We are moving imminently to Palo Alto, California on a new adventure.  WOW! If you had told me this even 3 months ago, I would have responded with an incredulous Nuh-uh! Just goes to show you, what can happen when you remain open to new opportunities and are willing to go with the flow.

Truth is, I did not initially consider leaving Austin (or Texas).  I, like so many, have fallen in love with Austin.  Many of my fellow laid-off-from-the-same-company colleagues adamantly refuse even to contemplate any other option.   However, I’m not the type to wait around collecting unemployment (which does not even cover health insurance, let alone food or mortgage), hoping the economy will recover.  I don’t have enough patience for that.  I also think I can be happy in many places, as long as I have my family with me.

In addition, I already took time off to adopt my daughter, hence, that restless desire to vacate the corporate world was out of my system.  At that time, I thought I was going to retire and dedicate myself to full time Momhood.  But after awhile, I discovered that I enjoyed working, and though I delight in my role as Mom, it’s not enough for me.   And hubby Ronny was willing (itching?) to try the “Chief Home Officer” role for awhile (he’s very good at it, by the way).  Thus the role switcheroo.  I think it’s an arrangement that works well for us, apparently it’s even stylish these days.

Finally, I came to appreciate the value of working (call me crazy!).  It’s full of opportunities: for growth, for fulfillment, to interact with others and build meaningful relationships, to team together to build something, to strive for a goal and savor the satisfaction of achieving it (and yes, the challenge and excitement of competition and “the thrill of the chase”).  Of course, it’s also a way to provide for my family, and Ronny’s golf addiction

I thus was happy and grateful to accept an exciting Industry Marketing position with a financially solid, established smallish company (~$600M revenues),  in the bay area.  It took 14 weeks from the time I was officially informed that my services were no longer needed, to accepting the offer.

How did I do this? I learned to execute a job search; I’d never needed to before!  Realizing everyone’s situation is unique, I thought it might still help others trying to land a job in this challenging job market if I gave the detail.  Here is the formula that worked for me:

• Reactivated my network by sending personalized, not blanket, emails to folks in my network asking for help, references, and introductions.  Luckily, I already had a good 300+ documented in linkedin.
• Networked my way to interviews by first finding a posting, then identifying someone in my network who worked at that company, contacting then for intelligence, and asking them to call/send an email of recommendation and my resume directly to the hiring manager.  This was the singlemost effective action to acquiring the position.
• Spent ~ 4 hours a day on average a lot of time on my job search.
• Focused my search – Started a broad job search, but realizing that hiring managers who get 50 (or 500!) resumes for an opening can afford to be very picky, I focused in on jobs and companies where I would be as exact a match as possible.  (Unemployment stat says 6.3 people per job – huh!  I heard anecdotes more like the above numbers).  I identified about 10 companies that I felt would be the best fit, and visited their job webpages at least weekly (and actually identified my current position this way).
• Linkedin was a wonderful tool for managing my connections.  Also, I used it to find colleagues-of-colleagues, and do research on individuals.  I also reworked my profile.
• Broadened my search geographically – Started looking only in Austin, but about 8 weeks in, decided to broaden to US wide, as Austin alone was not producing for me (news about Austin being less affected by the recession notwithstanding), and I suspected it was very competitive for marketing positions.
• Studied diligently for any interview – easily spending days prior, to understand as best I could the company, market, and specific position requirements.  I trolled the company website, downloaded and read their whitepapers and case studies, studied the competition, googled industry opinion, read analyst articles, practiced whiteboards of their products, watched webinars and listened to podcasts.  I created a “notes” file where I summarized the relevant information, and studied that.  I also got the names of the interviewers ahead of time if I could and investigated them, to try to glean a sense of their background/motivations/interests/personal brand.
• Created, practiced, and memorized a personal elevator pitch.  Who am I?  What are my strengths?  What are the top benefits I bring to an organization?
• Paid CareerBuilder to modify my resume, then took the results and punched it up even more to tailor to industry and role.  It took many iterations to get to “ready”.
• Created different “flavors” of my resume (one for sales, one for marketing, etc), as I have different skillsets, and then, when applying to a job posting, adjusted it further to match the requirements in the job posting.
• My resume, elevator pitch, and Linkedin efforts helped me become succinct about my capabilities and helped me clarify what I wanted as well.
• Started this blog!  Not sure it helped secure a job, but it has been fun, helped keep my sanity, and and advanced my understanding of social media.  Also utilized twitter, RSS feeds, google reader, and linkedin groups to learn about social media.
• Aggregators simplyhired and indeed became my job boards of choice, as they provided more useful results/better matches.  I started out paying for TheLadders but did not feel it yielded as good results.  Eventually, I set up alerts for my areas of interest/skills ie. “BPM Marketing in Atlanta”, for automatic delivery via RSS or email.  While I did not get my job via these mechanisms, they were still useful, as over time, as I got a sense of what types of jobs were out there, what was popular, who was hiring, how quickly posts would come and go, what key words to put on my resume, and how to better position myself.

Also,

• Ran a lot, nearly every day, as a therapeutic outlet and because I love to (even ran 4 5K races!).  I even managed to lose the 5-7 pounds that I’d gained in the last years of a sit-down-for-8-hours job.
• Kept my conscious contact with my Higher Power (HP) frequent and strong.  I kept in the forefront of my attention that 1) I don’t have the big picture, I just need to remain open 2) I have a unique destiny 3) my HP is looking out for me and my family 4) I have faith in my HP to show me the right path 5) I have so many blessings.  I tried not to insert my will, but just do my part as best I could, take action, and leave the results up to my HP.

I hope this helps others who are still looking.  I also want to thank EVERYONE who helped and supported me.  There’s too many to name, but YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE!  My musical pick for this blog post is: Roll with It Baby, by Steve Winwood

Wednesday, November 18, 2009

A day of many conversations and much learning.

1. Created a group for the Foundation on Idealist
2. E-mailed Karin Lewis about volunteering
3. Posted for Web-development interns/volunteers with the Parsons, The New School, for Design (http://www.collegecentral.com/parsons)
4. Posted for Web-development interns/volunteers with Columbia
5. Registered for Web-development interns with NYU Tische School of Arts
6. Spoke with Clive, Executive Director of One Brick, about volunteers and running non-profits in general.  He told me about Boardsource, NYAC for insurance and a tech development service dedicated to non-profits.
7. Spoke with Rebecca, General Manager at Peace in 5 Years (P:5Y), about partnership opportunities.  She suggested that I create a Peace Team on the site.
8. Registered at Peace in 5 Years (P:5Y) and created a Peace Team
9. Posted for Web-development interns/volunteers with Fordham
10. Talked with Simon (friend in London) who said that I would need database development as well for the website and that the video content would be server intensive, therefore more expensive web hosting
11. Researched salary ranges for Foundation on Idealist and Careerbuilder

The economy around the nation has been in a tough spot. The State Of Michigan has experienced extremes in situations including the housing market crisis, collapse and vacancy of General Motors, and a drastic drop in revenues. Leaving Michigan facing a 14.8% unemployment rate up coupled with a 10.2% national rate. With no revenue, and rising unemployment more people will be laid off. If you are one of the unlucky people who are currently unemployed and have no idea where to look to get back on your feet, look at social media. Sites like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn provide tools you would have never thought of and at no monetary cost. Here are some tips for using Social Media to supercharge your employment hunt.

Facebook

Facebook.com

Facebook should be your first stop on the hunt for employment. As with any social media site Facebook allows you to easily connect with others. Since Facebook serves over 160 million users, you are bound to have some friends or relatives.

Take advantage of your network

Let your friends know you’re looking for a job. Don’t let your pride get in the way of asking for help. Asking your friends to keep their ears open for job openings will create what I call a social tremor. Your friends will ask their friends about job openings, and they will ask their friends and so on and so forth. This will take your network from around twenty connections to hundreds, all looking for employment opportunities.

Join Groups

Facebook currently offers millions of user created groups. Within these millions of groups are ones based around hobbies, professionals, industries, and employment search. Coupled with your already expanding network of employment hunters you can amass even more by joining groups.

• Search for groups that share your hobbies, past industry, and area of expertise.
• Read group wall posts.
• Contribute content to group walls.
• Start conversations with group members.
• Share your interests in current job opportunities.

Twitter

Twitter.com

Like Facebook Twitter holds the opportunity for expanding your network and using your network to search for employment opportunities for you.

Following

The people you’re following are most likely to follow you back. (Baring there not celebrities and you post useful content.) So it’s crucial you’re strategically following people that are within your industry or area of expertise. Following Chad Ochocinco as opposed to someone that works in your field already will not land you a job.

Share Relevant Content

While in your job hunt make sure to share content via your tweets about your industry or expertise. If you’re a construction worker, share your opinion on alternative green building materials. This attracts more followers and adds credit to your personal brand.

Spread the word

Like I said before, don’t be afraid to tell those that you’re following that your currently searching for a job. This in return will create social tremors with the ultimate goal of referring you to a job.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn.com

LinkedIn is another invaluable free service for job hunters. The site puts job networking front and center. Think of it as a professionally polished Facebook, allowing you to easily find people within your industry or expertise and connect with them.

Add All Info

Just like Facebook, LinkedIn uses your profile as a center piece. Profiles contain a picture, employment history, awards, interests, and clubs. It is important to fill out each one of these areas to the fullest. These sections are the only insight people have into you besides the recommendation feature.

Recommendations

LinkedIn has a unique feature that allows people in your network to recommend you. These recommendations are personal remarks from other connections based on anything from your personality to your work ethic. The other cool thing about the recommendation feature is that you can ask for a recommendation from a specific connection.

Join Groups

Just like I stated about Facebook above, make sure to take advantage of the groups section of LinkedIn.

• Search for groups that share your hobbies, past industry, and area of expertise.
• Read group wall posts.
• Contribute content to group walls.
• Start conversations with group members.
• Share your interests in current job opportunities.

Other Resources

• Craigslist.com
• Monster.com
• Careerbuilder.com
• Hotjobs.yahoo.com

Overview

As you can see, social media can play a vital tool in your employment search. Not only are these sites free, but they are, in most cases, more effective. These suggestions are not meant to deter you from other options only to provide you more opportunities and to put your search on blast. Like with anything you must be persistent, timely and relevant to see success. So keep your profiles fresh, your pictures new, and your knowledge crisp. You never know, your next friend request maybe your next job.

Photo Courtesy of techbuddha.files.wordpress.com

For your viewing enjoyment a few of the best job-search related commercials over the last few years.

Have any favorites not posted here? Look forward to your thoughts.

Until next time, good hunting and good luck!

Originally written for and published Oct. 21, 2009, by Platform Online Magazine.

by Josh Morris

There is a need for the education of our youth concerning the risks associated with creating profiles and posting personal information online. “I stress to my students all of the time the importance of trying to maintain their reputations; trying to make them understand that once something is in cyberspace, it is hard to retrieve it,” said Anita Boyd, Advanced Placement English teacher at Laurel Christian School, in Laurel, Miss. Personal brand management is a necessary term to be learned and practiced by young teens and new Internet users alike.

As parents and teachers try to keep themselves aware and their children safe, newer threats to virtual privacy and safety are inevitable. Rapid technological advancement is creating generational differences, forcing children to learn from trial and error, not from Mom and Dad. Unfortunately, this problem has only recently caught the buzz that social media initially had as it became the biggest trend of Generation Y’s young lives. High school curricula are the perfect platform for implementing a course designed to address the issue from the root of the problem, by targeting uninformed minds.

Brian Stanton, an English teacher at Morse High School in Bath, Maine, acknowledged that, “In our advisory period we are often asked to talk to kids regarding cyber bullying/stalking/sexting and so on.” Battling the friendly foe of the Internet is best left to those qualified for the job: those who have been there, done that and accepted that friend request. Stanton said, “They do not have the benefit of wisdom from a past generation.” That past generation is people like me, my classmates and other young professionals who play witness and victim to the true threats of social networking sites and online profiles.

College graduation is upon us, and as we look forward to the next chapter in our lives, we are forever forced to look back upon the decisions made in previous chapters. Our parents aren’t holding grudges and our friends have learned to forgive and forget, but the Internet isn’t always as generous.

Just as fast as young teens are discovering the benefits of social media, my generation is being made aware of the pace at which potential employers are doing the same. According to a CareerBuilder survey in a CNN.com article titled “Digital Dirt,” in 2009, 45 percent of employers used social networking sites to research candidates. But college graduation is entirely too late to be taught the risks of social media, and employment concerns are barely the surface of potential problems.

Offering high school students a course centered on personal brand management and Internet trends is rising in importance. The Internet is not completely negative and can be a great place to communicate, share and self-promote, but it must be understood to be used appropriately.

“Students do not think before they write or post photos. A course could be a way of showing them moderation, but it could also provide education for any holes in their knowledge,” said Boyd. In November, Morse High School will follow a growing trend by giving every student a laptop computer for their personal use. There is a definite need for social media and the Internet to become a foundation for everyday learning, just as much as Shakespeare and Hemingway are.

The attention must now shift and focus on a proactive approach rather than a reactive approach. Pictures are more than frozen in time when they’re frozen in cyberspace. Deactivate a Facebook account and two months later, the same e-mail address and password can retrieve the same removed photos, information and friend connections. There is no deactivating the threats of the Internet. Students at the high school level must be reached because as Stanton said, “They interact without regard to consequence.” He also stated, “Awareness is valuable when gained.”

Those of us who possess such awareness should feel a commitment to protecting the dignity of less familiar followers and the integrity of the communication tools we’ve come to use, love and at times obsess over. Parents and teachers alike should be eager to help guide and educate the younger generations using knowledge and skills acquired from our generation’s mistakes. Capitalizing on this opportunity to influence vulnerable young minds will eventually lead to the confidence to friend request a potential employer rather than live in denial of their online reputation.

CareerBuilder Names Baltimore A Top City For Jobs -What About Green jobs?

WBAL-TV reported that CareerBuilder.com recently named Baltimore the 3rd best city in the nation to find a job.  Here are the top five rankings:

1. Kansas City
2. Washington D.C.
3. Baltimore
4. Dallas/ Fort Worth
5. Philadelphia

That’s great news for Baltimorians in general, but what about earth-loving job seekers?  A search of the web found that the best site for searching green job opportunities in the Baltimore area is SustainLine.com.  A quick search of the site revealed a handful of green jobs (albeit specialized) in Baltimore and more between Baltimore and Washington DC.  If a job seeker in Baltimore is willing to make a daily commute (by MARC train, of course) to D.C., the green job opportunities are numerous.

For general job listings in Baltimore, visit Baltidome’s Live In Baltimore page.

Job searching is very challenging now-a-days. With unemployment around 10% nationwide and over 15% in many cities, more and more people are on the job hunt. And the number of people crawling through Monster, CareerBuilder, and other jobs sites is in the millions! Yes, there’s lots of jobs posted on these sites, but considering the competition, how do you stand out enough when applying to those jobs to get to that all-important interview?

Your objective is really three-fold…get past the computer filter, get past the recruiter filter, and get past the phone screen call.  For now, let’s address the first, and in this economy, the one I think is the toughest…the computer filter.

Think of the recruiters’ sorting queries as being similar to a Google-type search that you might perform, where their objective is to get the best resumes for the jobs they want to fill to show up on the first page of their search results listings. To get your resume to show up on that first search results page, your resume has to have a very high correlation between the keywords the recruiter uses to search with and the words within your resume.  Your resume needs to have the keywords they searched for, but also the keywords relevant to the actual job you want. So you need to have multiple, ever-changing resumes (something my Dad wouldn’t have understood) to increase the odds that your resume will be found.

Just so you don’t get overwhelmed with the idea that you need hundreds of resumes, let’s start with the basic, solid, well-rounded “generic” resume. In fact, it’s not really “generic” at all—it’s really “targeted” at your industry or your job function. In general terms this means that the skills you have or the activities you performed that are relevant to the target industry or target role are listed first, explained more, and woven multiple times throughout your resume.

Say you have most recently been a car salesman and were previously a bank manager. Now you want to apply for a job as a manager of human resources for a mid-sized firm. Which prior role is more relevant to the new job? The roles and accomplishments for that job should be emphasized in your resume about twice as much as the other job’s accomplishments. And yes, both of these prior jobs can have relevance, so don’t eliminate good information, regardless of the prior role, if it’s relevant to your search. But I digress–I have written on the various elements of good resumes before (prior posts), and all those concepts are still relevant, but what we need to focus on right now is keywords.

The problem is, there are basically two types of resumes searches done today: 1) the search by a recruiter through the many resumes posted against a specific job that the recruiter listed (an announced job) and 2) generic searches through the millions of posted resumes when a recruiter is searching for a candidate where a job posting has not been made public (a hidden job). So how does your resume work for you in both of these cases? In this posting, since I’ll assume your current resume isn’t fully “targeted” yet, I’ll assume you’re posting your resume in a major job boards with a “public” or “visible” setting for the recruiters to stumble across while they are looking for unannounced positions. (We’ll talk about option 1 in Keywords 102.)

• Titles up-to-date: Search through a bunch of job postings that have titles and roles that match the type of job you are looking for and make sure that your titles in your resume are “up-to-date” when compared to these postings. For example, an airline stewardess is a dated term…use airline flight attendant instead; you aren’t a secretary anymore, you’re now an administrative assistant.
• Industry terms up-to-date: Are you in the health-care industry? Make sure you find a way to incorporate current keywords. Not just “managed hospital’s patient records”, but “managed patient health records in full conformance of HIPAA regulations”. Or change something plain like “wrote computer programs for my company” to “developed Java and HTML applications for my corporate website”.
• Reduce the use of Pronouns: Often using the keyword multiple times in the same sentence or paragraph helps, such as “Certified in Microsoft Excel and use Excel daily for revenue audits”
• Use keyword variants: Rather than just repeating the same keyword over and over, try using the keyword’s variants: project manager, project management, program management, managed projects, managing projects, managed several large projects, etc. Many search engines have a “synonym” feature that finds all of these when searching for “project manager”, but some search engines aren’t that smart…give them lots of choices
• Avoid keyword “lumping”: A few years back there was a practice of list listing lots and lots of keywords at the bottom of a resume. This might work on some job search sites, but not all. Some of the bigger sites look for the keywords to be in “context” with other “sentence structures” such as verbs, punctuation, conjunctions, etc. So things like “Project Manager, Project Manager, Project Manager, Project Manager,…” doesn’t benefit you today like it used to.
• Name Dropping: I don’t usually list jobs on my resume that I worked at over 15 years ago. But if it was for a recognized firm (IBM, Coke, Boeing, etc.), then I need to at least weave the name of the company into my resume somewhere. “Recently certified as a project management professional (PMP) by leveraging skills learned from working with IBM.”
• Name Dropping 2: Some recruiters look for firms by their initials, while others look for them by their full name, so list your companies by both names “”Assigned to AIG (American International Group) as a project manager while working for Hewlett Packard (HP).”
• No ancient stuff: Unless you really want a job related to a former role or job or affiliation, get rid of the keywords that can confuse or distract. If you want to be a brain surgeon, there’s no advantage of listing non-relevant keywords…janitor, FORTRAN, Democrat, car salesman, IRS, etc.
• Make changes: If your keywords aren’t working, do some research by looking through job postings and ensure that the keywords that these postings use that are relevant to you are somewhere in your resume.

Bottom Line: Start with a well written, industry or role targeted resume. Intersperse some relevant keywords in context (not lumped at the end) so the recruiter can see the same benefit that the computer search found. Make sure your keywords are current, reflect keywords common in job postings, used multiple times in your resume, and are applicable to you and your skills. Watch what the popular keywords are and keep refreshing your resume with new, up-to-date keywords. (Keywords 102 coming soon.)

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________

Danielle Messerschmidt
Writer/Editor/Assistant
San Diego, CA 92115

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________

Dear Hiring Professional Reading this Page:

Stop searching for a reliable employee; you’ve found her! If you are looking for editorial or administrative help, I have the skills and experience necessary to fill your position and help your company evolve and grow, as suggested by a few of my qualifications, listed below:

• I am goal-oriented and love to learn. I am grateful for this, as it helped me to complete a Bachelor’s degree in philosophy and English with an emphasis on creative writing, and a Master’s degree in humanities from a nationally ranked top ten university. Through these experiences I have developed the ability to self-motivate and work independently

• I hold myself as well as the projects I work on to high standards, as I demonstrated when I worked as a freelance editor for a ghostwriter. Such experiences have imbued me with a need for accuracy and an eye for detail as well as the ability to comprehend information outside my area of expertise.

• I have experience coordinating online documents, as I served as editor-in-chief of my undergraduate online creative writing journal, an experience that allowed me to oversee every aspect of a project from its inception to completion, as I was responsible for everything from assembling and directing a team of associate editors to creating and updating the webpage

• Growing up in the Midwest, I was raised to have a strong work ethic and a genuine concern for others. I greatly enjoy collaborating with people, and I work best in a fast-paced environment where I can learn and grow with the projects I work on

• I have strong computer skills such as a proficiency in Microsoft Office applications (Word, Excel, Powerpoint, etc) and adobe programs, familiarity with Mac and PC operating systems as well as social networking and media sites, working knowledge of HTML code and DreamWeaver, and the ability to type up to 90wpm. I also own my own Mac laptop and am a fast learner when it comes to technology and am able to quickly become proficient in applications I am not as familiar wit

• I am extremely loyal to the companies I work for. I know I’m not from San Diego, but don’t let that scare you! I’m here for the long haul, and though I have not been able to take long-term employment for the past year or so due to school, I worked at two of my previous jobs for at least four years each, and, having graduated, I now have a stable living condition so I can get settled into a career.

Having recently graduated from a demanding Master’s degree program, I am looking for a career opportunity that will engage and challenge me. I am confident that my skills and enthusiasm would be a profitable addition to your organization.

I would love to meet with you in order to further demonstrate my qualifications, and if you send me a message on this site, I will promptly email you.

Sincerely,
Danielle Messerschmidt

According to the CareerBuilder’s Halloween survey conducted on more than 4,000 workers, nearly one-in-five (18 percent) workers describe their workplace as scary. More on…………….

http://khichdiall.blogspot.com/2009/10/scary-bosses-for-halloween-characters.html

America’s Most-Wanted Workers
Kate Lorenz, CareerBuilder.com editor

Though the U.S. economy has softened this year — headlines warn of mortgage woes, layoffs and escalating gas prices — there are still jobs out there … you just have to know where to look.

We dug deep into Bureau of Labor Statistics data to find industries that are still adding jobs despite a rising national unemployment rate.

Click here to read more.

For more great information follow us on Twitter and become a FaceBook Fan!

C.R. Engliand, a nationwide trucking company, needed an administrative assistant for its bustling driver training school here. Responsibilities included data entry, assembling paperwork and making copies.

It was a bona-fide opening at a decent wage, making it the rarest of commodities here in northwest Indiana, where steel industry layoffs have helped drive unemployment to about 10 percent.

When Stacey Ross, C. R. England’s head of corporate recruiting, arrived at her desk at the company’s Salt Lake City headquarters the next Monday, she found about 300 applications in the company’s e-mail inbox. And the fax machine had spit out an inch-and-a-half thick stack of résumés before running out of paper. By the time she pulled the posting off Careerbuilder.com later in the day, she guessed nearly 500 people had applied for the $13-an-hour job. “It was just shocking,” she said. “I had never seen anything so big.”

Ms. Ross had only a limited amount of time to sort through the résumés. While C. R. England has not been immune to the downturn, it has added significantly to its stable of drivers and continued to hire office staff members to support them. Ms. Ross was also trying to fill more than two dozen other positions.

The 34-year-old recruiter decided the fairest approach was simply to start at the beginning, reviewing résumés in the order in which they came in. When she found a desirable candidate, she called to ask a few preliminary questions, before forwarding the name along to Chris Kelsey, the school’s director. When he had a big enough pool to evaluate, she would stop. Anyone she did not get to was simply out of luck.

She dropped significantly overqualified candidates right away, reasoning that they would leave when the economy improved. Among them was a former I.B.M. business analyst with 18 years experience; a former director of human resources; and someone with a master’s degree and 12 years at Deloitte & Touche, the accounting firm.

Over the course of four days, Ms. Ross forwarded 61 résumés to Mr. Kelsey, while rejecting 210 others. The remainder never even got a look. Many were, in fact, never uploaded to the company’s internal system because there were too many.

Just before the advertisement was removed, a standard one-page résumé arrived from Tiffany Block, 28, who lived in nearby Portage and had lost her job four months earlier as an accounts receivable manager at a building company when it closed its Indiana office.

Someone she knew had applied for the job and had said so on Facebook. Ms. Block went to the company’s Web site and filed an application online, which many others had not. By doing do, her application went directly into the company’s system. She was hardly optimistic, since she had not had an interview in months.

Ms. Ross, however, passed it on the next day to Mr. Kelsey.

Attendance at Mr. Kelsey’s school has surged during the recession. Mr. Kelsey, 33, had just promoted one of his three administrative assistants, who handle the paperwork needed for drivers to hit the road. He needed a replacement quickly.

The overwhelming response astonished him. He asked Cheree Seawood, one of his current assistants, to go through the résumés and help pick out several to interview. To make the task easier, he decided they should be even more rigorous in ruling out anyone who appeared even slightly overqualified. Mr. Kelsey, an ardent New England Patriots fan, compared his personnel strategy to the team’s everyman approach.

“We like to get the fair and middling talent that will work for the wages and groom them from within,” he said.

In other words, he said, he did not want the former bank branch manager Ms. Ross had sent, or the woman who had once owned a trucking company, or even the former legal secretary.

He also realized that in this climate he could afford to be extra picky and require trucking industry experience.

The company eventually settled on eight people to interview, inviting in the first two just five days after the job was posted.

In the past, Mr. Kelsey had mostly ad-libbed interviews, but this time he asked his company’s human resources department for help. They sent him a list of 13 questions, as well as an eight-page packet with 128 questions grouped under 50 “competencies.” He decided he would ask them all.

At the end of each hourlong interview, he and Ms. Seawood each jotted down a rating for each applicant and then compared them.

Invariably, the candidates’ job search travails came up. One woman who lost her job had started working as a waitress and confessed she had come directly from her job on the overnight shift.

But Mr. Kelsey resolved to keep his personal sympathies at bay. “If you start judging applicants on want or need, eventually that want, or need, will go away when they get the job and their financial situation stabilizes,” he said. “Then you’re left with whatever skills they have.”

Before Ms. Seawood called Ms. Block to schedule an interview, she had been getting increasingly depressed.

“I felt like, I’m 28 years old, and I don’t have a job,” she said. “What am I doing with myself?”

But Mr. Kelsey was immediately impressed when she came in on the second day of interviews. Dressed in a conservative business suit, Ms. Block patiently answered all of the 100-plus questions. Mr. Kelsey liked that she remained consistent in her answers and showed independence.

Afterward, Mr. Kelsey gave Ms. Block a 9; Ms. Seawood rated her at a point lower.

The next week, however, Ms. Seawood gravitated to a different candidate. The woman had just had nose surgery and came in wearing a protective mask. Besides her qualifications, the fact she had not tried to postpone impressed Ms. Seawood.

But when Mr. Kelsey invited the woman back, the interview was a disaster. She grew visibly irritated amid his battery of questions.

Mr. Kelsey immediately called Ms. Block to ask if she could come in for a second interview.

Was an hour from now too soon?

Momentarily panicked, Ms. Block quickly assented.

Mr. Kelsey marched through many of his questions again. Then, trying to gauge her ability to be assertive among truck drivers, he added a new hypothetical: if she were in the stands at a baseball game and a foul ball came her way, would she stand up to try to catch it, or wait in her seat and hope it fell her way?

The other finalist had said she would wait. But Ms. Block said immediately that she would jump up to grab it.

Mr. Kelsey decided he had found his hire.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/22/us/22hire.html?_r=1&hpw

An excerpt from 2004’s awesomely titled “When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops?”

Consolidated International: We Need You

We’re Consolidated International, and we might be looking for you. Are you one of those submissive people who show up, punch in, put out, pitch in, punch out, clean up, head home, throw up, turn in, sack out and shut up? That’s what we need, people we can keep in line. We just might have a place for you. Consolidated International:  People making things, so people have things to do things to other people with.

The best wordsmith in standup comedy, ever. That job sounds better than half the crap posted on Careerbuilder lately.

A friend of mine contacted me – his resume was getting lots of “hits” on the job boards, but no calls for interviews. He said he had followed all the up-to-date guidance around Objective statements, using all the keywords that are relevant to his industry, fitting it on two pages, including certification information, and had even paid to get it “boosted” on the job boards. He had a few inquiries asking for a copy of his Word-formatted resume, but nothing beyond that. So to give him a hand, I asked for him to send me a copy of his Word-formatted resume and I promised to take a look.

Urgh! His resume was pitiful–almost ugly. His grammar was terrible…sentences with missing punctuation, mixed tenses, disjointed phrases with extensive use of dashes, semicolons and ellipses, etc. He had used a resume authoring tool of some sort that had embedded a distracting graphic behind his text (a type of watermark) that, when printed to a PDF file, made the text unreadable. Everything was a table or a text box along with numerous underlined sentences…there were lines and boxes everywhere! This probably explained why even though the job engines were picking it up, the humans were showing no interest in it.  There were several things wrong that I pointed out to him as quick and easy fixes, but the entire rewrite process took several days.

Thanks to the built-in spell-checker in modern word processors, if you pay attention to what you’re writing, your spelling errors are corrected. But most people stop there and don’t take advantage of the grammar checker.

For example the following gets a pass on spelling from Word 2003: Won off the moist changeling aspics off righting a resume if prosper spilling an grimmer. Wyle eat is posse bull two get they worlds spilled write, ewe shod knoll tat Spill Cheek is knot awl tat is kneaded too ensemble a grate resume. (One of the most challenging aspects of writing a resume is proper spelling and grammar. While it is possible to get the words spelled right, you should know that Spell Check is not all that is needed to assemble a great resume.)

So, make sure you use Grammar Checker, have a couple of friends proof read your resume for you, and also consider these other issues:

Present or Past Tense – A resume is always written in past tense. While there are some that suggest that the responsibilities section of your current job should be written in present tense, this seems to make the resume read “unbalanced” in my opinion. It’s safe to write it in past tense. Oh, your cover letter can be in either tense, it just depends on your writing style.

Avoid abbreviations and contractions – As long as it doesn’t sound awkward, you should avoid common contractions (e.g., “aren’t”) in the resume, but they’re OK in your cover letter. Make sure you spell out all abbreviations that aren’t common. Popular firm names, like “IBM”, don’t need to be spelled out, but industry specific certifications, like “PgMP” (Program Management Professional), do need to be expanded.

Keep sentences short—In general a sentence shouldn’t contain more than 2 commas and shouldn’t be more than two lines in length…break these longer, more complex sentences into 2 or more sentences. Avoid conjunctions and phrases that cause complexity such as but, however, otherwise, although, notwithstanding, etc. Target the “level” of your resume to be written for a high school or early college reader…not a college graduate.

Punctuation: Exclamation point, semicolon, ellipsis, etc. – Use of punctuation other than commas and periods should be carefully considered—or just don’t. You shouldn’t have any sentences that are complex enough for semicolons (except for separating city/state lists). Save your exclamation points for your cover letter—they have no business in a resume. Ellipsis…breaks up the flow of a sentence…again the sentence should be short and to the point…nothing that should need an ellipsis.

Graphics or fluff – Yes, there’s something to be said about a unique-looking resume. They are eye catching. They show imagination. And they get thrown out more often than they are read.  A recruiter friend of mine tells me that when he gets a resume that is “overly pretty”, unless it’s for a job that requires this type of expertise (like a graphics designer, etc.), he just throws it away. While this might not be how all recruiters react, it does indicate that many aren’t willing to “struggle” through trying to read a non-standard resume. While basic features with simple tables or text boxes are OK, even these need to be used with care.

Bottom Line: Spelling, grammar, punctuation, colors, and other “visuals challenges” are important things to consider.  Make sure that you check not only the spelling, but also the grammar of your work. Reduce the use of less common punctuation; make your resume read clear and sound uncluttered. And don’t try to go to extremes to make it look “fancy” with graphics, extensive tables or colored fonts…these usually cause more frustration than the benefit they might provide.  It doesn’t have to be perfect, but it needs to be “good enough”. So keep it simple, crisp and clean!

If you haven’t picked a major yet and want a job that pays, check out this list of 30 jobs that pay $80,000. Click here.

I recently reviewed a resume that I could only shake my head at and wonder if the person was really trying to find a job. The lady had been to an Identity Theft conference and one of the sessions made numerous “recommendations” on how to “secure” your resume to prevent identity theft. She had taken these recommendations to an extreme with her resume and the resulting document was obscure and a little spooky. She had no address, no company names, no college names, no phone number and…no real chance of getting a call based on this, eh, information-less resume.

The underlying problem is that a resume must convey a reasonable amount of information to the reader, which might be moderately contrary to identity specialists’ recommendations. As mentioned above, some security experts suggest you don’t list the name of your college where you got your degree. I think that’s going a bit far, as the likelihood of someone stealing your identity based on your college degree info is fairly slim (but not impossible), yet not listing this rather common data on your resume is very limiting to your successful job search.

What DON’T you publish? For privacy/piracy issues, there are a few key items to avoid putting on your resume—most are quite logical:

• Social Security Number
• Full legal name (just use first and last name)
• Birth date
• Account numbers (checking, savings, credit cards, etc.)
• Drivers License number
• Passport / Green Card number
• Personal financial information (prior salaries, bonuses, hourly rate, etc.)

There are other things that some people suggest also leaving off, and while I don’t disagree, it’s not really an identity theft issue, rather it’s mostly a discrimination or privacy issue:

• Marital status
• Names of spouse or children
• Height / weight
• Age
• Hair and eye color
• Gender
• Mother’s maiden name
• Home street address
• Phone numbers
• Work e-mail

I talked with a couple of security experts and we can’t really justify some of these items listed above under a “piracy” protection. Still, leaving them off for discrimination purposes might make sense:

• Height & weight – while people that are overweight or very short might be discriminated against, these are visually available features (I can look at you and guess these) so these are not items easily secreted. It’s pretty unlikely that it would be on a resume, but I have seen it on a model’s resume and it’s probably common for other professions.
• Home address – there are too many ways for this to be easily located. A simple Google search turns up most people’s address and phone number. If you do choose to leave your street address off your resume, at least put your City & State on the resume.
• Home phone number – too easy for most people to find almost anywhere on the web (yellow pages, white pages, etc.). But still, as a privacy issue it’s best if people aren’t calling your home address when you aren’t answering.

Like I said, the problem is that there is a lot of your information on the web that you probably never knew was there. I found my birthday listed on the Department of Motor Vehicles web site; my address is listed in several “Who Is” listings because of the website names I’ve registered; a non-profit site listed my donation and credit card name (no account number); I even came across most of my employment information on the website of a college I recently attended.

While I can’t guarantee that your identity couldn’t be stolen from your resume, if you are in a serious job hunt (not just trolling for a better opportunity), your resume must not be a roadblock in this process. You can still take some reasonable cautions when writing your resume for use on the Internet, but don’t go overboard. Remember these guides:

• If someone can look at you or a photograph of you and get physical information (height, etc.), it’s probably not worth hiding
• If you did an Internet search, any identity information about you that shows up more than once is probably not worth hiding
• If you can find the info in a phone book, on a Girl Scouts cookie order form, or on the face of your checks (written to you or on ones you wrote to others), then it’s probably not worth hiding
• If it’s something you’d write in a Christmas card to friends or relatives, it’s probably not worth hiding

Bottom Line: A resume is a personal marketing tool used to solicit interest in contacting you…don’t make it too difficult. If the recruiters can’t get to you easily, they’ll go elsewhere. Have two resumes…one with limited info you post on the Internet and one with more complete info that you send to specific contacts. No sense in hiding things that are common (like what I can determine from a photograph of you or what a co-worker can tell about you), but take care to hide or start restricting the distribution of information that only creditors should know.

Good Evening!

Thanks to everyone that joined me for the Personified Social Media Sourcing Seminar today. I enjoyed your questions and insight!  For those of you that were not able to join, we had a great discussion regarding the benefits, challenges and best practices of using social media for recruitment. A few of the “user generated” highlights from benefit/challenge discussion included:

Benefits:

• Candidates WANT you to use social media to reach them and tell them about your opportunities. Reaching out to a candidate through a network is more like a warm call, and much more effective, than the traditional cold call. 
• Social Media helps your candidates get to know your brand better before they apply to your organization. Long-term, this results in a better hire and less turnover.
• Trends show that candidates have a higher level of trust for user generated comments than they do for employment brand promises. The right type of social media campaign can quickly position your organization as an employer of choice and allow candidates to speak amongst one another, creating a positive impact on your employment brand.

Challenges/Concerns: 

• It takes a lot of time to build and manage a multi-channel social media campaign. Should you outsource?
• Privacy Concerns. Are candidates still concerned about sharing information on the web and will this limit the applications your receive?
• It is difficult to ensure alignment in messaging between departments with social media campaigns because they evolve so fast.  How do you make sure that you are communicating in a way that is consistent with your marketing department? 

Suggested Best Practices: 

• Utilize “aggregators” like TweetDeck, Co-Tweet and Ping.com to efficiently post jobs to multiple networks. 
• Include privacy statements on all of your company pages, groups and websites to let candidates know you take privacy seriously.   Use social media networks that have proven to be industry leaders in the privacy area.
• As a first step in building your social media campaign, you should LISTEN to your audience to learn what they are saying before you engage or begin to create content.  Advise each department in your organization to do the same to ensure alignment.

The next webinar on Social Media Sourcing Strategy with Personified is November 12th at 2pm CST. If you’d like to join, you can respond to me or email operations@personified.com for pricing information and details. 

Have a great night!

c

Vill du ha en egen jobbcoach?

Nu kan inskrivna arbetssökande helt kostnadsfritt få en personlig jobbcoach. Vi har över 500 jobbcoacher i Sverige som bara väntar på att få hjälpa dig ut i arbetslivet. Det enda du behöver göra är att registrera dig.

Så här ser hela paketlösningen ut för dig! Du och din personliga jobbcoach går igenom var du är idag. Därefter läggs en plan för hur du ska hitta rätt jobb. Du får då:

1. Personlig coach

2. Ta del av jobbförmedling

3. Tips via en nätverksskola

4. Lära dig löneförhandling

5. E-kursen: 7 steg till ett roligare jobb – bra övningar

6. Hjälp till att hitta oannonserade jobb

7. Målfokusövningar

8. Intervjuträning

9. CV-skola

10. Nina Jansdotters bok livskarriär

Äntligen så har man lyssnat på de arbetslösa och skapat ett sätt att föra samman arbetsgivare, arbetstagare och uppdragsgivare. Som sagt, det är kostnadsfritt så vad har du att förlora? Här är mer information från Jobbcoachen.

The LRC has books on writing cover letters you can check out for two weeks .

When you need to write a cover letter, it’s sometimes the small things that make a big difference.  Review these cover letter tips and techniques for writing top notch cover letters to send with your resume, including cover letter format and presentation, choosing a type of cover letter, writing custom cover letters, and cover letter examples and templates.  Click here to visit About.com and learn more:  http://jobsearch.about.com/od/coverlettertips/tp/coverlettertips.htm

Another About.com site says:  To be effective, your cover letter should follow the basic format of a typical business letter and should address three general issues:

1. First Paragraph – Why you are writing
2. Middle Paragraphs – What you have to offer
3. Concluding Paragraph – How you will follow-up

 http://jobsearch.about.com/od/coverletters/a/aa030401b.htm

And advice from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute for its graduates:  

Effective cover letters are constructed with close attention to

• Purpose
• Audience
• Content
• Format 

The entire article can be found at:   http://www.rpi.edu/web/writingcenter/cover_letter.html

OWL at Purdue University has a full page of clickable links for learning more about writing cover letters:  http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/549/01/  Be certain the check out the complete page for all it has to offer.

And, lastly, CareerBuilder.com’s Cover Letter Do’s and Don’t’s :   http://www.careerbuilder.com/Article/CB-160-Cover-Letters-and-Resumes-Cover-Letter-Dos-and-Donts/?ArticleID=160&cbRecursionCnt=1&cbsid=82cedb582e9b425d92c2e525aab377df-308160509-RQ-4&ns_siteid=ns_us_g_cover_letters

Ok, as many of you know I am not technically unemployed.  I have been temping for just over the past 3 months!  And while I have been overjoyed to be able to pay rent, eat, and go out sometimes, I am becoming quite anxious and impatient to get the actual job offer.  You see, my headhunter called me on Sept. 8 and told me that the company I’m temping for was FINALLY requesting the paperwork to start negotiating my hire.  I was ecstatic!  Even when he told me that they had lowered the offer by $5k.  Not even THAT dampened my spirits.  So what if they lowered it a measly 5 grand?  It’s still good money, more than I’ve ever made!  I should be happy!  And I was.  But now here we are 3 weeks later and neither my headhunter nor I have heard boo about when I’m going to actually get the offer, or when my hire date will be!  It is incredibly hard to remain patient and try not to spazz out.  And I find it incredibly insulting that they wouldn’t move quickly on this.  I mean, this is my life, my fiscal life here, and the difference between a salary w/bennies and temp wages is great.  Sure, b/c of these temp wages I have been able to actually live for the first time in what? a year? year and a half?  I mean, I’m not making peanuts.  But I’m not making a salary or being paid anywhere near what I’m worth, and that is really starting to get to me.  What if they make me hold on until the new year?  What if they wait an entire year to make the offer?  Did I tell you that this happened to my friend M???  She was stuck in a holding pattern by the company she was temping for FOR AN ENTIRE YEAR!  That is such a ludicrous abuse of the system, and it does not make for happy employees.  The whole idea behind a temp, or temp-to-perm, is to try someone out, see how they fit in your corporate culture, no strings attached.  If it works out, great, you have an automatic employee.  If not, thanks for your help, and let’s see someone else.  This company has already decided to negotiate hiring me, and now that they have paperwork they are just sitting on it.  It’s frustrating and insulting and belittling.  But let’s never forget that I am also stupid grateful to even have a job at all!  Let’s face it, I’ve said it before: this is not my dream job, not by any stretch of the imagination.  But it is a GOOD JOB, a solid job, a relatively DRAMA-FREE job!  And that goes a loooong way in my book.  The people are nice, they let me stick to myself, and I get my work done and don’t bother anyone. 

So what I have decided to do is re-post my resume and actively begin searching again.  After the first month (I was originally told they would hire after 30 days) I made it known that I was still a temp and that I would still interview should the opportunity arise.  Of course the real problem is that the opportunity hasn’t arisen.  Nada.  Zip.  Zero.  Another headhunter called me on Monday to ask if she could send my resume out but I haven’t heard anything back from her.  That’s when I re-did my resume and logged back on to CareerBuilder.  Dear God how I hate that site.  I hate all job sites, as it were, right now, b/c they are just filled w/agencies.  Last year the majority of interviews I went on were for agencies, headhunters, not actual jobs.  It became maddening, infuriating.  But I suited up and showed up, in the off chance that they would be able to find something, ANYTHING for me.  And it wasn’t until June that my v fave agency, Euromode, found this position for me.  I’m grateful, don’t get me wrong.  But it’s time for them to do the right thing  and hire me already.  Maybe if they see that I have another job interview they’ll kick it into high gear.  I considered (just for a brief, teeny tiny moment) MAKING UP AN INTERVIEW, just to, you know, let them know that I am indeed desireable, from a job point of view.  But instead I decided to get myself back out there online and see if I get any takers.  I responded to 2 jobs today, and so far, no word.  But at least I feel like I am taking and active role in my employment opportunities, and not just taking the first thing that comes along.  Unless it’s the only thing.  Then I’m on it like white on rice.  You know?  I just hate feeling desperate.  B/c I’m not.

I was reading an article regarding people building their own personal brand.  It is important that you as a successful PT OT or SLP traveler create your BRAND.  One thing you can be doing wrong with your brand is by sending your resume to all of the big job boards for mass distribution.  When I see resumes that come from Monster, Absolutely Healthcare, CareerBuilder and the like, I know that that PT OT or SLP traveler is getting inundated with calls from 30-50 travel companies.  We’re all trying like heck to get you to come work for us.  Recruiters, like me, who know what they’re doing, know our time is better served working a traveler who does not have to decide or decipher 50 voice mails.

My advice is to search the job boards for jobs that sound good to you, then call the company directly.  Or do a little research by going to their website or asking around to other travelers you know.  When you find a company you want to deal with and you finally talk to a recruiter, as the recruiter to let you talk to a couple of his travelers, so you can get an idea of what you can expect from that traveler.

The point of this blog is to let you know to avoid blasting your resume out from the big job boards.  This is your career and you BRAND.  Don’t belittle your brand by including it with the masses.  Make yourself stand out by contacting recruiters, like me, directly.

Happy Travels!

Scott Ferguson                                                                                                                                                                Senior Recruiter

Cirrus Allied                                                                                                                                                                             866-518-1750 x 2308                                                                                                                                                    678-993-2308                                                                                                                         sferguson@cirrusallied.com

But I am still working on my back up plan. I am creating a blog of my research resulting from my back up plan. I will post it later when I am all done. It may turn out to be more than one blog because I am getting a lot of information.

I have not heard from the interview I had on the September 17th so I guess it is back to the drawing board. They said when they called that they had found my resume on http://careerbuilder.com but I had a feeling that wasn’t true. I looked at the jobs I had applied to and found it. They had posted it to http://craigslist.org and I had applied to it. They must have had me mixed up with someone else.

I have a cookbook from my childhood days. I think it was given to me when I got married many years ago. I made some baking powder biscuits from one of the recipes. The biscuits tasted like saltine crackers only not so crunchy.  So I am going to try another biscuit recipe. I have a folder with some recipes that I got from magazines, newspapers and friends. I looked through the folder but I did not throw any recipes out. Who knows I may use them one day. The cookbook is covered in contact paper. It was not meant for this use I believe it was supposed to be shelf paper. The paper works though because cookbooks get wet or dirty in other ways and the contact paper helps keep it water and soil proof and is easy to clean.

I took some online skill tests. Some I passed and some I did not. They were harder than the tests I have taken at temp agencies. I can retake them so I guess I will. Maybe after I do some studying. There is a BIG list of tests at this site that people can take. It didn’t cost anything but time to do this.

Individual Mandate on the Obama Health Insurance plan. You must buy health insurance or be fined $1900. In addition a year in jail or $25,000. Are they crazy? How many people are out of work right now? How would this affect them? Make me buy health insurance and I will be homeless. Make me go to jail OK. Then I don’t have to worry about rent for a year.  I don’t have to worry about where the money is going to come from for food either. This is clearly unconstitutional because it sure doesn’t fall under ‘the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’. This is supposed to be a free country. Making me buy health care is NOT freedom. It is dictatorial. Seig Hiel Obama because you now join the ranks of people like Hitler, Stalin, Mugabe, Idi Amin, Kim Jong Il, Pol Pot, Ho Chi Minh and so on and so forth, you get the idea. Obama is going to be a one term president because of this.

You might have noticed if you’ve ever skimmed through the help wanted ads in the newspaper or on websites like CareerBuilder is that a lot of employers are looking for a “self-starter.” According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, that’s somebody who has initiative.

The concept of initiative is not new to this blog, but I will revisit it from time to time, including this morning. I spent yesterday afternoon jotting down notes about Public and Media Relations from the Free Management Library.

Two months into the project, I don’t know everything there is to know about PR. And it’s unfair of me to expect that I should. But if I want to keep doing this kind of thing down the road, I need to get a firmer grasp of it over the remaining 10 months.

The publicity side of it is pretty easy, I write press releases and send them off to my old friends in the media. I also help to oversee our Facebook and Twitter accounts. But public relations is about much more than that. Various articles I’ve read suggest you need a plan that should describe who you want to promote your image to and how you’re going to do it.

I think we already have a pretty good idea of the audience we want to reach and the methods that we have in place now. It’s just a matter of getting those ideas onto paper. Such a plan would serve as a capacity builder, or the development of an organization. I can’t remember if I’ve mentioned capacity building in this blog or not, but the phrase gets tossed around frequently in the non-profit world.

For all I know, there is already a plan in place for dealing with the media. I’m still going to come up with a plan anyway, that way I have the experience of putting one together. I will do a lot of this on my own, but will seek the feedback of both current and former colleagues. I envision this as being another boost for both this effort and my own future.

Dear Prospective Employer,

I am completely fed up. Having spent a majority of my life in search of the perfect job, I am now ready to retire from such a fruitless endeavor. The ever-growing beast that is unemployment has shown its true face and I must say, “it is ugly”. In fact, it is so ugly that I must turn away from it in efforts to keep my mind focused upon the prettier things in life (i.e. my family). Neither you nor your company can convince me that my purpose on earth involves working so hard for a callback, much less an interview. Thank you, nonetheless, for taking the time to read this as I only wish to make you smile. I have entirely too much skill and talent to continue sifting thru such an insurmountable pile of dead-end postings and employer profiles. Do please keep up the good work as, somewhere out here in the vast expanse of the web, there is someone who cares. The following resume is enclosed for your reading enjoyment and as an example of how not to apply for (yet another) job. Peace and kudos on a job well-undone.

Joe PhiPho Smith

philosophersphone@gmail.com 

• Technical/Emotional Support and Sneaky Sales Representative
• Superior communication skills both written & verbal with Spanish cursing
• Proficient with PC/Mac applications including Sports & Adult websites
• Experienced in daydreaming & text messaging on the clock

 Work History  

Freelance  03/03 to Present  This is the only serious entry on this page. Visual & Recording Artist for hire. Performance Poet skilled in spitting hot flame flows for the purpose of expanding minds and inspiring ideologies in audiences of one to one thousand (honestly), lyricist, creative & technical writing workshop administration. Distinct marketing advisor and graphic designer for various projects including logos, album art, apparel design and layouts for professional printwork.

Hello Wireless  07/07 to 12/07  Retail sales and support for a defunct wireless company. Trained to flirt/stand around uselessly and rudely garner the attention of passersby to convince them that my product is somehow better than the one with which they are already comfortable by asking open-ended, confusing questions and displaying a limited selection of over-priced, although very cool, cell phones all for a pitiful hourly wage and commissions that were never paid in a mall kiosk aka swap meet environment. In-depth knowledge of product shortcomings and plan loopholes.

Version Mobile  10/06 to 05/07  Inbound CSR/shoulder-to-cry-on for a ghetto cell phone company in a drama – filled call center. Rapid promotion from activations to afterhours Tech Support taking calls from the intoxicated and mentally unstable. Lead positions in saying No and lunch break weed sessions.

Eventually Outsourced, Inc.  03/00 to 05/03  First and last real job. Trained to be a robot on an assembly line of robots in an unsafe, badly managed electronics plant using outdated tools & processes designed by other robots. Strong attention to detail while working 14-hr night shifts consisting of dozing/slacking off, 2-hr lunches and surfing the internet for other jobs.

U.S. Military  03/99 to 04/00  Deceptively enlisted as an Electronics Technician trained in advanced troubleshooting. No records exist of training nor service due going AWOL halfway through A-School in search of any reason to quit. Eventually returned to base in fear of military prison time to receive an Other-Than-Honorable-Discharge and no Veteran privelages. Perhaps the greatest experience of my life aside from fatherhood and sex with a woman.

Education

University of Texas at Arlington 1995 – 1997 General Studies/Partying and Getting Wasted

Mountainview College in Dallas, TX 1997 – 1998 Philosophy/Asking Why?