An excellent resume doth not a successful job search make. Three other influencing factors are the ads to which you are responding, your cover letter, and your interviewing skills. In fact, not only are three additional components, they all four are intimately intertwined. The ads to which you respond should to be closely aligned with what you’ve done. Reach too high or miss too many of the requirements, and you’re knoc...

Everyone who's been fired raise their hand. If your hand is up, and mine is too, we’re in good company. I’m unable to find statistics, but in 25 years of working with candidates, my conservative guess is fifty percent of all people within the workforce have been fired or laid off at some point. Despite this, most job seekers end up on the defensive, afraid of how it will reflect on them come interview time. And most term...

Last week we looked at two examples of termination, what they stemmed from, and how to handle them. This week we continue with the third example, which is the rest of my story, and why not to take termination to heart. When the assistant manager was promoted to manager, I'd been at the firm about two years. I'd started a new specialty and department, and been given a team of recruiters to train and counsel. There was a con...

One of the most overlooked ways in which people fail to sell themselves through their resume is by not defining the companies for which they have worked. Unless you worked for UPS or Macy`s or FedEx, the company name indicates nothing. The majority of job seekers neglect to describe their employers, and by doing so, not only cheat themselves of the full value of their resume, but also pull the potential employer’s attentio...

The purpose of providing references is to close the deal. It isn’t to discover if you are telling the truth about your dates of employment, verify that you’ve demonstrated the proper skills for the job, or even to assure the hiring authority that he’s making the right decision to hire you -- though each reason contributes. If a company is having difficulty deciding which of two individuals to make an offer to, references a...

Let's face it - while we go to the office to work, no one is expected to keep their head down the entire time they're there, not speak to anyone else, and forego the occasional cigarette break. Yet companies expect productivity out of their employees - that's why they're paying you!No talking or socializing at all is one extreme, while the other is being able to talk to whomever you want, whenever you want, about whatever y...

Perfection is an overrated concept. Even those who know it’s unattainable try for it when they interview. What’s the result? Nervousness. For example, fear you won’t be liked. Fear you’ll be asked a question but won’t know the answer. Fear that you won’t be asked back. Fear that you might, and they hire the other person instead. Frequently fear stems from lack of preparation. It can also result from being too attached to...

Thanks to Fisher-Price, as babies we learn a concept that we seem to forget by the time we’re adults: you can’t put a square peg in a round hole. We do it especially with relationships and with jobs. If we don’t know what we’re looking for, we become obscured by what we’re attracted to. And then we don’t realize we’ve reverted to pounding the round orange peg into the hole on that plastic table right in front of us when...

If I were to ask you what you’d do if you were in an interview and knew, absolutely knew, that the job was not for you, what would you say? Most job seekers would say, “Finish the interview.” But why would you continue when you know you don’t want the job? Would it stun you to know you could leave? If you know you don’t want to travel, and suddenly you learn a fact not specified in the ad: the job involves more travel tha...

A job interview is stressful. The person who hasn’t made a lot of changes isn’t practiced at what is involved (nor should they want to be), and the person who has made a lot of changes doesn’t have any idea what’s involved either, or they wouldn’t be making so many changes!Preparing for the interview de-stresses the situation considerably. Yet, 78% of all candidates - regardless of the level for which they are interviewing...