The 3 Most Avoidable Resume Mistakes
It's an often repeated fact that recruiters and hiring managers only spend about six seconds scanning a resume before deciding whether to keep it or toss it. If your resume only has mere seconds to capture a decision-maker's attention, you need to be certain to avoid any of the triggers that can send it to the "no thanks" pile. Here are three such triggers that are incredibly common but...
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The Interviewer Has Asked You to Deliver a Presentation — Here's How to Nail It
The standard question-and-answer interview is still the format you're most likely to face on the job hunt, but it's far from the only way in which employers are evaluating candidates. In fact, today's hiring managers are getting quite creative, with many asking for direct proof of candidates' skills in the form of tests, practice projects, role-playing, and even presentations. Yes, more...
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Business Development: The Flexible Career With High Earning Potential
According to an Indeed survey, job seekers want three things out of a new job: Great compensation A convenient location Flexible work options Doing business development for Recruiter.com offers exactly these things — plus a host of other benefits. Interested in doing business development under the Recruiter.com umbrella? Join the Recruiter.com Certification Program, where you...
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Your Best Friend Won't Help You Land Your Next Job — But a Stranger Might
A job seeker recently came to me with a problem. They'd been looking everywhere for the right job opportunity, and they had finally found it. It was just the role they were looking for, and their skills were a perfect match. Even better, a close friend had connections within the company and offered to advocate for the job seeker. It seemed to be a slam dunk opportunity — until something...
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What Do PR Firms Look for in Recent College Graduates?
For many young graduates, public relations represents an exciting career opportunity. It offers the chance to work in a fast-paced and vibrant industry with a selection of incredible clients from around the world. Unfortunately, not every graduate is well-suited to a career in communications. When it comes to sorting through the sea of college graduates entering the job market this...
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5 Benefits of Being a Recruiter.com Certification Program Trainee
The recruiting industry is thriving, seeing year over year revenue growth since 2008. In 2016 alone, the recruiting and staffing industry brought in $150 billion in sales. This makes recruiting an especially good career option for today's professionals. The industry needs talent to keep up with demand, and roles in the recruiting field tend to be quite lucrative, thanks to the many...
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Correct These 9 Social Media Disasters Right Now
Assuming you care about your personal branding efforts, you should know that everything you do online is subject to scrutiny. Today, recruiters look at every candidate's social media presence when making decisions about who should advance and who should not. In part, they're looking to see how creative and impressive candidates are on social media — but they're also looking for bad...
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Your Social Media Tattoo: What You Post Can Affect Your Job Prospects
Have you ever considered getting a tattoo or had a child ask about getting one? If so, you know it can be a tough decision. Getting a tattoo is a very personal choice. Tattoos are permanent. They often have personal meanings that tie back to one's beliefs or experiences. They can be socially controversial, and you have to think carefully about where you will place the tattoo. I was...
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Looking for a New Career? Recruiting May Be Just What You Need
You've been working in the same professional field all your adult life — and now you're starting to wonder if this is really the career for you. Sure, in your earlier days, you found it quite rewarding. You were making a living and doing something you cared about, something that challenged you, something that filled you with a sense of purpose. But now it's 5, 10, 15, or 20 years...
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What's Your Headline?
Newspapers have them. So do magazines, ads, and even stories on the nightly news. A headline highlights and introduces what is to follow. Based on a headline, an audience may stick around or bail out (turn the page, change the channel, fall asleep, etc.). Maybe your resume has a headline, too. It may be a few keywords, larger or bolder than the rest. It could be an opening paragraph...
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Tell Me About Yourself: 3 Techniques to Capture the Interviewer's Attention
The day of your interview has arrived, and you're feeling confident. You've prepared by doing your research about the company and memorizing your talking points. At this point, you could talk about the organization in your sleep — right down to what your interviewer studied as an undergraduate and the exact amount of media coverage the company has had in the last year. But when the...
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Why Recruiting Is the Perfect Post-College Gig
As the summer begins, many recently graduated college students are starting to plan for their lives in the professional world. It's an exciting time, but it can also be a little nerve-racking — especially if you're not totally clear on your career options. Today's college grads face a professional world that isn't always hospitable. Unemployment rates tend to be higher among young...
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3 More Reasons Why Job Seekers Should Blog
In an earlier post, I wrote about three reason why job seekers should blog. They were: to demonstrate their ability to write, to brand themselves, and to network. Today, I'd like to share three more reasons why you, as a job seeker, should blog: 1. You'll Feel More Productive — and You'll Learn From It Writing about what you know requires processing your knowledge to put it to...
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The Hidden Costs of Being Unemployed
In a previous article, I discussed things to do before you say, "I quit." Being unemployed has drawbacks besides the loss of a steady paycheck, so plan accordingly. Finding a new job takes time. According to career expert Alison Doyle, there is a simple way to estimate how long your job search might take: approximately one month per every $10,000 you want to earn. So, if you want to earn...
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5 Things You Should Learn From Your Job Search Competitors
After I explain to a group of people how much work is involved in today's job search, at least one of those people, consistently, responds with, "But I don't want to do all of that." My eyes then roll several times. These people forget that dozens if not hundreds of other job seekers are applying for the same jobs. No matter the state of the economy, you'll always be competing with...
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Cover Your Bases With Your Next Resume by Appealing to Multiple Personality Types
How you write your resume is just as important as what you put in it. I've written a few posts on the impact your personality type has on how you interview for jobs and the stress that can come with that, and now I'd like to discuss how you can leverage personality types to draft a resume that appeals to the various kinds of hiring managers that might be reading it. You can find all...
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Signs It's Time for a Midlife Career Change
Everything was fine for the first 20 years of your career. You were focused. You were happy. You were going up the ladder. Then, you hit an age. Maybe it was 30, or 40, or 50. But suddenly, everything changed. Now, you are no longer happy at your current job. Something just isn't right. Nothing about the job itself has really changed all that much, but you just aren't satisfied like you...
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How (And How Not) to Use Social Media During the Job Search
Several years ago, I was preparing to make the move to Washington, DC, after spending decades in Texas. I was moving from a market where I knew everybody to one where I didn't know a soul. I needed a job, so I headed to LinkedIn and cold-messaged 10 people I had never met before. I heard back from at least eight of them — and one of the conversations led me to where I work...
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Transitioning Out of the Military? Try Starting a Career in Recruiting
When you're transitioning out of the military and into the civilian workforce, the change can be a difficult one to navigate. Military life and civilian professions can be dramatically different, which may leave you wondering how to successfully make the jump. There are many resources out there to help veterans get their feet in the doors of civilian professions, but one you may not know...
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8 Areas Where Job Seekers Can Make Their Voices Heard on Their LinkedIn Profiles
One of the things I like about LinkedIn is it gives you the ability to express yourself through language and images. Job seekers can take advantage of this to give hiring authorities in the employment market an idea of their personalities. Resumes, on the other hand, don't offer as much room for self-expression. The goal of your resume is to make you stand out among hundreds of others who...
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3 Advanced Interview Tips to Boost Your Job Search Results Tenfold
Your job search success depends primarily on how well you build and develop relationships. This is especially true during the interview. You want to show your interviewers that they can trust you to be a valuable, reliable, engaged member of the team, should they hire you. In this article, I'll cover three ways to create strong relationships with interviewers during your job...
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Don't Let Your Vacation Put a Halt to Your Career Advancement
One of the most common obstacles preventing people from changing jobs is their vacation time. Let me explain. Many of us start our jobs with a certain amount of available vacation time — say 1-2 weeks. With each passing year, more days are added to your yearly allowance. After a while, you may find that you now bank 4-5 weeks of vacation time every year. It took you so long to earn...
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The Skills You Need to Sharpen to Combat AI
Artificial intelligence (AI) is predicted to be the most disruptive technological innovation since the computer itself. Google CEO Sundar Pichai has said it is likely to be "more profound than ... electricity or fire." Many business leaders agree and are making massive investments, hoping to gain an early lead in the field. Like no other technology before it, AI has the potential to...
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17 Ways to Calm Your Nerves Before a Job Interview
Everyone gets nervous before and during job interviews — whether they admit it or not. (Those who say they do not get nervous are the same people who come off as arrogant and overconfident during interviews. Watch out for them!) Interviewers know that you will be nervous. They expect it. Still, being too nervous is not good. If you are stammering, shaking, and sweating during an...
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C-Level Job Search Tips: 5 Job Search Shortcuts for Executives
Without the right tools, planning, and resources, a job search can quickly become a time-consuming and frustrating experience. Making one mistake — such as using the internet as your main medium for job hunting — can lead to countless hours of wasted time. Similarly, solely depending on your recruiter contacts for available opportunities can add months and months of wait time to your...
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Always Be Interviewing
Most people wait to start looking for a new job until they need one. They don't launch their searches until they've been fired or they hate their current job so much that they're ready to quit. Does this sound familiar? The problem is, if you wait to look for a job until you need a job, you've probably waited too long. The chance that you'll find a job on just the day you need it is...
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The Networking Tip That Changes Everything
The need to network as you progress in your career is unavoidable. Certainly, this is a skill that comes more naturally to some than to others. The question is: Why? Personality obviously plays a part, but your mindset may in fact be the biggest factor in determining how you approach networking. For some of us, networking produces fear. In others, it produces excitement. But fear and...
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5 Big Networking Mistakes You May Not Know You're Making
Love it or hate it, networking needs to be part of your professional plan. Be sure you know how to avoid the biggest networking mistakes so all your hard work as a job seeker doesn't go to waste: 1. Failure to Follow Up It sounds simple enough: Always follow up after first contact. But you're busy, and tasks that don't require immediate attention often get pushed aside. Suddenly,...
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4 Reasons Why You Should Consider Learning to Code
If you are looking to advance in your career, learning to code could be a surprisingly good way to do it. A full-time career in coding isn't the best fit for everyone, but becoming code literate can go a long way toward advancing almost any career. Here are the key reasons why: 1. You'll Learn New Ways of Problem-Solving When you learn to code, you learn to solve problems like...
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To Land a New Job, Start Talking to Strangers
When you were young, the adults in your life likely taught you about "stranger danger," warning you that people you didn't know could harm you. When it comes to children, I wholeheartedly agree: Avoiding strangers is a good way to stay safe. Frankly, I still sometimes avoid strangers in public places for fear that something might go wrong. Perhaps it's a reflex left over from...
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To Leave or Stay? How to Tell When It's Time to Quit Your Job
I was recently asked, "How do you know when you should quit your job?" This is a question many people struggle to answer, while others just quit without thinking about how wise their decision may have been. Investing in a career coach and/or talking to your mentor can help you figure out whether or not to leave a job. When having these discussions — or when considering your options by...
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No Experience? No Problem — You Can Still Write a Great Resume
Congrats, soon-to-be grad! Diploma in hand, you're ready for the real world. Well — almost. As you head out into the job market for the first time, you're going to need a stellar resume to set yourself apart from all the other members of your graduating class. There's just one problem: You don't really have any experience, aside from a few small part-time jobs. That's...
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5 Simple Steps to Networking on LinkedIn
According to one popular estimate, 85 percent of jobs are filled through networking. Many open positions aren't ever posted on job boards or advertised publicly. As a job seeker, you can't afford to focus solely on applying to online job ads and waiting for the phone to ring. If you're going to be an active participant in your own career development, you have to put yourself out...
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How to Bring the Hottest Experience to the Top of Your Resume
Whether you are an external recruiter or a job-seeking candidate, crafting a resume that gets results — i.e., interviews and hopefully offers — may depend on a few special tweaks you might not have considered. These tweaks are designed to bring more page-two experience to the forefront and emphasize on the hottest information hiring managers want to see. While the hybrid resume that...
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3 Tips on Writing a Response-Worthy Networking Email Introduction
A critical component of networking is understanding how to write a networking email introduction. Your approach can make all the difference between getting a response and being forgotten. Here are three key tips on writing a response-worthy networking email introduction: 1. Create Commonality When writing a cold networking email introduction, it is essential to establish a point...
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Are You Being Ageist Against Young Interviewers?
As a career strategist, I often come to the defense of older workers who experience ageism. However, I don't talk enough about "reverse ageism" — in other words, how older job seekers treat younger interviewers during the process. Some older job seekers have told me they have a hard time taking younger interviewers seriously. Their arrogance is clear as they talk about their...
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The No. 1 Reason Job Seekers Make Bad Career Decisions
We spend about a third of our days at our jobs, and yet roughly 70 percent of us are unhappy with our careers. While a lack of praise from leadership can explain this unhappiness, the job's fit may be a problem, too. It's not necessarily that an employee isn't smart enough to do the job they've chosen; even the smartest people make poor career decisions. Rather, poor career choices...
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4 Communication Touchpoints to Focus on During Your Next Interview
In an interview setting, communication skills can make all the difference in determining which of two equally skilled candidates will get the job. Some people are naturally good communicators, giving them the advantage. If you don't consider yourself a natural, that doesn't mean you're incapable of improvement, nor does it mean you need to act like someone you aren't. The value of...
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5 Questions to Help You Prepare for Your First Job Interview
Preparing for your first job interview can be a nerve-racking experience, but the best way to minimize your anxiety is to take the time to prepare before the interview. Research the company and the role, review your resume, and think about the questions you may be asked. In particular, you may want to practice your answers to the following five questions, as there is a very good chance...
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Looking for a Diverse Workplace? Employer Review Sites Are Key
Diversity is a key issue for many companies today, with LinkedIn reporting that more than half of organizations are "very" or "extremely" focused on diversity. This is good news, especially when you consider the World Economic Forum's recent estimate that it will take 217 years for women to reach complete equality in pay and employment opportunities. One of the key tools available to...
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With Unemployment at Record Lows, Layoffs Are Apparently Still a Thing
Nobody expects mass layoffs when the economy looks decent and unemployment is low — but they happen anyway. Companies restructure, target markets don't perform as expected, and sometimes corporate leaders just fail to, well, lead. Unfortunately, the effects of these decisions trickle down to the workforce, where those in the trenches feel the problems most keenly. Despite huge tax...
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Skype Interview Tips All Job Seekers Should Heed
The future of job interviews may very well include many more Skype interviews. If you're a job seeker and haven't had a Skype interview yet, chances are you'll have one soon. Here are a few important facts about and tips concerning this increasingly common form of interview: Why Do Companies Conduct Skype Interviews? One reason companies use Skype is because it saves time and money....
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Is Your CEO Executive Resume Missing These Three Must-Haves?
Executive resumes for CEOs are held to a higher standard on multiple levels. An effective CEO resume must deliver metrics-driven accomplishments while having visual appeal, an organized message, and a clear focus. A CEO resume needs to deliver its message with an "I know who I am and where I am going" type of spirit. The executive resume must show respect to the reader by clearly...
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Leveraging Your Personality Type for Stress Management During the Job Interview Process
As I sit down to write this story on how the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) tool can help us deal with stress during the interview process, I can't help but feel a bit stressed myself. I need to get ready for a workshop later this week. Each time I've attempted to sit down and prepare this morning, my brain has filled up with a litany of other things to which I need to attend. My...
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How to Ace Your Next Job Interview
If you manage to get through the application process and reach the interview table, it can be tempting to rest on your laurels. The company invited you to interview. That must mean the hiring manager likes you, right? Yes, but you're not in the clear just yet. The last thing you want to do is fail the interview because you failed to prepare. Recently, I had the chance to speak with...
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4 Reasons Why You Shouldn't Ignore Your LinkedIn Background Image
The director of the career center for which I work recently sat in on one of my LinkedIn workshops in which I talked about how to use your whole LinkedIn profile to brand yourself. I thought I did well, and afterward I asked the director for her thoughts. She was happy with my performance, but she said I forgot one thing. I never mentioned how your LinkedIn background image — the...
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Recruiters Spell Out the Biggest Deal-Breakers Costing You the Job
When you face tough competition for the job, even the smallest mistake can eliminate you from the hiring manager's pile. TopResume recently asked 379 former and current recruiters, hiring managers, and human resources professionals, "What are your biggest resume deal-breakers that can cost a candidate the job?" They revealed the following top 10 resume faux pas: Spelling and/or...
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Improve Your Job Prospects During Spring Break
Spring break is around the corner — or already here! — for many college students. You can either use this time to lounge around doing nothing, or to improve your job prospects. I recommend you do the latter. Show hiring managers and employers the value you can provide — as well as your manners — by improving your online presence. Regularly in the news, we read about someone who was...
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