Three Weekly Easy Peasy Lemon Squeezy Job Hunting Tips – July 27, 2015

Lemon Squeezy

Here are three simple job hunting tips for you to begin your week!

1. If you're actively interviewing, keep a lint roller in your car. If you've got pet dogs, cats, ferrets, or even llamas, you're bound to get hair and dander on yourself. That lint roller will help you from looking like you're wearing a mohair jacket when you're not.
2. Do you have a non-compete agreement in place? A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, you signed a mountain of paperwork when you started your job. One of those documents may have been a non-compete, which places restrictions on the types of   of jobs you can accept and at what companies for a period of time (usually one or two years). These are implemented to stop the workforce from directly bringing their experience and knowledge to their company's competition. Before even interviewing with another company, it helps to know whether you signed something saying you can't work for them. Don't waste your time - or theirs.
3. I'm sure this one won't make me too popular with the body art crowd, but if you have tattoos or piercings, make sure you cover these up best you can for an interview. Like it or not, people are judgmental, and one of the things interviewers will question if you have visible tattoos is your professionalism, and the impression you would make on internal and external clients. Better to let an employer hire you first, then you cangradually expose some of your more safe-for-work body art.

Scott Singer is the President and Founder of Insider Career Strategies Resume Writing & Career Coaching, a firm dedicated to guiding job seekers and companies through the job search and hiring process. He is a Human Resources professional and staffing expert with almost two decades of in-house corporate HR and staffing firm experience, and is a Certified Professional Resume Writer (CPRW) and Certified Professional Career Coach (CPCC).

Insider Career Strategies provides resume writing, LinkedIn profile development, and career coaching services, including a free resume review. You can email Scott Singer at scott.singer@insidercs.com, or via the website, www.insidercs.com.

Job Hunting Zen Thought of the Week – July 24, 2015

Here is your Job Hunting Zen Thought of the Week!

We are all taught at an early age to be ambitious and to please others. This serves us well in growing ourselves and building our careers.

Sometimes, too much is too much, and an obstacle may simply be too large to overcome.

For example, you've been approached about a job that sounds perfect for you. The job itself is great, and the salary is out of this world.

But the commute would involve traveling 90 minutes each way, for a total of three hours a day.

You're not afraid of hard work, or commuting to a job.

However, you will find the stress in your life - and time away from your family - increased substantially.

We don't always have the luxury of turning down a job opportunity. But make sure to evaluate all the factors that matter to you in your quality of life.

Scott Singer is the President and Founder of Insider Career Strategies Resume Writing & Career Coaching, a firm dedicated to guiding job seekers and companies through the job search and hiring process. He is a Human Resources professional and staffing expert with almost two decades of in-house corporate HR and staffing firm experience, and is a Certified Professional Resume Writer (CPRW) and Certified Professional Career Coach (CPCC).

Insider Career Strategies provides resume writing, LinkedIn profile development, and career coaching services, including a free resume review. You can email Scott Singer at scott.singer@insidercs.com, or via the website, www.insidercs.com.

Do I Really Need to Fill in ALL Those D@$* Boxes When I Apply Online For a Job?

Applying to jobs online is a chore.

First, you upload your resume. Then, there's about three million boxes to fill in asking minute details from your job history, to your favorite color, to which Marvel superhero you'd like to be. Its no exaggeration that filling out an online application can take 30 minutes to an hour. Or longer.

You would think that just uploading your resume would be enough. Couldn't you just type into the boxes on the online application, "See resume?"

You could. But you might really be hurting your chances at snagging the job, or even at getting a second look.

Here's why:

1. Yes, your formatted resume is part of the package. But for the recruiters to do their searches, it helps when you fill in all the boxes, as you might add additional detail. In addition, recruiters might search by a specific field. For example, they might search the job history box for "Motorola" to see who worked there. If you just typed in "See resume," you won't come up on the search. There are a million ways to slice and dice your data, and you need to have your information in the right place to be seen. The good news is you can cut and past from your resume for many of these.
2. It's a test. And the first thing a company will want to see is that you can follow instructions. If you don't enter in the boxes what they're asking for, you don't pass the first test.

Banal? Yep.

Boring? Absolutely.

Necessary? Probably.

Try to remember that job hunting can be a full time job. And some of that time is spent playing the game - which, in this case, means filling in a bunch of little boxes.

Scott Singer is the President and Founder of Insider Career Strategies Resume Writing & Career Coaching, a firm dedicated to guiding job seekers and companies through the job search and hiring process. He is a Human Resources professional and staffing expert with almost two decades of in-house corporate HR and staffing firm experience, and is a Certified Professional Resume Writer (CPRW) and Certified Professional Career Coach (CPCC).

Insider Career Strategies provides resume writing, LinkedIn profile development, and career coaching services, including a free resume review. You can email Scott Singer at scott.singer@insidercs.com, or via the website, www.insidercs.com.