gcapone, Author at Palladian Career Resources

Resumes Mistakes From an NCO

I received a resume from an Air Force NCO (non-commissioned officer) who has recently transitioned from active duty into the reserves. The NCO makes a number of common military transition mistakes in his resume.

The core of the problem is the NCO writes a resume focusing entirely on his qualifications in the military. It would be a good resume if he wanted a job in the Air Force. Unfortunately, that’s not his goal. This individual is looking to do something in the commercial sector. He wants to utilize some of the skills he gained in the military, but he is targeting a civilian job.

Let’s look at the structure:

Objective: To use the training and experience I received in the military to make a significant contribution, as a civilian, in making my community a safer place to live.
Technical Training: <long list of military training classes, almost all are related to specific combat activities or Air Force equipment>

Work History: <Listing to job titles and dates in the Air Force>

Experience: <A bulleted list showing the scope of responsibility in various leadership roles held by the NCO>

Certifications: <A certification related to the career field the NCO wants to pursue>

Awards: <A list of performance awards won by the NCO>

There is some good content in this resume, but most of it is of little value to an employer. This individual wants a role using his Hazmat skills. He has taken several training classes in this field, has a certification related to the field and one year of experience.

Unfortunately, digging this detail out of the resume takes too much work. The emphasis of the resume is on his military experience. The military experience shows a pattern of success and progression of increasing responsibility. This is a good track record, but it does little to show what the job seeker would do in a completely different role. The military experience and success in the roles he held should play a supporting role on his resume. The lead role is his experience and skill in the hazmat field.

Below is how I would restructure the resume:

Professional Summary: <A summary statement and bulleted list of key skills, training, certifications and accomplishments directly related to hazmat>

Work Experience: <Job Listing with details of hazmat experience, leadership experience and other transferrable skills>

Education: <Listing of education and training received>

Awards: <Listing of awards>

This structure focuses the top half of the first page on the hazmat experience and skills. It is much more relevant to a hiring manager than the previous version that listed courses such as “USAF Airborne Battle Management Course.” Expanding the work experience section to provide significantly more detail on the job seeker’s responsibilities and accomplishments will also help.

The bottom line is the NCO needs to make a sales pitch for what he can contribute in the private sector, and more specifically, in the role he is pursuing. Showing success in the military is nice, but there is a lot of competition for jobs. The successful job seeker will demonstrate the value they can offer. Demonstrating this value comes from showing key skills and accomplishments. To maximize the effectiveness of the sales pitch, it needs to be at the top of the resume, not buried further down.

Separating Accomplishments from Responsibilities

I’ve written a lot about the importance of accomplishments on a resume. Accomplishments show what you did, while responsibilities show what you’re supposed to do. Because accomplishments are so important to make a good impression, you should separate them from the list of responsibilities. The resume I read this morning did the opposite of this.

The resume had a chronological structure, with four sections: Objective, Work Experience, Education and Certifications. The structure works pretty well. I would have added a fifth section, Technical Skills, because the job seeker is in a very technical engineering role in the telecom industry. This isn’t the big problem, though. The work experience section does little to show whether the job seeker has been successful.

In the work experience section, each listing followed the same format:

Job Title, Employment Dates
Company Name, City and State
Responsibilities:
<A bulleted list of responsibilities and accomplishments>

By titling the text under each job as Responsibilities, the job seeker creates an expectation that there won’t be any accomplishments listed. It is unnecessary to say specifically “Responsibilities,” because anyone reading the resume is going to expect some description of the role.

I turns out the job seeker did list some accomplishments. There weren’t many, but each job had at least one. In each case, it was the last bullet listed under each job. This ensures someone reading the resume will find the accomplishments as one of the last items read.

An easy way to fix this would be to summarize the responsibilities in a paragraph and put the accomplishments in a bulleted list. This will draw the reader’s attention to the accomplishments ahead of the responsibilities and make a much stronger first impression.

Are You Successful?

It continues to amaze me how common it is for job seekers to fail to include any mention of a successful contribution to an employer in their resume. This morning, I was struggling to come with a topic for today’s article. After writing more than 360 articles over the last year and a half, I often need something to get me started. I turned to my old standby… my Inbox. I receive a lot of resumes, and readying a few always produced an idea for an article.

Today’s search was just as fruitful as past searches. I didn’t have to read many resumes to find one to inspire me. It was the first I opened. This is typical. When I look at resumes, I don’t think I’ve ever had to open more than three or four to find a disaster to profile. Now, to be fair, the some of the resumes I look at for my blog are from the really active job seekers. I subscribe to some resume distribution services that send resumes to thousands of recruiters. I really don’t know if these services are effective for the job seekers, but they help me ensure I always have a lot of bad resumes in my inbox. For a job seeker to reach the point where they are broadcasting their resume in an email to as many people as possible, they would have been overlooked for a lot of jobs in the past. A big reason these people haven’t landed a job is they have a terrible a resume. So, the majority of resumes I receive this way are absolutely terrible.

So, let’s look at today’s resume. It comes from a Marking Manager for firm selling agricultural equipment. The person has been out of work for a year. Prior to that, she worked for eight years for one company. The resume has five sections:

Synopsis
Summary of Qualifications
Work Experience
Continuing Education
References

The resume didn’t contain a single accomplishment – absolutely nothing showing the job seeker was successful at any point in her career. Looking at the language used in the resume, the entire resume is focused on responsibilities. Below are the first few words from each bullet in the work experience section:

Assisted…
Prepared…
Developed and coordinated…
Planned…
Managed…
Direct supervision of…
Coordinated…
Managed…

Most of these start with verbs, which is good, but the verbs are not very strong. You can use these verbs in a resume and make a strong impact, but you need to include another verb in the bullet. For example, “managed an advertising campaign for a new line of machinery, leading to initial sales 40% above budget.” This would be a good accomplishment because of the second half of the bullet. Unfortunately, the resume only included statements similar to the first half of the example.

Another big mistake on this resume relates to the education of the job seeker. She has a continuing education section with some good educational events, but nothing about her formal education. She has an Associate’s degree, but it isn’t listed on the resume (it was in the cover letter). A lot of hiring managers skip the cover letter. Additionally, when a hiring manager distributes a resume to several other managers to review, the cover letter may not be distributed with the resume. For key information like a degree, you need to put this on the resume.

To improve this resume, it would only take a little work to make a huge difference. The Summary of Qualifications section has five bullets. Two relate to soft skills (organizational skills and teamwork), two are marketing related (creativity with graphic design and tradeshow experience) and the last lists technical skills (Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator, etc.). Under each bullet, the job seeker should add one line describing an accomplishment or noteworthy experience. For the soft skills and marketing experiences, an accomplishment would be best. For the technical skills, listing an accomplishment would work, but the job seeker could also summarize the continuing education she has completed.

Adding five lines in this way would help tremendously. Throw in the Associate’s degree in an Education section and the resume should be reasonably effective.

One last note… The last section of the resume, a list of references with names and phone numbers, should be eliminated. There is no need to put references on a resume (especially in an email blast to the whole world). Companies know they can ask for references throughout the hiring process. Listing a person’s contact information is actually an invitation to cold call them. The three people listed are likely to be people who are respected by the job seeker, so a recruiter may toss the resume, but keep the names of the references. Who do you think is more marketable… the job seeker who sent the resume or the Director of Marketing who is still at the company and is listed as a reference? By listing the references, all the job seeker did was distract the attention of the reader from her background.

Send Me Your Questions: I’m always looking for ideas to write about. Do you have a job search question you want answered? Send it to me and there’s a good chance I’ll write an article on it. Just send your questions to me at [email protected].

Exceeding Sales Quotas

Sales is a field where the emphasis on quantifiable metrics is extremely high within the hiring process. Hiring managers look for sales professionals who have an established track record of beating their goals. Sales goals are easily measured and are one of the most commonly published metrics in an organization. This makes it extremely easy to find sales data for your resume. Despite this many job seekers omit hard data on their sales performance.

There’s a good reason many omit the information. Sales is a field with a high failure rate. There are a lot of sales people who just aren’t that good. They may work hard and land some sales, but struggle to reach the company’s goals. Putting sales numbers on a resume would highlight this poor performance, so they leave them off.

For a hiring manager, demonstrated success in sales is critical. Most will assume the job seeker was a failure if the job seeker doesn’t specifically tell them otherwise. The resume I read today made this mistake. It didn’t give enough information to know if the job seeker was successful, or if he was a failure.

The problem started in the cover letter. It is 178 words long. That’s on the long side for a cover letter, but isn’t too long. In it, there are five paragraphs. The first explains the person is seeking a business development role. The second and fourth paragraphs make general claims about a successful track record through the career, but nothing specific. The fifth paragraph is a simple closing.

The middle paragraph has four bullet points. A bulleted list in a cover letter is like a giant magnet for attention. Most people will be drawn to the list before they read the majority of the letter. That’s what I did. I read the first sentence of the cover letter and jumped to the bullets. Here’s what I found:

Creativity in developing new business opportunities
Credibility based on previous success
Proven executive experience
Positive attitude and desire to succeed

I’m not sure how a successful sales person could write something this boring and expect to grab a person’s attention. A desire to succeed is a good quality, but I assume anyone successful has that. If that’s one of the most impressive qualities you have to market, you’re in trouble.

After reading the bullets, I skipped to the resume. The only reason I know what is in the other paragraphs of the cover letter is I read it to write this article. The bullets made it clear it was a waste of time to read, and that conclusion was proven correct when I did read it.

In the resume, the job seeker included a few performance metrics. Each job listed a few big clients he landed, some with deals in excess of $10 million. Selling multi-million dollar deals is a marketable experience, but it still doesn’t answer the question about the success of the job seeker. In sales, you have to remember the old quote, “Even a blind squirrel will find a nut every now and then.” Is this job seeker a blind squirrel occasionally tripping over a sale, or is he a superstar?

The resume covers 11 years of sales experience. In it, the job seeker lists four years where he lists his performance relative to his quota. In those four years, three are listed as meeting 100% of quota and one is listed as hitting 350% of quota. The 350% year immediately preceded the three 100% years.

So we have a sales professional, who in 11 years of selling, is telling us he met the minimum expectations for his job four times, and once had a “blind squirrel finding a nut” year blowing his targets out of the water. He wants us to hire him because he’s creative, credible, experienced, and has a desire to succeed.

Now, you’re a sales manager trying to fill a key position. Sales are down, the economy is tough, and you can add one key person. If the person comes in and is successful, you will keep your job and may even earn a bonus. If the person bombs, you’re likely to get canned. Is this candidate going to get your attention? Are you going to bet your career on his performance?

So, what could this job seeker do? He should give more detail on his performance. What were his quotas each year and how did he perform? He had a long run with the same company, so there’s a chance he was more successful than the picture I painted. The three years he listed that he met 100% of his quota, he notes he received a corporate Circle of Excellence Award. Usually, awards indicate exceeding expectations by a significant amount. If his quota was a stretch goal, he should really show what his performance was relative to his minimum expectations. Even better, listing how he performed relative to other sales people would help. He may have been the best sales person in the company, or the worst. We have no way of knowing.

The key is giving a hiring manager insight into how your boss would assess your performance. The more detail you can provide about your specific performance, the more credible and impressive your background will be.

How Many Jobs Should You List

Experienced professionals often struggle with deciding how many of their jobs to list and how much detail to provide for each. This can be a tough decision. On a two page resume, you won’t have enough room to write in detail about everything.

You should provide at least the last ten years in detail. Hiring managers will be much more interested in your recent experience, so you want to prioritize this. You can summarize your experience further back if you don’t go into detail. For example, you could include a line like:

Progressed from entry level production supervision to materials management, including roles as production controller and logistics manager.

This line would take the reader from the start of your career up to the place on the resume where the detail starts, a materials management position. In this example, the progression is fairly typically, starting in production and shifting over to materials through a serious of positions. Most materials professionals will recognize this career path and won’t need additional information.

If you have been with a single company for more than 10 years, you should show the entire progression with them. Stability with a single company is a very positive sign on a resume. It shows the person was successful through the progression of promotions. List the full progression, since it demonstrates a strong pattern of success. For positions a long time ago, you can summarize the experience by listing the jobs, for example:

Logistics Manager December 1992 to July 2000
Production Controller August 1988 to December 1992
Shipping Supervisor March 1985 to August 1988
Production Supervisor June 1980 to March 1985

This shows the progression without any detail, just the titles and dates. From this point forward, the resume would show the detail of the materials management experience. You could even consolidate the summary further:

Held production supervision, production control and logistics management positions from June 1980 to July 2000.

This is a short summary providing enough information for a hiring manager to understand how you got to the materials role.

Job seekers who return to school in the middle of their careers have a different challenge. Getting a degree can transform a career, allowing a person to switch paths completely. In this case, the experience prior to completing the degree may be irrelevant. For example, consider a person who worked in hourly production roles and completed an IT degree. The person upon graduation takes a job as a network administrator and moves along an IT career path from that point forward. In this case, there’s little benefit to the experience prior to completing the degree, and it can probably be omitted, especially if it is more than ten years ago.

For older workers, there is a lot of concern about age discrimination. Listing every job back to start of a career will help ensure hiring managers know exactly how old you are. There’s no reason to highlight this. List the last 15 to 20 years, giving significant detail to the last 10.

The main reason you want to omit or summarize your experience from more than 10 years ago is it allows you to focus on the last 10 years in much greater detail. Your recent accomplishments are your biggest selling points, and you want to focus on them.

Proofreading Tips

Checking your resume for typos, spelling errors and grammar mistakes is essential. It is likely you proofread it numerous times and had friends check it for mistakes. This effort will hopefully eliminate all errors. Writing cover letters and filling in text boxes for online job applications is a different story. You can’t work on everything you write for weeks or months with numerous reviewers. So, how can you reduce the likelihood of sending out a bunch of typos?

If you struggle with typos in your writing, I’m going to share some techniques that will help you minimize mistakes. These are the techniques I’ve learned to use with my blog, and can help you improve the quality of your cover letters and other communications.

After writing more than 350 articles for this blog, I’ve gotten much better at minimizing typos. There has been a definite learning curve. I’ve always done a lot of writing, but nothing on this scope. I’ve learned techniques to make it much less likely I’ll publish something with a mistake. Equally important, the techniques I’ve learned haven’t slowed me down. I write, review and publish a typical blog article in a single time block, usually an hour to an hour and a half, first thing in the morning. This gives little time to check an article.

Some people will say I should prioritize proofreading higher and devote more time to proofreading. If I adopted a scheduled where I write and review articles a week ahead of publishing them, and then review them the day I post them, I could do a better job with typos. Even better, I could send each article to a professional proofreader for review. This just doesn’t fit my posting schedule. I want to write and immediately post. This requires other techniques to quickly and effectively review each document.

The challenge with proofreading your own work is you know what you meant to write. I have a lot of trouble with this. I can type 30 to 40 words per minute with decent accuracy, and over 50 with mistakes. As I write, I get impatient and push my speed beyond what I can do. This will produce incorrect letters and even skipped words. I’ve found lately I’ve been typing “you” for “your” by leaving the “r” off a lot. I’ve also been leaving out small words – is, be, are, of, at – are a few examples. Even worse, I’ve caught places where I miss contractions. In Friday’s article, I found a place where I typed “can” but meant to type “can’t.” This completely changed the meaning of the sentence. Fortunately, I found it before I published the article.

As I proofread, I read what I meant to type. If the sentence is supposed to have “your” and I type “you,” I read the “your” because I know that’s what it says. Someone else reading it would immediately see the error, though. There are ways to fix this, and I’m going to share my process.

My review process has four steps:

Microsoft Word

I write everything in Word. The spelling/grammar checker will automatically check everything as I type. This catches a lot of obvious mistakes. You need to have the real-time grammar checker turned on for this to work. You also need to pay attention any time Word underlines something in red (spelling) or green (grammar). By paying attention major mistakes as I type them, I avoid a lot of the errors.

Errors found by Word are the low hanging fruit. They are so easy to see and fix, there’s no excuse for not fixing them. I really hate getting a resume written in Word that has a bunch of underlined red text indicating spelling mistakes. It jumps off the screen before I can start reading the resume. All the job seeker needed to do was turn on the real-time grammar checker. Failing to do this will make a poor impression.

Unfortunately, Word can only catch major mistakes. Using the wrong word often will not be caught by the software. For example, the “you/your” mistake I’ve been making lately is one that Word often misses. This first check will not be perfect. It’s just a starting point to clean up the big stuff.

WhiteSmoke

The second quality check I run is with WhiteSmoke, a standalone grammar checking software package. The software is designed to catch more grammar mistakes than Word or other word processors. In my experience, it works. When I first got WhiteSmoke, I checked a number of documents in Word, fixed the errors, and then ran then through WhiteSmoke. In my writing, this process will find an additional one to two typos for every 200 words I write. Now, WhiteSmoke isn’t perfect. It still will not find everything, and it gives a number of false positives. I would estimate that half the errors it identifies are actually correct, but I’ll take a few false positives to help uncover the mistakes.

I have a lot good to say about WhiteSmoke. The bottom line is I use it. The software is much more accurate than Word, it’s easy to use and the technical support team is helpful and responsive. Despite this, there is one major drawback. WhiteSmoke is supposed to integrate with any software package including Word and Outlook. There’s something in my windows settings that prevents this from working and WhiteSmoke doesn’t have an answer for fixing it.

To use WhiteSmoke, I copy what I write over into the WhiteSmoke window and run the check. I then review the edits and make them manually in the original document. This is a little tedious, but works. The way the software is supposed to work, you highlight the text in Word, hit one of the function keys and WhiteSmoke will then open a window and check the document. As you review the errors, you can simply click the corrections. At the end, you click Apply and WhiteSmoke will copy the changes back to the original document. This is great when it works, but in my experience, it rarely works, so I use the more tedious manual method. Even though it is a little tedious, the software works and makes me more efficient and reduces errors.

(WhiteSmoke Review: This article was 1770 words when checked. WhiteSmoke identified 2 spelling errors, 14 grammar errors and 1 style error. In reviewing the errors, the spelling errors were places where I failed to capitalize the “s” in WhiteSmoke. Of the 14 grammar errors, I made six changes and found the other eight were actually correct. The style error was also a good suggestion resulting in a change. So in total, I made 9 separate changes to the article on top of Word’s suggestions because of WhiteSmoke.)

Read Out Loud

The third step in my review process is to read the text out loud. I really shouldn’t call this reading. When done right, I read each word individually out loud. Reading full sentences quickly causes me to see what I meant to write, not what actually ended up on the screen. Going slow and reading each word is the best way to find places where the writing is awkward, or where I used the wrong word. It is much more effective when reading out loud. Start at the beginning and say each word individually. Go slow and you will pick up on errors. This process is a little tedious. If you read any of my articles in the last six months and see some obvious errors, it’s very likely I skipped this step.

Another technique when reading out load is to read from the bottom up. Read each sentence individually, starting with the last sentence of the document. This process is a little slower, but can be more effective. It keeps you from getting into a rhythm with what you know should be there.

(Reading Out Loud Review: I printed the article and read it out loud. This identified 29 additional changes. Many were corrections to grammar errors. A few were changes were to text that was correct, but the changes made the text read better.)

Google Spell Check

After checking a document in Word and WhiteSmoke, and reading it out loud, there shouldn’t be any obvious errors. Despite this, I always run a quick spell check from the Google Toolbar before publishing each article. I do this in case I added new spelling errors as I edit and format the document in the browser window. It’s rare that I catch a mistake with this last minute check, but I still do it. I know I can’t write and review an article in under an hour several days a week and never have a mistake. At the same time, I really don’t want obvious errors that jump off the page, and running spell check one last time can’t hurt.

You can get the Google Spell Check function with the Google toolbar. All you have to do is hit the button, and it will spell check any form boxes in the browser window.

Other Techniques

This is my four step process. It’s not perfect. My goal for this blog is to provide a lot of high quality advice. Minimizing errors is important to me, but at the end of the day, this is just a blog. I write quickly and will not be perfect. Every time I write a blog article about typos or proofreading, I get comments from readers who are deeply offended by every typo I make. Hopefully, the majority of people will learn from my articles. In this article, I hope you get something that helps your writing, especially for your job search. There are other techniques we can employ and further improve the quality of our writing.

Proofreading in a different location than where you wrote the document can help the review process. It will get you out of the thought process you had when you wrote the document. Printing the document can help this too. Both techniques will allow you focus more on what is written instead of what you meant to write.

Letting a document sit for several days can make it much easier to proofread. You will forget what you meant to write, and read the document as if you weren’t the author.

Get a second opinion. Ask a friend, co-worker or family member to review important documents. They will pick up on errors you may have missed.

Hire a professional proofreader. I can’t overstate the benefit of a professional. Not only will they give you a second set of eyes on a document, but they are trained to spot mistakes. When I wrote my book, Power Up Your Job Search: A Modern Approach to Interview Preparation, I used two professional proofreaders. The first reviewed a preliminary copy of the book and corrected a number of major mistakes. I used the second proofreader late in the process after we had completed a number of rewrites. The results were fantastic and the two proofreaders help cut months off the editing process.

Getting a second opinion or a professional proofreader will work in a lot of situations, but isn’t practical for everything. You can’t stop in the middle of every job application form and send your text to a proofreader. Even a lightning fast turnaround of a few hours will cause your job search to grind to a halt. At some point, you will need a DIY approach, and I hope my techniques help you to write a little more effectively and accurately.

Spell Check Web Forms

Everyone knows you should proofread and spell check your resume. Unfortunately, a single resume document isn’t sufficient for a job search today. Many companies require job seekers to apply through lengthy online forms. Each field collects different information, and you will need to write answers to questions not covered in your resume.

The text you put in an online application needs to be professional. You can’t have a ton of spelling errors and think you are going to make a good impression. Submitting a job application isn’t like other writing activities – you will be judged very critically. Many job seekers struggle with this. They use spell check effectively but are lost as soon as they have to fill in a web form. There are solutions to help eliminate mistakes.

Google Toolbar

If you use the google toolbar, there is a spell check tool you can use. All you have to do is click the button on the toolbar and google will spell check all the text in the form fields on a web page. This tool doesn’t have a grammar check component. It also won’t identify places where you misspell a word by typing a different word. For example, I’ve found lately I continue to type “you” for “your” when writing. I can’t type as fast as I would like and end up missing a letter here and there. Spell check will never find this mistake, and a grammar checker won’t even find it a lot of the time.

Despite missing some errors, the google spell check will catch obvious misspellings. It’s easy to add and only takes a few seconds to run.

Using a Word Professor

To check your text more thoroughly, copy it over to a word processor and run the grammar checker. This is more time consuming, but will help you avoid mistakes on applications. It’s definitely worth the time.

Other Tools

There are other tools to help you avoid typos in your writing. I use a number of checks to try to avoid mistakes. I’ve learned the hard way. If you’ve been reading the blog for a while, hopefully you have noticed a vast improvement over the last year and a half. I find it extremely difficult to see mistakes in my writing. I know what I meant to write and have trouble seeing what I actually typed. This is especially difficult when I proofread immediately after writing. For this blog, this is how I write. I usually spend less than an hour from the time I start an article until I hit publish. That doesn’t give much time to edit.

On Monday, I am going to outline the full process I use to write and edit an article quickly. It’s reasonably effective, but not perfect. Within the process, there are four different checks I do to catch errors. I’ve worked to balance the effectiveness of the editing process with the time required. Check back Monday to see if some of the checks I do can help you improve your writing on cover letters and job applications.

Finding a New Career

In every recession, some companies and industries decline, never to come back. As painful as this process is, it is a natural component of our economy. Periodically, we clean house and get rid of companies who are not competitive. For the employees of these companies, the process is painful, frustrating and depressing. Making the situation even more difficult is the fact that the recovery will not bring back a lot of the jobs that were lost.

We have industries in decline and the recovery will not happen overnight. The US auto industry will be much smaller in the future. Cuts made at GM and Chrysler will lead to more foreign made cars and less domestic made cars. For people in the auto industry, this means jobs are going to be few and far between. Other industries are undergoing similar transformations.

The strength of our economy is the ability to bounce back and reinvent itself. Time and time again, we have had industries decline and collapse, only to be replaced by other industries. This has led to mass migrations of people to areas with better job prospects. One of the strongest images of the Great Depression is the small farmer packing up and moving from the mid-west to California. This pattern continually recurs. I grew up in Pittsburgh and watch hundreds of thousands of steel related jobs disappear in the ‘70’s and ‘80’s. It’s part of the reason Steeler fans are everywhere. Hundreds of thousands of people have moved to other parts of the country.

We’re going to see the same type of transformation over the next several years. This could happen quickly, or it could take a while – in either case, it will happen. If you are a job seeker, letting go of a job, employer, industry and home can be extremely difficult. Many people struggle with imagining what their possibilities really are. They also are reluctant to start over completely in a new field.

If you are considering a career change, picking a new field or industry can be difficult. There are some tools that can help. One tool that can help narrow the search and uncover jobs you may not have heard off is O-Net. O-Net is a website that allows you to search skills and identify the jobs that match your capability.

O-Net provides detailed information on the jobs it recommends. This includes information about the skills, education and experience required. It also provides an assessment of the demand level for the positions to help you focus on careers with more demand than job seekers.

Breaking into a new field can be difficult. It’s humbling to go back to an “entry level” status after progressing successfully in an alternate career. In the long run, starting over can pay huge dividends. The new career can also provide a faster career path. An experienced professional starting over should move up faster than someone without experience, and in a growth industry, there will be more opportunities to progress upward.

Sharpening the Saw

I spent several days last week in a training class. Professional development is important if you want to improve in your career. In today’s economy, it is even more critical. Unemployment continues to increase and job seekers continue to become more frustrated with the job market.

There is a lot of talk about the recession being over. We’re now in recovery! Unfortunately, it’s being called a jobless recovery. Companies have downsized to a point where they are profitable at lower volumes. They are not in decline any longer. They are also not growing or adding staff – they are only replacing key losses. This could make the job market very difficult for an extended period. It won’t last forever. Job creation will return, but if you need a job now, that’s not much of a consolation.

In the training class I attended, there were people stable in their careers looking to add a new skill, there were individuals looking for work who wanted to give themselves an edge in the job markets and others were looking to move in a new career direction and needed to add new skills to make the career change.

These are great goals. Additionally, by taking the initiative to find and attend a workshop, these individuals demonstrated a commitment to their professionals above what most are doing. They are not sitting still. They are striving to move forward and grow.

This is an important lesson in an economic downtown. The number of discouraged job seekers has been climbing. There are a ton of people who are out of work and have given up searching for a job. An extended job search is frustrating and depressing. There’s no way around that. Being rejected over and over can make a person feel that their job search is pointless. Unfortunately, if you adopt this view, you will be right. Giving up will ensure an unsuccessful job search.

So what are you going to do? Asking this question is a critical first step. Running out and signing up for a training class is an answer, but it is far from the only one. What is critical is what you are doing during your job search. This could be enrolling in school, attending a workshop, volunteering at a local charity or any other activity that keeps you on a path of learning, growth and development.

In additional to gaining some new skills, you will also help your marketability. For people who have been out of work for an extended period, they are likely to face the question, “what have you been doing while out of work?” Many will only answer “I’ve been looking for a job,” while a few will describe substantive activities related to their career that could make them more marketable. If you were hiring, who would you pick?

Interview Prep Book Award Finalist

Power Up Your Job Search: A Modern Approach to Interview Preparation, my book teaching interview techniques for job seekers, was named an Award Finalist by USA Book News in the Careers category this week. Since publishing the book back in March, I have heard from numerous job seekers who have used the book to improve their interview skills.

Power Up Your Job Search: A Modern Approach to Interview Preparation, my book teaching interview techniques for job seekers, was named an Award Finalist by USA Book News in the Careers category this week. Since publishing the book back in March, I have heard from numerous job seekers who have used the book to improve their interview skills.

The book is set up as a step-by-step guide teaching how to get ready for an interview. It is ideal for people who want a simple to follow process. We intentionally worked to make the book as short as possible. Each chapter, paragraph and sentence had to add value to stay in the book. We also focused the book on specific skills anyone can learn. This combination makes the instruction in the book quick and easy.

I wish there was a magic bullet that would get people hired. It would make my job teaching interview skills a lot easier. All I would need is a couple minutes with someone and teach them the “secret to interviewing.” There is no secret, and it will never be that easy. To excel in an interview your need to develop your interview skills, prepare thoroughly and practice. That’s why an interview prep book like Power Up Your Job Search is so important. It will teach you the skills you need to adapt to interviewers and questions that blindside you.

If you are getting ready for an interview, get a copy of the book. The job market is too competitive and mediocre interview skills will lead to missed opportunities.