We’ve heard so much lately about the importance of the online image of job seekers and why it is imperative for them to clean up their reputations before any potential employer searches them out. Niche businesses have even cropped up to help with this process and to turn a negative image into a more positive one.
Many companies are also spending significant resources to monitor and “fix” their online image, overcoming negative customer reviews and competitor backstabbing.
Nevertheless, although…
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Added by Steve Van Vreede on September 24, 2009 at 12:46pm —
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Just when I think perhaps I have heard everything, particularly when it comes to resume advice, someone has to go and put something out there that seems to come from left field. The flavor of the moment now seems to be: human-ness, making your resume sound more “human.”
And the wisdom that seems to go along with this concept is that you should incorporate “I” into your resume more often so that it seems less like a robot wrote it and more like a person, i.e., a human, wrote it.
On the surface,…
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Added by Steve Van Vreede on August 5, 2009 at 3:01pm —
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For those of you who are familiar with the work that I do (career coaching, resume writing, and promoter of the group job hunting concept), my title probably seems a bit surprising. After all, how can one of the biggest fans of group job hunting claim that there are times when it doesn’t work?
Well, most great concepts require more than just theory to make them beneficial. You can talk all day about how wonderful something is, but without true application, it will fall flat. The same is true fo…
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Added by Steve Van Vreede on June 25, 2009 at 1:39pm —
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Spend about 30 seconds (or less) perusing the latest job search advice, and you will no doubt come across statements like the following:
“A job search is nothing more than a marketing campaign with you being the product.”
“An effective job seeker in today’s market understands the power of personal branding.”
“A job seeker is a sales professional; the more nuanced the pitch, the more effective the result.”
As a career pro who has participated in establishing this line of thinking, I certainly…
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Added by Steve Van Vreede on May 12, 2009 at 12:38pm —
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Maybe you have heard of the “elevator speech,” that 2-minute or less prepared (but not too stiff) speech that job seekers are supposed to have at the ready when conducting face-to-face or over-the-phone networking? You know, that moment when someone goes, “so tell us what you’re looking for”? It usually goes something like this:
“I’m Joe Schmoe, a PMP with 10 years of management experience in the financial services arena, etc., etc., etc., and I am now looking for a new opportunity in the north…
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Added by Steve Van Vreede on April 8, 2009 at 8:19am —
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To cover letter or not to cover letter … that seems to be the question these days. This past week alone on Twitter, my business partner and I must have come across or participated in no less than 30 discussions that started out something like this: “Do I really even need a cover letter? Does anyone read them anymore?”
At one point, someone even started a poll to gather opinions from around the blogosphere.
Responses to these pleas varied from “cover letters are worthless” to “one third of hiri…
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Added by Steve Van Vreede on March 30, 2009 at 2:30pm —
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It is hard to imagine a job seeker today who isn’t on Twitter. Like LinkedIn, it is rapidly becoming a must-do social networking tool. And also like LinkedIn, it is rapidly becoming a popular hangout for job seekers.
Unlike LinkedIn, however, Twitter moves at a strange pace. It isn’t just about adding contacts you’ve worked with in the past or with whom you have had some connection. Twitter is mostly about making new friends, be it socially, professionally, or both.
At first it can be a confus…
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Added by Steve Van Vreede on March 25, 2009 at 11:53am —
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Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn...by now you have probably been exposed to at least one, if not more, of these sites. If you've been keeping up with the latest job search news, you've also probably been bombarded with cries to "network, network, network." Well, networking itself is obviously not new, but social networking or social media sites like LinkedIn (and NoddlePlace) are. Although these types of sites attract lots of users, not everyone knows how to use them effectively, especially when it c…
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Added by Steve Van Vreede on March 23, 2009 at 11:19am —
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In today’s business environment, many candidates in the financial services arena, including banking, mortgage, and investment management, are hedging their bets and considering their options in the job market. However, they are concerned that little, if anything, will be available within their own field, so they plan to try their luck in other arenas. So what can you do with your resume if you find yourself in a similar situation?
Don’t Hide and Don’t Explain Away
One of the most common mistak…
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Added by Steve Van Vreede on February 25, 2009 at 10:02pm —
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Creating an effective resume can be difficult for the inexperienced writer. But if you want to give it a try on your own anyway, here are a few resume writing tips and traps to consider.
Do: Think About Your Audience
When writing a resume, too many candidates think in simple terms of what tasks they performed. However, it is important to think about your resume from a strategic perspective before you write the first word. So it does not matter if you like what you put on the resume. The…
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Added by Steve Van Vreede on February 11, 2009 at 11:00pm —
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One of the trends I have been seeing lately with resumes is that the contact section at the top of a resume, which typically falls under the candidate’s name, seems to be growing by leaps and bounds. I came across a resume the other day that actually listed three phone numbers, two e-mail addresses, a website, a fax number, and a LinkedIn identifier.
It gave me pause.
Just exactly how much information is too much? Although all candidates certainly want to make themselves available to potential…
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Added by Steve Van Vreede on January 29, 2009 at 4:51pm —
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There is nothing like an air of mystery to perk up people’s ears and create a frenzy. And certainly all it takes in the job search world is to tell job seekers that they must have something or they will miss out on the greatest opportunities ever, and pretty soon you have a trend worthy of epic proportions on your hands.
The whole concept of keywords in resumes is one of those mysterious things that has caused many a job seeker to lose sleep. And all because this issue has somehow taken on a li…
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Added by Steve Van Vreede on January 15, 2009 at 2:52pm —
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Spend a little time in the wonderful world of resume writing, and you will find that it is a far more complex place than most people realize. Back in my college days, I distinctly remember the two extremes, those seniors running around fretting about their resume and whether they had followed all the “rules” to get them that key entry position into some Fortune 500 and those seniors who simply shrugged and said, “what is there to it?”
Personally, I was somewhere in the middle. I didn’t want to…
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Added by Steve Van Vreede on January 6, 2009 at 12:01pm —
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Maybe you have already purchased a professionally written résumé, but you have some doubts about the document you received. Unfortunately, the résumé-writing industry gets a bad rap sometimes simply because there is a lot of misinformation out there. And, truthfully, sometimes résumé writers don’t do the best job of explaining their strategy to the client. Not to mention, all the different opinions that seem to prevail out there, from our friends, online resources, recruiters, coworker, etc.
In…
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Added by Steve Van Vreede on December 9, 2008 at 2:33pm —
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I hear this cry from job seekers all the time: “Why, oh why, does my dream job always seem to be around the next corner? When will I ever find it?”
I have to say that as a
small business owner and self-employed individual, I find this discussion rather irritating.
The reason is because, all too often, the attitude of job seekers is that this elusive job is just out there, in all its perfection, just waiting for them to come along. The boss will…
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Added by Steve Van Vreede on November 29, 2008 at 10:29pm —
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Have you ever reached that point during a job search when you start to think that you must be missing out on something…that someone, somewhere, must have the answer for your troubles?
I mean, if you could just unlock the secret…find the holy grail…swallow the miracle pill, do the happy dance…whatever, the phone would start ringing, the offers would flow in, and you would have the career you have always dreamed of.
If you look hard enough (actually, I don’t think you even need to look that hard…
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Added by Steve Van Vreede on November 24, 2008 at 1:33pm —
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In today’s competitive marketplace, you will find some resume writing firms offering guarantees for the products they deliver. How do these guarantees work, you ask? They typically commit the resume company to reworking the product if the client has not earned an interview in a certain amount of time, say 30 or 45 days.
OK. Sounds nice, right?
But are you guaranteed a better resume as a result? Not necessarily. And this may have absolutely nothing to do with the level of expertise the w…
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Added by Steve Van Vreede on November 18, 2008 at 9:51pm —
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For most, the winter holidays are an enjoyable time for friends and family. However, job seekers have historically struggled during this time. They find that the volume of job advertisements and postings shrinks dramatically. Companies that had already initiated the process of finding qualified candidates tend to slow the process down.
Job seekers are usually surprised by how slow things become, and for how long! The holiday doldrums usually start in mid-November and extend through at least mid…
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Added by Steve Van Vreede on November 16, 2008 at 5:00pm —
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If you are like me, you are a sincere, passionate career services professional who simply wants to help as many job seekers as you can.
You got into this field because you saw how great a need there was for good, solid support. You wanted to create that amazing resume, walk them through that roller coaster ride of a job search, and be the shoulder to cry on during the tough days. You also wanted to be there to celebrate with seekers when they met their goals.
It is a great industry, and if you…
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Added by Steve Van Vreede on November 15, 2008 at 12:00pm —
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Whether we like it or not, a job search entails the selling of a product, which happens to be you. As with any product, there is a fine line between a successful negotiation and an ineffective pitch.
So before we go any further, it is wise to take a look at some of the top mistakes that job seekers make:
1. Overselling/Underselling. It is probably just as bad to oversell your qualities as it is to undersell them. The reason that either one occurs is because job seekers place all the emphasis o…
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Added by Steve Van Vreede on November 13, 2008 at 2:28pm —
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