Saturday, December 31, 2011

This last year

It has been an exciting year for me all around. A little over a year ago I started my "Get the Job" group on Facebook, a couple of weeks ago I started this blog. I've also written a couple of books on hunting for jobs. One of the books "Additional Considerations" I made available as a freebie and a lot of copies have been downloaded. I've even had some success in my actual job in retail and am now working 40 hours per week now.

Why I started the Facebook group was that I wanted to help some with their job hunts. There are so many people that are looking for jobs that I wanted to do a little something about it. This blog is kind of an extension of that desire to help people. The reason for the books is also to help some job hunters, mainly my 20 year old Sons in their job hunt. If the books help some others also that is even better. If this next years goes as well as the last one has I've feel extremely blessed.

Enjoy the new year, I wish you much success.

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Friday, December 30, 2011

Advertising and your resume

This morning I was watching some TV and I started paying attention to the advertisements. My thoughts became drawn to how those ads and a resume really are rather similar in some ways. Both of them are selling a product, in the resume the product is you. The more effective it is will make a difference in how often you get calls from employers. One of the things that I noticed most about the TV ads is that the most effective ones have very few words. This applies to resumes also, they also need to have very few words but yet they need to say a lot. It takes time to do that effectively.

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Thursday, December 29, 2011

A look into the future

To look into the future you need to look into the past and then you can extrapolate what may happen. This is something that I learned years ago when I was learning how to work on computers in a correspondence course. I simply looked at what computing was in 1974 and what computing was in 1994 when I was taking the course. The thing that noticed was the fact that the 1974 computer was rather large and couldn't do too much. The 486 that I had in 1994 could actually do more and there was also a size difference in the two. By extrapolating I envisioned that a computer would eventually be something that you could hold in your hand and pretty much do everything. Smart phones and tablets are definitely living up to the promise that I dreamed all of those years ago.

While there are some that will disagree with where I think computing will be headed. I'm forseeing that we will have neural interfaces, that we will have our computers inside us instead of something we carry. Some people will be a bit scared of that thought, that you won't be able to be disconnected ever. In fact I think that if you aren't constantly connected in this way you won't be able to find a job in 2030.

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Wednesday, December 28, 2011

Prepaid cell phones

Another thing that has occurred is the ability to always be connected at all times wherever you are. In fact, there now seems to be an expectation that you are connected at all times by employers. There's a bit of a surprise if you aren't available constantly these days. While it might not be entirely welcome to constantly have a cell phone with you it really is necessity. You could easily have a prepaid cell phone, they can be a very good choice. If you have per minute prepaid service it can be rather expensive I'll warn you. At one time I had a couple of prepaid phones and I remember well that they cost 25 cents per minute. While the cost has came down a lot they still are very expensive if you're paying by the minute.

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Tuesday, December 27, 2011

Being mobile

One thing that is extremely important in this job market is to be reachable where you are at. It will continue to be so long into the future also. This means that you do need a cell phone with you at all times during the day. The days of having a message number are long gone and are never coming back again. While you don't need a phone like the Blackberry that I am using to write this posting you do need at a minimum a basic phone with basic service. This will ensure that you are reachable at any time that you might get the call from an employer.

Several years ago I eliminated a home phone completely since working for a cell phone company for a while. We even use wireless for our home internet service today and will probably never again have a wired connection. I've found it to be very useful to be able to be completely mobile. Now I even have the capability to post a resume while walking down the street. While you don't need smart phone capability to find a job I recommend it and I could never go back to the way it was now.

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Monday, December 26, 2011

Fear

"The only thing we have to fear is fear itself", FDR

One of the worst things that you can do during a job hunt is let fear get to you. Fear and stress goes hand in hand and a lot of the both cannot help you ever. They will make you nervous, make you worry and generally overwhelm you. Let the fear and stress go immediately and you will do much better during your interviews. You'll also do better in your writing every time that have to fill out an application or modify your cover letter. De-stressing will allow your wonderful personality to shine, to set you apart from other candidates for a position. This will make it easier for you to get the job and shorten your job hunt every time that you are looking for employment. This is what you want, to shorten the amount of time between jobs.

Personally, I don't like to hunt for a job and I never have. Because I was trying to do something about it I realized that fear and stress were things that I could control. These were things that I would never again allow to control me. This allowed me to de-stress and begin to do better during interviews and every interaction from that point forward. I began to take control of the situation instead of allowing it to control me. So don't let fear control you, get in control of it.

Sent from my BlackBerry® smartphone, powered by Cricket.

Sunday, December 25, 2011

Merry Christmas

I hope everyone is having a wonderful day today on this Christmas Day 2011. As I've stated in my previous postings and on my Facebook group things are looking up in the job market for 2012 and beyond. Another big call center is opening here in Colorado Springs and there are a lot of openings in the Denver metroplex. These are all great signs so enjoy the day and look forward to tomorrow and the coming year.

Sent from my BlackBerry® smartphone, powered by Cricket.