The year 2012 will have a diverse mix of jobs available as the year progresses. Of course, things don’t always go according to plan. However, there should be something for every one on the job market this year.
The top three industries are Health Care, Technology and Science. Health care will always be top because we need health care no matter what, and it doesn’t matter if you have insurance. Everyone has to go to the doctor some time or another.
Information technology is growing by leaps and bounds, partly due to the internet. Degreed positions in this field are commanding a higher starting wage than some of the other fields. Everything from computers, cell phones to data storage require more and more positions.
Science is growing as they are building on the molecular level creating robots, micro-organisms and other areas.
At the same time, blue collar jobs will have a lot of openings as baby boomers begin to retire. Machinists, welders, truck drivers, construction workers are still needed in spite of the technology that abounds.
A good thing about blue collar positions is that many of those do not require a college degree. They may need a certificate or license, but it is still easy to get into a good paying job in these fields.
Now is a good time to dust off your resume and update it with all new information. Make sure that all information is current and that you have a good list of job skills listed.
There are many job search resources available on the internet so that you can decide which area of expertise you wish to pursue.
Due to the job markets lately, there are a lot of older generation employees wondering how to get hired. The key is recognizing and remembering that your work experience can play a supportive role as well as a leadership role with organizations. The two need not be mutually exclusive.
If you’re over 50, you’ve probably had the experience of being labeled as overqualified. And in response to this unwanted job-search slur, you’ve probably done what any intelligent, ambitious individual would do: Dumb yourself down on your resume.
A good move, but what does this do to your career confidence? If today’s market is telling you repeatedly in rejection emails that they are not concerned with your achievements, it’s no wonder your self esteem is shaky.
As an over 50 job candidate, you have a unique challenge to struggle with during the interview. Even though the interviewers are telling you that you are overqualified, you are suddenly feeling very inexperienced. This is because you’re overqualified because of the simple length of your resume, the style of your suit, color of your hair, and lingo in your business repertoire.
You’re under qualified because you may lack some understanding of today’s rapidly evolving technologies, flattened infrastructure, and business culture. Coming to terms with this before the interview is an essential component to building back your career confidence.
Be confident that you could do many of the job duties of the interviewer just as easily in the pre-computer generation. That doesn’t make you stupid. Many people couldn’t do a lot of jobs if it weren’t for computer programs helping them along.
Figure out your strengths and what you can bring to the table as far as being able take on a leadership role. It will still be a learning experience but we all have to learn something sometime. It’s important to know multiple aspects of your professional self prior to your job search, and it’s important to know how to present them to your next employer on paper and in person.
Professional resume objectives receive a lot of criticism. Some say the goals are usually poorly written, and have no real point. Others say that if it’s well written, then it will make the potential employer continue to read the resume. He or she will know what you wish to attain in your profession and your feelings for their organization. Here are some guidelines about writing expert resume objectives.
Goals need to be short and powerful sentences, letting the employer know what value you can offer to the company. It’s not necessary to express your dreams in an objective, but instead you need to relate to a particular responsibility.
Even though resume objectives can grab the attention of the hiring officer, in some situations these might not be very good methods to sell yourself. For example, if you need to apply for more than one job or you need to submit your application on line or a job fair, an objective statement can be too restrictive.
As a rule, objectives for entry-level job hunters and professionals should consist of short sentences about their objective in the profile section, not as an isolated heading towards the top of a resume. People with a lot of professional experience will notice that expert resume objectives do not always give them their greatest benefit.
Writing a profile part at the top of your resume is probably the best way to handle this problem. This has to be a 2 or 3-sentence outline of your major areas of expertise, unique talents and skills, as well as your profession goals. If you can write an expert resume, you will probably catch someone’s attention for a job interview.
If you don’t think you can, search online for resume writers who can get your resume tailored to put you in a very favorable light.
Termination – How To Deal With It On Your Resume
Interviewing
Your employer just let you go. You need to find another job, but how should you handle your termination on your resume? The days when you signed on with a company and stayed with it until retirement are gone. In today’s climate, employers are much more understanding when they see a less-than-perfect work chronology, but you still have to be careful how and when you present a termination.
Do not put the termination or the circumstances surrounding it on your resume. You will have a much better chance of impressing hiring managers if you deal with this question in face-to-face interviews.
If you were recently let go, resist the urge to keep your position listed as “to present” on your resume, giving the appearance that you’re still employed. You will have to explain yourself later on, and potential employers might think you tried to mislead them.
It’s a different matter if you were laid off instead of fired. In this case, you can mention the lay off in your cover letter. Employers are more forgiving of layoffs, so mentioning this might work in your favor.
Focus on your accomplishments in your resume. Your goal is to wow your potential employers by highlighting those accomplishments and skills. Even if hiring managers are wondering why you left a certain employer, your resume should be strong enough for you to receive invitations to interviews in which you can explain your situation in person.
Be sure to list all of your contributions about a previous employer, even any that laid you off. This too can be a red flag to hiring managers. Talk about your responsibilities, overall contributions to the company and if you received any awards or special recognition. All of this will go a long way in your favor and that’s what you want.
Most job applicants today believe that they should first write their resumes in order for them to land a career. Yes, resumes are truly important and highly critical in one’s professional/corporate success. It plays a significant role for someone to achieve their career goals. But, writing your resume is not the first step.
What you should do first is to look for the most appropriate job for your skills, competencies, and needs. After listing down the job opportunities you found that fits your needs and skills, it is then when you move on to writing your resume.
Always keep in mind that for a resume to be successful and outstanding among all other resumes being submitted for the same position, it should be personalized, specific, and targeted to the job you are applying for. This means, one personalized resume for every job opportunity.
To ensure this, you must first look for the most appropriate job for you and read through the job posting. As you are reading through the posting, make sure your skills, knowledge and ability match that of the posting. Make sure these skills are listed at the beginning of your resume. The person viewing the resumes will see it faster than having to sift through it.
The keywords you use in your resume need to be specific to the job posting. For example, if the job posting is requiring someone with department management skills, make sure these keywords are in several places on your resume and highlighted. And, use them in the cover letter as well.
Standardized resumes and those written using templates no longer succeed to catch the attention of the primary reviewer of resumes. If you want to make your resume stand out among all the piles of resumes submitted for review, it has to be highly specific with contents that have not been seen before by anyone.
Hiring a resume writer to tailor your resume to fit your skills and those of the marketplace is an excellent option. You can then know that your resume will be professional and will take you places.
It has happened to all of us. Everyone has experienced a bad job interview sometime in the past. Anything from being late, botching answers to key questions or not being able to show knowledge about the company. Although the proverb is true, you never get a second chance to make a first impression, you do have an opportunity to make up some of what you lost in your bad job interview.
Often, people are their own worst critics, but this can actually be a good thing. When it comes to a job interview, you might be seeing things that weren’t actually there, or at least, that weren’t nearly as bad as you perceived them to be. Try to put the interview into perspective. Obviously, things like arriving late are negatives that will count against you but maybe other issues could be worse. Did you stumble through some questions? Did you fail to impress your interviewer with your knowledge of the company? Are there several things that were on the tip of your tongue that you were never able to express? Answer these questions and you’ll be able to tell yourself whether the interview was as bad as you first thought.
Think of it this way. Maybe that job was not the right one for you anyway. Did you feel like you weren’t able to connect with the interviewer? Did you feel out of place in the office? Were the questions exceedingly simple and not a challenge to you? Sometimes our instincts will show us in subtle ways when something is not right.
If you’ve decided that you did do very badly in the interview but still want the job, you can do damage control. The first thing to do is to analyze what went wrong. Write a thank you note or recovery letter. This is a way to follow up your bad job interview with concrete examples to back up your less than stellar answers to the interview questions. This is your chance to set the record straight and take back the initiative. Put together a concise, hard-hitting letter, using verifiable facts to back up your case wherever you can. When your prospective employer receives the letter, they will know, even if you didn’t show it in the interview, that you very much want the job and further, that you’re uniquely qualified for it.
There are any number of reasons why you can have a bad job interview. Often, it’s not as bad as you thought, or the interview will have given you enough of a perspective to convince you that the job wasn’t for you after all. But if you have a bad job interview for a job you really want, writing a timely, fact-filled and enthusiastic recovery letter can show the employer yet again that you are the best person for the job.
There was a time when job seekers only had to be concerned about background and reference checks. That seemed intrusive enough. Now comes along social media and the possible damage it can do to your job search.
Almost everyone is on social media sites now, which is great. People can connect now like they never have before. But, here is a big BUT, potential employers can see this as well during the hiring process. When building a personal brand, this will all become a part of that brand as well.
Potential employers will do a Gooogle search of your name to find out more about you. This is not illegal and is becoming more popular with employers. This is an excellent way for them to really know who they are interviewing.
Some things you can do to prevent your personal life from spilling into the interview process is:
- Remove anything on social media sites that may not picture you in a good light. Photos, comments and personal views. You can set your profile to private so they will only see basic information about you. It might not be a good idea if they see you with a drink in your hand in a bar or something.
- Update all business social media sites with an updated resume, pertinent business information and a tasteful photo.
- Do not use silly email addresses like “want2chat” or “prowler” or something to that effect. You will want an email address that is much more professional.
- Do the same type of search on potential employers. Use sites like LinkedIn to see what type of business they are, what they are talking about and who works there. This gives you excellent leverage during the interview process as they will be impressed with your questions and statements about the company. They will know you have done your homework.
If you are not sure what is going to pop up about you or how to prevent it, there are always companies that can help you clean your act up. They can search through a lot of venues to make sure that nothing embarrassing will affect your job search.
If you are not getting calls for interviews, you may need to review the documents and information employers are receiving from you. Those things are what employers are basing their decisions upon regarding which candidates they will hire. Usually, if you are not getting interviews, there are red flags deterring employers from considering you.
These are the resume red flags of death:
1. Gaps in your work history. Really, a few months do not matter, but more than six months is considered significant. If you can show on your resume that you were doing something during this time such as freelance work or furthering your education, you will be better off.
2. Lack of career progression. Career progression is not necessarily expected in all career fields, but in many it is expected that as the years go by, you will attain more important status by job title with increasing responsibilities. If the progression is not there, employers could assume your work is not worthy of promotion to higher levels or that you lack ambition.
3. You were formerly a business owner. One would assume that with all the capabilities required by an owner this would be a plus to your resume, but not necessarily. The reason you are no longer an owner is the issue. An alternative job title for unsuccessful ventures would be Manager or Operations Manager, and if asked why you became unemployed, you can simply state that the business closed.
4. Career changer without experience or education in the new field. Employers may think you are grabbing at straws, desperate for any job you can get or that you lack direction. The reason for the career change is best addressed in your cover letter and should show a genuine interest in the new career field and reasons why the employer should choose you over experienced or educated applicants. Don’t forget to throw in volunteer and hobby experience if appropriate.
5. Lack of clear direction. You are a jack-of-all trades but master of none. You have worked in many industries or many different types of positions that do not relate to one another. Employers look for candidates who have a real interest in their job industry and may question yours.
6. Multiple jobs of short duration. Employers call this “job hopping” and assume you will also leave them quickly, wasting the time they spent searching for, interviewing, and training you. The best type of resume format for this circumstance is a functional resume. However, when employers receive functional resumes, they often wonder what an applicant may be hiding. If you were freelancing or a contractor, list all companies or persons for whom you worked under one section with your freelance or contractor job title as the heading.
7. You never completed a high school diploma or a GED. Employers presume this is evidence of lack of ambition or laziness. If you did not complete high school, leave the education section off your resume completely.
Go through your resume carefully looking for red flags, and decide whether you need to have some re-vamping done. Then continue your job search with renewed energy and hope. Your new job is out there. It’s time to claim it.
