Saturday, February 07, 2009

Resume & Job Hunting Tips

Okay, the best job hunting tip I can give you is to look while you are still employed. Look for either a way to grow with your current company, (a promotion), or for an opportunity to grow with a new company.

Your attitude will be much better if you don't feel the pressure of unemployment. Now for the resume tips from the DLM Blog:

Dumb Little Man - tips for life

Link to Dumb Little Man - Tips for Life

How to Write a Resume That Will Land an Interview

Posted: 14 Jan 2009 09:10 AM PST

Many people haven’t looked at their resume in years; they haven’t needed to. But in 2009’s collapsed economy, jobs are shaking out like coins from a piggy bank.

If you’ve been laid off or you’re worried you might be, blow the dust off your old resume and bring it back to life. Whether you are just updating or starting from scratch (who knew those floppies would become obsolete?), these steps will help you create an honest, positive resume.
resume
  1. Understand the resume’s purpose.
    Your resume and cover letter are tools to land a job interview. Not the job, just the interview. Think of a resume as a fact sheet and a cover letter as an explanation of those facts. Lose sight of this and you may overwrite, over explain and convolute.

    But a resume is also your public relations advocate and should be flattering. Maybe your record isn’t long or perfect, but don’t let your resume knock you out of contention before you have a chance to talk your way into the job.

  2. Research resume templates and cherry-pick what to use.
    Look at sample resumes for your field. Check out: www.resumetemplates.org, or www.collegegrad.com/resumes.

    Once you find a template or format that makes sense for your goals and experience, don’t feel you must follow its structure exactly.

  3. Delete the objective statement.
    Your objective is to get the job; you know it, the employer knows it. Unless you really need to fill space, explain your objectives in your cover letter. Cover letters allow you to tailor your goals to the job you are applying for and creating a good cover letter is key.

  4. Add creative space, if necessary.
    If you don’t have much experience, your credentials can look pretty lonely on the page. No one expects a young person to have as much to say as a person who has been working for twenty years. The results of thoughtful spacing? An easy-to-read resume.

  5. Add new activities to your resume.
    Volunteer at the soup kitchen or the animal shelter. Get active in your community. If you volunteer at something related to the field you want to work in, everyone wins. Add this activity to your resume immediately.

  6. Think creatively about your accomplishments.
    Some of your achievements may not have happened within the confines of a job. For example, if you worked on a major research project in school, you can describe your project and the skills it developed. Here is a list of resume action words that may help jumpstart your memory.

  7. List jobs first, and in reverse order.
    List your most recent job at the top and the rest in descending order. This is the order employers/recruiters expect to see your experience; don’t disappoint or confuse them. A rare exception to the rule: if you are graduated from a prestigious college and you’re working at a filler job. All you Harvard degree graduates who are scooping ice cream, list your Harvard education first.

  8. Omit your mailing address.
    Who is going to contact you by snail mail anyway? Your email address and cell phone number is all anyone needs to contact you. With your resume floating around the internet, keep some information private.

  9. Figure out what keywords are relevant and use them.
    Some HR folks don’t read resumes any more. They have software that scans resumes for relevant keywords. Use nouns, like the names of the computer programs you know. Read tons of job descriptions and notice which words are used over and over.

  10. Include accomplishments in addition to responsibilities.
    If you made a suggestion that your boss used, if you saved your company money, if you streamlined the work process, it counts. Don’t be shy about highlighting accomplishments on your resume. Back them up with statistics, if possible. How much money did you save the company? What percentage of the budget was it?

  11. Keep the resume concise.
    Stick to one page, unless you have been working ten or fifteen years. If early jobs are not relevant, leave them off.

  12. Never stop revising.
    Your resume can always be improved so keep tweaking it. Add a better word, a better phrase, a new accomplishment. Keep old versions of your resume in case you need information that you previously deleted.
Warnings
  • Don’t Lie.
    You knew this would be on the list. Employers routinely check job histories and education claims. Lies about either your job history or degree are the easiest for employers to uncover. The newly named dean of admissions at MIT lied on her resume when applying for a clerical job twenty-eight years ago. With the promotion in the works, her lies were discovered and she was fired. Never lie!

  • Omit the Ugly.
    Mediocre grade point average? Leave it off. Have a 4.0? Put it front and center. Not all information is mandatory. Some people omit listing jobs they only held a short time or that might give them a bad reference. However, if the omission creates a gap that you are asked about in an interview, remember tip number one: don’t lie.

  • Mind the Gap
    I know someone who waitressed a couple of years after college. She omits her graduation year from her resume so there is no obvious hole, but no lies either.
Having a solid resume ready to send someone is important. Whether you need a job now or not, you never now when an opportunity will present itself and you'll be asked to submit a resume. Clean yours up and be ready to shine!

Written on 1/14/2009 by Kate Mortell. Kate is a graduate of Marquette University and lives and works in New York City. She writes the blog, Moonfun.net, a collection of travel journals and commentary on real estate, animal rights, gun control and whatever else might be under her skin at the moment.Photo Credit: jm3

Fort Wayne Site-of-the-Day


Today at 12 noon, there will be an interview with the folks from this Ft. Wayne business that you can listen to LIVE on the radio on online:

WGL-AM 1250
WGL-FM 102.9
http://www.1029theriver.com/


Click here to go to their website.

Friday, February 06, 2009

VideoTime: Buggy

I have an Aunt Jean, Aunt Maria, and Aunt Lorraine, but none are as strong as these ants:

Fort Wayne Site-of-the-Day


Thursday, February 05, 2009

Where are you?


In Internet land, you could be lots of places.

Most likely you have done a Google Search for yourself and your company.

But you can look other places too.

I found this handy article recently from ReadWriteWeb.com:

Although search engines provide a great starting point when you're searching for someone online, with all of the new social sites that have popped up over the past few years, they're often just not enough.

In our recent State of Blog Search 2009 post we discussed the various reasons you may choose to use any or all of the following blog search tools: Technorati, Google Blog Search, Ice Rocket, Ask.com Blogsearch, and FriendFeed. While these blog search engines are great to fill specific needs, they're also another great place to look for your footprints on the Web.

However, you can drill down even more.

1. BlogPulse: Trends in the Blogosphere

Part of Nielsen-Online, BlogPulse highlights the top trends in the blogosphere and is mostly used to determine the hottest topics on the Web and how they got to be that way. But, its value as a personal monitoring tool can not be disregarded. Search for your name then grab the RSS feed to see who is talking about you and what they're saying.

2. Pipl: Searching the Invisible Web

Pipl claims to search the deep or invisible Web to find documents, blog entries, photos, publicly available information that other search engines don't serve up. It's a great, fast search engine that we like; the only disadvantage is it offers no RSS feed.

3. Spy: Watching what Happens on the Web

According to the site, Spy can "listen in on the social media conversations you're interested in." This clean visualization search tool watches Twitter, FriendFeed, blog posts, Google reader shares and Flickr for any term you want. An RSS feed is available.

4. Serph: The Social Web Right Now

A brilliant tool for searching the social Web, Serph shows you what is being said about you "right now." Serph gathers results from blog search engines, social media sites, social news sites and social bookmarking sites and offers an RSS feed for the results.

5. Social Mention: Mentions of your Name on the Social Web

Another great tool for searching the social Web, Social Mention offers a quick glance at mentions of your name on the Web. Just enter your name and switch between blogs, microblogs, bookmarks, comments, events, images, news or all of them at once. Slower than Serph, but occasionally offers different results. An RSS feed is available.

6. Monitter: Tracking Twitter

Monitter is one of the coolest looking monitoring tools for Twitter and one of the most useful. We've written about it before and although most people are using Twitter's own search tool for search and alerts on Twitter, Monitter offers a little bit more. Giving you the option to search for three different keywords at once, Monitter is great if you want to keep your eye out for mentions of your name, your username and your company all at the same time. It also offers an RSS feed.

7. BoardTracker 2.0: The Ultimate Search Tool for Forums

BoardTracker is a forum search engine, message tracking and instant alert system that offers relevant results quickly. One of our favorite search tools for forums and message boards, BoardTracker currently tracks in excess of 1.2 billion posts.

8. Google Alerts: The big G

We couldn't end this post without mentioning Google Alerts, although likely most of you are familiar with it. Although Microsoft and Yahoo have alert tools, Google's offering beats them hands down. It offers e-mail and RSS alerts for any set of keywords including your name.

While we're still waiting for that perfect product that will associate our names with our brands with our usernames, and send us the results instantly, we don't expect to see it anytime soon (although we've got our fingers crossed), but we do hope that this list provides you with some alternatives to track your footprints across the Web.

If you've got a great tool you want to share, please let us know in the comments.

Fort Wayne Site-of-the-Day


I'm going to stop numbering these, just remember a new one every day in 2009. Click here to go there.

Wednesday, February 04, 2009

Video Time: Ouch

Please don't let these happen to you...

Fort Wayne Site-of-the-Day 35

In case you are just joining us, each day in 2009, I am featuring a different Fort Wayne Based Website every single day. Last year I did 100 Fort Wayne Blogs, this year, I've expanded it to non-blogs too. Check 'em out each day and get to know your neighbors!

Tuesday, February 03, 2009

VideoTime: Extreme

Wanna dance?

Fort Wayne Site-of-the-Day 34


Lot's of stuff at this site. Click here to go there.

Monday, February 02, 2009

Blog Tips

Saw this yesterday. You get to see it now.

5 Elaborate Tips To Make Your Blog Social Media Friendly

Posted: 29 Jan 2009 11:17 AM PST

BlogsRegardless of the niche your blog operates in, there is no doubt that social media plays a crucial role in its success. Social media sites like Digg, Stumbleupon, Reddit and more recently microblogging sites like Twitter have emerged as excellent sources of free traffic for blog owners. As a blogger, ignoring such sites is a big mistake.

Most new bloggers seem to be aware of the fact that luring social media visitors to their blog is a decent way to gain traction. However, they do little to make their blog look appealing to those visitors and hence only a fraction become loyal subscribers.

To help on your quest for blogging stardom, here are a few tips that may help increase the attach rate brought with using social media. When I say attach rate, I means it has the ability to captivate social media users and gives easy options to users allowing them to share and promote articles. Also, keep in mind that these are general tips and things may vary depending upon the particular social site you are targeting (Digg users are different than Reddit users, etc.).

Design
I'm not a designer but I understand that a friendly design, social media visitor friendly to be more specific, would allow the visitor to read the content easily without annoying ads popping up in between. The design should make navigation through the site easier and ensure the lack of clutter on the site.

A good design immediately captures the attention of a social media user or any visitor for that matter and there is a good chance that he would subscribe to or bookmark the site for future reference. Hence, if you plan to include social media in your blog's marketing strategy, then the layout of the blog should be well planned too.

Speed
Speed would refer to the time it takes for a web page to load in the browser. Keep in mind that internet surfers are an impatient lot and if your blog takes too long to load, they may immediately switch to a different destination not caring about what you had in store for them.

This directly correlates with the first factor (design) which I talked about. If you clutter the page with a lot of stuff like ads, images, symbols, javascripts and links, then it would take time to load all those things.

So, make sure that you check the loading time of your blog using a service like Pingdom tools and check which part is taking the longest time to load. If it's an unnecessary third party script then go ahead and remove it. Also, research well before choosing a web host because it plays an important role in the loading speed too.

Content
Yeah, I know; great content is the most basic rule of good blogs. Every blogger knows it, talks about it, & advises it. And really, you can't escape the fact that if you want your blog to be popular and get more traffic, then it should produce content which is good and interesting. You may not be able to produce great content every other day. However, having a thoughtful blend of great articles and mediocre ones may do enough to keep an audience engaged.

If this was 2003, I would have probably said don't worry about the content as much, but now, with millions of blogs already out there and more coming up everyday, great content is the deciding factor and when it comes to social media, there are not many instances when crap blogs attract social media attention everyday. Only blogs with great content do.

Optimization
So you've got a good design, ensured that the loading speed is fine, and written great content. Now you are ready to market your product. But wait, it's not over. Are you sure you are in a position to attract the maximum attention of social media visitors ? Do you have a nice RSS button visible easily which makes it easy for them to subscribe ? Do you have a list of great posts written by you previously firmly displayed on your blog sidebar ? Have you added the social media buttons using services like AddThis or ShareThis ?

These are just a few of the things you can do to make sure that you retain the maximum of those who visit your blog from a social media site. There are many other steps you can take depending upon the niche of your blog and the social site you are likely to get traffic from.

Prepare
No matter what steps you take to make your blog social media friendly, if there's a burst of social media traffic and your blog crashes then all your efforts would go down the drain. So it's important to be prepared for such occasions. If you are on a hosted platform like Blogger or Wordpress.com then you don't need to worry. However, if you host your blog on your own, make sure your host is able to handle a sudden burst of traffic. For self-hosted Wordpress blogs, there are plugins like WP Super Cache which help in preventing the demise of a blog when there's huge load on its server.

My suggestion would be to minimize the use of plugins in your Wordpress installation. Most of the time, a plugin is responsible for your blog going down in high traffic situations and not the host. If your blog does go down when it hits the Digg front page, check your plugins and disable most of them.

Overall, just make sure that you are prepared to leverage the traffic and get maximum returns in the form of loyal visitors.

Cheers,

Abhijeet

Written on 1/29/2008 by Abhijeet Mukherjee. You can catch him at Jeet Blog where he blogs about different Web 2.0 apps and online tools and how they can help you become more productive.Photo Credit:
Annie Mole

Tony D in The Fort


The retired Colts Coach appeared on the pregame in yesterdays Superbowl telecast, and now he's come to our town.

From Fort Wayne Observed:

Coach Tony Dungy to be at North Side High School Wednesday

Fresh from offering half-time analysis during the Super Bowl, former Indianapolis Colts Coach Tony Dungy will be visiting visiting North Side High School on Wednesday.


And more details from WANE.COM:

FORT WAYNE, Ind. (WANE) - According to Fort Wayne Community Schools, Former Indianapolis Colts Coach Tony Dungy will visit North Side High School Wednesday.

Dungy will talk with Freshmen from all six FWCS high schools about what it takes to achieve success.

Coach Dungy will talk about the themes included in his new book, "Uncommon," including the idea that true success is uncommon and only achieved by having the right attitudes, ambitions and allegiances.

Students will be split up into 2 different groups to hear Dungy speak. Students from Elmhurst, Snider and Wayne will be first at 10:30 a.m. followed by a 1:00 p.m. program for Northrop, North Side and South Side students.

Dungy will also give students time to ask questions.

Fort Wayne Site-of-the-Day 33


My Mom was an active member of this organization. Click here to go there.

Sunday, February 01, 2009

Back up Ideas

Last year I accidentally reformatted the hard drive on my laptop and lost a lot of stuff. Click here to see what I did afterward and read this from DLM for more ideas:

Dumb Little Man - tips for life

Link to Dumb Little Man - Tips for Life

Effective Ways To Backup Important Data

Posted: 30 Jan 2009 08:35 AM PST

The other day my computer made a really unhealthy gurgling sound. To be honest, I feared the worst and spent half the day backing up my hard drive. It's beyond me as to why I choose to wait until the last minute to create back ups. I think it goes without saying that this should be done automatically every day, or at least every week.

Truth be known, I believe that most computer users neglect PC backups; then the worst happens. Unfortunately, this isn't a viable option for my business. If I neglect PC backups, I risk losing all of my business data.

I'm not a tech geek and make do with the things that work for me. Below is a list of backup options I'm currently using. Since I'm pretty compulsive about losing my backup, there are backups of backups. To me, one can never be too sure about keeping data safe.
  • Google Docs/ Zoho
    I use Google Docs and Zoho for all my completed client work. This means that once a client has received my project, I move the documents online to keep them safe and away from my hard drive. I feel this works really well as it keeps my hard drive uncluttered most of the time and therefore faster. If I need something fast, I know where to get it.

    If you wonder why I keep this data online and not on an external hard drive, it is simply for convenience reasons. Having the data online allows me to access it from any computer in the world. If a client sends me a frantic email and tells me he lost his articles, I can log in to my admin and resend the missing files, even if I'm working from an Internet cafe.

    You can upload many different formats to Google Docs and Zoho. I prefer Zoho, since they also support zip files which is great to compact storage.

  • USB
    I don't use USB memory sticks as a real backup but I do use them to transfer some files from A to B. While you could use these for backup purposes, I like to use USB storage for portability purposes instead.

  • CD and DVD
    To be honest, I only use these for my photos. I don't even keep all of my photos on CD's; most of them are stored on a secondary hard drive. They are convenient because you can easily share them with your friends and family when you travel if you want to leave a CD full of pictures behind.

    By the way, you can do this with memory sticks too. Next time you visit family or friends, why not take a 1GB memory stick with your photos for them. They make a great present and allow your loved ones to print out what they like.

  • Online Storage
    I have recently signed up with an online storage provider. I use Mozy for this and will be backing up my files over the next week or so. The only drawback to this is the initial backup; it takes ages. Most likely it will take a week for all my gear and that alone freaks me out a bit to be honest.

    I suppose, I just need to keep my computer running and go for it since I paid my membership already.

  • External hard drive
    This is my favorite form of backup. I actually have two external hard drives. One being a portable and light one, the other a massive monstrous thing with some 500GB. While external hard drives are great to have peace of mind, they too could die for sure. That is why I own two of them and between them and my online backup, I should really be 100% covered.

    I guess some of you are not as freaked out like me when it comes to backup and to be honest, except for the photos, everything else is replaceable. At least most of it.

  • Software
    Most computers these days come with their own built in backup software. I have Vista on my computer right now with a Windows backup restore center built in. This software lets me backup my hard drive on a separate partition on my computer. This means my hard drive will be split into two. Hopefully, the data will be kept intact on the partition if my main drive were ever to be fried.

    This software also allows me to schedule backups in advance which is handy because often I just forget.

  • Blog backup
    To backup my WordPress blog, I use a really cool Plugin called WP DB Backup. This Plugin is so cool, it allows me to backup to the server, whenever I like. Even better, it lets me schedule email or server based backups so that I don't have to think about them.

    Usually after I create a new niche blog, I back the blog up to the server. Then I set the scheduled backup and leave it be knowing I'll always have an up to date copy of my blog available if something goes wrong.

    If you run a blogger blog like Dumb Little Man, you might like this article.
Those are probably the most popular forms of backup for your data. I would love to hear from you guys on what you use to backup your data. Before I end this post, I like to leave you with one sentence: “Go backup now!

Written on 1/30/2009 by Monika Mundell. Monika is a passionate freelance writer and pro-blogger. Her blog Freelance Writing helps new freelance writers to get started in this exciting industry. If you like to work with Monika, feel free to visit her Portfolio site.Photo Credit: avlxyz

Fort Wayne Site-of-the-Day 32


Tonight marks the end of the NFL Season with the Superbowl. In the meantime, I'm looking forward to warmer weather and maybe this year I'll join the folks over here.