Maintain a Career File for Quick Reference.

Unfortunately, the majority of my clients don’t have a career file that has vital career information. With the economic climate changing daily, it is more important than ever to be prepared. When clients come to me, it often can takes days or even weeks to locate all the necessary information needed to develop a great resume and cover letter. Reducing the time you waste looking for and becoming prepared is a smart defense and might give you the jump on a great career opportunity.

What should you include in your career file?

Ø Career Portfolio: Keep a file containing your most recent resume, cover letter, contacts and reference sheet, and related addendums.
Ø Training: Training or assessments that you have completed through your company should be saved. Also, training you have sought outside of work or formal education you’ve completed before and during your career should be saved here too. Keep copies of transcripts, certificates of completion or graduation diplomas, again, all in a file.
Ø Annual Reviews: Every time you go through the review process at work, make and save copies of all documents and keep them in a file.
Ø Special Recognition: Anything you have received as an employee in terms of awards, achievements, promotion, bonuses or other forms of recognition for work or service should be kept in a file.
Ø Work Completed: This may be the most important item to keep track of. When you’ve completed a special assignment, made a big sale, expanded the market, launched a new product, finished editing an important piece of work, worked with a top visiting specialty physician or some specific achievement you were part of; jot it down and drop it in a file.

Make sure to include the job title at the time, date, important event or challenge you took on, what happened, who was involved, how long did it take, and the results. Gather as much quantitative facts as you need, such as budget amount, revenue dollars generated, amount of costs saved or percentage of gain or expansion. The more details the better.

This will help with details in your future resume development, interview preparation and even salary negotiations. Sometimes when you leave a company, records are sealed and you can’t get to important figures. Even though an event seems unforgettable at the time, a few years down the road details get fuzzy and it is much easier to have an accurate record of those special moments already on file.

Whether you have a file for each job, files for different information or yearly folders is up to you. The important thing is that your information is all together in one spot for easy retrieval. Start it today!!

Save Your Job By Being a Know-It-All

Learning and continuing to improve what you do is how you can stay ahead of the game. Just when I think I’ve got it all figured out some new job board, career tool, or networking source such at twitter comes along and I am off and running. My goal is to know it all. So, when a client calls with questions I feel confident in helping them and I will be able to understand what they are looking for. By me being a know-it-all, I can help them find ways to use this new knowledge to improve their career search. Now, I really don’t expect to know it all but I am going to try. And, if I don’t know it when my client calls, I will learn about it when we end the call.

Trying to keep your job, especially in today’s economy is definitely a challenge. Sometimes know matter what you know or how good you are, your job is still eliminated and the only thing you can do is move forward. If you currently have a job and are worried about your future, trying improving your skills and stepping up your work performance and get noticed.

What ever your job is you can always find ways to improve your performance. Read industry magazines, learn new procedures, new ways to expand business or find ways to cut costs. By knowing more and working to get noticed you are also improving your skills and achievements – which you can take with you where ever you go! This not only improves your performance but it improves your marketability. So, get noticed by being a know-it-all, it just might save your job!

Shine on!

Job Search Effort = Job Search Results

I received another call from a potential client that is looking to update her resume. More importantly, she is looking for advice on her future and easy ways to make it happen. I can’t stress this enough, the more effort you put into your job search, the faster you’ll find the results you are looking for.

The women thought that developing a resume was really all that was involved. I believe she said, “I’ll just give it to a couple of recruiters and let them do all the work”. Those days are long gone! Remember, recruiters get paid by the employer not the job seeker. Coincidently, I received a Outplacement Report not long after getting off the phone with her from the AIRS News that said Korn/Ferry International, the Executive search firm, will be laying off 400 recruiters (15% of Global workforce)in the near future due to less client activity.

What this means is there will be fewer recruiters and more job seekers and still they work for the employers. My point being, recruiters will not be doing your search for you. If you want to find the right job – faster, you need to do the search and do it well. Posting to a few job boards won’t probably lead to success either. Not to say that recruiters and job boards aren’t helpful, they just shouldn’t be your only avenues.

An aggressive and results-driven job search involves you the job seeker working daily to find new companies, new contacts, new opportunities and new available positions. Be creative, be curious, and stay motivated to find the job that is right for you. The more you put in to your job search the more you will get out of it and the faster you can leave the situation you are in.

Shine On and Happy New Year!!!