Tips For Getting A Job At Facebook, Google, Snapchat, And More – Lydia Dishman

Jun 132016
 
Tips for GettingWorld-changing companies are looking for very specific individuals as they grow their ranks. Here’s the scoop. 

We’ve reported that it’s a great time to be looking for a job. Unemployment is low, many companies anticipate adding more staff this year, and over 100 occupations have more openings than actual hires month-over-month.

For those looking to switch jobs, it’s hard to deny the lure of a big name company. This is especially true in the tech sector, where company names can be synonymous with big innovation: Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Google, and the like. But it’s also the case at other businesses where the focus on developing world-changing products and services can be just as laser-like.

With that in mind, we scoured Fast Company‘s current list of 2016‘s Most Innovative Companies to bring you the inside scoop on what it takes to snag a job at five of the top employers.

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These 3 Career Skills Will Make You Invaluable to Your Employer – Hannah Morgan

Jun 062016
 
Companies want workers with collaborating, decision-making and mentoring skills, according to one study.

3 Career Skills

Employers have raised the bar on what they expect from new employees. It may be due to the increasing number of college graduates. Or it may have something to do with the overqualified candidates who filled lower-level jobs after the recession. As long as companies can find candidates with the mix of hybrid skills they are looking for, you’ll continue to see these demanding job requirements.

The hybrid skills companies are requesting were once isolated to a specific department or role, such as social media skills as part of the responsibilities of human resources and marketing. But in fact, 71 percent of in-demand skills are required across two or more job categories, according to analysis by Bentley University and labor market analytics firm Burning Glass, which identified skills with the highest demand. This reinforces the cross-functional need and that employees “must demonstrate deeper and broader competencies to be marketable” said Susan Brennan, associate vice president of university career services at Bentley University, in an interview with Fast Company.

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10 Things New Grads Need to Know Before They Start Their First Job – Russell J. Bunio

May 312016
 
Things Grads Should KnowStart by taking a deep breath and reading these pointers.

So you managed to graduate college and land a job. The hard part’s over, right? Not quite. For recent college graduates, starting that first “adult” job can be a daunting prospect.

We get it, and we’re here to help. First, stop and take a deep breath. Next, check out the following pointers, which will help you prepare for the start of your post-graduate career.

Here are 10 things you need to know:

  1. Your boss is a valuable resource. While the very idea of having a boss may scare you, it’s important to understand that he or she is there to help. Because your success is a reflection on your manager’s performance, the smart ones will take the time to explain the job to you, provide training and monitor your progress as you gain some experience. Never hesitate to ask your boss questions if you don’t understand something. It’s okay to take up some of his or her time so your expectations are clear. You want to succeed at work, your boss wants you to succeed, and by working together you have a better chance at making that happen.

Related: The One Thing Every Manager Wants in an Employee

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  •  May 31, 2016
  •  Posted by at 8:57 am
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  •   Career Success, Social Skills

No Correct Answers – Stephanie K. Eberle

May 232016
 
The best tool you bring into a job interview is comfort with yourself, not a set of practiced responses.

Experienced interviewers can tell within a few minutes of knowing you if you are delivering, verbatim, pre-prepared answers to their questions. It’s not just that memorization often results in a monotone, rushed answer. It’s that thinking about your fit ahead of time, instead of rehearsing answers, allows a more genuine, passionate answer in the moment.

The equation for getting your career of choice is simple: your interests, skills and values, plus the alignment of an employer’s desired skill set and cultural values and interests, equals fit. Communicating this fit begins early in the cover letter and CV/résumé portion of the job search process. Early on, employers want to know if you can do the job — that is, are your skills and experiences close enough to those they seek. The interview, then, may delve more deeply into your skills, but it primarily assesses whether or not they want you to use said skills at their organization. In short, do they want to work with you?

The best way to get to know your future supervisor and colleagues is to have an honest conversation with them to assess fit on both sides. Yes, you are assessing fit, too. Most people do not approach interviews with such openness. As interviewees, we are constantly trying to guess which questions will be asked, aiming to come up with the “correct” answer. But, as with any new connection, there is no correct answer, only fit.

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How To Get Your Application Noticed Every Time – Raghav Haran

May 162016
 

I love reading relationship advice on Reddit. Users on there ask some pretty interesting questions, and are very honest in their answers. They’re also mostly delusional. Check out this really interesting post I came across a little while ago:

Noticed 1

Tons of guys say things like “I’m smart, nice, I make good money, etc. but I still can’t get dates!!” Notice the subtext here.

In other words, they’re saying that all the FACTS are on their side! On paper, these guys are awesome. They did everything they were “supposed” to do. They’ve got everything going for them. How could anyone turn them down?

When we apply for jobs, most of us obsess over our resume, cover letter or online portfolio. We think that if we just use the right words, if we just emphasize the right skills in the right way, then we’ll get noticed.

We focus on the facts. We try to highlight our skills and positive qualities about ourselves. This is why so many of us end up not knowing where we went wrong if we get rejected. We thought we did everything we were “supposed” to do. We had all the skills.

We knew we could do a good job. Maybe we even hired a “resume writer” to format the whole thing perfectly. We had all the facts on our side.

But if that’s the game you’re playing, you’ve already lost.

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Why What You Learned in Preschool Is Crucial at Work – Claire Cain Miller

May 092016
 

Robot Boxing.jpbFor all the jobs that machines can now do — whether performing surgery, driving cars or serving food — they still lack one distinctly human trait. They have no social skills.

Yet skills like cooperation, empathy and flexibility have become increasingly vital in modern-day work. Occupations that require strong social skills have grown much more than others since 1980, according to new research. And the only occupations that have shown consistent wage growth since 2000 require both cognitive and social skills.

The findings help explain a mystery that has been puzzling economists: the slowdown in the growth even of high-skill jobs. The jobs hit hardest seem to be those that don’t require social skills, throughout the wage spectrum.

“As I’m speaking with you, I need to think about what’s going on in your head — ‘Is she bored? Am I giving her too much information?’ — and I have to adjust my behavior all the time,” said David Deming, associate professor of education and economics at Harvard University and author of a new study. “That’s a really hard thing to program, so it’s growing as a share of jobs.”

Some economists and technologists see this trend as cause for optimism: Even as technology eliminates some jobs, it generally creates others. Yet to prepare students for the change in the way we work, the skills that schools teach may need to change. Social skills are rarely emphasized in traditional education.

“Machines are automating a whole bunch of these things, so having the softer skills, knowing the human touch and how to complement technology, is critical, and our education system is not set up for that,” said Michael Horn, co-founder of the Clayton Christensen Institute, where he studies education.

Preschool classrooms, Mr. Deming said, look a lot like the modern work world. Children move from art projects to science experiments to the playground in small groups, and their most important skills are sharing and negotiating with others. But that soon ends, replaced by lecture-style teaching of hard skills, with less peer interaction.

Work, meanwhile, has become more like preschool.

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The Company I Keep: Why Job-Hopping Isn’t Necessary to Succeed – Martha Hiefield

May 022016
 
Five Ways to Grow While Staying at the Same Company

It used to be that jumping around to different companies was a telltale sign of a bad candidate. Training can be expensive and employers weren’t interested in risking short-term talent. Many still don’t. But an influx of younger generations into the workforce has brought about a change of opinion. Short tenures are suddenly in vogue.

There are a lot of people who now believe that changing jobs more frequently can actually help your career. The thinking goes: 1. Switching things up shows employers that you’re not complacent or lazy; you’re willing to take risks and learn new skills. 2. You’ll have a much better shot at a higher salary when you apply for a new job, rather than waiting on a raise.

The math behind that latter point is hard to argue against. A 2014 Forbes article reports that “staying employed at the same company for over two years on average is going to make you earn less over your lifetime by about 50% or more.” That’s an alarming stat, especially for people just beginning their careers, and one that FastCo recently referenced again.

But do we really need to switch it up all the time to succeed? And is it really a new quandary?

To me, career advancement is about so much more than the number on your paycheck or the title on your business card. And deciding to leave or keep a job is a dilemma that’s always existed, for all generations — an age-old question — should I stay or should I go?

No two scenarios are the same, and each person must decide for themselves.

But as someone who just celebrated 17 years with the same company, I wanted to offer a counter opinion to the job-hopping frenzy.

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  •  May 2, 2016
  •  Posted by at 2:01 pm
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  •   Career Success, Social Skills

The Best Cities For Women In Tech Aren’t On The West Coast – Clare O’Connor

Apr 252016
 

San Francisco’s booming technology sector is a pretty great place to make a living if you’re a man. Men hold 82% of leadership positions, on average, at Google GOOGL -1.02%, Facebook, Twitter and the rest of the industry’s biggest companies. And they don’t have to concern themselves with that pesky gender pay gap. Men with bachelor’s degrees or better in Silicon Valley earn over 50% more than their female counterparts.

Luckily, the Bay Area isn’t the only place for women in tech to grow successful careers. Financial technology company SmartAsset analyzed U.S. Census Bureau data to come up with a list of the best cities for women in the tech sector. San Francisco didn’t crack the top 15.

SmartAsset looked at four metrics across the 58 largest cities in the country: women as a percentage of the tech workforce; the gender pay gap in tech; income after housing costs; and three year tech employment growth. 

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  •  April 25, 2016
  •  Posted by at 9:32 am
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  •   Career Success, IT Trends, News

4 Misconceptions About Getting a Job After College – Arnie Fertig

Apr 182016
 
4 Mis-ConsCollege students shouldn’t wait until senior year to meet with a career counselor.

Make sure that your LinkedIn profile is complete, including full descriptions of what you’ve done, skills, volunteer activities and languages you speak.

Dialogues with college seniors in the midst of trying to figure out “what comes next” often reveal a disconnect between student life and launching a successful career. It’s easy to empathize with the cry, “I can get an A in my senior seminar but I don’t have a clue about how to get a job.”

Ideally, colleges and universities would fund career services departments with a full complement of savvy professionals. However, more often than not, budgets are cramped and the staff doesn’t have time to do as much as one would hope and expect from them.

To get the most out of this practical college offering, students shouldn’t wait until senior year to build a relationship with a counselor. Even when they’re freshmen or sophomores, students can take aptitude and other diagnostic tests to identify important traits and preferences to keep in mind when figuring out what career path to pursue. Still, sometimes professors and career services aren’t up with the latest in the realm of workforce development and staffing best practices.

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Greed Is Good For Your Career – Karie Willyerd & Barbara Mistick

Apr 112016
 
Greed 1When it means taking on more experiences.

Experiences are the ways in which we obtain knowledge and skills. That’s why anyone searching for a first job understands the conundrum that “You can’t get a job without experience, and you can’t get experience without a job.” When you have the opportunity to see or feel something, it has an effect on you that goes beyond what you can learn through observation.

Whether you are launching your career, considering a career shift, or simply wanting to stay relevant where you are, it’s important to have a plan to manage and acquire a variety of experiences. Being able to answer the question: “What kind of experiences have prepared you for this role?” with practical and tangible examples can provide you with surprising leverage and desirability. That’s why we advise you to be greedy about experiences.

The word “greedy” is almost never used in a positive context. However, when it comes to experiences, the best way to future-proof yourself is to be voracious in seeking out as many opportunities as you can. Experiences are the most effective way to learn new skills, reinforce what you know, and help you build on your strengths. People who have developed a repertoire of skills throughout their career know that this is a gradual and continuous process. It takes practice and repetition. People who are developmentally engaged look for new chances to stretch and capitalize on experiences, even when they don’t seem particularly relevant to their current role.Greed 2

While repetition aids in building expertise, when it comes to experience, you will want to seek out diversity to stretch to the next level. You must acquire new experiences, and not just repeat the same ones over and over again. A third benefit is that they are a great way to help you expand your skillset, especially when the experiences are a bit outside your comfort zone. Continue reading »

  •  April 11, 2016
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  •   Career Success
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