also be overwhelming to read and process, and they can actually work against you in the hiring process. Keep your Professional Experience descriptions concise and direct, with three short bullet points per position.

Pro Tip: Eliminate your graduation dates

By dating your education, you date yourself. If you alert hiring managers to the year you graduated from college, they can estimate your age within a few years. Your age is supposed to be irrelevant to hiring managers, but if they calculate your age based on your education dates, it opens up the chance that they could discriminate against you, however unknowingly.

Watch out for this question in interviews, too. Even if you remove your graduation dates from your resume, hiring managers could attempt to gauge your age by casually asking what year you graduated from college or high school in an interview. If this question should surface in the hiring process, you may be able to deflect it by responding, “May I ask the reason why you need this information?” or “I could order you a copy of my transcript if necessary.”

Pro Tip: Modernize your resume’s appearance

Again, your resume is hiring managers’ first impression of you. This part of your application is a way of projecting who you are without ever meeting someone from the office in person. Older job applicants have a tendency to use outdated visual techniques and formats in their resumes. In today’s job market, many applicants are utilizing graphic design and self-branding in order to attract the attention of hiring managers. If you can modernize your resume’s appearance, then you will not stick out as an older applicant when hiring managers first screen resumes for the position. If you are worried that you don’t have the graphic design skills to modernize your resume, don’t worry! Resume Yeti uses an online system in which you type in your information, and the program rearranges it into your choice of a beautiful modern template.

It may not be possible to eliminate age discrimination in the workplace and hiring process, but it is possible to prevent it from happening to you. Test our Pro Tips, and get ready to receive more call-backs and interview requests than before!

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