Saturday, January 27, 2007

Don't Make Mistakes at Your Interview

This article's title may seem like an oxymoron; after all you really are not supposed to make mistakes during an interview. Unfortunately, regardless of how good your resume may be, if you make mistakes at your interview, you might as well not have come in the first place. Sounds harsh, eh? But that's the real world. This is not to say that companies are in search only of perfect, flawless droids who never ever make mistakes, but it's best that you present yourself in the job interview in the best light possible. During your online job search, you may encounter problems. Some can be overcome very easily, others happen without thinking. So when you are called in for your job interview, whatever you do, rehearse each and every step you may come across with your interviewer.If you have a friend who works in the human resources department, then he or she might give you advice on what and what not to do during a job interview, as they know these things the best. Otherwise, you can just rehearse the interview with a friend who's willing to grill you and assess your answers.Here are a few other tips you will want to know before you show up for that interview and land that job.Communicate wellEven if the job you are applying for doesn't require you to be articulate (e.g. web developer, technician), it still pays to be vocal during the interview. Make eye contact with your job interviewer, give a firm handshake, stand tall, and speak clearly and audibly. Feel confident and you will have won half the battle already.Watch Your Body LanguageBody language can make or break your chances at your job interview. The first impression you make will be the one and only lasting one and can be an excellent beginning to your interview or a very swift finale. Watch your body language then. Sit straight, don't slouch, and be relaxed as much as possible. Pay attention to to the job interviewer's body language so you can adjust yours in synch with his or hers.Listen AttentivelyOut of fear and nervousness, many of us get mental blocks during an interview, a not-so-promising scenario (especially when being asked why we left our last job.) Remember that your interviewer is going to ask you tough questions, and your demeanor during the whole process says a lot about how you can handle stress at the workplace.Be attentive then. Of course if you are not attentive or cannot understand what your interviewer is trying to convey, you'll surely won't make it on the ‘short list.’

Saturday, January 20, 2007

Importance of Career Planning

Career means profession, which we want to adopt for earning livelihood, and planning means proper flow or to make proper decisions. Pre- planning in our life plays very important role in every aspect of life, to work in a proper flow, and pre-planning for career, which we want to pursue in our future ahead after acquiring certain level of degree is also very necessary in today’s competitive world.

According to the Thorndike dictionary

“A goal that you desire to achieve in a selected field or occupation with a well-thought out plan, to get you there is called Career Planning.”

The world is now moving very fast, and the time has come when this meritocratic society accepts only those, having right qualification and right skills. Olden days are gone, when just a degree would help an individual to get high profile job by giving bribe or using some other mean. Now it’s high time, when the transparency in job recruitment has taken place.

Challenges and competition are the part of today’s society, and therefore, Career Planning is the only task, which can guide us to do what we want to do in our life, rather than just aimlessly changing job all the time in future.

We have seen many Pakistani, who after completing Intermediate don’t know where to go, what to do and we have also seen graduates, who aimlessly do graduation without any specialization. As a result, they earns just in 6-8 figures.

Career Planning is one of the broader aspects of learning in our existence. We all have some intentions and we all think to have stability in our future lives, and for that purpose, CAREER PLANNING serves as a key to success.

Career Planning makes a person to think suitably about their positive and negative aspects. All about their interest, about their creativity becomes possible through proper analyzing ourselves.

Career Planning basically starts, when a person finishes Secondary/ Higher Secondary level of education. After that level, a person could opt for that educational degree, which would help them out to have a good job opportunity according to their skills at the right time.

Career Planning helps us to design and formulate our future smoothly. Like, If a person wants to be a banker, then he or she would choose to go for ACCA or CA or MBA in finance after completing Intermediate in commerce and Graduation in commerce/ business administration.. Else he/ she would go for CAT course or Masters in Commerce or even upto doctorate level.

This pre-planning would be effective and would give him/her benefits after achieving educational targets effectively. It also helps us to evaluate our own personality, which helps us to know that which kind of job would suit us according to our need and capabilities.

In short, Career Planning is like mapping our future.

Without proper planning, no one could think of getting a desired job in future.

Think what we want to do and finding out more about the kind of training, education, and skills we will need to achieve our career goal is the core objective of career planning. It help us knowing the nature of the jobs that interest us, such as educational requirements, salary, working conditions, fringe benefits, promotion chances, future prospectus, and help us focusing in the right dimension.

Career planning directs us, motivates us, and helps us to accomplish what we want. A career goal is a specific vision such as an architect or a teacher or a career goal can be a particular field, which we want to work in, such as Media, Education, Medicine, Engineering etc.

For those who will think about their future and career after completing education without any long term desired goals are the one, whose all attempt might end in smoke. There are some cases and situation, which bound a person to pre-plan in advance, such like family high family business status, lack of interest in studies or traditional job, low motivation, low financial status etc or some past educational traumas, which had made a person to plan after wards.

Career planning is a life time process we are always learning and growing, and as we do, our interests and needs also change. Career planning is not just making plans to obtain our career, but it also help us to make many adjustments there will be along the ways we learn throughout our lives.

Those who have successful careers like educators, business man, manager, pilot, architect, banker, doctor etc are the one, who has made their ways through proper guidance.

No doubt, that our parents have some wishes and expectations from us, but we have our own too. Therefore, we should also consider others opinion. For that we could take guidance from an educational counselor to get better guidance towards new dimensional fields as well. Teacher, professionals, career guidance websites, Head educational consultants can also guide us, to have a better approach for our future.

We must have freedom of speaking and freedom of choosing our career as we have to lead our lives which interest us. We must try to have an open mind in order to choose the right career on right time.

According to one renowned professor,

“Few of us like to opt for those degree courses, which their family or friend has advised them to adopt and this inappropriate knowledge trapped them into a great mistake and In this way, they are unable to get good job opportunities according to their interests. Only Proper Career Guidance would help an individual to be on the right path before hand. Few of us try to seek the right path and take guidance from family or teacher to tell them what is good for them, which career is in demand and which career suits their interest.”

The future is un-predictable, however, we could still make our place in this meritocratic world by making career goals and plans in advance, for getting better opportunities in todays pluralistic and globalize world. We must pre-plan our goals under the supervision of professionals in conscious state of mind, so that we could strategically maintain our goals and follow it towards the path of successful future.

Munir Moosa Sewani is one of the famous, prominent and creative name in the field of Education since 8 years. He is a Master Trainer In Special Education, Post Graduate, Teacher Educator and a Teacher. He is a Freelance Writer and Photographer too. He is an author of the famous self-published storybook for children named as "The MORAL STORIES FOR CHILDREN" and has also written Biology course book for Secondary Classes. He has written almost more than 20 articles on social, health, educational and cultural issues, which are internationally recognized and published in most of the famous world wide websites, magazines and newspapers. He is also a Social worker, private tutor, career counselor, musician, lyrics writer and have multi- dimensional talents. His future plan is to write dozens of informative books and articles and to work for education and media also, in order to develop the sense of understanding many dimensions of life through his creativity.

Saturday, January 13, 2007

13 Resume Mistakes That Can Cost You The Interview

1. A BLAND OR GENERIC OBJECTIVE: If your objective could be applied to a marketing resume as easily as a resume for an accounting position, then your objective says nothing and will get you nowhere. An objective is NOT some required paragraph at the top of the page that is an exercise in 5 lines of job speak. It's an actual and real description of your skills as they're related to who you are and what you want. It should vary with the type of job for which you are applying.

2. BLAND JOB DETAILS: "Responsibilities included overseeing construction of 4 Hilton Hotels in Tri-City Metro Area, each 50 floors in height." Yeah? So what? That doesn't say if they went up on schedule or if you brought the projects in under budget. It doesn't say if you took all four from site work up or if the guy handling two of the four hotels was fired and you were promoted to overseeing all four. Differentiate yourself from the others coming in to interview. If you don't tell the hiring company how you will be an asset to them, how will they know?

3. WHO'S THE MYSTERY COMPANY?: Don't assume the name and purpose of your company is common knowledge. If it's a competitor, it might be, and if it's in the same industry and located nearby, it might be. To be on the safe side, provide a sentence or two about the focus of your company's products or services.

4. ANOTHER JOB, ANOTHER PARAGRAPH: Don't keep adding on to your resume job after job, year after year. By the time you're in your 40s, you need to have weeded out some of the earlier stuff. You don't need all the college activities, just your degree. You don't need ALL 5 bullets for each of your first two jobs.

5. REFERENCES: Shouldn't be listed on your resume. "References available on request" is the proper phrase. You present them separately when they're requested. This isn't about protocol. This is about protecting your references so they aren't called until you and the company are serious about each other.

6. IT'S NOT A STORY!: Don't - whatever you do, DON'T - write your resume in the third person!

7. SKIP THE PERSONAL INFO: You might think your weekend baseball coaching or your church choir participation shows you're an interesting and well-rounded person, but they're irrelevant. If the interviewer wants to know who you are as a person, aside from the job interview and your qualifications, he'll ask.

8. DEGREE DATE: No matter how old you are, don't leave the date of when you were graduated off your resume. It looks like you're hiding something (well, you are, aren't you?), and then everyone counts the years backwards and tries to figure out how old you are. Sometimes you can be ruled out - just for leaving the date off. If you're trying to hide your age by not stating the date, what else might you not be forthcoming about?

9. SPELL CHECK, SPELL CHECK, SPELL CHECK: Spell checking visually by you AND someone else, any fewer than three times, isn't enough. And don't forget to check your punctuation.

10. GETTING YOUR RESUME OUT THERE - part one: Don't use one of those resume blaster things. Half those sites aren't even valid. You don't know how it will come out on the other end. You don't even know where it's going or if the landing targets are employment related. It's bad form and just....NOT the way to find your perfect job. Finding your perfect job takes focus, attention, detail, individuality, tailoring, specifics. Resume blasting is about as far from that as you can get.

11. GETTING YOUR RESUME OUT THERE - part two: If it's an ad, you probably have instructions as to how to send it. If it says email, cut and paste it in the form, AND attach it. You never know what it can look like on the other end because of the variety of settings available to each user. Quite frankly, you're better off not emailing it at all, because it usually just goes into cyber space, and then it's all about the hiring company - but unfortunately, besides not sending it at all, sometimes that's your only choice. Emailing your resume takes any option for further participation right out of your hands, because often there's not even a name given for a follow up contact. You've no other option than to wait and wonder. (And half the time it's going to HR or an admin department to be scanned into an electronic database.)

12. GETTING YOUR RESUME OUT THERE - part three: If you know the company, call and ask if they prefer email, fax, or snail mail. I know a recruiter who never even opened his email. Because he was listed in The Kennedy Guide to Executive Recruiters, he received so many resumes emailed to him cold (so NOT pro-active) that he just did a mass delete every morning. Candidates contacted for a specific search were requested to snail mail their resume to him. How about that? I'll bet less than 10% of those who emailed their resumes even bothered to follow up to see if it was received (this isn't a numbers game).

13. RESUME VISUALS: Ivory paper. Black ink. Individual pages. No plastic, 7th grade, science report cover with the plastic slider or metal push down tabs. Your name centered at the top, not on a cover page that says "Introducing Clifton Lewis Montgomery III". No exceptions. Your resume is a professional document, not a school book report or an art project. Until every resume is done this way, yours will still stand out in the crowd.

You are the product, and your resume is the marketing piece. To find your perfect job you must differentiate yourself from the other people who will be interviewed.

Your resume must be specific, individualized, easy to skim so it invites a closer reading, and focused on the differences you've made with your previous companies, as well as the accomplishments you've achieved with - and for - them. This tells the hiring company what you can do for them - and it IS about the hiring company, not you.

Of course this assumes you meet the requirements for the job - otherwise it doesn't matter how good your resume is! The resume is what gets you in the door. If your resume is poorly written, looks sloppy, is difficult to read, is cryptic in any way, or necessitates being slogged through to learn your information (they won't bother), you won't even get in the door. And how can you decide whether you like the company, if they've already decided they don't like you?

Saturday, January 6, 2007

Ten Signs That You Are Ready for a New Job or Career

You've been in your job for a few years. You get a decent paycheck and your benefits are helpful. But you wonder if something's missing. You try to tell yourself you should be happy you have such a good job, but some days you have to face how unhappy you are at work.

Are you settling? Are you making do in a job that really isn't a very good fit for you?

Read this list of ten clues to determine how many of these statements reflect how you feel about your work.

1) You get depressed every time you think of going back to work after a weekend, a long weekend, or a vacation.

The closer Monday morning gets, the more a sense of dread comes over you. You feel a pit in your stomach that you can't ignore. You wish there was something, anything, you could do to avoid going to work.

2) You spend more time recovering from work than having fun.

After you leave work each day it takes you several hours to feel like yourself again. You feel so tired all you can think about is sinking into your couch and zoning out in front of your television. You may have difficulty cooking a decent meal for dinner because you are so worn out from your stressful day at work. Over time you realize you rarely have the energy to head out after work with friends. Instead you rely on a glass of wine, a carton of ice cream, or a bowl of popcorn, and a DVD movie as your outlet for fun.

3) You watch the clock all day long.

You look at the clock on your computer, your cell phone, the wall of your office. The time creeps by, slowly, so very slowly. How often do you check the time each hour? How frequently do you check the clock in the last two hours of your work day? When time moves so slowly it's a good sign you aren't enjoying your work any more.

4) You spend too much time checking your personal email rather than working.

There are lots of ways to entertain yourself when you don't feel like working--checking your personal email, sending text messages, surfing the web, scanning opportunities on your favorite job board. How much time do you spend on non-work activities during a typical workday?

5) You take frequent mental health days.

Some days you wake up and just know you can't face a day at work. What do you do? Do you call in sick? Plan a vacation day? Fabricate a doctor appointment? Leave work early? Come up with something you need to do for your children? An occasional mental health day is a good strategy to take care of yourself. If you find you are taking more and more mental health days, you may want to take a look at why you aren't happy at work.

6) You have a resignation letter drafted and waiting.

On really bad days, do you spend time tweaking your resignation letter? Does it relieve some of your feelings of dread to imagine how you'll feel when you submit your letter or to visualize how you'll celebrate your new found freedom? Do you have a time line for when you want to resign? If you haven't done so already, I encourage you to start looking at your options so that you have something in the works when you do submit your resignation letter.

7) You complain about your job to anyone who listens.

Who knows you don't like your job? A better question may be: Who doesn't know? Do your closest friends know how frustrated you are at work? What about your immediate family members? How about your coworkers and colleagues? Do you talk with your hair stylist, manicurist or chiropractor about how unhappy you are? Are any of these people tired of hearing you complain about your work situation? Do they wish you'd get on with your life already? Rather than just talking about what's not working for you, it may be time to do some personal soul searching to determine your next move.

8) You are bored silly at work.

The tasks you do at work don't engage you any more. You've been there, done that. You can do the work in your sleep...some days you feel like you are! While you try to get your work done, you dream of having work that's fulfilling, meaningful, and engaging. You don't know what that will be, but you hope something else is out there that you can do.

9) You are consistently late for work.

No matter how hard you try, you seem to show up late for work. It's like pulling teeth to get yourself out of your house and into your car to get to work. You get distracted by the simplest tasks at home, trying to do just one more thing before you head into work. You may also find that you are showing up late for appointments, meetings, and phone calls. Your tendency to show up late may also manifest in your inability to meet deadlines at work. Although you may chalk your tardiness up to laziness or procrastination, I encourage you to see it as a sign that you don't want to be doing what you feel you must do. Time to look at your options!

10) You hope to win the lottery to solve your life's problems.

When all looks bleak, it's common to look for a miracle to get yourself out of the bind you are in. For some it's daydreaming about winning the lottery so that they no longer need a job to fulfill their monetary needs. Others may dream about what they'll do when they recieve an inheritance, finding a spouse who is stable financially, or winning big at Vegas. Whatever your dream, it's likely you are searching for confirmation that your time in this job is limited.

If you recognize any of these signs in your own life, it's time to make a commitment to yourself to explore your work options. Don't waste the days of your life in a job you don't like. Even if you can't make a move today, you can start exploring your options today. As soon as you envision what you want to do, the path that will take you to your future work will become clearer and clearer.

Monday, January 1, 2007

How To Train Yourself For A New Job

If you’ve been looking for a job for any length of time, you’ll notice there are many out there beyond your level of expertise. Why is that? Is it because of your education? Your lack of experience? If you want to move ahead in your career, sometimes you need to make yourself more marketable. How exactly can you do that?

Further Your Education

Many job postings today ‘require’ degrees. If you’re in the market for one of these positions and you don’t currently hold a degree, then you need to seriously consider exploring obtaining one. Start gathering information about online distance programs, if that would suit your lifestyle better. This is true for undergraduate and graduate degrees.

If you don’t feel that a formal education is what you need, look into other specific training programs that are suitable for your field. Look through job postings and take notes on the areas where you can improve and research ways on how to do just that.

Take Advantage of Your Situation

If you’re currently employed, you can use your position to better yourself as well. Take on new tasks that will allow you to gain that experience you’re lacking. Head up a project and manage it and the people a part of it to get some managerial experience.

It can be difficult to muster up enthusiasm to try new things at a job that you dislike. If that’s you, you need to change your frame of mind. Instead of dreading every day, look at it as an opportunity to train yourself for a new, and better, job.

It’s imperative that you don’t sulk in your misery. Potential employers can spot a desperate job seeker a mile away. Even if you are desperate to get out of your current situation, take advantage of the in-house training they may provide. Can you take outside classes to hone up on your computer skills? If there is a weakness in your resume, take this time to make it a positive instead.

Looking for a job is a stressful situation. However, if you can make yourself more attractive in a potential employer’s eyes, then you need to do it. There are lots of other job seekers out there just waiting to take your dream job. Strive to make yourself easily employable and then the difficult part will be deciding which job offer to accept.