ONET – The Career Exploration Resource

If you are looking to change careers, have never known what you truly want to do for your career, or know a high school student deciding on a college major to pursue, then ONET http://www.onetonline.org/ is your source.  We all realize to make a truly good decision, it is all about the data, and you can gather a great deal of that data for a career path determination on the ONET site.

Whether you search by an SOC code (Standard Occupational Classification) or a job title, an impressive summary of over 12,000 different job types awaits.  From the knowledge, skills and abilities needed for a specific job, to expected salary, related professions, and typical education needed, it is your go-to research resource.

Give ONET a try and discover a wealth of information concerning your next career. 

Set Yourself Apart from Others with Your Resume

I want to talk to you today about the importance of setting yourself apart from others with your resume.  Your resume is not a one-size fits all document, and you are not a one-size fits all employee.  So let’s look at a few suggestions that will help you with your resume:

1)    More than one page is okay.  That rule came about for college students who were just graduating and had no real work experience.  Two to three pages will be the norm for most jobseekers.

2)    Showcase what makes you a beneficial employee.  When companies interview you they want to see that you will make difference in their organization.  Here are some items to consider:

§  Increasing profit or revenue.

§  Supervising employees (hiring, interview, dismissal, performance reviews).

§  Reducing costs.

§  Managing a budget.

§  Creating or co-creating proposals, policies and procedures, employee manuals, tips sheets, spreadsheets, etc.

§  Dealing with, assisting, or other regular contact with big name clientele in your daily work, like GE, AT&T, 3M, IBM, Bank of America, and Garmin.  This also includes big name companies within your city or region that others outside of the area might not know.

§  Managing inventory.

§  Sales numbers.

§  Building new business.

§  Training and coaching employees.

§  Negotiating pricing (with customers or vendors).

§  Starting a new department or branch from scratch.

§  Improving customer service.

§  Project Management.

3)    Use bulleted points instead of paragraphs.

4)    Use action words/verbs to start each bullet point (manage, develop, implement, systematize, increase, decrease, coordinate), remember to use the proper tense, and not overuse the same action verbs (get your thesaurus out or use the one Microsoft Word provides).

5)    Avoid generalizations like Microsoft Office and instead use each application – for instance:  Microsoft Word, Microsoft Access, Microsoft Excel, and Microsoft PowerPoint.

6)    Proof, proof, proof your document.  Read it to yourself, wait a few hours and then come back to the document and read it out loud (this is a great way to catch syntax errors), and then read it backwards (better to catch spelling, punctuation, and double word errors).

Follow these simple tips and you will have better resume, and increase your chances of an interview.

Using Twitter as a Jobseeker or Employee

I will admit to being a bit of a newbie on Twitter, as I don’t have a ton of followers yet, but there are several things I have learned using this social media tool that I believe will help jobseekers and employees alike.  Here are 10 practical tips to help you get more out of Twitter.

1)      Get a real picture and write a real bio, even my slightly out of focus picture is far, far better than the twitter egg or some silly picture that makes no sense. While a little whimsy in your bio can be cute, don’t go too far – be professional, and think keywords.

2)      Don’t judge a potential follower by their profession (within reason of course), but by their tweets and bio.  Are they positive, in no way trying to take advantage of someone (i.e. buy 10,000 followers), avoiding constant cussing, racial slurs and bizarre remarks in their tweets, not overly political or religious, and can you speak their language at least enough to understand their tweets?  Likewise, just because someone follows you doesn’t mean you have to follow them back.

3)      Please don’t spam people by trying to sell them something via Twitter, especially when you are not connected. 

4)      Don’t engage in arguments and any other negative conversations (on any social media), it just makes you look bad to your workplace or potential employers that might hire you.  

5)      Use Twitter to link with people you might not be able to contact easily via LinkedIn – if they follow you back, you can invite them to connect with you on LinkedIn as well. 

6)      Don’t run your Twitter feed on your phone, as just like your Facebook feed it will take up too much of your precious free time, instead visit Twitter directly a few times a week.

7)      Do post information about your area of expertise, whether you create the content yourself or share it from another source (retweet).  Think work expertise specifically, and try to post at least a couple of times a week so you look active.

8)      Avoid over-sharing, no one needs to know where you are 24/7, or that you really, really, really like hot dogs with sauerkraut.

9)      Use hashtags # to learn and connect with others.  Hashtags are essentially a subject area, like #JobSearch, where you can learn lots of great tips for a job search.  You can also use hashtags in your own posts to help promote yourself to other followers.

10)  Use Twitter to follow company’s you might want to target for employment, as most large and some medium-sized organizations have a career-related Twitter feed that posts jobs available regularly. 

Be positive and professional in your posts and in those you follow and you will see your Twitter grow with quality connections and be seen as a knowledgeable and qualified in your field. 

The Difference between Job Boards and Job Board Aggregators

Like them or not, job boards are not going away, and continue to be a popular way for people to search for new positions being advertised.  They can come with a few issues such as reverse spamming (you join and put your resume on one site, and now it’s on 25 partner sites too), fake ads and job scams, and just like any other site, occasionally someone may hack them, but they do provide a good service.  The reason for this post is to learn a better way to use the job boards while protecting yourself from the above mentioned issues.

I am big promoter of Job Board Aggregators.  They still allow the jobseeker to use the job boards, but in a different way.  Instead of searching dozens of different job boards for potential positions, you can now use an aggregator to search hundreds, if not, thousands of job boards at a time.  Think of them like a database gathering the jobs posted on all the sites it searches and stores information from, and then allowing you to do ONE search.  Like in hospitality industry aggregator ads on TV, and I quote, “search one and done.”

So, here are a few recommendations:  www.Indeed.com, www.SimplyHired.com, and www.Linkup.com.  Indeed.com is the number one job board aggregator online, and acts as a job board too, as does SimplyHired.  My suggestion is you use them as aggregators only and then go direct to the company advertising and post your resume on their site.  To be more effective in your search use multiple job titles for the same job for which you are searching, such as:  Administrative Assistant, Administrative Coordinator, Secretary, Office Manager, Office Coordinator, Office Assistant, and Executive Assistant.  If you use only one title, you will limit your search significantly.  All of the above titles will fit in the search bar, and you can then sign up at the bottom of the first page with email only for daily updates of the new jobs posted.  The only different type of aggregator I listed is Linkup.com which actually aggregates company job boards.  If the company job board doesn’t require you to sign up before seeing the jobs they offer, then it will aggregate their content.  It works the same as a job board aggregator, you can sign up for the same type of daily digest email, but it is just for company-specific job boards like H&R Block, Sprint and Garmin.  I counsel jobseekers to use at least one job board aggregator and Linkup.com as there will be some different returns.

I hope this helps you refine both your job search, and saves a lot of time in your overall searching online.  Any time that is saved can be used to network, personalize your resume and cover letter for specific job applications, apply for jobs, and practice interviewing skills.