Keppie Careers

Social media speaker, social media consultant, job search coach

Looking for a New Organizing Tool to Help With Your Job Hunt?

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To end the week, I thought I’d share some information from my friend and Professional Organizer and Coach, Lauren Davidson. She recently blogged about an online organizing tool called www.Toodledo.com.

Lauren says:

This thing can prioritize, it can sort, it can synch with Outlook, Google calendar. You can SEND IT new items using JOTT or even JITTER (and a few more). Get this: you can format the lists to print out such that you can fold them into a little book.

The best part is it’s EASY to use and EASY to maintain. Dare I say, it’s FUN to use? This is THE software I recommend for setting goals and tracking progress. Talk about no more excuses! I haven’t been so excited about a productivity tool since I met and fell in love with my Blackberry Pearl.

That’s pretty high praise from a productivity expert! So, if you’re having a hard time keeping your “to do” list together to get your job search in order, check out www.Toodledo.com. Maybe it’s just what you need to get you started – or to keep you on the right path.

Other useful resources for job hunters:

Razume
The Career Search Organizer
Jibber Jobber
Getting from College to Career

If you’re ready to start your job search or need some help getting going, Keppie Careers is here for you! Need a great resume? Some help to write the perfect cover letter? Write to me and visit www.keppiecareers.com for more about what services we provide.

If you want to receive free up-to-date tips to help with your job hunt, Click here to subscribe to receive future blogs sent directly to you!

Razume Relaunches with New Tools for Job Seekers

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I’m excited to share some news from a cyber friend, Sam Blum, one of the founders of Razume. Razume aims to provide job seekers “with all the tools, resources and guidance…to find and land your perfect job.”

This week, TechCrunch announced Razume’s relaunch after completing a 12-week program with incubator LaunchBoxDigital…

While there are lots of businesses out there to help the employer (Job boards, etc.), there is a huge under-served opportunity to focus on the needs of the job seeker, especially ones without the power of a robust LinkedIn network to help them in their job seeking journey.

The opportunity: There are over 20 million job change events happening this year, and the average 18-year old today is expected to make over 10 job changes before they hit 38 years of age.

Razume helps the job seeker along three dimensions. First, it helps a person develop a professional resume, starting with powerful authoring tools and online tips, and then making it simple for a person to reach out and get tips on fine-tuning their resume from friends, associates and, just as importantly, the Razume community itself. Simple annotation and commenting tools allow people to give very specific feedback to turn someone’s resume into a better, more effective marketing tool.

After that, Razume helps get the resume into the market. That’s done through two means: a free one-click posting of the resume to the major job boards (a service that costs $59+ at other sites), and use of the Razume Job Finder to browse and bookmark jobs of interest from over 7 million job listings on the web.

Once a user has a call-back, Razume helps them prepare for that interview with useful tips and techniques, plus tools to help research prospective employers that, ultimately, helps a person get the job and make the right decision.

Want to learn more? Take a look at this video explaining Razume.

As a featured Razume Expert Reviewer, I’m particularly excited to see the new features launched this week. When I spoke to Sam, I was thrilled to learn that his passion for helping job seekers fueled his interest in focusing full-time on creating and growing Razume into an indispensable tool for job seekers.

Are you interested in getting feedback on your resume? Are you an expert in your field who would enjoy sharing your skills with others seeking work in your industry? Want to check out an up-and-coming platform that focuses on helping job seekers – for free? I hope you’ll take a look at Razume and join the community.

I’m happy to offer your my expert resume advice! Need a great resume? Some help to write the perfect cover letter? I’m here to help! Write to me.

If you want to receive free up-to-date tips to help with your job hunt, Click here to subscribe to receive future blogs sent directly to you!

Video Resumes – Not the Next Big Thing (Yet)

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My cyber-friend, Chris Russel, of Secrets of the Job Hunt Network, recently shared this information about video resumes:

MENLO PARK, Calif., July 31 /PRNewswire/ — In an increasingly competitive job market, applicants are looking for new ways to stand out from the crowd, but a recent survey suggests submitting a video resume may not be the answer. Just one in four (24 percent) senior executives interviewed said their companies accept video resumes from candidates.

The survey was developed by Robert Half International, the world’s first and largest staffing services firm specializing in accounting and finance. It was conducted by an independent research firm and is based on
interviews with 150 senior executives from the nation’s 1,000 largest companies.

Executives were asked, “Does your company accept video resumes from job seekers?” Their responses:
Yes ……………………24%
No …………………….58%
Don’t know ………..18%

“Before submitting a video resume, job candidates should check with the hiring manager to ensure the company does not have a policy against their use in evaluating candidates,” said Max Messmer, chairman and CEO of Robert Half International and author of Job Hunting For Dummies(R), 2nd Edition (John Wiley & Sons, Inc.).

Although there are certainly some great uses for video resumes, for example when the job involves being on screen or making presentations, I was not surprised to learn that they are not yet widely accepted.

My thinking?

  • Viewing video resumes takes too long. Conventional wisdom is saying that resumes receive an 8-second glance. It takes that long to load and press “play” for a video resume. Most employers are too impatient and don’t have time to take these seriously right now.
  • In my opinion, no one should send a video resume without being coached on how to look, what to wear, what to do with their hands, how not to fidget. The list goes on and on. The fact is, looking good on camera requires more than sitting in front of it. The camera itself and the person BEHIND the camera can have a lot to do with the finished product. If you don’t have a coach and an expert behind the scenes, consider the fact that your video resume will look like a 5th-grade humanities project.
  • Many organizations worry about bias. Having a visual as the first impression of a candidate is not traditional in U.S. hiring, and using videos may open the door to charges of discrimination. This is not to say that a video is the only way to see what someone looks like, but using it as a screening tool can open up employers to problems.

The fact is, unless your job requires being on camera, demonstrating your skill (or lack thereof) in this medium is not of much value. Unless you are fabulously attractive, well spoken, coached in the best ways to appear on camera AND have great camera operators and technology to back it all up, stick to a paper resume or consider an on-line resume that allows links and a portfolio, such as visualcv.com if you MUST do something different. (Keeping in mind that most employers don’t have more than 8 seconds for your documents!)

What do you think of video resumes? Does your company allow them? Would you consider using one?

Video resume! You don’t even have any resume! Need a great resume? Some help to write the perfect cover letter? I’m here to help! Write to me.

If you want to receive free up-to-date tips to help with your job hunt, Click here to subscribe to receive future blogs sent directly to you!

photo by ianbwarner

Lost At Sea? Career Search Strategies and Tips for Today's Job Market

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Can you believe it is already August? Before you know it, you’ll blink and it’ll be Labor Day, and the summer will really be over.

Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be a lot of good news in the employment sector. Rough waters continue to prevail, and many may be feeling lost at sea in a turbulent economy. Careerbuilder.com summarized the latest data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which released its monthly summary of job data for July 2008:

  • Unemployment rose from 5.5% in June to 5.7% in July.
  • There were 51,000 fewer jobs in July. Total job loss for 2008 so far is 463,000. That is an average of 66,000 jobs lost per month.
  • The most notable losses were in construction, manufacturing and employment services. The drop for employment services indicates far fewer companies are using temporary help.
  • The report also mentioned that teenagers and young adults who usually take on part-time jobs during the summer have had challenges in finding a job this year.

What does all of this mean to you?

It depends. If you work in one of the harder-hit sectors, it could very well mean that your job is in jeopardy, and you need to start thinking about what you will do if you are out of work.

I’ve written a lot about job seeking in a recession. Some links that might be useful:

You are still feeling lost in a tailspin of negative jobs data? You can’t focus on what to do next? Here is some advice from my friend and colleague, Walter Akana, Certified Personal Branding Strategist at Threshold Consulting:

Stop everything! Evaluate where you have been, what you most want to do and think about where you can do it. Walter suggests answering the following questions from the book Zen and the Art of Making a Living:

  • What work best reflects who I am?
  • Whom do I want to serve/work with?
  • What will I most enjoy doing?
  • To what will I be willing to devote myself?

To help evaluate alternatives and focus, Walter recommends creating a personal career alternatives matrix. List your ideal job criteria, interests and capabilities in the first column, and then three or four alternatives in successive columns. This exercise is designed to help you focus on getting on a track that suits you, which might be a very different track from the one you’ve been on most recently!

Take the plunge and look for a job! Still need a great resume? Some help to write the perfect cover letter? I’m here to help! Write to me.

If you want to receive free up-to-date tips to help with your job hunt, Click here to subscribe to receive future blogs sent directly to you!

Photo by Irish Sheep

New Job – Longer-Term Strategies

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This week’s posts have offered tips for starting a new job. From first-day jitters to adjusting to company culture – how you manage your transition will shape your impact at your new job.

To top off the week, here are a few more tips to focus on for the longer term.

These are things to consider to help ensure your success in a new company down the road:

Start trying to figure out who is in charge. You may be surprised where the real power is in your new workplace. Maybe the receptionist holds a lot of authority. Who seems to make the decisions? The quicker you learn, the better off you’ll be.

Ask questions, but keep your opinions to yourself. No one expects you to reinvent the wheel in your first week (or month!)

Volunteer to help. Be a hero – offer to do a job no one else wants to do. There’s no better way to win friends and influence people than by stepping up to the plate. An added benefit? If you wind up solving a big problem, your ability to influence the workplace goes way up!

Rome wasn’t built in a day. Even if there are a lot of expectations riding on you, don’t start a new job expecting to make a lot of changes right away. Learn how things are done and why before you start implementing new policies. Demonstrate that you value what has been done before you got there, even if you plan to change everything! You’ll win a lot more friends with honey than with vinegar!

What tips have worked for you in starting a new job successfully?

Wish you were facing new job jitters? Take the plunge and look for a job! Still need a great resume? Some help to write the perfect cover letter? I’m here to help! Write to me.

If you want to receive free up-to-date tips to help with your job hunt, Click here to subscribe to receive future blogs sent directly to you!

photo by decor8