Why I have a Blogger Account

Having recently found Smartpassiveincome.com, I decided to really start to write the content I been only talking about writing. I want to help college students and soon be grads navigate the job search process. SP (short for Smartpassiveincome....) suggests that an easy way for people to overcome inertia is to start with creating an infobarrel account and accumulate content there. I thought it was a brilliant idea--it would get me going and I could write in small amounts when I felt like it and/or had time. I gave myself a goal of one article a week that more or less I've stuck to.

My true intent, in addition to truly wanting to help students, was to see how much passive google adsense income I could generate, thinking I could really become an amazon affiliate if I got more popular (I certainly could do links to appropriate clothing sites...). I first tried to link an adsense account to what I consider my professional blog (ellenweber. wordpress.com) and I didn't get anywhere, but really what I wanted was to link to Infobarrel but didn't have any content when I started so I tried to get everything going with my wordpress blog.  I went into the Infobarrell website for instructions on linking and followed them. I didn't end up linking and found that google didn't approve many infobarrel people anyway.

I then realized, that google in all it's dominance, makes it easy only if you have one of their blog accounts. So, I cut and paste my infobarrel content to this site google Blogger site that you are on now. The content comes from: http://www.infobarrel.com/Users/LNWebr. I had planned to set up a wordpress site for this specifically (I already had started one before...), but figured that Blogger was fine and if it made it easier to do what I wanted, so be it.

Let's see how this works.

Resume Writing

Part 5 Resume Writing

Think of your resume as a continuous work in progress that can and should be changed when you: 1. Add skills, education, etc  2. Think of a better way to say something that you said before 3. Forgot something you didn’t say before 4. Didn’t realize that something you did would be pertinent to a job you are now applying for.

We started with the address and moved to the title in my last post—talked about how no one cares about your objective. Now we’ve gotten to the next part of the resume.

Many young people will put their education next.  Unless you have no work experience at all, or you went to Harvard, education should be at the end (and if you went to Harvard—good for you—but since most people didn’t, they might find it offensive or bragging. So almost always, put it last).

The top part of your resume is really important. It’s the opportunity to bullet point skills, highlight accomplishment and generally tell people why you’re good, not just where you have worked. It also may be the only area that someone looks at and if it doesn’t have some skill or experience they are looking for, they will likely move on to the next one.

A standard format after name and title is a brief summary followed by bullet pointed skill set and then some specific highlights of accomplishments.

So it would look something like this;

Senior Level Digital Strategy Exectuive

Accomplished and seasoned Strategy and implementation specialist with an eye on the bottom line and conversion to sales. Adept at writing long boring copy that may or may not interest anyone reading this resume but need to put something of value so they’ll consider me for this spot.

·         Expert level omniture, site-catalyst, google adwords

·         Advanced analytic capability using SAS and other like software

·         Excellent presenter and communicator of difficult to understand concepts

·         Data expert with….

·         Strong ability to get along with others and play in the sandbox

(this generally looks good in two columns but my word processing skills aren’t good enough for this).

After this bullet pointed skill portion of the resume, you might have (or be able to legitimately make-up) specific accomplishment you can highlight in at this time. For example:

·         Help xyz company increase leads 120% in my time running the strategy group

·         Increased sales by 200% over a two year period

·         Able to grow account 120% with in my tenure in this position

·         Responsible for a data migration to a new system in a six month period

·         Financial analysis was able to save my company $100million dollars

Since you’re new to the job market, it’s obvious that your skill set and accomplishments will be more humble. But you can still use the format to show your skills and accomplishments. For example,

-was able in a six month internship to research and evaluate market competitors that lead to companywide savings, etc.

The next part of the resume should be a clean chronology with company, title, location, dates—followed by job description and more accomplishments if you’ve not listed them in the above section. For example:

The Best Advertising Agency, New York, NY                                     Summer 2012

Associate Account Executive (internship)

Responsible for day to day operation of the Blah Bank business. Specific duties included: competitive analysis using SAS, review of strategy and creative, writing in-depth recommendations to increase sales.

·         Was able to help client increase sales 35% while working on the business

·         Streamlined internal process to help make more efficient and move faster

Do this for all related jobs you’ve had. Education and specific qualifications should follow at the end.

There are lots of templates out there including Microsoft word. There is no reason not to use them, especially if you are “bullet and column challenged” as I am.

Next we’ll get into how to convert this to Linked In and About Me.

Starting to Get Your Resume together

Part 4

Starting to get your Resume/Linked In profile/About Me together

Hopefully by this point you have started to amass some job skills, whether it’s specific software skills or more loosey goosey type skills such as “good with people.” Depending on what you want to do, you’ll likely need a combo of both. If you are IT or Analytical and can’t have a conversation with someone and can’t present to a group in a cohesive way, a management position in that area is not going to be for you. You’ll be considered a back-room player—which is fine, but your progression will stop at a certain point. (that doesn’t mean that the money will stop—think about how much back room actuaries earn…)  And if you are a good manager and people person, you’ll need a skill set behind you to be able to move to the next step.

What I want to do now is to help you formulate your skill set into something that is easy to read, looks good and will help explain who are you are to people who will be looking at a sheet of paper.

1.       The top of your resume. The only reason I bring this up is because many of you will be applying for jobs while you are in college and may not apply in the area that your family lives (ie you want to work in NYC for the summer or permanently—your family lives in Ohio—you are in school in Florida). In this case, you need to put only your name, phone number and email address (and a professional blog address if you have one).

 If you’re trying for that NYC job, the company will want to know that you’ve figured out where to live so if you have a local address put it as part of the top. Putting one in Ohio will be turn-off some people (“I don’t want to deal with an intern/new hire who now has to figure out where to live….”). You want people to think that working with you is easy, not difficult—that you’ve figured out how to get where you want to work and how to live. If you don’t have an address, then talk about your situation in a cover letter.  Even if it’s a full-time job, you want the company to know that you’ve figured out your living situation or can figure it before you start.  You can do that by saying I can start with two week’s notice—and then figure out how to sleep on someone’s couch or get a quick temporary apartment share.

The next part of your resume should basically be a short summary preceded by a title. Your resume will be looked at quickly so you want to make the most impact as fast as possible.  Generally HR people and recruiters look at the top of a resume first to see where you live, then go to the end to see where and when you went to college, and then will go back again to the beginning to see if it says anything related to what they are looking for.

So if you give yourself a title, you are capturing a moment where you are best able to position yourself in the readers mind. Your level and experience will define the title. My title is Senior Level Executive Recruiter and Talent Acquisition Specialist. When I worked in advertising it would have been Seasoned Advertising Account Executive, if I was in IT I would say Senior IT Professional with Financial services Experience. You can say something like Junior Copywriter or Social Media Strategist—as long as you have something to back it up and you’re not lying, it’s okay.

So look at this:

Brandon H. Quillian

646-822-2678

Brandonh@gmal.com

Copyblog.wordpress.com

Social Media Strategist

The next part of your resume can be a short summary and then some bullet pointed skills that highlight what you can do. The one thing that you don’t want to put on your resume is an objective. A “I’m looking to work….” Portion is not going to help you get a job. Companies don’t really want to know what you want to do, they want to know how you are going to help them achieve their goals. At some point in your career they will pay more attention to what you want, but not until you become a valued employee and a company wants to make you happy and not leave.

My next post will be the skill section and the rest of the resume.

Finding Internships before you Graduate

#3

Finding Internships

Summer before Senior Year/For Credit internship

This is an extremely important summer for you. It’s the last one before you graduate. Your college might require a semester internship (hopefully it does) and this will be your last chance before graduation to do something related to a desired career—or your last chance to “try it out.”

You have to go about finding an internship in a similar manner to finding a job. You do have to realize however that you might not get paid, so depending on your home/family situation, you have to take this into consideration. If you need the money, and many people do, you have to consider taking a job—but trying to get a job that is as close to an internship as possible. Something that can give you skills that you’ll need for a career.

Thinking back on my own summer jobs (they were not internships but gave me excellent work experience), I worked for the Youth Conversation Corp (I was lucky enough to get this through a lottery), the local Community Park, summer camp …. I had assorted other jobs (some awful one like the one where I cleaned typewriters—yes I’m old enough to have cleaned typewriters), supermarket cashier, etc. But I can look back at all those jobs and say I learned something.

During the semester: If your college gives you credit for an in-semester internship, it will be the most important internship you will have. It will be the time to really figure out if this is what you want to do with your life and fine tune your course schedule for your senior year. It will also be the time where you can make professional contacts—people who really can help you find your first job when you graduate. If people like you and respect you, and think you do a good job, they generally want to help you.  The HR people in just about any company would prefer to recommend someone who has been personally vouched for by a person in their company. It makes their life easier and the hiring process more full proof—you are a known and proven entity.

I think back on my internship. I wanted to be a Park Ranger in a National park. My internship ended up in a southern city in their park’s department. The experience made me realize that being isolated in a National park wouldn’t work for me, but having the ability to plan events for a city park would be very appealing. I then realized that I needed to have many more business classes under my belt and went back and adjusted my class schedule.

So how do you go about getting an internship? Your school should help you; previous alums are a great source for that as well.  Professors with contacts, parents, parent friends, contacts you’ve made in other summer jobs. But again remember, the more focused you could be at this point, the easier it will be to find something.

Make your list and then figure out how to approach for an internship. I’m not too positive on college career centers, but I do believe that your college is the best place to facilitate a for-credit internship.

Choose the best internship you can handle (meaning that if you get paid at all, it won’t be a lot of money—so take the best one you can afford to take). And treat this job like your career depended on it. You’ll have other chances but use this one wisely.

While you’re in the internship, practice your social media skills. Use this time to figure out how you’re going to connect to all the people you’re meeting. I suggest this is the time to start to develop a Linked-In profile and an “About Me” page with thoughts in mind of how you’re going to turn this into an actual resume.

My next post will be on resume development, Linked In profile and an “about me” page.

How to Decide on a Specific Career

Article #2

How to decide on a specific career?

The sooner you can narrow down a career trend (I use the word trend because you can trend towards something or away from something, but use the same skill set—for example, you decide on a marketing trend and then want to trend toward social media—it’s a similar part of the same thing), the sooner you can get appropriate experience and direct your college course load.

But keep this in mind; this is a very difficult time for college grads to find jobs. It’s not that jobs don’t exist; it’s that students are not gravitating to the jobs that are open. One reason is that some of skill sets rely on advanced math (engineers) and some of these career choices are more vocational (I’m not going to college to be that!), but many are not.

For example: I just read an article in the NY Times that featured two women who were running their father’s machine parts business and were given a big government contract. They had a hard time filling this contract because they didn’t have enough skilled welders—high level welders who could work on complex projects. They ended up training someone who is now dedicated to being an internal training person. It’s unlikely you need to go to college to be a welder (a vocation school is a better bet) but this particular article shows that it pays to research where opportunities lie and perhaps there is another opportunity (the trainer) where one opportunities ends and another begins.

Look up the yearly reports on the professions that need the most amount of people and are growing. Perhaps none of them interest you or you don’t have the math/science skills to be an engineer. The Health care field is a growing field. Think broadly: if health care people are in such demand, perhaps a career in HR or Public Administration in a health care environment might be the way to go. What about marketing for senior living centers? Look at alternatives that fall into the spectrum of what you want to do and what’s needed.

Here’s how to start:

·         Look at the most needed careers and see if your skill set can fall into one of them or a tangential type of career.

·         Come up with a list of companies you are impressed with and think you’d like to work for. For this first pass, it’s okay to have Apple and Google on the list.

·         See where they are located geographically. Are you willing to move/work there? If not, look for similar companies in an area you are willing to live in.

·         Take a look at the company career sections. Almost all big companies have that on their website—many even have an entry level section. Go through the job descriptions and see what sounds interesting to you. Do you have the job skills for this—can you get the skills, do you want to get the skills? Don’t pick something that sounds good but you’re no good at. Are you choosing a career with stiff competition?

·         Figure out what work experience you can get to match the qualifications of these jobs. At the very least, what similar skill set can you get; how can you adjust your course load to get some of that experience.

·         Finally, how can you get work experience in the summer or during the school year to achieve your goal?