Creating Your First Resume

Creating Your First ResumeMy first resume may not have worked out as I had originally planned, but it got me out of bed the next day. The idea of getting up in the morning and writing a resume was far too daunting for me when I was still in school, so I decided to do it the old-fashioned way: writing my own resume.When I first started writing my own resume, I didn't know how many words to put on there. If you've never tried to write your own resume, I recommend that you either use the template found on the job boards or you create one of your own. Either way, you want to follow these guidelines to create your own first resume.Know what kind of experience you have and what you can offer. Whether you are planning to apply for a position as a general manager or you plan to apply for a position as a salesperson, you want to be clear on what you can offer. And if you are applying for a position in sales, it is probably good to put a little more information in than if you were applying for a position as a project manager. So if you intend to apply for a position as a salesperson, it would be great to include some personal information and business experience.For this one, you will need to determine how good you are at selling. Some people think that they should write their own resume because they know so much about sales and they know that they are good at it. But that's not necessarily the case. If you truly think that you are one of the best salespeople in the country, you will want to include this information in your resume.Your letter should go with your resume. Because there is no doubt that this will be used, you should not go ahead and submit your resume without including your letter. However, this is not the time to do so. You can do so after you have received your first interview.When you create your first resume, you should list your prior work history, and possibly give an outline of your current employment. In addition, you should list the roles you have h eld in your prior employment. Some companies, especially larger ones, may require that you also list any affiliations you may have.The final step is to include all of your education, awards, and accomplishments. You don't want to forget to include this information, so be sure to write it down. This will be used by your potential employer in determining whether or not you are a good match for the position.

Start A Side Gig Without Compromising Your Current Job

Start A Side Gig Without Compromising Your Current Job With lifetime employment a thing of the past, a side gig means you no longer have to rely on your job as the sole source of income. A side gig is also a great way to hone new skills, earn extra money, and have some fun. However, while you’re ramping up your new business, you don’t want to neglect and possibly jeopardize your current job. Here are five things to keep in mind as you start a side venture. 1. Read your HR manual (finally) Are there published restrictions on working for anyone else? Check your company intranet. Ask a friend in human resources. See if you can find examples of other employees who have side gigs of their own. (You want to learn the official policyâ€"just because the company hasn’t enforced the rules doesn’t mean they won’t start with you.) Check for conflicts of interest. If, for instance, you’re working for an advertising agency and start a marketing consulting side gig, your employer might argue that you’re competing with its business. If there are no restrictions and no conflicts, launch away. If there’s a possibility of objections, talk to your manager. It’s better that your bosses hear from you directly, and you might even get a verbal go-ahead. 2. Bring your own devices Even if you get your employer’s blessing, never use the company’s equipment for your side gig. Don’t use its email address or phone number, and bring your own laptop. Are you planning to print advertising flyers? Don’t use the company copierâ€"it could muddy the ownership rights. If you use company equipment to create something for your side gig, even if it’s the result of your creativity and effort, your employers may argue that the output belongs to them. 3. Set clear time and place boundaries Just as you shouldn’t use company hardware and services for personal projects, it’s not wise to engage in side gig activities on company time or at the company location. If you’re seeing clients, don’t meet in the office conference room, even if it’s your lunch break. If you have to take a 3pm call related to your side gig, take a shorter lunch. You want to have a clear delineation between your side project and your current job so you don’t even give the appearance that you’re slacking off at work and funneling your energy elsewhere. 4. Share your newfound energy You’ll likely have an abundance of energy for your side gigâ€"the newness, the potential, the creativity. Share some of that energy with your current employer by doing an even better job than usual. You definitely want to preserve the vast majority of your energy for the side gigâ€"you’ll need it. But think of your newfound on-the-job sparkle as a way to bank some good will for the future. If you’re doing an even better job, your boss won’t have anything to complain about, and may even encourage your side gig or offer more flexibility as you need it. 5. Be ready to explain yourself If your side gig and current job ever collide, know in advance how you’re going to deal with conflicts. For example, if you’re at the office holiday party and your senior management mentions that your boss told them about your side gig, how will you respond? You want to have something interesting to say about your outside work, but also balance it with something interesting you’re doing in your current job â€" otherwise they’ll think your head and heart belong elsewhere. Read next: How to Compete for Freelance and Permanent Jobs at the Same Time If your boss puts you on a project that requires late, volatile hours that cut into your side gig, how will you resolve this? You want to decide in advance how willing you are to give extra time to your current job now that you have another project. If your side gig starts to grow and you need flexibility, are you willing to ask your boss for that? Decide how far you want to take the side gig. You may change your mind down the road, but an initial plan will at least give you some structure. It’s absolutely feasible to juggle a side gig with a full-time job. It’s even preferable in that it removes the pressure on the side gig to make money right away. It also could give you a brighter attitude toward your day job, allowing you to perform better than before. Just make sure you take precautions so you succeed at both, rather than pit one against the other.

3 Career Development Tips That Will Get You Ahead Of The Competition - Work It Daily

3 Career Development Tips That Will Get You Ahead Of The Competition - Work It Daily Whether you are on the verge of graduating or you have other plans to join (or re-join) the workforce, you need to look for ways to efficiently and effectively develop as a professional. You have to continually improve your strengths and/or your weaknesses, build good rapport with your co-workers and bosses, and be able to prove your worth to be the best employee you can be. Related: 3 Steps To Create Your Own Career Development Plan New employees can sometimes be confused when trying to identify the right steps to take. Some end up in choosing the wrong job, and this creates obstructions in an otherwise bright career path. Here are three career development tips that can help you achieve success with absolute confidence. 1. Polish Your Curriculum Vitae (CV) A well-formatted CV is the ideal way to let your employers recognize your educational qualifications, work experiences and skills. You need to constantly revise it to keep potential employers up-to-date about your accomplishments. It’s very important to design a CV properly, since it also plays a key role in making the first impression on people you haven't met. Remember, in today’s job market, you need to represent yourself in such a manner that your future employers are convinced they should hire you without having a single doubt. A legible and reader-friendly CV can work wonders for your career, especially if it highlights what makes you an employee that does more than the minimum required. 2. Be Certain Of Your Career Goals Distraction is a word you must wipe out of your career dictionary to achieve success. There are people who initially aim to equip themselves for their dream jobs. However, because of outside circumstances, their dream doesn’t get fulfilled. You need to be the exception in this respect. If you have always dreamt of having a specific job, give your heart and soul to get it. Keep yourself updated on the news and developments within your industry. Never stop researching the employers who are hiring people for your position. Even if you have your own business, try finding out how others are performing in the same field. This would surely keep you informed of your competitors, which in turn would help you adopt strategies for staying ahead of them. 3. Look For Opportunities That Can Let You Lead The more you accumulate experience at work, the easier it becomes to master leadership qualities. However, if you are new at work, you can’t expect to become a leader within a couple of months. This is a reason why graduates opt for career development courses like MBA's to qualify for managerial positions later. Enroll in a course that can play a vital role in heightening your career prospects. If you are working and have no time to enroll in a full-time course, you can look for accredited online university courses. In fact, pursuing an online course will help you apply your course-based knowledge to your existing work, which will later help you lead in a top-notch organization. There are other strategies that you can adopt for career development. However, the ones mentioned above are no doubt crucial and effective. If you keep them in mind, no one can stop you from achieving a bright future. That’s a promise!! This post was originally published on an earlier date. Photo Credit: Shutterstock Have you joined our career growth club?Join Us Today!

How to reduce interviewing stress

How to reduce interviewing stress Share Share via TwitterShare via FacebookShare via Google PlusShare via LinkedInShare via E-mail By Lea Alvarado Prior to the interview, as well as the morning of, walk yourself through the following visualizationFind a quiet spot to sit for about 10 minutes. Close your eyes and see yourself arriving at the business where you are interviewing. You walk in and introduce yourself to the receptionist. He/she greets you with a thermisch hello and directs you to have a seat. You look around and notice that the environment has a nice feel to it. The waiting room is aesthetically pleasing and as staff pass by, they glance over and smile at you.The interviewer approaches you and you stand to shake their hand. He/she seems excited to meet you and you notice that you feel comfortable in their presence. You are taken into a room where there are other staff members seated around a conference room table. The interviewer directs you to sit at the h ead of the table. Each person introduces themselves and greets you with a warm and friendly hello. You notice that in spite of being in a room with so many individuals, you feel confident and at ease.The questions begin and you find that you are able to answer each one in an articulate and confident manner and the committee seems pleased with your responses. Although you have been in the room for less than 30 minutes, you notice that you have a certain level of rapport with unterstellung individuals that feels as though youve known them for a long time. This makes you feel relaxed and you find it easy to be yourself.The interview begins to wrap up. You stand and shake each persons hand. Each person smiles and expresses enthusiasm in meeting you. Their response feels genuine. You can tell that they really liked you and you feel excited about where this may lead. You walk back to your car and feel great about how you did. On your way home, you call a friend to share how it went. They can hear the excitement in your voice.The next day you receive a call from HR and they share with you how much they enjoyed meeting you and that they want to offer you the job. In that moment, you feel elated and cant wait to share the news with others. See yourself signing all of the necessary paperwork and shaking hands with an HR representative and feel the excitement of knowing that youve been hired by a wonderful company doing work that you know you will enjoy.See yourself sharing the news with someone close to you and imagine reacting in the way you do when something great happens in your life. Take a moment to really feel it as though its happening right now. Use all of your senses and experience it fully.When you are ready, slowly bring yourself back to the room you are in. Feel your feet on the floor and your back against the chair and open your eyes.This visualization can be adapted to fit any interview process. It is recommended that it be done at least several times lead ing up to the interview in order to gain the full benefit of it. Ive personally used this technique many times to prepare for interviews, and it always creates a sense of calmness and confidence within me. More times than not it has resulted in getting hiredCategoriesCareer AdviceAlumniTagsInterviewing

The Fight Against Writng Resumes

The Fight Against Writng Resumes Things You Should Know About Writng Resumes The information that you include in your resume and the layout of your resume will ride on your abilities and experience in connection with your career objective. If youve got many abilities, the previous skill paragraph may be called Additional Skills. Learn about the three kinds of skills you may highlight and the way it is possible to incorporate them into your resume. So once youre considering how to compose a resume, dont forget that you need to be selling your abilities and accomplishments, leid only listing your work history and your old responsibilities. If your work involves social media, you can incorporate the links to other social networking accounts like Twitter, Instagram, and so on. The majority of the times your prior work experience will be the absolute most significant part the resume, so put it at the top. A great resume format is simple to scan. Well it is all dependent on whethe r the job posting instructions specify a specific format. Life After Writng Resumes Whether you are searching for a resume, a CV or a cover letter, you can trust us. If youve been in the workforce for more than 15 decades, you probably have a couple positions that got left out of the last section. To make certain that your resume does not end up the kusine of the pile. The Writng Resumes Trap Your job (while youre attempting to find a job) is to ensure you fit what theyre searching for. You should list work in reverse chronological order starting with your latest job. Each time you submit an application for a new job, check your resume to guarantee that it is not only targeted, but in addition current. Everyone can say he or she excelled at their final job. On the flip side, the moment the work applicant has strong experience, there is not any need to require the academic training any longer and it doesnt need to get mentioned. You must tailor your resume to each work appl ication so that it responds to the particular demands of the job that youre applying for. Choosing which to use is dependent upon the kind of job that you are applying for and your degree of experience. You have to invest time into each application and be sure that your resume is tailored to every employer and the job which youre applying to. The Upside to Writng Resumes Theres a great chance it wont include all the keywords platzset out in the work description. A simple resume template is going to be your very best bet. The info in your resume should paint a photo of the kind of employee you are and show employers what youre capable of accomplishing. Attempt to comprehend the market of the organization youre asking for work, and identify what type of difficulties they could be going through. The Benefits of Writng Resumes What you exclude is at least as vital as what you include. Recruiters have to scan a great deal of resumes over a quick period of time to detect the ide al candidate theyll hire. Resumes may be used for a number of reasons, but most often theyre utilized to secure new employment. There are lots of standard kinds of resumes used to make an application for job openings.

Employee Productivity at Work #Infographic - Spark Hire

Employee Productivity at Work Infographic - Spark HireDo you know how productive your employees are? Its near impossible to assume that your employees are working for the full eight hours they are in the office. They will talk with one another, take a few breaks from their work to surf on the net and walk around the office to kill some time. These things are all normal, and in fact are pretty healthy for your office. You cannot expect your employees to be chained to their desk all day. However, do you know how much time your employees are actually wasting on the internet? Check out this infographic for some interesting statistics.According to the infogrpahic from Visual.ly and NICE Systems, employees spend five hours a week on non-work related sites. On top of that, 20 percent of that non-work related surfing is done on social networks. Of those social media sites, Facebook takes the cake with 41 percent of users wasting their time on it.Social media isnt the only culprit though. Fan tasy Football takes up 93 1000000 wasted hours a month. When the Olympics were going on over the summer, it came in second with 69 million wasted hours. Furthermore, do you know which gender wastes the most time? If you guessed men, then you guessed right 69 percent of men waste time online as opposed to 62 percent of women. Take a look at the infographic below to check out some more office productivity statistics.

Great Workplaces Do the Laundry First

Great Workplaces Do the Laundry FirstGreat Workplaces Do the Laundry FirstGreat Workplaces Do the Laundry First Robin, Ph.D., and Michael Burchell , Ed.D., co-authors of No Excuses How You Can Turn Any Workplace into a Great One (Jossey-Bass, 2013)There is an old Zen saying, after enlightenment, the laundry which beautifully captures the idea that one can never let go of the minutia that helped enable the enlightened state in the first place.All of us have life management tasks such as purchasing groceries, paying bills and doing laundry that are necessary to organize our life and that help facilitate other higher order things such as engaging in meaningful work or connecting with loved ones.The same is true in business. We need to get the basics right and do the organizational laundry.Take Care of the Laundry FirstOur view of organizational laundry is having a clearly articulated mission and vision, company values that guide the organization, an effective strategy, a productive mana gement system, and a company culturethat supports all of this.We too often find, however, organizations operating without reference to the basics. Quickly, the vision becomes a slogan, the business plan becomes a door stop, and the values are a plaque on the wall.Conversely, in great workplaces, we find that behind their financial success lies a strong sense of identity that helped create such excellence in the first place.Through our experience, it has become clear that only in addressing these areas of organizational laundry can you really leverage the power and opportunity that comes from creating and sustaining a great workplace.But as mundane as the laundry sounds, it can be energizing. As long as your effort helps to reinforce the sense of organizational identity, it contributes to a great workplace and buffers against the inertia of excuses.The Necessity of Mission, Vision and ValuesAt W. L. Gore Associates, they talk about their one objective which is to make money and have fun. As a business, they understand that they need to make money or they wont have a business for long.On the other hand, they also appreciate that having fun together as they accomplish their goals builds an enduring business for the long term. Both need to be in balance, and at Gore, they work diligently in meeting their one objective. And as a result, Gore is a very solid business.No matter what form they take, an adage such as that at W. L. Gore and Associates or a more formal statement, best companies have a clearmission, vision, and values first and foremost.Second, they have a well-crafted strategy or plan for achieving their vision and goals.Third, they have created the right managementstructure to align their internal resources in service of that vision.And fourth, they have developed a strong, sustainable high-trust workplace culture that enables its employees to deliver on that vision.ansicht four points are summed up well by Rajeev Peshawaria in Brains, Bones, and Nerve s The Only Three Things an Enterprise Leader Should Focus On, an online publication by 800-ceo-read (2011). In it, he explains that there are a vital few things an enterprise leader should focus on. He offers,The key is to control and shape the three most important levers of sustainable business growththe Brains, the Bones, and the Nerves. The brains of a business are its vision and strategy, and here the enterprise leader must shape and set direction. The bones are the organizational architecture, and here the enterprise leader must design the organization in order to execute the strategy. And the nerves refer to the culture and climate of the organization, and here the enterprise leader must foster a culture of long-lasting excellence.At the cola Company, they have been able to capture the brains, bones and nerves onto a single page document that all managers and all employees have access to, understand, and use in their work.The Coca-Cola Company sees their mission as refreshing the world, inspiring moments of optimism and happiness, creating value, and making a difference.The Coca-Cola system is comprised of both the company that produces the syrups and infrastructure and the over 300 independent bottlers and distributors around the world. Their corporate culture is focused on creating a great place to work throughout their entire organization.As one of the managers we spoke with at Coca-Cola explained,Theres a visionary document that looks 10 years ahead with 6 Ps including portfolio, people, profit, and partners. Everybody in the organization knows they play a very important role and results are tracked in each of the Ps. We have this phenomenal strategy that took us some time to put in place, and now the culture is following this.It took Coca Cola some time to align to their plan, but now they are really beginning to see the payoff for doing this organizational laundry and creating a great workplace in the process.Reprinted by permission from the publi sher, Jossey-Bass, a Wiley brand, from No Excuses How You Can Turn Any Workplace into a Great One by Jennifer Robin and Michael Burchell Copyright (c) 2013 by Jennifer Robin and Michael Burchell.Author BiosJennifer Robin, Ph.D., is a research fellow at Great Place to Work Institute. A former consultant with the Institute, she led the Advisory Practice, helping senior leaders integrate their organizations culture with its strategy and aligning efforts to be a great workplace. Currently, Jennifer teaches in undergraduate, MBA, and professional programs in the Foster College of geschftlicher umgang at Bradley University. She lives in Peoria, Illinois.Michael Burchell, Ed.D., is vice president, International Operations at Great Place to Work Institute, Inc. A member of the corporate management team, Michael oversees affiliate operations, global expansion efforts, and the business development of multinational clients across the Great Place to Work network. Previously, Michael led consult ing services for the Institute in the United States. He also co-owns and is a director for Great Place to Work Institute in the United Arab Emirates, in Dubai. He is based in Washington, D.C.