Resume Clinic’s Bits and Bytes

For everything there is a season. Conversely, there are times when things are out of season. When it comes to landing employment, that “low season” is essentially from mid-November until after New Years.

During this stretch of the year, businesses are usually operating at half-strength, both physically and mentally. It is usually around this time that employees request extended vacations and time off. And the staff that remains is more worried about Christmas parties and shopping than they are work. As such, hiring usually grinds to a hault around this time.

Now, what does that mean or you? Well, this is prime time to get your resume and cover letter in before the big push back to productivity starts after January 1st. When all employees return to work after the start of the new year, it’s “catch up time”. By making a solid push in distributing your resume over the holidays, your resume should be right there in the first week of January for hiring managers to review. Also, you have a leg up on your competition that decided to take it easy during the holidays to pick up on the search after January 1st.

So after your thanksgiving turkey and football, get right back to work. Send out those resumes with reckless abandon to position yourself at the head of the line. Don’t let Christmas activities interfere with the search either. Block aside some time everyday to tend to the job search. Who knows, maybe the best Christmas present of all is waiting for you in January: a good paying job!

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William Mitchell, CPRW
http://www.theresumeclinic.com
Order a free resume critique today!

As we all know, one of the first things you are taught by anyone who considers themselves a resume writing professional is that you want to keep the document down to no more than two pages. Well, the “guideline” has not changed. But the frequency of the penalty for not adhering to it has.

As a certified professional resume writer, we understand that the document has to be “as long as it is interesting and relevant”. There are times when a three-page resume is justified (in my experience, this has only been for senior level executives, certain IT candidates, and academic CVs). But the economy has spawned a different reviewing environment that has to be accounted for.

As a member of several recruiter and HR manager groups on LinkedIn, I get to see a lot of “chatter” about what their days have turned in to. With the vastly increased number of candidates in the unemployment pool, many have come right out and said “If I receive a resume three pages or longer, I simply throw it out because I don’t have the time to go through all of that”. Now, THAT is scary. But when you have hundreds of resumes to review, you want applicants to get to the point.

Now, sometimes going to a third page just cannot be helped. But I can tell you from 14 years of writing experience that when done right, this is highly rare. I would say that of the resumes I have written, less than 1% have had to go to a third page. There are just too many strategies one can use to better organize and prioritize the information to say what needs to be said quickly. Remember you only have 15 seconds or less to make your pitch.

So, if your resume is unnecessarily pushing out at 4 or 5 pages, please beware … “The trash can-a-cometh”.

Much of our success (or failure) depends heavily on our ability to block out distractions and focus on the task at hand. Many of the daily tasks and projects we have on our dockets suffer because we either consciously or unconsciously allow external situations that are at the time outside of our control take the focus away from what we are doing now. Hey, I’m not just preaching here. I am very guilty of it myself at times and my daily productivity and long-range goals take a hit as a result.

I’m no therapist, so I don’t necessarily know the right answer. Maybe the solution is different for every person. But I know that those who get an incredible amount of things done within any given time span have a way of shutting out peripheral thoughts of situations that are of low priority at the moment. The best example I can think of is the year Kobe Bryant was on trial. When he hit the hardwood, nothing else existed except the game. To mot people, it would have been a huge distraction that affected every aspect of his game. But in an interview later that season, he commented on his ability to “compartmentalize” his thoughts and focus on the task at hand. It is what I believe a renaissance man such as Benjamin Franklin must have been able to do to accomplish as much as he did (and he didn’t even have a computer or Smartphone to help him!).

One of my goals this year is to research strategies that help to focus and block outside thoughts to achieve maximum effectiveness. If I find any good reading materials that work, I’ll be sure to pass it along.

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William Mitchell, CPRW
http://www.theresumeclinic.com
Order a free resume critique today!

In this depressed economy you will find that the competition has not only increased in quantity, it has increased in quality due to more qualified professionals being jettisoned into the market. In this situation, it helps to gain an edge in any way you can.

Career blogs offer an excellent way to gain perspective from other professionals on everything from regional employment trends to unique ways to conduct one’s job search. CNN recently provided an excellent article identifying what they thought to be the best career blogs you should visit. There are several others out there that are excellent as well, but I have to say that I agree with most of their choices.

Please feel free to provide feedback if you have visited these sites before and have an pinion on ther effectiveness.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/LIVING/worklife/01/12/cb.work.blogs/index.html

I have prepared a few resumes for Anheuser-Busch employees (or should I say InBev now) and “it” is hitting the fan, according to my sources. Some jobs are starting to be eliminated and my contacts say things are not pleasant around his/her office.

Many of the people in that office prepared their resumes well in advance, as soon as they heard of the pending merger. Smart move. Think at least half my clients will be safe, but at least those wh aren’t will be ready to hit the ground running with a killer resume if the axe falls. Nothing like being prepared!

When you work from home, it can often give you a case of the “blahs”. You have little interaction with others and the walls can sometimes close in on you. I definitely get this feeling every so often.

It is best to get out and change your view for several reasons. First, there’s the human contact. Working solo can turn you into a hermit. Interacting with people isn’t just good for the interaction, but you keep in touch for networking purposes. Next, how about Vitamin C? Staying in your home office for days at a time keeps you from the sunlight exposure that is good for your health.

Find a nice coffeehouse at which you can work. If you have an air card, maybe you can get some work done in the park or at the lake (my personal favorite). Even the public library can present a nice change of pace!

If there is one thing that you can be certain of, it is that life is happening to everyone. We all tend to feel that our trials and tribulations are unique and that no one in the world has ever had they kinds of troubles that we have. This can at times bog down our progress in reaching our goals and dreams because we feel that the chips are stacked against us. Sometimes, in order to amass the strength and confidence to traverse a situation, it helps to find out that there were others facing the same issues who found a way to emerge triumphant.

Biographies and autobiographies of people who have successfully overcome similar hurdles to ones you are going through serve as an excellent way to delve into the inner thoughts of those who are willing to share you you have arrived at where you wish to be. For instance, if you want to understand the mindset of the successful business professional, you might want to read the autobiographies of Donald Trump or Lee Iaccoca. Perhaps you’re struggling with weight issues. In that case, Ricki Lake may be a good read to find out how to harness strength and will power. For every situation from bankruptcy to debilitating illness to dysfunctional family life, someone’s been through it and wrote about how they overcame it.

It is not always necessary to re-invent the wheel. Sometimes the blueprint to success already exists. Many extraordinary people have already been through the fire and documented their journey. Perhaps we can learn from their mistakes instead of our own.

It may have begun with the U.S. economy, but it definitely is not ending there. As we saw over the past month, our behemoth of an economy carries the world with it. When we hurt, everyone does. The Resume Clinic, like many other resume writing services, has seen a spike in resume orders from professionals across the globe who have either lost their jobs already, anticipate doing so soon, or are just preparing for the worst just in case. We have also seen a spike in international resume orders from expat professionals being affected by mergers and consolidations. Clients from as far as China have smartly prepped themselves for the worst-case scenario by getting their resumes on the launching pad to hasten any transition.

While resume business has been steady, the trend is worrisome for us as a nation and world. We are heading into the holiday season with thousands of people in mortgage trouble and employment peril. There’s talk from President-elect Obama of a new stimulus package, but can we afford to wait until January 20^th for him to take action? Non-farm payroll employment fell by 240,000 in October and the unemployment rate rose from 6.1 to 6.5 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the U.S. Department of Labor.

Hang on folks … it’s gonna be a bumpy ride!!!

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William Mitchell, CPRW
http://www.theresumeclinic.com
Order a free resume critique today!