How to Overcome common CV issues

How to Overcome common CV issues by Amber Rolfe Writing a CV can be a challenging task…Even if you have all the right experience â€" what you end up writing doesn’t always portray your skills in the best light. However, as long as you’re aware of what employers want, and you’re able to spot what might be holding you back, overcoming issues might be easier than you think.To help you improve the quality of your CV, here’s how to overcome five of the most common CV issues:My CV is too long When it comes to your CV, including too much can be just as bad as not writing enough â€" especially if you’re filling up space with unnecessary information.But how will you fit all of your skills, experience and education into a two-page CV? You might not always be able to â€" but that’s OK.Here’s why:Employers are only interested in skills and experience relevant for the  job  you’re applying forDepending on the role, your most recent experience and educational achievements will probably be most interestin g to potential employersShorter CVs  are easier to read and therefore more likely to be consideredSo be selective with what you include, tailor your CV to the role, and use the job description as a guide to ensure you only reference the skills and experience needed to do the position you’re applying for.How to keep your CV short and sweetI want to change careers Changing careers isn’t always easy, especially if your previous experience is totally different to what you’re looking to do next.But that doesn’t mean it isn’t possible. In fact, no matter what field you’ve worked in or type of education you have, you’ll have gained a range of transferable skills which will make you suitable for a number of other roles.The key to standing out comes down to your ability to communicate these skills effectively in your CV, as well as show your enthusiasm about pursuing a career in a new industry.And as long as you can prove how your experience (however different) could help you d o the job you’re applying for, you’ll be on the right track to impressing an employer.Career change CV templateFive signs it’s time for a career change I have gaps in my CVWhether it was to raise a family, to go traveling, or for something else, having one or two gaps in your CV isn’t uncommon.But without the right representation, they could be perceived as negative by employers â€" especially if it isn’t clear why you weren’t working.To ensure they aren’t holding you back, it’s important to remember the following things when including gaps in your CV:Travel and  voluntary work  can be included in your skills and experienceSmaller gaps in work will be less apparent by specifying work dates in years only, rather than months and yearsTaking a course or writing a blog is a great way to be proactive with your time offTo show your absence hasn’t affected your passion and drive, always keep up-to-date with changes in your industry while out of workAnd remember: lying abo ut your gap is never a good idea.How to explain a gap in your CV  I don’t have any work experience If you’re still studying or you’ve just finished school, college, or university â€" you might not have any tangible work experience to speak of yet.In this case, placing an emphasis on your GCSES, A levels, degree, or any other education related achievements (and structuring your CV with education coming first) will help you to highlight your strengths and show what you could bring to an organisation.Additionally, detailing individual modules or relevant hobbies and interests will help to demonstrate your skills, enthusiasm, and ability to do the job.Which parts of my education should I include in my CV?School leaver CV templateGraduate CV template  All my jobs have been very similarIf you’ve had a large number of jobs with similar duties and responsibilities (e.g. if you worked as a temp for a number of organisations), it might not be essential to include every single one in y our CV.Instead, provide a brief summary of your career history, with a more detailed section outlining the practical skills and experience you’ve gained from all of these roles.Alternatively, you could choose to provide details for the most impressive (or longest) role, and simply include job titles and dates for any similar positions that have taught you the same skills.Not only is this section a good opportunity to highlight your relevant skills, it also emphasises your ability to summarise information and recognise what the employer wants.CV template for temp workI don’t have many qualificationsIf you don’t have many qualifications to include in your CV, don’t panic.You can still emphasise the skills and experience you’ve gained in your work or elsewhere, without official educational or professional qualifications. You just need to back them up with tangible examples.However, if you think a lack of qualifications could be hindering your progress, you could consider taki ng an industry-recognised course, which will allow you to quantify your skills using a range of different learning styles and formats.Not only will it enhance your qualifications, it’ll also demonstrate your willingness to learn.What type of course is right for me?Final thoughts No matter what stage you’re at in your career or what type of work you’re looking for, understanding how to tailor your skills and experience to a specific role is the key to creating a perfect CV.And whether it’s by highlighting your strengths above your weaknesses, cutting out unnecessary information, or simply using the most effective formatting â€" making small changes like these could make all the difference when it comes to standing out to employers and landing your dream job.Because even if you’re the perfect candidate for a role, you could still miss out if your CV doesn’t tick all the boxes.Free CV review    Need more CV advice?It takes an employer just seven seconds to save or reject a job applicant’s CV. This means creating a succinct CV is absolutely vital if you want to land that all-important interview. To find out how to make your CV stand out from the crowd, buy James Reed’s new book: The 7 Second CV: How to Land the Interview. Still searching for your perfect position?  View all available jobs  nowFind a job What Where Search JobsSign up for more Career AdviceSign up for moreCareer Advice Please enter a valid email addressmessage hereBy clicking Submit you agree to the CVs

Hoarders At Work Get Help Before Its Too Late - Personal Branding Blog - Stand Out In Your Career

Hoarders At Work Get Help Before Its Too Late - Personal Branding Blog - Stand Out In Your Career When you have to separate a very talented person from your company, it hurts. As my partner often repeated, “Nice beats genius every time.” That means playing nice â€" whatever else you do, make sure you fit into the culture and connect with people at work in a polite and congenial way. Respect for others is paramount, no matter what else you do. Playing well with others while doing good work is much more valued than extraordinary work done by a difficult person who doesn’t respect others. Having empathy, respect, and good boundaries are all part of the emotional intelligence that can come with good parenting, life experience or coaching. For many of us, relational skills are not innate or intuitive, but simply learned. The sooner, the better. There are certain chronic personal problems that cut down even a towering intellect, great talent, or an otherwise hardworking individual. Hoarding is one of those personal problems that can ruin your career. Maybe hoarding is more extreme than the mess some people make at work, often because a cleaning crew comes in and at least tosses away the worst of it. But sometimes, even the cleaning people can’t approach the task of untangling what’s work and what’s trash. And, they certainly can’t file away piles or make order out of chaos. You may have seen this at your office: a staff member who has an obvious insensitivity to the rules of shared space. Here’s what we faced at work, every day. A small aisle through half open boxes and old lunch sacks led the way toward my co-worker’s desk, where she sat amid a half dozen empty Coke cans and a stained, two day old Starbucks vente cup.   To her left and right, sat small mountains of discarded documents and crushed flyers. On her credenza, a load of whatnot crammed the small space in front of books leaning at different angles. Color charts splayed open, a clutch of paper cuttings sat precariously atop the cutter, and an exacto knife stuck into a board. The floor under her desk was crowded with more used bags, old paper and rotting food, giving her just a few inches of space to move her small chair. No amount of asking, explaining, or doing got the office tidied, much less clean. A couple of times each week I stayed late, putting things in order. But it didn’t take a half-day before she was sunk in her mess, and we all were surrounded by it. The best we could do was shut her door, but sometimes clients came in and we were mortified. Her office mate got sick and stayed sick for months, perhaps from the dust and the dirt. Plus, he was just plain miserable from his increasingly smaller oasis of clean amid her uncontainable mess. So, after years of trying to manage this, we had to be fair to everyone else in the office. We had to lose a hardworking teammate and a really talented person. No more hints, no more talks, no more cleaning up after her, no more good friend. We simply could not operate around the problems she was causing. In the end, it’s everyone’s loss. Are you struggling with hoarding or another personal problem that’s cutting away at the goodwill of your co-workers? There are many support groups that offer guidance, often with a sponsor who has made their way through the problem you have. Do something about it, and let your co-workers know what your plan is.

Woman Get What You Deserve With These Winning Strategies! - Personal Branding Blog - Stand Out In Your Career

Woman Get What You Deserve With These Winning Strategies! - Personal Branding Blog - Stand Out In Your Career Today’s working-woman embraces a culture of flexibility, oftentimes juggling dual roles as both a “career woman” and a “family woman.” For most young women, the future holds some hybrid of entering a working world and starting a family. As companies become more sensitive to the various demands placed on women who want both a career and a family, many changes are taking place in the job market. Personal relationships and familial roles are changing as well. Although some couples do share family responsibilities and some men even take the dominant role in family care and housework, these responsibilities still usually fall on the shoulders of the woman, whether she has a career or not. According to a 2009 employee benefits survey from Working Mother magazine, 54 percent of the nation’s employers offer some sort of flexible working arrangement and almost half offer a telecommuting option. Other lifestyle benefits are also increasingly popular in today’s workplace. These statistics indicate an important message: Do your research. Whether you’re going straight into the workforce from undergraduate school or seeking your first post-graduate position, you need to figure out which companies and firms are making it possible to be a working mother and where these companies are located. Even women graduates of the most prestigious and selective universities have plans of combining career with family at some point. A few years ago, a famous study focused on a graduating class of Yale University reported that 60  percent of women in this elite school planned to cut back on work or stop working entirely to have and raise children. Even with these astonishing numbers, only a few schools are establishing programs to prepare women to “step-out” and then to “re-enter” the workforce after spending time home with children. Hopefully the myriad of programs, workshops, recruiting firms, coaches, and consultants will grow exponentially as people everywhere work to assist women with the competing demands of work and family. The problem is that many jobs are organized around a full standard work week, and challenging these arrangements can be difficult. For the most part, women must broker flexible working arrangements using exceptional credentials or skills. On the plus side, flexible workers may be available at more affordable rates, and therefore nonprofit groups, small businesses, and start-up companies may be eager to make a deal and be more flexible with scheduling. The goal is to find a business solution for stay-at-home mothers who don’t want to make a once-in-a-lifetime decision between working and staying at home. There are several ways of handling the conflict: take a brief hiatus from work, use some combination of flextime and reduced hours while home hours are in demand, or move to a part-time work situation. As a solution, part-time work is often a drawback in professional work settings. Many part-time jobs pay little and don’t provide benefits. One research center found that approximately two-thirds of women who leave work to raise children want to re-enter professional life but feel that companies are reluctant to hire them. In fact, one study reports that female professionals who take three or years off earn 37 percent less, on average, than women who don’t take time off. What is a woman to do? Well, it begins with preparing now for what is probably inevitable: at some point, you may wish to have a family. If this is the case, you must position yourself as best you can to fulfill all of your goals. That means you should carefully examine your choice of college, graduate school, career, and city. You should gather information from women who have been down the path before, and learn from their experiences. The following is a list of specific programs at top universities that currently assist women in this process; pay close attention as other schools are certain to soon follow suit. How Higher Education is Focusing on Womens Career Needs: Harvard Business School (HBS) introduced a program called “Charting Your Course,” where alumnae were invited to come to HBS for two days to develop a strategic plan to return to work. One group included women who were stepping out for a few years to raise children and wanted a strategy to bridge the gap, keep skills current, and keep networks going. Another group of women were ready to return to the workforce but needed the tools to re-enter the market, to find the right employers, and to negotiate flexible working conditions. HBS also offered a more intense program called “New Path,” a six-day immersion to help women ascertain how their particular field had changed during their absence, how finance and information technologies have  advanced, and how new tools could be utilized to make contact with prospective employers. A few other elite schools have been developing similar programs to help women either rejoin the workforce after a break or to manage some combination of career and family work. Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business launched a “Back in Business” program to address the needs of women returning to work after taking time off to raise kids. Pepperdine University is at the forefront of these efforts, offering a part-time MBA program specifically designed for stay-at-home moms. Stanford’s Graduate School of Business is addressing the problem with several executive education programs for moms. Babson College offers a variety of programs through the Center for Women’s Leadership, through education, outreach, and research that assist women in achieving leadership goals. They also assist women in areas from stepping back into the workforce to global women’s entrepreneurship. Columbia University’s “Mothers in Business” is one of the nation’s first organized groups that specific ally addresses the concerns of MBA moms. The group offers roundtable discussions with alumni and provides networking opportunities and support services for women with children. Another innovative program is at the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania. Monica McGrath, Wharton adjunct professor of management, has studied the difficulties women face upon their return to the labor force and co-authored a study called “Back in the Game, Returning to Business after a Hiatus: Experience and Recommendations for Women, Employers, and Universities.” According  to McGrath, women should prepare for their return to work from the moment they leave. She suggests staying up-to- date on skills and keeping a hand in the working world while on hiatus. This may include keeping up professional licenses, taking courses, and staying connected with professional contacts, even if done informally. McGrath poses short-term consulting jobs or project work as viable options. Women can also improve their chances of job re-entry by keeping up with technology changes while out of the workforce. McGrath suggests that a woman state her case for hiring unapologetically and proactively, framing her story in business terms and with a positive tone. For example, “I felt I could make a better impact with my children by staying home for these years, and this is how I have stayed current with my skills.” Work for a parent/teacher organization could be framed as, “I was part of a team that raised over $0,000 in a fundraising effort.” McGrath urges schools to offer targeted career services, alumni networks, and educational programs for women hoping to eventually re-enter the workforce, and she urges students to ascertain various career path options that they may want to take after they have worked a few years. According to McGrath, “We need to encourage women to think of their career as a lifetime. They need to be asked, ‘What’s your game plan?’ The most progressive companies are diligent and strategic in planning the path for a talented person’s career. As women, we need to do a better job of that ourselves.” This blog was extracted from my recently published book From Diploma to Dream Job: 5 Overlooked Steps to a Successful Career; see  the last chapter for girls eyes only.   Author: Beth is Founder and President of Get Hired, LLC.   She advises students on how to bridge the gap from school to career.  Beth is the co-author of  From Diploma to Dream Job: Five Overlooked Steps to a Successful Career  (available on Amazon  http://www.amazon.com/dp/14687082) Her coaching assists students to successfully match their needs, interests, passions, skills, and personal goals with the needs of a sustainable industry in a sustainable location.  Beth is also a resource for print and online media and offers workshops for University Career Service Departments, Executive Recruiters, Outplacement Services, College Guidance Counselors and College Alumni Associations. See website for more details about Beth’s services  www.fromdiploma2dreamjob.com  You can follow Beth on twitter @BethKuhel

You Are as Rejected as You Make up Your Mind to Be

You Are as Rejected as You Make up Your Mind to Be Embed from Getty Imageswindow.gie=window.gie||function(c){(gie.q=gie.q||[]).push(c)};gie(function(){gie.widgets.load({id:'y8ZHl9G7QL5CxWM9x6Yd9Q',sig:'jT08-z-iLWojAdbIVbBJNckERy96BtidgqLGVaDI83g=',w:'509px',h:'338px',items:'581002709',caption: false ,tld:'com',is360: false })}); Scott Allan is the author of  Rejection Free: How to Choose Yourself First and Take Charge of Your Life by Confidently Asking for What You Want. His book provides a road map for preparing for rejection and refusing to let it rule your life. In a previous post, I wrote about how you can re-position rejection in your mind and take it less personally. In fact, Allan asserts that rejection is merely a story you tell yourself. You’re actually rejecting yourself, either by not trying for what you want or personalizing a decision that may not have anything to do with you. He writes, “When we buy into rejection, it solidifies the lies we formulated ages ago about our personal value and self-worth. …this is the foundation of self-rejection. We are harder on ourselves than anybody else. Staying hidden and out of sight is no way to live your life. It certainly isn’t going to put you on the path to fulfilling your master goal or dream.” The cure for self-rejection is to choose yourself. Don’t wait for the world to offer you the perfect opportunity; go out and seek it yourself.   “This is about choosing the person you want to be, and not molding yourself into what others think you should be. All of us can have what we want if we can only muster the courage to break through the fear that holds us back from doing the things that we love,” Allan writes. He also writes that this philosophy will not cure rejection. But it will help you take the power away from your fear. You’ll learn to live with fear, but you’ll no longer be living in fear. You can choose your reaction when you don’t get what you want. You can choose to brood or you can choose to move on to the next person or the next idea. Allan writes that it’s important for you not to assume that being rejected is a sign you’re on the wrong path. Thomas Edison famously said: “I have not failed 10,000 times. I have not failed once. I have succeeded in proving that those 10,000 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”   Stephen King’s manuscript for Carrie was rejected 30 times. JK Rowling was rejected 12 times and told that she should strongly consider getting a day job. When you choose yourself, you take the power away from people without the vision to choose you. (There are a lot of editorial “experts” who never saw how great some authors would be. Here’s a list of famous publishing fails. “If you believe that your rejection is real, it is,” Allan writes. Choosing yourself means you’ve decided that you’ll never allow another to determine if you are good enough.

Jumpstarting Your Motivation At Work

Jumpstarting Your Motivation At Work Photo Credit â€" Pexels.comSometimes finding motivation to work is hard.When we’re lacking motivation to get going we find ourselves doing nearly anything to stall and prevent ourselves from completing the task at hand. We check our social media accounts, get coffee, visit work friends, get more coffee, and then finally we set down to start work and… oh wait did someone just mention a new cat video that’s gone viral?If you are finding it difficult to muster the motivation and it is cutting into your productivity and performance, maybe it’s time to change things up.evalSmall changes to your current work pattern, such as developing a routine, taking breaks, and renewing a focus on your health, can make a monumental difference in jump starting your workplace motivation.1. Develop a New RoutineevalOne of the best ways to make a breakthrough in feeling more motivated at work is to literally make a change in how you are doing things. This can be something simple such as setting a g oal of finishing a task before going to get another cup of coffee, or a complete restructuring of the order in which you complete your goals.For instance, rather than starting your day by doing all the small things first, prioritize the big tasks right when you arrive and tackle the small ones in the afternoon.As you are working through your tasks, try to remember the purpose of the work you do. Finding purpose in your work can build resolve for what you’re doing and help to give you a direction. Not only that, but having a purpose that you believe in and care about is key to feeling motivated to do work in the long run.2. Reward Yourself with BreaksOne of the biggest mistakes that many employees make is failing to take much needed breaks. Studies have indicated that breaks are valuable ways to reenergize your work day. Breaks provide a powerful way to step away from work for a moment and think about other things â€" or nothing at all!When you come back to work after a break you m ay be able to look at problems in a different light, or feel ready to dive into a new task.One great way to incorporate breaks into your new routine is to reward yourself with breaks for completing certain tasks.evalFinish a big report? Take a 15 minute walk to celebrate.Waded through boat loads of emails? You earned that few minutes of face to face chat with your co-worker in the breakroom.Within reason, breaks are a phenomenal way to divvy up the day into smaller bite-sized chunks that don’t seem to drag on.3. Focus on Your HealthFinally, although it may seem unrelated, there is quite a lot of evidence suggesting our health plays a substantial role in our ability to remain motivated and productive throughout the day.evalFor instance, even mild dehydration has been implicated as an influencer of mood and energy levels in a negative way. Trying to avoid the morning doughnuts and eating healthy have also been shown to have profound impacts on the amount of energy we have and on the way our brain processes information.Beyond physical health, taking care of yourself mentally can also have a big impact on your motivation at work. Social workers have found that those people that focus on self-care tend to have more positive outlooks on life, sleep better, and have fewer health issues among other things. All of these things can make going into work and feeling more motivated to accomplish tasks a reality.Reigniting your motivation and enthusiasm for the work you are doing is an important thing to do if you are feeling sluggish. Perhaps the most significant way to do so is to bring about a change in your schedule and to reevaluate the purpose you find in your work.Additional changes to be made include taking consistent work breaks and making sure you are attending to both your mental and physical health.Good luck!