Monthly Archives: November 2009

Tips For Your LinkedIn Job Search

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Fantastic read over at a blog called New Grad Life. 22 Tips for Landing a Job On LinkedIn has a great list of advice covering the best ways to use LinkedIn during your job search.

Among the best advice:

7. Update Your Profile Often (keeps you on your contacts’ news stream), but Not Egregiously

10. Invite Anyone You Meet in a Business Setting

and…

19. Consider Creating Your Own Group

If you haven’t already, I would seriously recommend getting yourself on LinkedIn. It’s the best social media tool for professional networking. And when you do, check out 22 Tips for Landing a Job On LinkedIn.  It has some seriously good advice.

Why References Still Matter

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There has been some debate recently about whether or not candidate references matter. In fact, a recent article on CNN called Do references really matter? explores this issue.

One quote from this piece caught my eye:

Harsh [an employer] agrees that when he receives a resume with references attached, he gives them virtually no weight.

Honestly, I don’t blame him. Today’s resume references are no more likely to turn up negative information than if you called the candidate’s mother directly. No job hunter is going to willingly provide a bad reference, it just doesn’t make sense.

Regardless, I still believe that references have their place. I have three reasons for this:

  1. Everyone else is going to provide a reference when asked. Regardless of whether you agree that references are useful, you need to have them in order to be at the level of other candidates. Sad, but true.
  2. Finding and contacting references also provides you with valuable networking experience. You never know when these references may be able to help you down the line.
  3. Finally, it allows you to find out directly whether or not your references will support you in your job search. Believe it or not, “non-positive” references are not uncommon.

So take the time to go through your references. It will be beneficial in the long run.

Income-Based Repayment Makes Repaying Student Loans Easier

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I just read about Income-Based Repayment for the first time. Being from Canada, this doesn’t apply to me (sadly), however, it sounds like a great program.

In the article Grads Get a Break on Student Loan Debt, the Income-Based Repayment plan is described as a new federal program that is…

… making it easier to pay back these loans. If a student chooses to repay her or his loan with this plan, payments are then recalibrated — based on their income to something they can reasonably afford. All debt will be forgiven after 25 years. A graduate who earns less than 150% of the poverty line (about $16,000) won’t have to make any payments. This is in addition to the year-old Public Service Loan Forgiveness program for those working in jobs such as law enforcement, public health and social work. Their loans will be forgiven after 10 years.

While it isn’t the perfect solution, it’s definitely a step in the right direction. It’s too bad that it’s only treating the symptom and not getting to the root of the issue. It’s the size of the debt that is the big problem. Tuition rates across North America need to come down before this will be truly solved.

So that brings us to the most important question: Will this plan help you?

Gradversity Quick Tip #21: Practice For Interviews

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Every job seeker needs to go through the interview process to land a job. It’s a fact of life.

So given that this is such an important event, it makes sense to be as prepared as possible.

Take some time and ask a friend to grill you with mock interview questions (the tougher the better). It will help get you into the interview frame of mind. This kind of practice can help you polish your delivery and increase your chances of landing the job you really want.

I’ve Heard Of Tough Interviews, But This is Crazy…

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I’d always had a hidden desire to work in high finance until it turned into the scapegoat for the economic disaster. So it caught my eye when I read You Think The Google Interview Is Tough? Try Getting A Job At A PE Firm, I couldn’t resist taking a look. In case you don’t know, PE stands for Private Equity, and the people who work in this profession are the new “Masters of the Universe” in terms of international finance. Even as we come out of the economic turmoil of the last few years, investment bankers are still being paid enormous sums for the work that they do. It’s unbelievable.

Want to get in on the act? Be prepared for a nightmare interview. Here’s one of the scenarios you may see:

…the typical interviewee is walked into a little room and told he has two hours to write out the steps necessary in something like an LBO (leveraged buy-out)…once done, the interviewee is taken into a room with one or more men (it is usually men, he says). They ask him to walk them through each step he took and listen while he justifies the reasons behind everything he suggested. If he does well, he is brought into another room where he begins an interview with someone else. The whole process takes at least three hours, he says, they are trying to trip you up the entire time.

This doesn’t sound like my idea of fun, but if you want to eventually make the big money, you have to be prepared to jump through the hoops!

Ever been through an interview like this?

Gradversity Quick Tip #20: Get LinkedIn

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Over the past several years LinkedIn has become the premier social network for the modern job hunter. It provides access to contacts within any given organization which you wouldn’t have had before. If you aren’t taking advantage of networking power of LinkedIn, you are already losing the job search battle.

Get on LinkedIn for the good of your job search and start networking!

Top 10 Cities For Jobs Requiring Twitter Experience

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Read Write Web recently posted a short study which listed the Top 10 US Cities Where Twitter is Mentioned in Craigslist Jobs. It’s an interesting list. The results are below…

  1. New York City, NY
  2. San Francisco, CA
  3. Boston, MA
  4. Seattle, WA
  5. Chicago, IL
  6. Portland, OR
  7. LA, CA
  8. Austin, TX
  9. Dallas, TX
  10. Phoenix, AZ

I’m quite surprised that Portland is on the list. I would have expected places like San Jose or other Silicon Valley cities to rank a little higher.

But as the author suggests, jobs that ask for Twitter experience may not be any good. Many of these jobs appear to be either low paying hourly jobs or unpaid “experience” positions.

Check out the original article. It’s a good read.

Should I Contact Them If They Say “No Calls or Emails”?

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A recent post on CAREEREALISM called Can I Break the “No Calls, No E-mails” Rule? had a very interesting debate between JT and Dale about when it might be acceptable to break this guideline. Given that this is one of those questions that every job hunter has, I thought I would throw my two cents into the discussion.

Here’s my take: If an employer explicitly suggests no calls or emails, you have two options. You can apply and take your chances or you can apply and follow up. If you just roll the dice and hope that they will see your resume, then you have a small chance they will find it and call you back. However, you increase your chances of being “found” if you follow up.

The point I’m hoping to make is that if you don’t follow up and just take your chances, it’s likely that your resume will never be found among potentially  hundreds of applications for a single position. If you aren’t likely to be found anyway, I don’t see the harm in breaking the rule. As JT suggests, it may cause you to be labeled as someone who “doesn’t follow instructions”, but I think that it’s a chance you have to take. Job hunting is serious business and one in which only the strongest candidates get hired.

If I were you, I would follow up anyway. I’d make it short and polite, but make it hit home. It’s still your best chance of standing out from the crowd. And yes, it may cause you to be labeled or ignored, but the alternative is being lost in the crowd.

Agree? Disagree? Leave a comment below!

What is a 2 Column Cover Letter?

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Found a very interesting post the other day called The T-Formation or 2-column Cover Letter. It outlines the benefits of this unique type of cover letter.

According to the article, in a 2-column cover letter you…

…quote in the left-hand column specific qualifications that come right from the employer’s want ad and in the right-hand column, your attributes that meet those qualifications

I’ve never heard of this being used, but I can see that it may be a very useful technique. It would certainly present a compelling image to the employer or recruiter.

Has anyone tried this? If so, did it increase your success rate?

Why would anyone want to join RBS?

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RBS wants to recruit. According to today’s Financial News, it’s, “Probably one of the most aggressive hirers in the market at the moment.”

This may be so, but given speculation about the future of RBS’s investment banking business, enthusiasm for joining the bank is likely to be muted.

RBS stock is down nearly 6% today on the news that it will probably be obliged to sell Citizens, Churchill, Green Flag, Direct Line, more than 312 RBS branches in England, and Global Merchant Acquiring (card payments processing).

More to the point though, is what’s happening to its investment banking business.

Late on Friday, the Telegraph reported a Treasury spokesperson as saying:

The taxpayer cannot be expected to be on the hook for exotic instruments and overseas deals that did much to bring the bank [RBS] down.

The paper concluded that ‘risky’ investment banking activities such as debt syndication may be “shut down.”

Both Bloomberg and The Times knock further nails into the coffin with the claim the sale of parts of the RBS investment banking business is on the cards.

However, one RBS insider assures us this is “rubbish,” and that, “There’s a lot of stuff knocking around which isn’t true.” Any slimming down of RBS’s investment banking operations will be simple and not “particularly wide ranging” he says soothingly.

RBS is due to announce its results on Friday and a firmer statement about its future is expected to be made in the coming days.

In the meantime, headhunters working for the bank insist a surprising number of people are willing to contemplate moving there: “You’d be surprised. It’s tricky to persuade people, but not impossible,” says one.

Article courtesy of the Recruiting Blogswap, a content exchange service sponsored by CollegeRecruiter.com, a leading site for college students looking for internships and recent graduates searching for entry level jobs and other career opportunities.

Job Hunting Along Side Your Parents

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Very interesting article on CNN today about cross-generational job hunting. With the economy in tatters, it seems that new grads seeking Entry Level Jobs are looking for work at the same time as their parents and elders.

Parents and kids trade job hunting advice goes into some of the details of this new reality. While it doesn’t offer much in the line of real job hunting advice, it’s still an interesting read.

Funny how times change…

How Don Dodge Landed On His Feet After A Layoff

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In my recent post How To Handle A Layoff In Style, I wrote about Don Dodge. Don was a long time Microsoft employee who was recently given a layoff notice.

And what did Don do after being let go? Far from lashing out at Microsoft, Don had only glowing things to say on his blog about his former employer and colleagues. In my eyes, it was the perfect way to handle the sudden loss of your job. No angry outbursts, no burned bridges, just a simple farewell.

So when I recently read Google scoops up ex-Microsoftie Don Dodge, I was thrilled. It just goes to show that you can quickly land on your feet after a layoff, so long as you don’t burn your bridges (especially in public).

Now Don can look forward to a new career at Google.

Congrats Don! Well done!

Girl Fired For Facebook Post, Can’t Understand Why

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It never ceases to amaze me just how many people don’t understand that what you post online can come back to haunt you.

The latest evidence is a girl who was fired for posting on Facebook that her job was boring. Her boss saw the post (written only three weeks after she was hired) and decided that she wasn’t the type of employee he wanted.

You can get all of the details in the video below. Don’t let this happen to you!

When Personal Branding Interferes With Your Job

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If you are a looking for a job, you’ve probably heard of the Personal Branding Blog run by Dan Schawbel. Dan is the guru of personal branding and provides a lot of great advice on his blog.

He recently posted an article called 10 Ways to Get Fired For Building Your Personal Brand and it outlines some of the things that you can do in the process of personal branding which may interfere with your job.

Among the things that you can do to hurt your career:

Putting your personal brand in front of your company’s brand.

…80% of people are tweeting about themselves, not about their company…Companies, by nature, are looking to build their own brand, sometimes through the use of selectively chosen spokespeople who represent the brand and can be quoted within press articles (cited with the brand). When you’re getting more attention than your company, you know something is wrong.

Regardless of whether you are looking for work or already have a job, be careful of how you build your brand. Unless you are independently wealthy, it’s easy to get fired by being negligent.

Tweet Your Way to a New Job

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“The qualities that make Twitter seem inane and half-baked are what makes it so powerful” – Jonathan Zittrain

Who would have thought that Twitter would be leveraged for so many different purposes? When I first joined Twitter as a way to let people know that I had posted a new blog on my website, I was fairly naive in terms of how many people are both tweeting and leveraging job search on Twitter.

Why, you may ask, would you want to use Twitter in your job search? Well for one, you get information “real time” in many cases. One of the more important theories of job search is to “get there first” as this gives you the best chance. How does this work? Just take a look at the links below. Leverage the power of Twitter now.

  • TwitterJobSearch – This site is a job search engine for Twitter. Sounds a little “out there”, but it actually seems to work. The main page is a simple screen with a search bar for “What do you want to do?”. Type in your job type (like Finance) and hit enter and you get results immediately (I got over 22,000 opportunities for Finance when I checked). All of the leads are listed in typical Twitter format, but who has the time to look through 22,000 opportunities? Not to worry, this app takes care of that too. To the right of the search results is a section for “Refine By” with quite few choices. And no need to move to the next day. The page adds additional lines at the bottom as you scroll down.
  • HOW TO: Find a Job on Twitter – This article, featured on mashable.com and written by Sarah Evans provides a great overview for leveraging Twitter for your job search. Some basics like “make your presence known” and include a link to your resume/cv. There is also a link to a free template for creating a professional Twitter background. At the bottom of the post are links to a few recruiters on Twitter.
  • UNEMPLOYED? TIPS TO USE TWITTER FOR YOUR JOB SEARCH | CAREERS – This article, from Ceoworld Magazine, gives a brief overview of what Twitter is and how to use it followed by how Twitter can get a job for you. There is also some tips on changing your background, how to prepare your broadcast, tips on who to follow and a long list of job related sites on Twitter at the bottom of the page.
  • 50 Terrific Twitter Tips for Job Seekers – 50 tips from MBA Jobs on how to use Twitter. This article is organized along several topics: Branding, Networking, Etiquette, Tools, and People to follow. There are a number of great tips and, depending on your particulars, you will want to leverage many of these. One, like “add a photo” may not work as well (you will need to decide, like if you look like your 80 when you are really 40). Branding is very similar to the “Market yourself” advice that I often give. My favorite (although you should read all of them) is Tools, (too many to list them all here) but Twittercal is pretty neat. The Tools section has direct links.
  • Top 50+ Employers Recruiting on Twitter – Okay, but who is looking for potential employees / candidates on Twitter? Job-Hunt’s article lets you know! The article leads with a brief overview and then goes right into it’s list. No need to follow every company listed here, but you should follow those where you think you have the best opportunity to find a job that matches your criteria. An interesting list which also has some non-US listings.

Good luck in your search.

Article courtesy of the Recruiting Blogswap, a content exchange service sponsored by CollegeRecruiter.com, a leading site for college students looking for internships and recent graduates searching for entry level jobs and other career opportunities.

Your Resume May Not Be The Problem

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BullsEye Resumes has an interesting blog post up which goes over some of the reasons (other than your resume) that you may be having trouble landing a job. Don’t Always Blame the Resume in the Job Search has some great insight as to things you can check before you take the time to completely rewrite your resume.

I could spend some time and highlight some of the tips, but it’s probably best if you check it out yourself. There’s a lot to read, but it just might change your perspective.

Enjoy!

It’s Harder To Be Unemployed Than It Was Before

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This just makes me depressed. I read Jobless: 10 percent is tougher than it used to be and now I’m in a funk. We all know that the economic sky is falling, but the conditions of this downturn seem to be taking a greater toll on the unemployed than ever before.

I’m going to take the rest of the night off and find something happier to write about tomorrow.

Over and out.

Teen Unemployment Rate at Record High

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Stats released a few days ago indicate that the teen unemployment rate is at an all time high.

The unemployment rate for teenagers in the labor force soared to 27.6% in October, up 1.8 percentage points from the month before and hitting a third straight record high

That means that more than 1/4 of teens looking for work can’t find a job.

Seems like the jobless recovery is continuing. It just goes to show that teens (along with everyone else these days) will need to go above and beyond in order to land a position.

Why Larry Johnson Lost His Job (And How You Can Avoid His Mistake)

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A little while back, NFL running back Larry Johnson got in trouble for his comments on Twitter. Apparently, he used some homophobic language during an exchange with a fan and got himself suspended by the team (pending an investigation).

Now that the investigation is over, the results are in and Larry Johnson got released. Even though he is a Pro-Bowl caliber player, the Kansas City Chiefs let him go. This says a lot about how your activity online can negatively impact your career.

Eventually, Larry Johnson will land on his feet. Everybody does. But if you can take anything away from this, know that no matter how talented you are, no one is immune from issues stemming from online stupidity. Be careful about what you say on social networks lest it come back to haunt you!

Are You in the Right Job?

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One-half of US employees are dissatisfied with their jobs, up from two-fifths 10 years ago. Are you one of them?

If you are seriously dissatisfied, it’s going to affect your attitude. And that may show up in your performance. It could also put you at risk of losing out to others who are more satisfied with what they do.

But are you really in the wrong job or business? Or is it just a case of the grass being greener on the other side of the fence? Are you dissatisfied or unfulfilled for little or no reason? How can you tell?

Here are some steps to help you figure out if you’re in the right job.

Think of yourself as a business. Would you back yourself? Would you invest in You, Inc? If the answer is no, you’re in the wrong job. To invest in a business, or in this case, in yourself, you need to be comfortable on three main fronts: that market demand for your services is buoyant, that competition is not too tough, and that you are reasonably well placed to succeed.

Consider market demand for You, Inc. You need to be sure that demand for you is not about to fall off a cliff. If you worked as a travel agent before the dot-com era, long-term demand for your services would not have looked promising, given the looming threat from e-booking and e-ticketing. Is there something happening in your industry that could affect future demand for your services?

See who’s competing. You need reassurance that there are not too many people competing for jobs the same or similar to yours. For example, if you work in the printing industry, you may find that jobs like yours are being outsourced to Asia. Some manufacturing companies have moved their entire operations overseas. Who’s lined up to replace you?

Check how you measure up. How well placed are you in your marketplace? How well do you meet the capabilities needed to succeed in your job? Do you have the right skills, knowledge, and experience? Are you efficient enough? Is your attitude right? Is your heart in what you do? If not, you’re in danger of becoming unbackable.

Become more backable. If you find you are in the right job, how can you become more backable? You need a strategy. Which of your strengths can you build on? Which of your weaknesses can you improve in? What study, training, or related work experience can you undertake to reinforce that strength, or negate that weakness?

Consider moving on. If you find you’re unbackable in your current job, it may be time to move on, to a job where you would be backable—preferably in a field that brings out the hwyl in you, the Celtic concept of passion, fervor, and spirit that can lift you to extremes of success. But how to find such a job, and how would you know whether you would be backable there?

List and screen jobs that ignite your passion. Make a long list of all those jobs and businesses done by friends, family, colleagues, people in newspapers or on TV, fictional people in books, movies, etc. that you find exciting, and rate them on a scale of 1 to 5 by the amount of hwyl you would feel if you were doing them. Take the top dozen and screen them for gut-feel backability. How promising are the market conditions, and how well placed would you be in such a job? If none look promising, move on to the next dozen, always moving in descending order of hwyl.

Do a reality check. Take the two or three most promising jobs that emerge from your screen and subject them to the same rigor of analysis that you did on your current job earlier on (market demand, competition, your position). Of course, you won’t know as much about these target jobs as you do your current job, so you will have to do some research. Talk to practitioners, talk to their customers. How could you slot in? What entry strategy should you deploy?

Take Raquel, a Los Angeles bus driver. She was in a job where demand outstripped supply, with vacancies cropping up regularly. She was an excellent driver and had 18 years of experience. Raquel should have been highly backable—well placed in a buoyant job market. There was only one problem: Her heart wasn’t in the job. On the contrary, she was becoming ever more stressed by both the LA traffic and the rude drivers—and passengers. Raquel found she was becoming irritable and oversensitive. She was in danger of becoming unbackable. So she went through the process as set out above. It revealed that gardening was her passion, even though she had never considered it as a possible source of income. Raquel went to evening classes for two years before quitting her driving job and setting up her own garden design and maintenance business. She hasn’t looked back since.

That could be you, too! One of the problems with feeling discontent in a job is we don’t know what to do or where to start. Raquel’s example shows that these basic steps will get you moving on the right track to finding the right job, or feeling good about your chances of success in your current job.

* * * * *
Vaughan Evans is a renowned economist, business strategist, sought-after speaker, and the author of Backing U! A Business-Oriented Guide to Backing Your Passion and Achieving Career Success (Business and Careers Press, 2009, www.backingu.com).

Article courtesy of the Recruiting Blogswap, a content exchange service sponsored by CollegeRecruiter.com, a leading site for college students looking for internships and recent graduates searching for entry level jobs and other career opportunities.

Michael Wade’s Top 10 Career Mistakes

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Interesting piece from Michael Wade (On Careers) posted on USNews. It’s called 10 Career Mistakes I’ve Made, but it contains some great “don’t make the same mistake I did” advice.

Among his “mistakes”:

Expecting a career to be a direct path. This isn’t a rocket launch. You’re steering your ship past reefs and through storms. You may even encounter pirates and shipwrecks. Life is sloppy.

Truer words were never spoken.

Check it out here.

Are You What The Internet Says You Are?

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I have written a number of posts in the past on managing your online identity, but when I discovered Pipl last week, I was intrigued. Pipl is a search engine for online identities. You type in a name and a city, and it tries to find references to that person online.

I can see how this would be extremely useful for an employer or HR department as a poor-man’s background check. But what’s most concerning about this this site is that it displays information about every person who shares your name (and who may or may not live in your area).

For instance, I live in Toronto, Canada. Here are some of the results that I get back when I search for myself:

I could be…

…an Emeritus Professor and Honorary Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Adelaide

…an author and consultant who works with new graduates preparing to enter the work force

…an award-winning wedding photojournalist based out of Renfrewshire, Scotland

…the Australian ambassador to Burma between 2000 and 2003

…the President and CEO of TWI Inc.

See the problem? While none of these are particularly offensive, it’s just a sampling of what might be out there. You never know what you will find.

For instance, if someone was trying to determine what I look like, they might be tricked into believing that this is me:

Other Trevor Wilson

This is not me. (Though I will say that we Trevor Wilson’s really know how to have a good time :-) )

What I am trying to say is that while it can be difficult to control your online image, you need to be aware of what is out there. Take some time to Google (or Bing) yourself. The more you know, the more prepared you will be to answer any awkward interview questions.

Don’t Wear Perfume or Cologne to an Interview!

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I have been traveling for work over the last few days and Mrs. Gradversity and I had planned to go out for a nice dinner when I got back. Everything was going according to plan until we sat down at our table and were hit with a wall of perfume.

The woman at the table next to us was covered in the stuff. She must have been wearing half a bottle. And even though she was just about to leave when we arrived, the scent lingered through most of our meal.

Normally, this wouldn’t be a problem. The trouble is that last night, I had a massive allergy attack (brought on by the perfume) and spent the entire dinner sneezing my head off.

The lesson here is that you shouldn’t wear perfume or cologne to an interview (or any other time when you will be meeting a potential employer). You never know how an interviewer is going to react, either from a personal taste perspective (liking or disliking the scent), or from an allergy perspective (sneezing like mad).

Don’t take the risk. Leave the perfume/cologne behind!

How To Handle A Layoff In Style

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I was reading TechCrunch today when news broke that Don Dodge was laid-off from Microsoft. Normally, this wouldn’t make many waves, but what caught my eye was how he handled the situation.

In a post on his blog, Don refused to say anything negative about Microsoft, or burn any bridges with his former employer. In fact, he even went so far as to praise certain coworkers:

Thanks to all the fine people at Microsoft. You know who you are. There are thousands of talented people there and I enjoyed working with all of them. I’m sure we will see each other again at conferences and industry events. Its a small world…and getting more connected every day.

The lesson here is that if you are faced with this type of situation, don’t overreact. No matter how bitter or jaded you feel, bow out with grace. You never know who you may encounter again in the future.

Gradversity Quick Tip #19: Style AND Substance

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When applying for a job that you really want, make sure to pay attention to both the style AND the substance of your application package.

People with well formatted “fluff” resumes have difficulty landing jobs. The same goes for resumes that show great accomplishments in a messy, displeasing format.

Ensure that you strike a balance between style and substance relative to the posting to improve your job search odds.

The 30-Day Job Search

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Following seven months of struggle, one Minnesota man made a simple change in his job search in August, and was hired for a new position only 30 days later.

What did he do?

Read on …

Scott Bornstein, from suburban Minneapolis, was using what he thought was a well written resume, but without results. “Every time I sent it out, people would suggest changes to make. When I handed it out at a job fair, they’d say, ‘Thank you’ and file it away immediately.” He wasn’t getting called by employers.

Sound familiar?

But Bornstein found a way to improve his resume, which boosted his self-confidence, which, in turn, led to more interviews, in a virtuous circle that led to a job offer within 30 days.

It all started with a new, improved resume.

“I went to using a Guerrilla Resume. It was easy to write and it gave me confidence, with a resume that I felt positive to hand out to anybody,” says Bornstein.

The Guerrilla Resume is a format I co-developed with David E. Perry, author of Guerrilla Marketing for Job Hunters 2.0 (full disclosure: I’m a contributing author to that book).

This new style of resume is usually one page long and has two essential components:

  1. Logos or graphics from past employers, colleges, or organizations;
  2. Quotes from people familiar with your work, such as managers or clients.

Why are these elements so powerful?

Logos and graphics can improve your resume because the human brain would rather look at pictures than read. (What’s worth a thousand words?) So the right logo or graphic on your resume can make a favorable impact before an employer reads one word of your resume.

Can you get in trouble for using a logo? If you print it on a T-shirt and sell it on Ebay, sure. But is it verboten to use a logo in your resume to convey a relationship with an employer, client, school, or organization? Not in my experience since 1996. Of course, I’m not a lawyer and this is not legal advice. When in doubt, ask permission before using a corporate graphic or logo.

Quotes from past managers or clients are the second element of every Guerrilla Resume.

Bornstein used three quotes on his resume. Quotes get attention because they are third-party endorsements of you, just like testimonials in an infomercial.

Where can you get them? Start with the recommendations on your Linkedin profile. They’re already in the public domain — why not use those quotes in your resume?

Now, here’s what happened after Bornstein revamped his resume.

“The next day I went to a job fair in Minneapolis. I walked up to a recruiter and handed my resume to her. She actually grabbed my hand, leaned in, and said, ‘This is an amazing resume.’ And I knew at that moment that I had something,” says Bornstein.

What he had was confidence, which improved every part of his job search. Think about how easy it is to do something when you know you can, versus when you’re unsure. It’s the difference that can make all the difference.

“With the new resume, I had complete confidence in what I was doing. As soon as I started handing it to other people –hiring managers, recruiters, whoever – nobody wanted to change it. I felt they all wanted to give me a chance, and that was different,” says Bornstein.

The job Bornstein eventually took came from a contact he made at the Wooddale Transition Group. (If you’re not a member of a high-quality job club, consider joining one. In addition to producing employment leads, it gets you out of the house to meet and help other people.)

“An email went to the group members on a Wednesday and I applied, along with 32 other people. The new resume immediately popped up for the hiring manager,” says Bornstein, who was called on Friday and interviewed on Monday. A second interview followed on Thursday and he was offered a job the next day — nine days after applying.

What did Bornstein do to seal the deal in his second job interview?

He brought a portfolio of achievements, work samples, and comments from others, organized in a three-ring binder. The portfolio, which took Bornstein two hours to assemble, supported his resume and helped him edge out two other candidates for the position.

Bornstein described the difference his new made this way: “The confidence was huge for me.”

An eye-grabbing resume can provide the same kind of ego boost you might enjoy after getting a nice haircut or a $1,000 suit. If clothes can make the man, can a resume make the job search?

Apparently, yes.

Kevin Donlin is co-author of Guerrilla Resumes. Since 1996, he has provided job-search help to more than 20,000 people. Author of 3 books, Kevin has been interviewed by The New York Times, USA Today, Fox News, CBS Radio and others.

Article courtesy of the Recruiting Blogswap, a content exchange service sponsored by CollegeRecruiter.com, a leading site for college students looking for internships and recent graduates searching for entry level jobs and other career opportunities.

October Roundup: The Best Gradversity Posts of October 2009

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Happy November Everyone!

It’s time for the monthly roundup where I provide a look back at some of the best posts that October 2009 had to offer:

Enjoy!