The Cider Vinegar

Which is more important to you and why: flexibility or expandability?

2009-12-05T23:17:00.003-05:00

Flexibility.

Sometimes some things aren't worthy of expansion - like a bigger family or more wives. Personally I'm not opposed to more wives but I think it's against the law in many places.
Whereas Flexibility keeps you nimble and less likely to break something...like your business, profession or a body part.

Pesticide Resedue on Common Fruits and Vegetables

2009-03-11T15:20:00.005-04:00

The EWG has compiled a report of pesticide residue found on common Fruits and Vegetables purchased throughout the US.
The report is based on research conducted from 2000 to 2007 by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Food and Drug Administration.

This is a great guide to help us all decide what produce we should be spending a little extra on and buying organic or not. The top 12 they refer to as the dirty dozen.
Get the full report here or download the shoppers guide here.

What The Job Requirements REALLY Mean

2008-01-22T00:02:00.000-05:00

It's amazing that in this day and age hiring managers and HR staff still use generic terms when advertising their internal positions. Some of the terms used are really just fluff, and purely subjective, meaning that if you asked 10 people what they meant you would undoubtedly receive 10 different answers.

If you really think about it you'd have to wonder why anyone would want to work for a company that required their employees to be self-motivated, flexible, creative and able to multi-task in a fast passed and dynamic environment. The picture that is painted in my mind is that you'll be air lifted onto an ocean tanker with a belly full of oil in the middle of the North Atlantic just after it ran into an iceberg and you are responsible for saving the oil as well as your corporate bosses from legal/environmental liability. As you watch the helicopter that dropped you melt into the horizon the first mate reports that most power systems and all external communication systems are lost. I guess if you are the kind of person who likes to be in a continual state of emergency without any lifelines this seemingly would be the perfect position.

In stark contrast, the following description would be far more enticing. "We provide a work environment that offers you the time, training, freedom and flexibility to create something extraordinary for our clients, coworkers and most importantly, yourself."
A job posting is an advertisement for the company and should be written with at least as much care and attention as any other client facing document. The posting should engage anyone who reads it so they would feel motivated to respond and, if not selected, would feel obligated to tell others how great your company is. Of course, in order to really pull this off and have prospective employees clamoring at your door you would have to use the standard defined in the latter job description and create that environment.

What message do these common job posting terms really convey to prospective employees?

Multi Task - We aren't able to do any one thing well (Sure! I can drive while reading, shaving, eating and calling you as long as auto insurance is not a requirement)
Flexible - Your time is our time. We need you to be able to drop what you are doing and do something different most of the time.
Self-motivated - Motivate yourself! We don't like what we are doing either!
Creative - We haven't yet developed systems, processes and resources for this position - you're on your own.
Passionate - We can't seem to convince anyone to believe in what WE do
Fast paced - We are running in many different directions all at the same time
Dynamic environment - No sooner than the team starts to gel and deliver results we'll mix things up again.

What do these job description terms mean to you? Or feel free to add your own.

The Resume Format Example

2007-10-01T00:05:00.002-04:00

Follow this resume format and get interviews...

Candidate Name and Contact information
(Contact information should not be in a header or inside a table so that it can be easily read by applicant tracking software)

SUMMARY OF EXPERIENCE
(This should address the position description – It should include single bullet points that are loaded with key industry, role and skill key words - numbers stand out)

4 years Java development experience
5+ years extensive Business Analysis experience
Experience working with various business units to map out business processes, capture system requirements and identifying issues

EXPERIENCE

2003 - 2004 Company Name
Business Analyst
(project description and scope, responsibilities, accomplishments, outcome, environment, industry and type of applications – again numbers stand out – point form is easier to read than paragraphs – Hiring managers think in terms of resource technical and functional gaps in their environment, show that you have been in that environment –– again #’s, project size in $, people led, # users)

Sole Business Analyst for a $30M software development project
Wrote use cases and performed business process analysis and designs of initial business requirements
Prepared process maps/flows using Visio for eBusiness Architecture
Led testing team of 25 through user acceptance test phase

2001 - 2003 Company Name
Project Manager
Responsible for Telecommunications staff for 11 call centers and 150 retail locations

Symposium Upgrade Project (9 months)

Upgraded 5 Call Centres from MAX 8 to Symposium 4.2
Designed call flows and created new scripts
Managed vendor implementation at all 5 sites
Designed and performed training for call centre staff
Integrated Calabrio! Workforce management and Inova readerboards

Environment: Nortel Meridian PBX, Symposium 4.2, CCR, Meridian Mail, Calabrio! Workforce Management, Lucent Definity, NEC NEAX 2400, Inova Lightlink

Project 2: ISP Product Capability Analyse and Design ( 3 Months)

Utilize resource from InfoNet and Desktop+ Web applications
Analyzed and designed the project as part of a team
Delivered input on feasibility study as well as impact to current markets/regions/systems
Produced PCT code table
Created BSADR diagram
Documented T235 according to method/1 (Amex standard)

Environment and tools: ASP.NET, ASP, VBScript, JavaScript, VB.NET, W2K, IIS6.0, MS SQL Server2000, Mainframe,

2000 - 2001 Company Name
Team leader / .NET Software Architect

Design and implementation of the new technological framework for the Content Manager System (CMS) 100% .NET.
Led and mentored development team comprising of 3 .NET developers
Software requirements analysis (use cases, UML)
Development of process improvement and formalization
Best practices implementation and management
Research on many subjects (CMS, .NET, good practices, development process including RUP, XP, SCRUM)
Workshop organization and planning for.NET using C#

Environment: .NET, C#, Visual Studio .NET, SQL Server 2000, COM+, SOAP, UML

CERTIFICATION

Currently… MCSD for .NET
Solution Architecture for .NET 70-300
Windows Application (C#) 70-316

2003 MCAD for .NET
Web Services, .NET Remoting (C#) 70-320
ASP.NET (C#) 70-315

EDUCATION

SKILLS

End of Resume....

Dave Soteros is President of Alrym Consulting. He has over 10 years of experience with career coaching, career planning, career counseling, resume writing, interviewing, hiring, resourcing and recruiting.
He looks forward to your comments and questions and can be reached at http://alrym.blogspot.com

The Essential Resume

2007-09-30T21:22:00.000-04:00

What is the best resume? In this article we will explore one of the most important documents you will ever create, your resume.

The resume is one of those documents that everyone has to create and then update on a regular basis. Those who have joined the job market in the last 20 years will likely change jobs 5 time over the course of their career. This new reality highlights the importance of a good resume. There are many different methodologies and formats floating around out there but most of these are post war era, a time when people took jobs for life. These old formats do not apply in the 21st century and they actually could be keeping you from getting an interview.

After all, the real reason anyone writes a resume is to get a job interview so the best resume is the one that gets you the INTERVIEW.

Dave Soteros, President of Alrym Consulting, says that many resumes don't even get into the hands of decision makers. Some resumes just confuse the hiring manager or recruiter prompting them just to ignore it. Recruiters just don't have time to decipher or decode a resume and if the resume is that bad then maybe the writer is bad too. Even if they do think you may have the skills for the job they won't feel that they could send the resume to the hiring manager without a lot of reformatting or a lot of explaining. Reformatting resumes is the bane of recruiters as it eats up their valuable time. The truth is that recruiters are more likely to submit a good resume over a poorly written one. The well written resume can be sent to the hiring manager right away and if the resume is accepted they may not need to, or it may not be in their best interest, to send more resumes.

So what does a good resume look like?

Dave says he spent many months researching best practices in resume writing as a consultant to a global staffing agency and has personally spoken to many hiring managers about what they look for in a resume and, most importantly, how much of the resume they read.

He goes on to say that most hiring managers don't like the hiring process as it takes up too much of their time and takes focus away from their daily deliverables. Hiring is not a domain of expertise that they are actively pursuing.
You can assume that the hiring manager is likely already overwhelmed by the hiring process and to make the best use of his or her time you have to have the right information in the right place to be selected for an interview.
Dave says that, just like a book, the first few lines of a resume are what gets the reader hooked so if you want to get the attention of a recruiter or hiring manger you must respond to their needs in the first 10 lines of your resume. To get inside the head of a hiring manager we have to understand how they think.
Hiring managers only think in terms of their own 4 walls. They think about the human and technical gaps in their environment. They need to see that you can fill a gap in their environment meaning that you have done what they need done and have worked in a similar environment. The environment is all about the numbers, number of people, number of processes, number of transactions, number of clients, number of industries, number of technical tools and of course the most important number the number of years of experience.

So now that we have the intelligence what are the rules?
Dave Soteros says that if you follow these rules you will get more interviews:

The purpose of the resume is to get an interview
Use a pleasing easy to read font such as 10-11 points Arial
Use basic document formating like bold, bullets and italics with black lettering
Write in point form with no more than 70 columns per line - Bullet points can be read quickly and easily where as paragraphs force the reader to read each word.
Do Not include subjective information as it will be ignored - Subjective information is tantamount to BS. Everyone can say they are quick to learn, team players or goal oriented etc... You have to be able to qualify this information. It's better to display your achievements like completing a specific project in less time and under budget, acted as the subject matter expert for the team, completed task in record time etc...
Do Not use an objective as objectives are subjective - see rule five
Use a summary of experience at the top of the resume as it is likely the only part of your resume that will be read. The summary should respond directly to the specific job requirements for the job you are submitting your resume for. You should have a list of summary items that are interchangeable depending on the job requirements.
Your work experience should reflect your summary - The work experience section of your resume only needs to be as long as required to reflect your summary. If you state in your summary that you have 8 years experience then you must have work experience going back 8 years.
List achievements in your work experience. What you were responsible for is not as important as what you achieved so turn your responsibilities into achievements.
Explain gaps - Any time you leave questions unanswered on your resume, like a gap in work history, you are creating more work for the recruiter or the hiring manager. Why? Because they have to ask and that may be the reason they don't call. So if you went to Tibet to discover yourself then fill in the gap with that information. You'll have to provide it anyway so clear up the question before it gets asked.
Tell the truth - Failing this is probably the best way to produce a gap in work history.
Do Not use a cover page - Cover pages are typically subjective and summarily ignored by hiring managers and recruiters. If they ask for one just politely say that you have included a summary at the top of your resume. They will appreciate this.

Here is an example of the resume format

Dave Soteros is President of Alrym Consulting. He has over 10 years of experience with career coaching, career planning, career counseling, resume writing, interviewing, hiring, resourcing and recruiting.
He looks forward to your comments and questions and can be reached at http://alrym.blogspot.com