Job Search Tip: What Have You Done to Prepare for Your Interview?

The following post is courtesy of the Recruiting Blogswap:

You might be surprised at how little time many candidates invest preparing for an interview. Then again, you might be even more impressed with how much time other candidates do invest preparing for an interview.  But the bottom line is, you probably would not want to attend an interview without being as well or better prepared than the individuals that you will be competing with for a given role. How do you ensure that you are clearly the most-prepared candidate for any given position? Read along and you will find out.

An interview begins long before you step in front of the interviewer. Wise job seekers will prepare with this in mind. Some important steps to take on the journey to your interview are:

    * Research the company. Know about finances, product plans, recent news, noteworthy executives, physical locations, operating challenges, the range of products, pricing, typical sales processes, operational approaches, and anything else you can find out prior to stepping into the room.

Minnesota IT Consultants And Contractors: Contact Me

For 13 years I have only practiced in the full time, permanent job part of the industry. I have passed consulting/contracting requests and consultants/contractors on to friends at other firms.

Around October of 2009 I noticed an increase in requests from clients for this service. In March of 2010 it was easy to see the market definitely picked up and as this summer has progressed more momentum.

A few weeks ago I had a client tell me I was an “idiot” for not expanding my business. Actually there was a word in front of “idiot” but I usually save that for Gopher football games.

It may have taken much longer way too long to take the plunge but take it I am.

As we get into Q4 of 2010 I am going start talking with clients to see how I can better serve them with both offerings and by Q1 2011 have this up and running with all the glitches worked out.

I have much to learn but I have a lot of friends who are giving me their time to educate me.

So if you are looking for a full time or part time contract in IT send me an email with:

Wordy Resume? Consider An Addendum

The following post is courtesy of the Recruiting Blogswap:

If you feel your resume is too lengthy, it probably is. These days, resumes longer than two pages with very little open space are likely to remain unread.

However, there are options to shorten your resume for marketability, and transfer your more detailed "nuts and bolts" information to a separate document. This is called an addendum and it is especially useful for IT and academic professionals who may have a lot of certifications, trainings, speaking engagements, or published work that should be highlighted, but will bog down a resume.

It is becoming increasingly popular to offer a shortened resume, or "executive summary", that highlights your best attributes, including hard skills (e.g. computer software knowledge) and soft skills (e.g. sales know-how). Then, you can use an addendum to present at an interview or send upon request. An addendum is an often bulleted listing of your detailed qualifications that serves to essentially back up your resume data.

For example, your resume may state, "Successfully presented Oracle training to five large-scale conference audiences." Then, your addendum would actually list those conferences with dates.

3 Minnesota Companies Listed On 2010 Working Mother 100 Best Companies

WorkingMother.com has released their 2010 Working Mother 100 Best Companies and 3 Minnesota companies are on it (links to company web site):

• Carlson
  
• General Mills ranks in the Top 10
  
• McGladrey

WorkingMother,com gives a lot of background on why they like the companies and some statistics.

I like the “It’s a Fact” they do. Here are the links to each companies entry along with the fact:

• Carlson

Infants, toddlers and their parents can take baby sign language classes at Carlson Companies’ HQ childcare center.

• General Mills

In 2009, General Mills offered free career counseling to its employees’ unemployed family members.

• McGladrey

McGladrey’s free Coach-on-Call program offers employees access to sessions with a licensed coach to help them achieve their desired success.

One Reason Why I Use Social Networking Sites To Source And Recruit

I was doing a recruiter training the other day for a Minneapolis software company and after talking about the why and showing the how of social network sites I noticed one of their hiring managers sitting in the back of the room with his arms crossed and giving off a bad vibe.

So I took a deliberate pause, one of those awkward ones and then asked if there were any questions, thoughts, comments or wanted to challenge me on some of the content.

There were questions and comments, a lot of them, but I could not provoke the hiring manager to speak up.

I took another awkward pause and as I was about to move on to another topic the hiring manager leans forward and says:

“But why do we go to these sites? We have a career page, we post jobs on different job boards and we do other things too...”

A senior recruiter cut him off with:

“Yeah and how is that working for us? Our talent pool does not know who we are. We are passive in everything we do. We wait for people to find us and they are rarely who we want to be hiring.”

Anecdotal Analysis Of The Minnesota Job Market Q3 And Q4 2010

Over the past six weeks between Recruiter and HR events, meetings with senior management in companies of all sizes and industries, what I hear from job seekers and what I see from job postings here is an anecdotal analysis of the Minnesota job market as we end the 3^rd quarter of 2010, ready???

I don’t have a (definitive) clue.

My Magic 8 Ball has a cracked lense and some moisture has gotten in there making it difficult to see the answer to my (all of our) question.

Yep, that’s what I have come up with.

Hold on here is some information you can use to come up with your opinion and do me a favor, tell me what you are seeing.

Please note that this is not scientific and specific to skill set, industry, education attained or salary range unless otherwise stated. But it does come from enough varied sources that I feel comfortable giving an opinion.

What I know I know:

College Grad Job Search Resources - What You Think

The following post is courtesy of the Recruiting Blogswap:

“I know that you believe you understand what you think I said, but I'm not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant.” - Robert McCloskey

It doesn't always have to be about me, sometimes it can be about you too. I get lots of emails suggesting links that many of you think will appeal to CareerAlley readers.

I generally collect these until I have enough that is worth a dedicated post and today is your lucky day. So thanks to all of you who have submitted your ideas and please keep them coming!

The Best Of Job Search List

The following post is courtesy of the Recruiting Blogswap:

"In order to succeed, your desire for success should be greater than your fear of failure." - Bill Cosby

I often get asked "what's the best job search board" or "who are the best recruiters".

There are so many resources for job search, literally, tens of thousands. And, as with everything in life, what is considered the "best" is sometimes a matter of opinion.

But generally speaking, "best lists" are a good indication of where to focus your time. Today's post focuses on some of the "Best of" lists.

Recruiters:

• Students and College Grads - List of top recruiters,email addresses and other contact information - This is an amazing list for students and college provided by Askstudent.com. This list includes companies with contacts (so these are "internal" recruiters), email addresses and links to the companies recruiting website. There is a short overview, followed by the list. There is a second list at the bottom of the page which provides additional company career site links.

Minnesota Recruiter Jobs

The following new Minnesota Recruiter Jobs have been added to the Minnesota Headhunter Recruiter Jobs Page:

• Recruiting Assistant - Full Time Job - Brigham Group Staffing

• Talent Acquisition Manager - Full Time Job - MnSCU - Minnesota State Colleges and Universities

• Virtual Part Time Sourcer - Part Time Job - Collective Genius

• Senior Recruiter - Full Time Job – Ceridian

• Contract Recruiter - Contract Job – ADC

• Recruiting Coordinator - Full Time Job - Cargill

Check out Minnesota Recruiters. An informal group of 2,050 corporate, consulting and search firm recruiters - you must be in Minnesota to join.

 
 

Click Minnesota Recruiter Jobs for more jobs, Minnesota Headhunter for most recent blog posts.

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Minneapolis & St. Paul Rank #48 As A Stressed City

Portfolio.com and Business Journals released an analysis of 10 data points and the 50 largest metropolitan areas and ranked the cities by those “most stressed”.

Click A Stress Test for America for more results.

The Top 10 most stressed cities are:

1- Detroit

2 - Los Angeles

3 - Cleveland

4 - Riverside, CA

5 - St Louis

6 - New York City

7 - New Orleans