Minnesota Headhunter

3 Ways To Create A Recession-Proof Resume

The following post is courtesy of the Recruiting Blogswap:
 

It’s no secret that a recession is one of the toughest times to find employment.  With millions of workers looking for positions, your competition is incredibly steep.  The good news is that job seeking during a recession doesn’t mean you can’t be hired.  It does mean, however, that you will need to work to secure a job.  A great way to increase your chances of being hired is by creating a recession-proof resume.

What is a Recession-Proof Resume?

A recession-proof resume is one that is able to get you hired under the toughest of economic conditions.  With dozens—and sometimes even hundreds—of job seekers vying for the same position, it’s pertinent that you find ways to make yourself stand out from the pack.

The recession-proof resume is able to accomplish this goal because it brings forward your strongest qualities as a professional in your field.  It helps ensure you’re able to find a quality job even when it seems no one is being hired, making it immune to the conditions of a recession.

3 Tips for Writing a Quality Recession-Proof Resume

The Nerdery Overnight Website Challenge 2012 – Recap

Every year I stop by this event and every year I have failed to write a blog post about it which is odd because it is an intersection of my life: tech folks, friends and non profits.

The Nerdery hosted their Overnight Website Challenge at the University of Minnesota St Paul campus and the space was packed. How packed?

They had 18 web teams (10 folks in a team) and 18 non profits and community organizations.

Here are some photos of the three rooms:

Minnesota Recruiter Jobs

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

• Marketing Recruiter - Full Time Job - Celarity

• Recruiter - Full Time Job - Dashe & Thomson

• Sr Recruiter - Full Time Job - Prime Therapeutics

• Talent Acquisition Specialist III - Full Time Job - Lifetouch

• Recruiting Specialist - Full Time Job - Thrivent Financial for Lutherans

• Recruitment Sourcing Specialist - Full Time Job - Park Nicollet Health Services
   

Check out Minnesota Recruiters. An informal group of 2,900 corporate, consulting and search firm recruiters - you must be in Minnesota to join.

   
 

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Project Management No-Nos That Apply To Your Job, Too

The following post is courtesy of the Recruiting Blogswap:
 

Though I’m not a project manager, I often pick up issues of PM Network to see what kind of career advice it has. I often find that the career advice it gives is widely transferable to many fields beyond project management. The February 2012 issue of PM Network boasts an article titled “10 Mistakes That Could Get You Fired,” which I found to be both enlightening and applicable to almost all industries.

So many professionals are guilty of these missteps that it bears spreading the good information that the article provides. I picked out five of the 10 mistakes featured in the article (some were indeed more focused project management) that could apply to any professional. Here is a summary of those mistakes outlined and how they may apply to you:

1. “Guesstimating.” Providing clients, teams, and superiors with guesstimates and of required or requested data can be dangerous and can ruin your credibility if proven false. In a large executive meeting I once attended, a young analyst was asked to address a crowd of corporate clients to provide information on an upcoming new product. When asked in front of the crowd by our company CEO to provide the date of launch the analyst gave a noncommittal “mid spring” as his answer. Frustrated the CEO fired back “Spring is not a date; it’s a season.” However prepared the analyst thought he was, he quickly learned that rather than replying with a “let me get back to you on that”, his guesstimating efforts wouldn’t cut it in that corporate environment.

List: 2012 Minneapolis St Paul Business Journal 40 Under Forty

Congratulations to this years Minneapolis St Paul Business Journal 40 Under Forty. A talented group for sure and very happy to call a few of them Friend.

Here is the list with the link back to the Business Journal and their profile:

• Jessica Boden

• Gina Brennan

• Michael Caguin

• Kate Cimino

• Katie Clark

• Gary Collins

• Scott Cummings

• Mike Derheim

• Paul Dzubnar

• Jonathan Fletcher

Minnesota Job And Career Fair: Jobs Summit 2012

The Minnesota Recruiting and Staffing Association will be hosting the 2012 Jobs Summit March 27^th (next week) from 9 am to 2 pm at the Minnesota School of Business in Richfield.

This is a FREE event for job seekers and has four parts:

Job Fair

30 staffing and recruiting companies will be interviewing for full time, part time and contract jobs.

This IT Job Post Sucks

I was having a conversation with a client about their job posts and after many months saying theirs sucked… they said “You are right.”

After asking them to repeat that last part (it was a minor victory) we took a tour of some different company web sites and job boards.

I found the following IT job post on Craig’s List:

 

STOP THE PRESSES INTERNET!!!

Who thought this was good idea?

Minnesota Morning: Economy, War For Talent And Gopher Hockey Edition

After a couple of weeks of being able to fall asleep at night… last night was not such a good night. I went to bed well after midnight  and woke up well before the birds started chirping.

So no words of wisdom or funny things to say today…

 
Economy

The middle of the month is always a busy time for different economic reports and there were a bunch of mostly good news last week highlighted by:

- Initial Jobless Claims: March 10^th the Labor Department reported 351,000 people filed for initial unemployment benefits. That was below the average market predictions of 355,000 and down from the revised number of 365,000 claims the previous week. The 4 week moving average was unchanged at 355,750.

Ongoing claims were 3.343M much lower than predictions and lower than the 3.424M.

- Philly Fed: March 15^th the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia released their general economic index. 12.5 was the number in line with predictions and up from 10.2 in February. This is a positive indicator with manufacturers putting out more products which tend to lead to hiring more folks. The New York index was also a positive report.

- The Thomson Reuters & University of Michigan preliminary index of consumer sentiment dropped to 74.3 from 75.3. 76.0 was the average prediction. Gas & fuel prices are most to blame for the negativity.

Check out The American economy: Unmired at last (The Economist)

 

War For Talent

I am seeing this phrase (popular from 2003-2007) more and more as the economy continues to recover. For those of us in I.T. this is not news and is more like “where have you been” kind of news.

Today on ERE.net is this article The War for Talent Is Returning; Don’t Get Caught Unprepared from Dr John Sullivan.

I am not a big fan of the words “war” and “talent” but it is the phrase the industry uses.

It is always easy to use Silicon Valley as a place to talk about the “war” but here in Minnesota when it comes to recruiting I.T. folks we have definitely seen the increase in competition to hire moving past a “skirmish” but not quite a “war”.

Gopher Hockey

Congratulations to the Minnesota Golden Gopher Women’s Hockey Team for their victory over the Wisconsin Badgers in the NCAA Frozen Four Championship Game

This is the Gophers third NCAA Championship with the most recent in 2005.

Check out the post on GopherSports.com Gopher Women's Hockey Wins National Championship where you will see a lot of information about the game including this video:

 

This still shot is currently the splash page on the Gophers web site:

 

 

Minnesota Governor Mark Dayton has declared today to be Gopher Women's Hockey National Champions Day.

GO GOPHERS!!!

Links:

Minnesota Business

• Minnesota misses out on new Moneygram jobs (MSP Business Journal)

• Hallock, Minn.., offers free home lots to attract canola plant workers (Grand Forks Journal)

• Publisher John Cowles Jr. shaped the Twin Cities for 50 years (Mpls StarTribune)

Career

• 7 Things Never to Put On A Resume (AOL)

• Is Your LinkedIn Profile 100% Complete? (Executive Career Brand)

• Dumb Things People Have Said During Job Interviews (Yahoo! Finance)

• 8 Ways to Meet Your Professional Goals Using Social Media (Law.com)

 
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Minnesota Morning: Summer In March, Gopher Hockey And March Madness Edition

It might normally be around this time of the year when someone in Minneapolis might say that spring has sprung. Not so much last year as we did not get to see spring until almost June.

This year... we skipped spring (for now) and jumped to June.

And I like it… for the most part.

The only thing that I have not liked so far has been the rock concert the birds are putting on in my courtyard between 5 am and 6:30 am. I love the birds and the spring they bring with them but dang.. why so early?

Here is one particular crooner. I took this at 8 pm. I love the song. It sounds good at 8 pm.

But I have different feelings for it at 5 am:

 

Executives Have To Eat Too - Resources For Executive Job Search

The following post is courtesy of the Recruiting Blogswap:
 

"Dream more than others think practical…Expect more than others think possible." - Howard Schultz

The infamous food chain (not to be confused with a food web!).

This is where corporate life mimics the animal world, although in the corporate world the food chain is shaped like a pyramid, with lots of junior employees at the base and fewer senior people as you move up the pyramid.

With that picture in mind, the more senior your role, the more difficult it is to find a new job. So, how long does it take to find a more senior job?

The answer is similar to the question "how long is a piece of string?" - it depends.

TechRepublic: 10 Low Stress IT Jobs

Justin James at TechRepublic has come up with a list of 10 low stress IT jobs.

I am not sure if the folks doing these jobs see it this way but it is in the eyes of the beholder. And where you work.

For sure I agree with #10 IT Industry Analyst.

Click 10 low-stress jobs for IT pros for the rationale on this list:

1: Computer sales

2: Desktop support technician

3: Backups administrator

4: Configuration (or presales) engineer

5: Computer lab support

6: Application architect

7: Build engineer

8: Installation technicians

9: Trainer

10: IT industry analyst

Check out Making it in IT: 10 Low-Stress Jobs for IT… Really? to see Tom’s IT Pro for their response to the above list.

 
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What Makes You a Great Executive Catch?

The following post is courtesy of the Recruiting Blogswap:
 

When hiring managers are searching for their next executive candidate, they’re not looking for someone mediocre.  They want someone who is incredibly talented, knowledgeable, and skillful—and with an inordinate amount of drive and passion for what he or she does.  This is what they consider to be a great catch.

Do you fit into this category?  Can you go above and beyond the call of duty to meet the demands of the company at such an important level?  If you can, your job is to prove it through your resume.  Here are some tips to help you show the company that you are indeed a great catch.

Prove You’re Results-Driven

Getting results, whatever they may be for the company and the position in which you’re interested, is one of the most important factors in determining whether you are the right candidate over another very qualified executive.  This means, not only is it important that you show that you fully understand what they company needs but also that you are the person who can deliver results.

Did You Get Paid For Leap Day?

I asked this question on Twitter and Facebook and had varying replies.

Of course hourly workers were getting paid for their work but what about salaried folks?

Here was my thought (and to make the math simple)... say you get paid $50,000 a year and there are (on average) 260 work days in a year. But in a Leap Year there are 261 work days.

$192.31 a day in a normal year and $191.57 in a leap year or $0.74 less per day.

Your per day pay would be a little less or in my mind, you worked free for the day.

Some replies said that because they get paid every two weeks they were getting paid for the day.

Still confused I sent a message to Jason DeRusha (@DeRushaJ) at WCCO TV who does a popular segment called Good Question.

Here is what he came up with:

Look Both Ways Before You Quit

The following post is courtesy of the Recruiting Blogswap:

 

"It's far better to buy a wonderful company at a fair price than a fair company at a wonderful price." - Warren Buffett

There is a reason hotels charge more for the beach view than the inside building view. It's all relative, the other guy's view always seems to be better (you know, the grass is always greener on the other side of the street).

Jobs are much the same.

You could be fat and happy, enjoying your job and then you get a call from a recruiter who happens to have the most amazing job. More money, more responsibility, better company, great career opportunities, and so on.

Minnesota Recruiter Jobs

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

• Technical Recruiter – Sourcer - Contract Job - Pearson VUE

• Sr Recruiter - Full Time Job - The Schwan Food Company

• Sr. Recruiter - Full Time Job - CSM Corporation 

 

Check out Minnesota Recruiters. An informal group of 2,400 corporate, consulting and search firm recruiters - you must be in Minnesota to join.

   
 

If you are using a RSS Feed click Minnesota Recruiter Jobs.
 

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What Makes Your Cover Letter Introduction Stand Out?

The following post is courtesy of the Recruiting Blogswap:
 

Many job seekers fail to thoughtfully consider the importance of the cover letter introduction.  Oftentimes, it’s viewed as just another paragraph among many in the document.  But in reality, the cover letter introduction holds a lot of weight.  In fact, it can be the determining factor in whether a hiring manager will continue to read on through the remainder of the letter.  So what makes your cover letter stand out—not just among other paragraphs within the document but among other candidates’ cover letter intros?

The Unique Opening Sentence

It’s not uncommon for job seekers to utilize a blanket opening statement when writing their cover letter introductions.  Even in your own cover letter, you may be guilty of opening with something such as: “I am writing this cover letter to express my interest in your sales position with XYZ Company.”

Five Quick Ways To Improve Your Resume

The following post is courtesy of the Recruiting Blogswap:
 

1. Replace your Objective with a Professional Summary

I’m not a fan of objectives on resumes.  As a hiring manager, I’ve eliminated candidates based on their objective much more often than I have considered them.  If the objective does not absolutely address the specific company and role you’re seeking, I’d remove it.  Replace it with a strong, exciting and compelling Professional Summary.  This is your opportunity to promote yourself in way that will generate interest for the reader and make them want to read further.

2. Choose the correct format, Chronological or Functional

Select the resume format that’s right for your specific background.  If you have a traditional work and education history, chances are a chronological format will work for you.  This is the most common format, and the type of resume that is most recognizable.  A functional resume will work well for someone who has frequent career changes, is returning to the work force after a long hiatus or has an unstable work history.