All Too Common Interview Mistakes

Very small, but very significant acts that could stand between you and your next job.

There are reasons you might not feel as confident as you'd like to when you're in your next job interview. It is an expected challenge. Small but significant acts could stand between you and your next job.

In addition to proper preparation to give substantial responses, be sure to pay attention to simple details and don't sabotage yourself with common mistakes.

For the top 10 things NOT to do in your interview see the complete article here.

Top 10 Ways To Get A Job Interview

Knowing that you are likely one of many applicants, how do you get �noticed�? There are a few steps that you can follow to greatly increase your odds of landing that interview.

Breaking down my favorites, David Letterman style, here are my top 10 ways to get an interview: Here are ways 10 to 6.

10.  Be Specific
9.    Know Your Strengths
8.    Research Your Target Companies
7.    Develop A Resume That Stands Out From The Rest

For more info as well as all ten ways to initiate a job interview, click here.

Customize Your Resume for Best Results

You have a resume, but it's not working as well as you'd like it to. What can you do to increase the number of calls you receive for job interviews?  Submitting the same resume for every position can't possibly meet each employer's individual requirements. If you want to grab hiring managers' attention, you need to give them what they want. You must take the time to tailor your resume to each employer and its goals to strengthen your chance of getting noticed.

Suggest you update the following headings cited below.

• Copy Your Monster Resume
• Title
• Objective
• Description
• Qualifications Summary
• Job Descriptions
• Skills

For specific insight of improving your resume, click here

Thank You Email After Interview Considerations

There are several advantages over the old-fashioned paper-and-ink variety of thank you letter. 

• You can send your note right away, the same day if possible, and ensure that it gets to its intended recipients (provided spam filters cooperate). 
• You can do more than remind your employer of your qualities and skill
• You can show them off, by including a link to your online portfolio, LinkedIn account, or professional social networking profiles.

For more insight with Do's and Don't examples, click here

30+ proven tips to put in a resume

Here are some very appropriate ways to improve your resume with proven tips that work!  If you want a resume that will give you more interviews, you need to know what skills to put on a resume and how to describe them.

This article will specifically show you:

• Where to put work skills on a resume. 
• What skills to put on a resume to get you MORE interviews.
• How to list work-related skills on a resume.
• 31 best examples of how to put your skills on a CV (right vs. wrong examples).
• INFOGRAPHIC that shows the most important resume skills.

For insight, click here to learn more.

Using Social Media in Your Job Search

An increasing number of employers are using social media sites to recruit and to advertise for employees. The majority of open jobs are not posted on job boards, but are found through networking. According to JobVite�s 2013 Social Media Recruiting Survey:

• 94% of recruiters across all industries have adapted to social recruiting
• 78% of recruiters have made a hire using social recruiting
• 93% of recruiters are likely to look at someone's social media profile
• The order of preference is 1. LinkedIn 2. Facebook 3. Twitter

This article covers why use social media, referrals are everything, and how to get started.  

For more info on how to use social media, click here.

Curriculum Vitae Use

A curriculum vitae is a document one uses to apply for employment. It provides detailed information about an individual's educational and work history. Often called a CV, it is much more comprehensive than a resume and therefore it can be much longer. There is no limit to how long, but it must include only information that is needed to illustrate your academic and professional experience. A lengthy CV isn't better than a short one if it contains irrelevant data.

CV features covered in this article include:

• What Should You Put on Your CV?
• CV Mistakes to Avoid

To learn more, click here.

Why you need a career plan

Developing a career action plan can be achieved only after doing a thorough self assessment with a complete exploration of viable career options.  The career planning process is ongoing, and bi-directional, meaning you can move back to previous steps when you need to gather more information or clarify your choices.

For example, a counselor can't set your goals for you. He or she will just help you clarify them and assist you in finding strategies to reach them. You must amend your action plan over time as your goals change, your priorities change, and your career grows.

For more info about writing a career plan, click here

Putting Together a Career Action Plan

A career action plan is a road map that takes you from choosing an occupation to becoming employed in that occupation to reaching your long-term career goals.  The career planning process is ongoing, and bi-directional, meaning you can move back to previous steps when you need to gather more information or clarify your choices.

Your career action plan will be made up of these goals and the steps you will have to take to reach them.  Here's what you need to do: 

• First brainstorm to come up with a list of all your goals. 
• Then break your goals down into short-term and long-term goals.

For more info about writing a career plan, click here

Develop a Career Action Plan

Of desirable career options, one must choose choose an occupation after examining them carefully and determining which one is the best match. After doing a thorough self assessment and an exploration of career options you should develop a career action plan.   

The career planning process is ongoing, and bi-directional, meaning you can move back to previous steps when you need to gather more information or clarify your choices.

Once you have identified an occupation to pursue, you then develop an action plan ncluding the educational or vocational training requirements.

For a discussion of a Career Action Plan see the article here.

Judge Your Job Opportunities

Top recruiters place candidates in new jobs by carefully qualifying job job descriptions.

These recruiters search the job description to see if the manager has realistic expectations. They evaluate the text for a sense of urgency, to help assess the chance of filling the position. They zero  in on the most promising positions.
In your search for jobs, you can steal a few pages from the recruiting playbook. Before investing hours tailoring your standard resume, decide if an opportunity is worth pursuing with the following:

• Study the Job Posting
• Identify the Must-Have Skills
• Determine the Level of Urgency
• Explore the Compensation
• Verify the Hiring Process

To decide if a position is worth the time and effort see more details here

How to Pick the Right Career

The most important thing to do in picking a career is to choose one that is right for you. Finding a career that is a good fit is all that matters. Ignore people who tell you what type of work to pursue. 

You will pour much of yourself into your job, and spend much time at work; your career must be suitable for you. It has to fit well with your interests, aptitudes, work-related values, and personality type. The first steps include:

• Learn about yourself
• Learn about potential occupations

Find more information here.

Your Personality and Your Career

Trying to decide what career to pursue? You should find out what your personality type is. Certain occupations are more suitable for particular types than others.  A self assessment should look at your values, interests, and aptitudes. These four taken together serve as a way to find the right career.

A way to learn about your personality is through the use of "career personality tests." They are more accurately called personality inventories. A career development professional, such as a career counselor, can administer a personality inventory and help you utilize what you learn from it. 

For more on personalities see the complete article here.

Picking a Career Path

When selecting a career there's a lot riding on your decision. You want to pick an occupation in which you can be successful for many years to come. 

While you can change careers, doing so can be an effort. It is easier if you don't have to . 

You should pick something that is not only suitable for you, but also can support you financially far into the future. Increase your chances of making a good decision by avoiding some very common mistakes here.

Money moves after loosing your job

When you have overcome the shock of losing your job � and, likely, your main source of income � organizing your finances can have a calming effect. The sooner you make a plan, the easier it will be to cope with your change of circumstances.

Despite being one of life's biggest stressors, being fired, demoted or seeing a change in your financial state does not have to spell doom and gloom.

Review the short term demands on your wallet and longer-term financial obligations and ease this stressful financial situation. See some suggestions here.

Assessing Your Aptitude

What is Aptitude?
When you are researching occupations, or reviewing job offerings, you may see aptitude listed in the requirements. For example, you may read that in order to work in a particular field you need to have an aptitude for science. Other occupations require having an aptitude in math, visual arts or or manual dexterity or motor coordination.

When an aptitude is among the qualifications to work in an occupation, it is referring to a natural talent or an ability through life experience, study or training. It also pertain to one's capacity to acquire a skill.

For a discussion on Aptitudes, see the full article here.

Exploring Career Choices

You have a multitude of options when it comes to a career  It can be difficult to pick one, especially if you have no idea what you want to do ... or if many things appeal to you. Does it seem like an insurmountable task? It's not. 

You will have to put some effort into making your decision, but your effort will be well worth it in the end. If you follow these steps, you can successfully choose a suitable career and avoid making a big mistake. 

Assess yourself
List occupations to explore
Explore the occupations
Create a 'Short List'
Conduct informational interviews

For details on the above steps, see the article here,

4 tips for the perfect customer service resume

If you're trying to enter the customer service field or change jobs within the industry, it's possible to stand out and make hiring managers choose your resume over others. Here are four tips to consider as you craft your resume.

Maintaining a basic resume template is important when applying to jobs; however, most career specialists recommend creating industry-specific resumes to appeal to the managers and human resource representatives who are reading them.



Customer service representatives are on the front lines of a company. They deal directly with customers and often have to diffuse stressful situations and solve problems quickly and calmly. If HR teams make poor hiring decisions for their customer care teams, then they could end with employees who make the situation worse and isolate customers. This is why the hiring and training process is so lengthy and involved for this department.

Quantify Your Previous Experience

When possible, include quantifiable information about your performance and your company within your resume. This helps HR departments understand how you performed at your job and what your workload looked like. While customer service is similar across companies and industries, each company has its own distinct expectations, too.
For example, the team at Zendesk conducted a survey to determine the average performance of customer service departments across the world:

The average customer satisfaction rate was 86 percent, and companies faced an average of 630 customer complaints that needed human interaction.

By sharing your personal customer satisfaction rate and listing how many calls or complaints you solved monthly, it's possible for your employer to understand how effective you were as a customer service agent. Your time on each call could also be an important statistic to include if it took several minutes or an hour to solve your customers' problems within that industry, in order to explain why you only helped about a dozen customers per day.

Specify What Technology You've Used

Historically, customer care representatives (CCR) relied on phone banks to receive their calls while upper management monitored their performance. However, today's customer care teams are responding to calls, answering emails, and engaging in customer chats all throughout the day. To manage these multiple forms of communication, companies have started to invest in various software programs like FreshDesk or LiveAgent.
Some of these software platforms actually use machine learning to move customers further down the sales funnel, so customer sales teams receive information about customers and potential solutions to their problems before they even say a word to them. If you've worked with technology like this before, it's important to list it on your resume.
When you start working at a new company in the customer service department, you will likely be trained on their software and internal tools. If you're already familiar with them � or have used similar programs � hiring managers could see you as an asset because you will pick up the job faster and will be less of a burden on the training teams.

Include Soft Skills as Well as Technical Knowledge

According to a survey by CareerBuilder, 77 percent of hiring managers value soft skills in an employee (i.e., the less tangible skills associated with an individual's personality) just as much as technical ability. This number might even skew higher for customer service agents who require strong soft skills to solve problems while representing the company.

The Provide Support blog created an infographic with the top 20 skills needed to work in customer service and explained why each one is important. As you build your resume, try to mention a few of these soft skills along with the technical experience and training that you have. Many of these traits are actually buzzwords on a resume that hiring managers will be looking for when considering bringing you in for an interview. For example, you could say that you:

• Listened to customer feedback and compiled reports for your managers.
• Brainstormed creative solutions to customer problems that benefitted them and the company.
• Led training exercises within your team to improve communication when relaying problem customers to upper-management.

While you're technically discussing your experience and sharing what you did in previous jobs, you're also highlighting your listening skills, creativity, leadership, and communication ability � all of which are soft traits your future employers will be looking for.

List Any Leadership Opportunities or Promotions

When you're creating your resume, you want to prove that you're dedicated to the companies you work for. No company wants to hire employees who will do the bare minimum and spend their days counting the minutes until it's time to go home. Instead, companies want people who will do their best and motivate those around them. If you're able to show that you're a dedicated employee, then your resume has a higher chance of making its way to the top of the stack, above applicants with the same skill set.
The average employee stays with a company for 4.6 years, with young people between the ages of 25 to 34 staying with companies an average of 3.2 years. Not only do hiring managers want someone who will stay for several years (and therefore reduce turnover and training costs), but they also want potential leaders. If your manager selected you for training or a leadership seminar at your last job, be sure to mention it in your resume. This shows that you're willing to stay at a company and that your manager thought of you as a key candidate for promotion.

Steps to Choosing a Career

When the time comes for you to pick a career, you will discover that you have a multitude of options. It can be difficult to pick one, especially if you have no idea what you want to do ... or if many things appeal to you. 

This is not an insurmountable task. You will have to put some effort into making your decision, but your effort will be well worth it in the end. There is a method and by following these steps, you can successfully choose a suitable career. 

See eight steps here to structure your investigation.

Analyze the Job Description

Any interview is definitely a one time make or break. The company will make a decision on you as a candidate for the role you are interviewing for, but they will also decide how they feel about you as a candidate for the company overall. 

Knowing what you are interviewing for is more than just knowing the job title and position basics. It means dissecting the job description and knowing how to apply your past experience to the job being filled.

For the anatomy of a job description, there are usually 4 main parts: the overview, the responsibilities, the requirements, and the desired attributes.

For a discussion of these factors see the article here

Have A Career Network

A career network should be in place when you need it, both for job searching and for moving along the career ladder. Since you never know when you might need it, it makes sense to have an active career network, even if you don't need it today.

Career networking, or "professional" networking, involves using personal, professional, academic or familial contacts to assist with a job search, achieve career goals, or learn more about your field, or another field you'd like to work in. 

Networking can be a good way to hear about job opportunities, or get an "in" at the company you'd like to work in.  For 7 tips see the article here.

Create a Personal Power Statement

In 30 Second Summaries and in Resumes, consider the power of words that describe a person's character, values, and skills perfectly. Creating a power statement is imperative for all persons at any level. Individuals need to be effective in communicating their strengths and accomplishments at any educational level. 

When presenting oneself to others, there is a need to present information to validate one's values, character, and skills in a powerful and succinct manner. 

This could be difficult without the guidance presented here.

Things to say in an interview

Your interview is usually your first (possibly only)  opportunity to present yourself.  You need to be able to effectively communicate your skill set and show the best competitive advantage to secure employment. 

During the interview process, you want to highlight as many of your strengths as possible. An easy way to do this is by slipping a few simple phrases into the job interview. 

Find seven things you should be ready to say in an interview here.

Networking for Introverts

You have probably heard you should spend some portion of your time networking. This includes even when you have job. So with networking being essential, now is the time to start.

You will most likely find yourself at an event of some kind event  (networking?) or mingling before the event starts (networking?). This is a natural opportunity for networking to take place.  For the recent college graduate,and for the unemployed, networking is really about any room you are in that contains other people too!

Some people are naturals at the art of networking while for others, perhaps the more shy or introverted among us, networking can be a stressful experience.

Find eight tips which will provide some help in relieving that stress here.

Assess your Career � Take a Short Test

Using questions about your preferences and attitudes, you can be associated with one of the 16 principal personality types. 

Conducting a personal career profile will give you insight into your individuality, outlining your strengths along with areas of relative weakness. It maps your behavioral style and core motivations to areas of work and patterns of work which best accommodate your individual make-up, giving you the  opportunity to reflect and make decisive choices on your working life and career.

The initial free analysis will give you an interesting picture of you as a person. Purchasing the  followup report is optional. Find the test here.

Part Time Employment from Home

The good news is a number of companies are looking for part-time workers -- and that number is expected to rise in the coming years. Nearly one in five workers is currently part-time, and by 2020 projected that will increase to 40%.

A firm that screens companies offering part-time opportunities has analyzed more than 40,000 companies offering part-time remote jobs in the first half of 2016 and come up with the top 35 to watch for such work.

Industries that topped the list include education, marketing and healthcare, travel and technology. Some of the more common part-time remote job titles are teacher, writer, speech pathologist, coder, interpreter, editor, and customer service representative.

See the 35 legitimate companies in the complete article here.

Negotiate a Higher Salary

Negotiating is a skill, and many people don't have much experience with it. However, negotiating can earn or save you more money in less time than just about any other method. 

Most job candidates do a poor job of negotiating for a higher salary, and some don't even realize that salary negotiation is an expected part of the interview process.

See 7 essential tips for negotiating a higher salary here

Ten Work at Home Jobs

Searching for jobs home-based work, used to be a matter of scanning the Sunday classifieds for offers to get rich quick by stuffing envelopes. Working from home is easier now because exposure to at-home opportunities has multiplied.

A wide variety of job ads are just a click away, but so are the scams. It is difficult to find a legitimate opportunity. With 4,500 to 5,000 work-at-home job ads posted weekly, the statistics find 60 phonies for every one that's for real

Let�s initially begin with the type of job that represents a true opportunity here.