Resume Transformation

December 4, 2013

How can you transform your resume from a series of facts and bullet points to an eye-catching,appetite whetting document that gets you calls for an interview? Vivian Giang explains what a career expert at TheLadders suggests in this article: How to Write an Excellent Resume 2013 For more resume and career advice, go to http://careercenter.cofc.edu/ and select the Students or Alumni links on left.

Job Seekers – You need to read this!

May 31, 2013

If you are sending out resumes and not hearing back, Dr. John Sullivan’s May 20th article on ERE.net is a MUST READ in its entirety. Why You Can’t Get a Job … Recruiting Explained by the Numbers

Class of 2012: 60 Percent of Paid Interns Got Job Offers

August 6, 2012

From NACE (National Association of Colleges and Employers) Knowledge Center
Spotlight for Career Services Professionals

Paid interns have a distinct advantage in the job market, according to results of NACE’s 2012 Student Survey.

Overall, approximately 60 percent of 2012 college graduates who took part in paid internships received at least one job offer, according to the results of the survey.

The survey also found that unpaid interns fared only slightly better in getting job offers than graduates who had not taken part in an internship. Overall, 37 percent of unpaid interns received job offers; 36 percent of graduates with no internship experience received job offers.

The advantage of the paid internship is especially true among students performing internships in the for-profit sector: Among those interning for for-profit employers, 64 percent earned job offers compared to 38.3 percent of their unpaid peers. Pay status, however, also favors students in the nonprofit and government sectors. (See Figure 1.)

Although there are other factors that affect offer rate, the study also suggests that differences in the type of work undertaken by paid and unpaid interns contribute to the discrepancy in job offers. Paid interns spend more time than unpaid interns engaged in “real work,” and thus have the chance to gain more of the relevant work experience employers prize.

Results show that paid interns spent 42 percent of their time on professional duties (analysis and project management) and just 25 percent on clerical and non-essential functions; unpaid interns spent 31 percent of their time on clerical and non-essential work and 30 percent on professional tasks.

NACE’s 2012 Student Survey was conducted mid-January through April 30, 2012. Nearly 48,000 college students nationwide, including 15,715 seniors at the bachelor’s degree level, took part in the survey. A report based on results from graduating seniors will be available later this summer.

Planning a Career Change?

July 30, 2012

By Helen Burnett-Nichols, BrighterLife.ca
From CareerVitality

While some people are fortunate enough to find their true calling on their first try, for others, finding the job that best matches their strengths, skills and interests may call for a career change – or several as they search for it.

Vancouver resident Fannie Smith made a successful change, with the help of careful planning. After working in the tourism industry for several years, she started questioning her career path, wondering if a more fulfilling profession was out there.

The journey towards her new career began while Smith was watching a wheelchair rugby game in 2010, when she decided her true interests lay in event management for disability sports. She then began to plan her career change. After a year-long transition involving a lot of time and energy, she is now thriving in her new role as high-performance coordinator with the Disabled Skiers Association of B.C.

If a new career area has piqued your interest and you are considering a move into a new job, sector or profession, those who have made the leap say there are a number of steps you can take to help you get there.

4 New Job Search Tools to Check Out in 2012

July 23, 2012

by Joshua Waldman | From Recruiter.com

The year 2012 seems to be the year of innovation around the job search. They say great inventions come when people find a better way to solve a problem. Others say laziness is the mother of all invention. But I say that great innovations happen when millions of Americans are out of work and finding a job sucks.

So in honor of America’s comeback, here are four of my favorite innovations so far this year.

3 Reasons Your Resume is Keeping the Phone from Ringing

May 29, 2012

From CareerRealism.com
by Jessica Holbrook Hernandez

If you know someone who’s looking for a job—and I’m sure you do—then you may have heard them complain about having sent their resume off to hundreds of employers, only to receive absolutely no responses or acknowledgments. I’ve heard this complaint countless times from friends and colleagues.

Part of the reason this happens so often is because companies really have become much less personal about their hiring processes. They simply can’t respond to every person who contacts them through their online application process.

However, there are still people being hired every single day. So what are they doing differently from those who never get a phone call?

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**Another recent article from CareerRealism worth mentioning: 4 Reasons for Career Gaps and How to Handle Them on Your Resume

Why Fear is Hurting Your Career

May 21, 2012

By Bud Bilanich
From CareerRealism.com Success Tweet

Success Tweet: Procrastination is the physical manifestation of fear and is a confidence killer. Act; especially when you’re afraid.

As I’ve mentioned in previous posts on Success Tweet 45, 46 and 47, fear is the enemy of self-confidence and success. Fear often manifests itself as procrastination. Most people fear failure, criticism and rejection. It’s only normal. We all want to feel good about ourselves.

Failure, criticism and rejection are not pleasant experiences. They lower our self-esteem and make us feel bad about ourselves, so we often avoid doing things that we think might lead to failure, criticism or rejection. As a career success coach, I advise my clients to have to have the courage to do things that might result in failure, criticism or rejection.

Failure, criticism and rejection provide you with the opportunity to grow and develop – to become a life and career success. You can’t take failure, criticism and rejection personally. Failure, criticism and rejection are outcomes. They are a result of things you have done. They are not who you are.

Remember this career advice. We all make mistakes and fail on occasion. We all do things that cause others to criticize or reject us. This doesn’t mean that we are failures as people. It means that we have made some poor choices and have done some dumb things.

Failure, criticism and rejection provide the opportunity to start over – hopefully a little smarter. Buckminster Fuller once said, “Whatever humans have learned had to be learned as a consequence of trial and error experience. Humans have learned only through mistakes.”

That’s great career advice. I agree with it wholeheartedly.

Fear leads to procrastination. That’s why putting off things you want to do, and need to do can really hurt your self-confidence and career success. If your fear of failure and criticism, and rejection paralyzes you to the point where you aren’t willing to take calculated risks, you’ll never learn anything or accomplish any of your goals.

Don’t be afraid to fail, or too hard on yourself when you fail — or when others criticize or reject you. Instead, put your energy into figuring out why you failed and then do something different. Here are my four career success coach questions to ask yourself the next time you fail, or get criticized or rejected.

1.Why did I fail? Why did I get criticized or rejected? What did I do to cause the failure, criticism or rejection?
2.What could I have done to prevent the failure, criticism or rejection?
3.What have I learned from this situation?
4.What will I do differently the next time?
If you do this, you’ll be better able to face your fears and act; and you’ll be using failure, criticism and rejection to your advantage. In Think and Grow Rich, Napoleon Hill says…

“Every adversity, every failure and every heartache carries with it the seed of an equivalent or greater benefit.”

I know it’s hard to see the benefit or opportunity in failure, criticism and rejection. But it’s there – you just have to look hard enough. But it all begins by facing your fear and acting; by conquering procrastination.

The common sense career success coach point here is simple. Successful people are self-confident. Self-confident people face their fears and act. They follow the career advice in Tweet 48 in Success Tweets, “Procrastination is the physical manifestation of fear and is a confidence killer. Act; especially when you’re afraid.”

Our most common fears are failure, criticism and rejection. However, if you choose to find and use the learning opportunity in failure, criticism and rejection you will not only become more self-confident, you will become more successful.

It’s sad but true – failure, criticism and rejection are the price you pay for becoming a personal and professional success. Beating procrastination by facing your fear of failure, criticism and rejection and acting will pay big dividends — and help you create the life and career success you want and deserve.

5 Ways to Land that Post-College Job (Even if You Graduated Years Ago)

May 14, 2012

by Jessica Kleiman, Contributor
Forbes.com

For college seniors and grad school students, graduation is no longer something on the distant horizon. In the next several weeks, many will be entering a tough job market, although the good news is it’s starting to look up. According to a 2012 survey by the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE), participating employers reported that they plan to hire 10.2 percent more new college graduates from the college Class of 2012 than they did from the Class of 2011.

However, with many experienced workers looking for jobs and companies still watching their budgets, it can still be quite challenging to land that first post-graduate position. In BE YOUR OWN BEST PUBLICIST: How to Use PR Techniques to Get Noticed, Hired, and Rewarded at Work (Career Press; Jan. 2011), the career guide I co-wrote with fellow Forbes blogger Meryl Weinsaft Cooper, we discuss why it’s essential for job candidates to stand out from the competition and market themselves as a valuable and unique brand. This is especially important for recent grads because many will be interviewing for entry-level jobs along with fellow graduates who have the same basic qualifications.

So what can graduates do to improve their employability in 2012? Here are a few pointers from our book.

2012 Best Places to Work for Recent Grads

May 7, 2012

From Experience.com

Experience invited employers from across the country to participate in the 2012 Best Places to Work for Recent Grads survey, and the winners are in! This exciting initiative is dedicated to identifying and recognizing the best employers for recent college graduates. As a whole, these 10 organizations offered outstanding company cultures, sweet paychecks, and extraordinary opportunities for rapid career growth. Here’s a detailed look at this year’s winners (sorted alphabetically) – including some new and familiar faces to the chart.

To see which employers made the list, please click here.

Employers Report Record Intern-Conversion Rate

April 30, 2012

From NACE (National Association of Colleges and Employers)

Not only are employers expecting to increase internship hires by 8.5 percent over last year, but they’re also reporting record-breaking conversion rates, according to results of NACE’s 2012 Internship & Co-op Survey.

Survey respondents converted 58.6 percent of their Class of 2011 interns into full-time hires, an all-time high since NACE began reporting conversion rates in the early 2000s. The previous record of 57.7 percent was reported by NACE in its 2011 Internship & Co-op Survey.

The drivers of the record conversion rate were lower offer rates coupled with a stable acceptance rate. Employers extended offers to 61.2 percent of their Class of 2011 interns, compared to 66.7 percent of their Class of 2010 interns, but both classes accepted at the same rate—86.5 percent.

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