Dealing With the Most Important New Career Risk

Making the decision to pursue a new career can be one of the most challenging and exciting times in a person’s life. You look forward to the possibility of doing something you have always wanted to do, fulfilling your personal vision, benefiting others, increasing your income, or any combination of these or other benefits. You may be looking to start your own business, move into a new field that has always interested you, or go back to school to get the training needed to allow you to leverage your expertise to teach.

Is making the new career decision enough?

By the time you have made the decision to pursue a new career you likely have done the hard work to carefully think through your decision (If not or to confirm your choice, see the link below). You have spent weeks, months, or maybe years, dealing with the up and down emotions associated with making this type of life change. You have sought career guidance from friends and family, and possibly paid for professional advice. The plan is ready. Time to execute. You are ready to go.

Read more

Top Ten Ways to Find a Job

When the economy is in bad shape, the job market is usually worse. Those with jobs are trying to stay employed and people without jobs are desperately trying to find a new job, both can be extremely stressful.

If you put in the time and effort into finding a new job you will be rewarded no matter how fierce the competition is. Stay motivated and persistent – finding a new job is your new job right now.

These are the top ten ways to find a new job:

Read more

Looking for a New Job in I.T. ?

Most people who are looking for a new job in I.T. start by looking online or in the press for vacancies. This is a strategy to find a job, but it can be very time consuming and ineffective if you don’t know what you are looking for. How do you know when you’ve found it? There is a system which will get you more effective results and a much better job match for you personally. Follow these steps and find a job you love!

Before you start – get a notebook that you will write all your ideas in. This is important so you can remember all your ideas and keep everything organized.

Read more

5 Ways to Drastically Improve Your Resume in 10 Minutes or Less

by Vincent Czaplyski

Follow these quick and easy tips to build yourself a better resume in under 10 minutes flat.

1. Use strong, action oriented language that describes specific skills or accomplishments.

Go through your resume from top to bottom and eliminate weak language. Don’t write “Was in charge of large graphic design department that increased company revenues” when you can say “Managed 12 graphic artists in major creative projects that increased revenues by over 3 million last year.”

Whenever possible, eliminate all forms of the verb “to be” (is, are, was, am and so on), as demonstrated in the previous example. Instead, replace them with strong action words that paint a compelling picture.

2.  Add bullets.

Bullets are a great way to transform lists that would otherwise make tedious reading in paragraph form, or that would benefit by a cleaner layout. They make the job of reading your resume more pleasant for the reader. A perfect candidate for bullets is a list of accomplishments related to a single job. For example, “Postmaster, 1998 -2003″ followed by 3 or 4 major accomplishments in bullet form.

3.  Write a specific, concise job description.

If the job you really want is “Director of Human Resources at a Fortune 1000 company,” say so. Don’t write “Middle management position at a large or mid-size company” or something equally vague. That covers a lot of territory. You need to help the company with the exact job you’re looking for find you. Put yourself in the hiring manager’s shoes. Would you call a candidate for an interview in the hopes that she is a good match, or would you call the person whose job description specifically indicates she wants the job?

Read more

Creating Your Career Transition Binder

If you’re in job search mode, you should create a binder – your very own Career Transition Binder. I’ve found that there are two types of job seekers: those who create a binder to keep track of all their networking, interviewing, career documents, lists, and contacts in one place – and those who don’t.

Guess which group tends to make more progress, get more interviews, land great jobs more quickly, and negotiate better deals? Yup – the binder people!

Think you can track and manage all this information “electronically” – on your Smart Phone, PDA or Netbook? Think again! I’ve had plenty of technology-savvy clients try to do this, but it never works. They ALWAYS wind-up using a paper-based organization system, in the form of their own Career Transition Binder.

Read more