Welcome To The New Site

Hope you enjoy the new look blog site. Have a play around and let me know of any errors (As I do so well for others )

Resumes – Getting Started

Establishing a clear and concise definition of what a resume will get you started in the creation of a Really Great Resume. In actuality, a resume is a marketing tool that sells you to a perspective employer. The true purpose of a resume is to get an interview and a Really Great Resume serves to get your foot in the door. It also expresses your talents and potential.

When preparing to write your resume, you must first and foremost decide what your objective is in terms of a job. Ask yourself, “Who is going to be reading this resume” You will make it your goal to write in a way that would appeal to that person or persons. Ask, What do they want to see in a prospective employee. What skills, accomplishments, talents, etc.

Next, you will need to decide what type of resume best suits you. There are several types of resume formats and each is appropriate for its own use.

Really Great Resume Types:

Chronological – Your information is organised chronologically, usually the most recent experience is first and goes back. This resume places highlights positions held and where.
Functional – A functional resume puts emphasis on your skills or functions and the resume will be organised by such. Only the skills and functions of the prospective new job are what will be highlighted.
Accomplishment – This is a resume that features a list of very impressive achievements. After the achievements are listed a chronological work history may follow.

Note, that it is not unusual to combine features from two different resumes, such as Functional/Achievement or Chronological/Achievement.

Next, start by listing all of your work history. Think back through each of your past work experiences and examine them for what you liked about them, your favorite skills in each and what you liked about each position. Be sure to jot these down.

A job objective will now need to be identified. The job objective appears on the resume right after your name, address and phone number. The objective states what position you are considering or what level of responsibility you are willing to assume. You must be specific, otherwise employers will be confused as to what you want to do at their company.

Steps to Creating a Really Great Resume

- Establish your objective.
- Determine the basic functions of the new job.
- List jobs that you held in the past. Omit short term positions.
- Decide which of these past jobs provided the experience that will be useful for the new job.

Avoid writing a job description for each of the positions. Instead, record a few short lines about your accomplishments in that position, what you brought to that job that may have been valuable and unique or that was of benefit to that company. Don’t be afraid to be very specific. This allows the employer to visualise you actually doing those tasks in the new position. If there is a job that is non-relevant, simply write a one-liner that explains the responsibilities performed.

With this information in hand you are ready to put it all together. Keep it simple and clutter free. Use bullets to organize things clearly. Use an easy-to-read font. With some good thinking and note-taking you will be on your way to creating your Really Great Resume.

Wordle Yourself

A new toy to play around with. Wordle.net

Wordle is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes. The images you create with Wordle are yours to use however you like. You can print them out, or save them to the Wordle gallery to share with your friends.

Employment Market Shake-up.

I’m an optimist.  Can’t help it.  It’s part of my make-up.  I don’t hold a high regard on always being happy, though.  I reckon you need bad times to challenge your strength, just like the immune system needs the odd germ to strengthen it.

There is a fair amount of talk at present about the state of global financial health.  Most of it’s pretty dire.   As a result, companies are getting nervous about their economic well-being.  Staff are lying low and getting on with the job.  There are lots of stats, not facts.  I’m going to regurgitate a few, and would ask that you decide of your own reading of them.  I’ll give you my opinion at the end.  But as I warned you…I’m an optimist:

According to Seek.com.au the Australian employment market has eased further in October.

Despite much speculation however, there were no signs of an abrupt response to the deepening global financial crisis that might signify a developing recession.

Nationally the SEEK Employment Index (SEI), which measures the ratio of new job ads on seek.com.au to job applications via the site, fell by 4% in seasonally adjusted terms, suggesting jobseekers may have witnessed increased competition for fewer available jobs.

However, despite the global financial crisis deepening, this rate was consistent with the average rate of decline seen since December 2007 (4.5%).

However, Seek Ltd themselves have downgraded their forecast for profit growth to zero. Net profit after tax, which last year saw a 37.4% rise to $76.3 million, is now forecast to be flat.

News Corp has flagged job cuts, after reporting a 29.6 per cent drop in first quarter profit and it’s likely that Fairfax is also felling the pinch…

So what does this all mean for the online recruitment market.  Here’s what I reckon…Seek will have to make some changes they might not otherwise have considered.  Strategies must change, even if a little.  Will this open up opportunities for niche job boards to gain a foothold in the market?   Possibly.  And if this happens, what a great opportunity is a recession (no Keating comparisons, please).

Point is, sometimes nothing beats a good old dose of the flu.

Classifind.com.au Tackling Jobs, Cars And Real Estate…

Thomas Shaw referred me to a new vertical search engine, so I thought I would would give it a road test.

Although not fully functional, I like the fact that they are pioneering the aggregation of the three classified categories, Jobs, Cars and Real Estate. Cars and Real Estate have received little attention from the aggregators and I wonder if the market leaders, Carsales.com.au and Realestate.com.au will apply the same ‘Don’t scrape us’ policy that Seek have?

On the surface, Classifind looks simple enough to use, opting to go with a full search box for each vertical on their home page. Most other aggregators use keyword only searches. However beware the results may take a while to appear – if at all.

Search results contain jobs by the usual suspects, CareerOne, Mycareer, Jobx e.t.c and redirect to the chosen site through another window.

You can also set up alerts for all the verticals.  These notify the recipient via email or sms when a listing matches their saved profile.

That’s all great but where’s the advertising?   How will Classifind survive without Adsense?

Site owner, Matt Ford, ex White Agency and Yahoo, seems to be relying on performance only for his revenue.

“Classifind is proud to offer a performance based marketing opportunity through an aggregated search site. If you would like to include listings from your job, car or property board on the classifind site please contact us below”.

As previously discussed, this service needs a mega amount of traffic and participation to generate any type of decent revenue.  It’ll be fascinating to watch the progress of this progressive company.

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