Do you have a Professional Profile on your Resume?

You must admit resumes are pretty boring reading, especially when that is what you do all day.  Recruiters and HR employees read through 100’s of resumes a day.  OK, read!!!  maybe more like scan.  That is if you are lucky enough to get past their ATS (Applicant Tracking System).  Now you have to grab their attention while they are doing their 10 second scan of your resume.  Sometimes I think Recruiters and HR employees can scan faster than their computer systems. The Professional Profile is the easiest way to entice them to actually read your resume.

The Professional Profile appears right under your name and contact information.  What makes a good professional profile:

• Keep it short:  one or two sentences giving a brief synopsis of your experience; followed by 3 or 4 small bullets of specific detail related to the actual job description if necessary
• Use key words from the job description.  If they are looking for a Java Developer, don’t put in the profile that you started out as a Cobol Programmer
• Years of experience in your field
• If they are looking for a specific degree or certificate and you have it, put it in a bullet in your profile

Action words in your profile will give it a little more zing:

• boosted sales by 23%
• implemented an employee incentive program
• set up a new data centre
• maintained 200 desktops
• converted a 1000 desk data centre from windows to
• increased production
• decreased customer service calls

Detail not to put in your profile include:

• personal information, ie hobbies, number of children, marital status – you get the point.  Truthfully this information doesn’t even need to be on your resume
• opinions about anything,
• that you can work independently, multi task, hard worker, always on time, etc.  These are taken for granted.
• the word “I”

Finally here is a sample professional profile for an IT position at a financial institution.

Java Developer offering a broad technical background working in the financial industry. This includes 7 years of WebSphere development, 3 years WebSphere portal development and 3 years of WebSphere/WebSphere portal administration experience.  

• Bachelors of Computer Science from the University of Western Ontario (if degree needed from job description)
• Certifications include:  (if specified from job description)
• 4 years experience in building mobile web applications.  (keyword from job description)
• In-depth experience in software full life cycle and design pattern

A professional profile is just that, a profile, keep it short, to the point and targeting the specific job description you are applying for.  For some more examples check out this webpage http://jobsearch.about.com/od/profiles/a/resume-profile-examples.htm

 

 Good luck job hunting

Lynne Carlson started her career off in administration, moved to Cobol Programming and for the last 14 years worked in all things recruitment.  Absolutely loves social media and excited about all the new innovations appearing every day!

Job Tips

#JobTip: When asked about your “strengths” in the#interview, use anecdotes and stories to highlight them.

 

Digital Project Manager – Infographic

Digital Strategist

 

Digital Project Management:

The nature of front office projects compare to traditional IT projects is one that generally involves a more co-operative project.

Not only do you need developers and testers but you might need artists, user experience and web analysts or more.

As a result THE key skill of a digital PM is the ability to be a strong scrum master who knows how to be a gatekeeper not just a facilitator.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Job Tips

#JobTip:  “Tell me about yourself” #interview question.  Don’t give your life story, focus on education, achievements.

 

P4Capital Shines a light on Credit Suisse and their reshuffling at the top

P4Capital is beginning a series of Podcasts and interviews featuring our executive team, who will be discussing pressing concerns for the Canadian financial industry.

This weeks topic, Credit Suisse and their recent reshuffling at the top.

Transcript

Job Tips

#JobTip:  Answer all #interview questions with a strong forceful voice.  Don’t be timid

 

Job Tips

#JobTip: Show your enthusiasm for the position during the #interview.  Be excited, positive and confident.

 

A Pirates Life for No One

It might be the end of the road for all the pirates out there.

Let’s face it, most of us can attest to digitally pirating something in our lives. Whether it was an ill-gotten song when we were kids, to downloading the newest episode of Game of Thrones, the odds are we’ve all been guilty of this behaviour at some point.

Of course, all of us realized that this was wrong. I’m sure all of our readers are honest and upstanding citizens and don’t use products that have been illegally downloaded.

Right?

Well, things are about to get a lot harder for those individuals who continue to download all manner of things illegally from the Internet. At least if they use Google.

Google and Piracy

Google doesn’t have the best reputation when it comes to online piracy. They’ve been blasted time and time again by Hollywood and other content owners for not doing enough to prevent links to pirated material from showing up in its search results.

What does online piracy mean exactly?

Now, Google hasn’t been ignoring online privacy by any means.

In 2012, they announced they’d demote the ranking of websites that received a large number of DMCA notices in their search results.

For many, this wasn’t enough. Many music and film rights holders accused Google of not doing enough to tackle copyright infringement.

In fact, an open letter sent mid-September to the European competition commissioner,  News Corp chief executive Robert Thomson branded the company a “platform for piracy and the spread of malicious networks.”

By the Numbers

Now, it can be difficult to put online piracy into perspective to understand why so many are so upset. The internet is a huge beast, using up as much energy as any of the larger countries out there. So how can anyone hope to understand how much of its use is illegal?

Check out these statistics to try to wrap your head around it.

• According to a survey of Spain, 1 in 2 internet users there download illegal content.
• More than 1 million illegal downloads of the Game of Thrones season four premiere were recorded in just half a day
• The US economy loses $12.5 billion in revenue each year to it
• The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey was illegally downloaded more than 8 million times.
• 42 percent of all computer software used around the world in 2010 was pirated.
• More than 146 million visits were logged everyday at piracy sites in 2011.

Now that is a huge amount of traffic.

Google’s new front in the Piracy Battle.

In defence to these claims, Google published an updated How Google Fights Privacy report last week. This report explains how the search engine fights piracy across its services. It lists all the official numbers and developments.

Katherine Oyama is the Senior Copyright Policy Counsel. She claims that the Google has been testing many initiatives to combat privacy.

Currently, they are trying out new ad formats in their search results. These results mostly target searches related to music and movies. These ads will direct people to legitimate sources of media, rather than piracy sites.

For the searches for movies that include terms such as ‘download’, ‘free’, or ‘watch’, Google will list sources like Google Play, Amazon and Netflix.

These initiatives are currently only operational in the United States. Google has plans to spread it to the rest of the world.

Google has also developed an improved DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) demotion signal in Search.

What that means is that illegal search results (torrents or downloads) will no longer be at the top of the search page results. Instead they will be on later pages, and near the bottom of those pages. Legitimate, legal sites like Amazon or Google will instead take the top spots.

In addition to this search result demotion, Google is also targeting the searches themselves. More terms are being removed from Google auto-complete, based on legitimate DMCA removal notices.

Despite all these policies and initiatives, Google claims that the best way to battle piracy is for content owners to distribute their works via legitimate digital services.

Google maintains that the best way to battle piracy is for content owners to distribute their works via legitimate digital services.

“As services ranging from Netflix to Spotify to iTunes have demonstrated, the best way to combat piracy is with better and more convenient legitimate services. The right combination of price, convenience and inventory will do far more to reduce piracy than enforcement can.” — How Google Fights Privacy report

 

Repercussions

Updates began rolling out globally last week.

Sites like rapidgator.net, filestube.com and dilandau.eu, each of which has received at least 11 million individual take down requests, will likely be the first targetted.

It will be interesting to see how these new copyright initiatives will affect legimate sources of creative art. There is a bevy of original art on the internet based off of other people’s creations.

Such as this Game of Thrones piece of fanart by artist Gigei deviantart.com

It certainly looks like Winter is Coming for all the Pirates out there!

Job Tips

#JobTips: Tip:  Don’t use abbreviations for your Company names unless they are common.  Not every employer is familiar with everyone else – spell it out.

 

How to survive a Video Interview

To think that 20 years ago every interview was set up as a F2F (face to face). That’s right you went into the office,  dressed to the nines – suit, skirt/dress, shined shoes all freshly scrubbed.  There weren’t any telephone interviews.  Skype wasn’t even invented.  And now we have video interviews.

In 2012 63% of 500 HR Managers surveyed conducted video interviews.  That was up 14% from 2011.  13% expect their companies to increase their use of video interviewing over the next years.  Office Team Survey.

 

Lights, Camera, Action.  How do you prepare for a video interview?

Check your Equipment

You don’t want your battery to run out before your interview is over so make sure everything is running smoothly.  Clean the lens on your camera, nothing worse than a fingerprint showing up in the middle of your face.  Practice with a friend so you can find the appropriate volume for a normal speaking voice.  You don’t want to have to yell and you don’t want to miss the question because you can’t hear the interviewer properly.

Where are you going to set up your Interview?

Find an area that is quiet from distractions.  You don’t want to hear the dog barking as people walk down your street.  Make sure the area is clean and clutter free.  If you are doing it in your bedroom you don’t want the Sports Illustrated Bathing Suit calendar showing up in the picture.  Empty or full beer bottles on your counter won’t set a very good example.

Dress like you were meeting in Person

Dressing professionally makes you feel more in control and self-confident.  So put your dress or suit and tie on, make-up, hair, shave.  All the things you would do if you were heading to the office to meet the interviewer. Try not to wear white as it can look very bright through a camera, also busy patterns can be distracting.

Camera

Have your camera set up at a level so you are looking up just a little bit.  This will emphasize your face more than your body and will make you look a little slimmer.  It also helps to stop the camera from looking up your nose if you do a bit of a stretch.  REMEMBER – don’t look down or the interviewers will be looking at the top of your head.  Look directly at the camera, maintain eye contact and smile.

Cheat Notes

Yes you can use cheat notes, perfect for writing down your interview questions, but remember that rustling paper can be picked up by the microphone and is very distracting.  You also don’t want your eyes roving around the room or looking down, leaving the interviewer looking at the top of your head.

Truthfully it isn’t that much different than a F2F.

• Be prepared – practice those interview questions and research the company
• Sit up tall and don’t wiggle around too much.
• Relax and speak clearly
• Remember to thank everyone for their time

Don’t treat a video interview lightly.  You have to have the qualifications and you have to be able to sell yourself.  All you are doing is using a different venue.  So Take 1 and wow them the first time.

 Good luck job hunting

Lynne Carlson started her career off in administration, moved to Cobol Programming and for the last 14 years worked in all things recruitment.  Absolutely loves social media and excited about all the new innovations appearing every day!