When you land your first job fresh out of college, you might be tempted to invest the money you save up each month. Some will tell you to invest in stocks, others will tell you go after government bonds, among other things. Watch this video to see what a finance grad has to say about investing.
Companies are looking for potential employees who can help them generate revenue, reduce cost, and/or increase efficiencies. Thus resumes should include quantifiable results of accomplishments. However, some job seekers have a hard time quantifying their accomplishments. Below is a 5 step approach job seekers can follow to enhance their resumes.
1. Determine which Accomplishments to Highlight: Review the reasons why you were hired, the problems you solved, and/or tasks you completed in your previous positions.
2. Identify Appropriate Metrics: Review how your performance was measured to determine the appropriate metrics that can highlight your results. Sample metrics are below for various professions:
• Operations – inventory turns, out-of-stock rate, service levels, product rejects, warranty costs, customer satisfaction, and raw material costs • Finance/Accounting – COGS, gross margin, SG&A and operating expenses, operating margin, DSO, cash flow • HR – absenteeism and turnover • Project Management – time, cost, and quality • Web Design – pages/visit, average time on site, clickthrough rate, and cost per thousand impressions
• Marketing – brand penetration, cannibalization, customer retention, and market share • Sales – pipeline, closing ratios, new business, and quotas • Customer Service – customer complaints, consumer satisfaction index, average call time, and dropped calls • Collections – overdue accounts and collection costs
3. Quantify Your Results: Determine the percentages and/or amounts (which include dollar figures) for the metrics you selected. For example, the initiative increased revenue from $100M to $150M or by 50% ($150/$100M – 1).
What do more than 50 seasoned college recruiters from top-level corporations and universities say are the biggest mistakes college grads make in job interviews? That’s the question I recently posed to recruiters from companies and schools like Google, Disney, Sony, and Stanford University. The outcome? Their five 'biggest blunders' - which are outlined below. Are YOU committing any of these mistakes in your job search?
1. Not paying attention to YOU on the Internet. Chances are your interviewer or future boss will do a "Google search" on you before they decide to call you in for an interview. In fact, I found out about 45% of recruiters now go beyond Google and search for you on social networking sites like Facebook and LinkedIn. So, think twice about what you post online, even if you think it’s protected by a password.
What does this mean for you and your online personal brand? Think twice before posting those wild photos from last year’s spring break on your Facebook page or a picture of you passed out on your friend’s living room couch on your blog. Veda Jeffries from Stanford University, says, “Students feel that Facebook, etc. is their personal thing, but it’s difficult to erase negatives about who you are when it is open to anyone and everyone.” Pay attention to what you say in your blog or other social media, too. Negative comments about professors, internship colleagues, or dorm mates - or using bad language - may find you out of a job. Remember: Privacy is virtually non-existent on the Internet. As soon as you post it, your secret is out, and you may be unconsciously hurting your personal brand faster than you can click your mouse.
2. Believing a company’s “greeter” at a career fair is a peer or a confidante. Recruiters made it clear: The job of a company’s greeter at a career fair is to check you out just as much as an interviewer. Even if a greeter seems casual and talks to you like you were a friend, his or her job is to report back to the company whether to call you in for an interview or not. So, keep in mind that the greeter’s opinion counts! Also, make sure that you don’t say one thing to the greeter and something different to your interviewer. You’ll get caught, and that could lead you to being branded as inconsistent — or worse, dishonest. Keep it professional when interacting with every company rep.
3. Thinking the interview only begins when you’re across the desk from the interviewer. HR professionals repeatedly told me: From the moment you walk into the location where you’ll be interviewed, you are “on.” That means no talking on your cell phone, listening to your MP3 player, or texting in the lobby while waiting for the interviewer. It means remembering that how you treat the receptionist may be shared with your potential boss later on.
And, it also means remembering that the time you spend following the interviewer from the reception area to the interview room is also part of your interview. I found out that some recruiters are purposely quiet during that time just to see how you respond to the silence and to see if you’re outgoing and personable enough to talk. So, be sure to start some conversation during that time; a little small talk will go a long way to communicating a strong personal brand.
This week I’m re-running three of the best networking tips I’ve found recently to help you find a job faster.
These proven networking tactics get results in good times and in bad.
Which can you try today?
1) Network with the Recently Departed
David Perry, author of “Guerrilla Marketing For Job Hunters 2.0,” shares a unique way to find and connect with employers using Google.
It’s this: Find and call people who used to work where you want to work now.
“The fastest way to learn the real workings of an organization is to Google past employees and call them up. This is exactly what I do. Before I take a recruiting assignment from a company to place an executive there, I want to know if I’m walking into a hornet’s nest,” says Perry.
Here’s how to do it …
Google the name of your target employer and the word “resume.” The search results will include resumes of people who used to work there. (You may want to add the word “experience” to “resume” in your search; experiment using Google’s Advanced Search options.)
Once you find resumes, pick up the phone and call. Say: “Hi my name is _________. I’m researching XYZ Corp. and it looks like you used to work there because I found your resume online. I’m thinking of applying for a job there. May I ask you a few questions? I know this is an unusual way to do a job search …”
Most people will be impressed by your initiative, flattered to be asked for their opinion and willing to help you out.
“You want to learn about three areas: the company and its culture; the department you would work in; and the name of the manager you would report to,” says Perry.
Finish your conversation with this all-important question: “If I decide to talk with them, may I say that I spoke with you?”
“You ask this for two reasons,” advises Perry. “First, if they left on good terms, you can drop that former employee’s name when contacting the company to ask for a meeting. Second, that person may phone his old boss and tell him or her to keep an eye out for the smart person who just called — that would be you.”
If you’re hesitant about this technique, try it on a company you have no intention of applying to. Work out the bugs first, then network your way into your ideal employer.
Here's the thought: What parts of your job search do you measure?
If you're thinking, "Huh?" or "I don't measure anything," you are like a dieter who doesn't own a scale -- how can you know if you're succeeding?
The answer lies in questions. Specifically, if you ask the right questions, you'll get the right answers needed to measure -- and improve -- your job search.
So, to get you started, here are three questions to ask yourself at the end of each day ...
Question 1: How many networking phone calls did I make today?
Write the number down. Are you happy with it? Did you make 15 phone calls, for example? Good. Reward yourself appropriately, write down what you did to achieve that goal, then repeat it tomorrow.
Not happy with the number of calls you made? Think back to a day when you were happy, when you were "hot" on the phone, and talked to a lot of people. How did you do it? Whatever you did that worked before, repeat it tomorrow.
What if you've NEVER had a good day making networking calls? I would suggest that this is impossible -- and I can prove it to you.
Think about a time when you made a lot of phone calls to ask an important question. Maybe it was to confirm the guest list for a party, or to find a babysitter, or to get a sub at work. If you can do that -- pick up the phone and ask a question of people you know -- you can make networking calls about your job search. Because it's pretty much the same thing.
In this case, the question you are asking is not, Do you know anyone who's hiring? Instead, first tell others what kind of company and job you're looking for, then ask, Who do you know that I should be talking to?
Regardless of whom you call and what you ask, the goal of each networking phone call is simple: To schedule an in-person meeting.
National unemployment in November rose to 9.8 percent. With national unemployment hovering in the 10 percent range, an increasing number of analysts, pundits and economists are asking whether these high rates of unemployment in the U.S. are here to stay. As grim as the overall national numbers are, the situation is even worse for young Americans.
Unemployment among teenagers is at 24.6 percent, nearly double what it was 10 years ago. For those 19 to 24-years-old, unemployment is 15.6 percent compared with 6.8 percent in 2000. Even college graduates are finding it hard to land jobs. Unemployment for those with bachelor’s degrees rose in November to a 30-year high of 5.1 percent.
Prospects are not getting brighter for recent college grads, many of whom are burdened with tens of thousands of dollars of debt upon finishing school. As reported by the Wall Street Journal, a new survey from the Collegiate Employment Research Institute shows that only 43 percent of employers who hired college graduates from the class of 2010 are certain they will do so again for this year’s graduates. Another Journal story noted that the percentage of business-school graduates receiving job offers is slightly improved from last year but still far below what it was just a few years ago. The director of career services for Pepperdine University's business school was quoted as saying that hiring is “dramatically down from 2007 and 2008 ... nowhere near where we were in the past.”
Graduates used to leave school and enter the workforce by taking entry-level positions that were ample, thanks primarily to a vibrant private sector. Those jobs placed them on a steady career path that gave them opportunities for advancement and professional development. But these entry-level positions have begun to disappear as private businesses have drastically scaled back their hiring of new employees. While small businesses create a majority of new jobs, they are hiring far less now than they have in the past. Privately held firms with fewer than 500 employees have added an average of 35,000 net jobs a month in 2010 compared to 143,000 in 2006 and 79,000 in 2007. Fewer jobs being created in the private sector means less in the way of employment opportunities for young Americans.
