Career Professionals of Canada News Feed
By Cathy Milton. Recently, I’ve been reading a lot of online resumes. I’ve been doing this as part of a personal research project, the goal of which is to find fresh, clear descriptive words and phrases. A few of the resumes I found were unintentionally funny. Funny, because in the quest to sound professional, accomplished, and important, some of the documents contained strings of inaccessible – sometimes indecipherable – “ten-dollar” words. I had to read them several times to extract their meaning. If you’re not familiar with the phrase, a…
By Brent Warman. In my experience as a Career Development Practitioner, I have found that certain clients are frustrated with the results of their job search activities. These clients say that they have sent out many resumes to employers, yet they do not get an invitation for an interview. Although they were well qualified for the positions where they applied, their efforts were in vain. Upon deeper review, I found that the resumes that these job seekers submitted to employers were general, not customized, and lacked focus. Resumes do not produce jobs. Rather, the resume is…
Career professionals routinely advise clients to keep their resume up-to-date. We know that this is an effective strategy for documenting new employers, education, and achievements. An up-to-date resume can be used in many ways throughout the career development cycle. Career professionals need to update their resume as well. CPC program leader, Adrienne Tom says “Don’t wait for the perfect opportunity to present itself before taking action. Reflect on your career achievements over the past year and add them to your career portfolio. Taking the time to reevaluate your value and…
By Stephanie Clark. In an instant, we size up a person and make assumptions about their status, health, and maybe even their personality. We do this by assessing hair style, clothing, and physical appearance. Any number of things trigger a response in a first impression. This is no less relevant when a recruiter assesses a resume. In fact, in a seemingly impossible time span of seven seconds, the typical recruiter will decide whether or not a candidate will be interviewed. This may seem ridiculous, given that reading takes much longer to convey…
Job layoffs, a competitive job marketplace, and hiring freezes have put a lot of pressure on job seekers to stand out and be noticed. Those concerns should be alleviated by Tell Stories, Get Hired, a new book which demonstrates how job seekers can leverage their stories to convince hiring managers and recruiters to hire them over their competitors. Daisy Wright, author of the Canadian best seller, No Canadian Experience, Eh?, collaborated with 17 professionals with varying backgrounds from Canada, the US, England, Belgium and France, to develop this new book…
By Lori Jazvac. Here is a typical scenario: two sales candidates with excellent credentials apply for the same position but one authors an inspiring follow up letter that gets read by the prospective employer while the other does not even bother to follow up after a few weeks of submitting the application. Can you guess which candidate will get an interview? Writing a follow up letter could, in fact, transport a résumé to the top of the file as it demonstrates enthusiasm for the position, open communication, propelling the jobseeker…