Don’t Take That Job Before Doing This – Stacy Rapacon

Aug 292016
 

Don't Take That JobWhether you’re a new grad eager to enter the world of work or a seasoned pro ready for a new opportunity, know what you’re getting into before accepting that job offer.

“The job market is strong across the board,” said Dawn Fay, district president of staffing firm Robert Half International. “It’s really become more of a candidate’s marketplace. If you’ve got some sought-after skills, you’re probably going to wind up with more than one job offer.”

Indeed, with a low national unemployment rate of 5 percent and positive hiring outlooks, the odds are in favor of job seekers. Salaries overall also are expected to be 4.1 percent higher than they were in 2015, according to Robert Half’s 2016 salary guide.

So how do you decide whether an opportunity is worth taking? Very carefully. And it all begins long before you get your offer. After all, your job is where you are going to spend the majority of your waking hours.

“For the employer, it’s a commercial decision,” said Kim Seeling Smith, founder and CEO of human resources training and consulting firm Ignite Global. “For you, it’s a life decision, so you have to put a lot of thought into taking the next opportunity.”

The first thing you should do when approaching a job hunt is figure out a three-year career plan, said Seeling Smith. This process should involve evaluating your personal goals, your career values, and your strengths and weaknesses. If you’ve figured this out, you can more easily determine whether your next job offer is the right step to take.

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5 Skills You Need to Work on to Get Ahead – No Matter What Industry You’re In – Antonio Neves

Aug 222016
 

5 SkillsWhen it comes to succeeding in the workplace, a college degree isn’t necessarily enough. Nor is years of experience on the job.

That’s because the most in-demand skills that employers crave are the elusive “soft skills”—the intangible but important qualities that enable you to work and interact with the people around you effectively.

These traits include leadership, self-awareness, communication skills, and emotional intelligence. In fact, an important criteria during the hiring process at Google is screening for “learning ability.”

Having great soft skills can be a huge game-changer as you go through your career. It can be the difference between getting people to believe in you or being forgotten, the difference between advancing a project or having it rejected, the difference between getting a promotion or finding yourself in yet another disappointing lateral move. These skills teach you not just to be a better employee but a stellar human being as well.

So, check out the five soft skills below that are essential for success—all of which you can teach yourself to practice in your daily interactions:

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  •  August 22, 2016
  •  Posted by at 10:05 am
  •   Comments Off on 5 Skills You Need to Work on to Get Ahead – No Matter What Industry You’re In – Antonio Neves
  •   Career Success, Social Skills

The One Question You Should Ask at the End of Every Job Interview – Peter Economy

Aug 162016
 

The one questionWhile we all know that resumes and applications–and anything else we submit on paper–take priority for getting our foot in the door with a new employer, there’s one thing that ultimately determines whether or not we get the job: The interview. How do we nail it? Read on to find the one question you should definitely be asking–and why it works so well.

Interviews are crucial for employers to put a face to a name, as well as to see whether or not they think the person would be a good fit for the company. That being said, it’s of utmost importance not only to put your best foot forward, but also to show that you can add something to their team. When interviews do fail, they leave so many applicants wondering just what they did wrong. The trick to circumventing this problem, however, is actually easier than it seems.

Sometimes, the solution is simply to ask.

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13 Social Media Power Tips for Getting the Job You Want – Matt Sweetwood

Aug 092016
 

13 Social MediaI believe that social media is the most effective tool for building your brand and business. That is true whether the brand is for business or is personal. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat and Linkedin have become commonplace in our culture and maybe the most popular forms of interaction today. In fact, Facebook has 1.5 billion monthly users. That’s one in five people on earth.

Job seeking has changed a lot over the past few years. Gone are the days of waiting for the Sunday newspaper to scour the job section for new opportunities. We have Monster, Ladders, Recruiter, ZipRecruiter and other dot coms which provide job listings and automatically deliver your resume electronically. So, do you need to use social media to find a new job? Does having a powerful personal brand give you an edge in the job market?

Related: The Easy Way to Get a Social Influencer Advocating Your Brand Is to Hire One

Let’s look at some statistics, courtesy of the September 2015 study done by the Society for Human Resource Management: 57 percent of companies hired from LinkedIn, 19 percent hired from Facebook and 65 percent of companies used some form of social media to hire.

Related: Build a Social Media Hiring Strategy

From the same study: Hiring managers thought it important for job seekers to have the following social media accounts: LinkedIn — 87 percent, Facebook 63 percent, Twitter 56 percent, and a blog 55 percent. The statistics tell us that if you are not using social media to help you find a job you are putting yourself at a huge disadvantage.

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11 Sloppy LinkedIn Mistakes That You’re Too Qualified to Make – The Young Entrepreneur Council

Aug 012016
 

11 SloppyA LinkedIn profile’s an awesome opportunity to shine beyond the traditional resume. Between your job history, publications, endorsements, and connections, potential employers scan your information to see what you can bring to the team that no one else can. But if your profile is riddled with typos or you don’t have an adequate picture, an employer isn’t going to see you as a viable candidate.

We asked 11 entrepreneurs and members of YEC to share the mistakes they see most often and how they hurt your professional image in an employer’s eyes. Here’s what you should avoid:

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These Ten Mistakes Are Killing Your Resume – Liz Ryan

Jul 182016
 

These Ten MistakesAlthough most if not all of us were taught to write our resumes using horrible, zombie language like “Motivated self-starter with a bottom-line orientation,” it is easy to see that if your resume sounds like everybody else’s resume, no one will notice your brilliance!

You have to stand out, right in your resume. You have to sound like yourself.

You can’t pitch your resume into anonymous online recruiting portals. Those things don’t work. You could wait months to hear back from an employer when you apply for jobs online. You may never ever hear anything.

You have to take a different route to get a job these days, and contact your hiring manager (a.k.a. Your Next Boss) directly.

You’ll send two documents to your hiring manager and skip the online job application. You’ll send your two documents together in the mail, stapled to one another with one staple in the upper-left corner. The two documents are your Pain Letter, written specifically for this hiring manager, and your Human-Voiced Resume.

Your resume has to sound like a human being wrote it in order for it to catch your hiring manager’s attention. He or she is crazy busy the way we all are. Here are ten mistakes that will keep your resume from doing its job for you.

Make sure your resume isn’t holding back your career by failing to brand you as the capable and unlike-anyone-else person you are!

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Four Breakthrough Topics And Questions For A Job Interview – Pollyanna Pixton

Jul 112016
 

A stack of resumes sits in front of you. You’ve read them and sorted them into accept and reject piles. You think you’ve found candidates likely to fit in your company. You want the right people in your company and on your team. But how can you decide among these applicants which are the “right” people? What do you need to look for in your new hires? Who will help you gain the competitive edge you need? Will they step up and help move your company forward? Keep in mind, it may take several months to hire the right person but it can take years to get rid of the wrong ones.

On the other side of the table, as a job seeker your resume has resulted in the opportunity for an interview. How can you find out if this is a place you want to work? Do they have a culture and environment where you can make a major contribution?

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How To Get Your Interviewer Off The Script – Liz Ryan

Jul 052016
 

Off the ScriptGetting your interviewer off the job interview script is essential in the Pain Interviewing process I teach. If you allow the interview to be governed by the goofy script the interviewer holds in his or her hands, you won’t have the opportunity you need to get past the standard interview questions and talk about what’s really at stake.

Your goal is to get your interviewer off the script and into a human conversation with you — not asking you dumb questions like “What’s your greatest weakness?” but rather talking about the real issues in his or her department, and your success slaying similar dragons in the past.

Of course, you must be polite as you gently guide your interviewer out of Zombie Interview Script Land and into Human Conversation Land. You can’t be pushy.

Anybody who begins your interview by asking you standard interview questions is someone who is comfortable with the scripted approach. To get your interviewer off the script, you have to use a little tact and finesse.

You can’t use this approach with an HR screener or a recruiter. It doesn’t work with those guys, because they are not in pain. They have a list of things they want to know about you, and they want to use their time with you to get answers to their questions – period.

You’ll use the Pain Interviewing approach with your hiring manager — the person who will be your boss if you end up accepting his or her job offer. This person has pain. If they didn’t have any pain, the finance person who approves every job opening would not have given permission for your hiring manager to hire anyone new.

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Interning With Your Best Foot Forward – Julie Kantor

Jun 272016
 

Last week I spent some time meeting several Sidwell Friends students (my alma mater) in Washington, D.C. as they embark on their summer internships. My hats off to the students for electing in high school to seize an opportunity and work full time while their friends are in Costa Rica, Bethany Beach, Camp and many at family houses at the Jersey Shore.

I came back to the Twomentor offices and asked two of our awesome interns, Delia and Matt, to join in and share our top 15 pieces of advice to start interning with your best foot forward. Here are my top recommendations followed by Delia’s and Matt’s great insights:

JULIE’S TAKE:

1] Finding Yourself Professionally. An internship will teach you what you like and what you don’t like professionally. This is invaluable experience as it might give you insight to help inform your college major and the direction you might want to go in life. Having confidence in yourself professionally before you go to college (ideally) is equivalent to having keys for a new car. You will need it and an internship will give you merit-based self-esteem.

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Five Communication Skills That Make Good Leaders Great – Steve Olenski

Jun 202016
 

Comm Skills

Whether you’re the CEO of a Fortune 500 company, or a teenage entrepreneur just starting out, communication skills are vitally important. Great leaders motivate, encourage and inspire. They also train people, share new ideas and negotiate. These activities have one thing in common: They all require excellent communication.

Here are five communication skills that make good leaders great:

  1. Interpreting Body Language

In his book, Introducing Body Language – A Practical guide, Glenn Wilson writes: “Where body language conflicts with the words that are being said, the body language will usually be the more ‘truthful’ in the sense of revealing true feelings.” That’s why the most successful leaders are always paying attention to people’s unseen language and nonverbal cues.

When you’re able to read thoughts and sentiments that aren’t revealed by a person’s words, you have many clear advantages. Take interviewing, for example. By learning non-verbal signs, you can oftentimes determine how honest a candidate is being with you. You can also tell if someone is comfortable with what you’re saying, and whether the person feels confident in what they are saying to you. Reading body language also gives you an advantage during negotiations, selling, delivering presentations and speeches, and conducting meetings.

Also, when you know how to read body language, you’ll be able to master the art and science of projecting effective body language to those around you. Exuding honesty, confidence and leadership is just as important as being able to read these traits in others.

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  •  June 20, 2016
  •  Posted by at 10:48 am
  •   Comments Off on Five Communication Skills That Make Good Leaders Great – Steve Olenski
  •   Career Success, Social Skills
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