BLOGStreet, from JobStreet.com

Snippets: Highlight all your achievements

This is part of a series of articles to make your job hunting experience more meaningful with JobStreet.com.

A simple tip for your resume is to highlight all your achievements while keeping your mediocre results away. Remember that a resume is like your two or three-page sales pitch. You need to keep it informative, impressive and make sure it sends out the impact that it rightfully deserves. Simply said, all you need to do is to invoke that kind of curiosity in the interviewer that makes him want to meet the person behind the hit trailer you just gave him.

Do check back on 10 Mar 2009 for more tips!

Staying positive

JobStreet.com member Kum Cheong shares with us his experience of recession: what is it to him and how he got out of the last one.

Recession - a dreaded but unavoidable economic condition that no one wants to be part of. Just like what goes up must come down, an economic boom must necessarily be followed by an economic downturn or recession, which is what we are currently experiencing.

A few years back in 2003 when Singapore was struck by the SARS virus, our shaky economy, still reeling from the dot-com burst and post-911 events, went into an immediate tail-spin. As a result, unemployment rates soared to unprecedented levels.

During that time, I was unemployed for a total of eight consecutive months before I found a suitable part-time job and eventually I decided to return to school for higher education.

Having never directly gone through a recession before this, it was by far the darkest and loneliest eight-month period of my life. It was a harrowing experience but at the same time brought out a new whole side of me that I have never seen before. It completely changed my perspective of life from then on.

Click here to read the full story from him.

Social networking sites coming into their own

People used to think of social networking sites like LinkedIn or Facebook or Twitter as, well, websites that allow them to add friends and strangers to their expanding online social network and nothing more.

However, the global economic downturn has given these sites a new perspective. People are beginning to use them as a means for job opportunities.

According to an article by Julia Angwin in The Wall Street Journal, those annoying people who want to be your "friend" may come in very handy when you want to look for a job or a new career.

"Friends" on online social networks, says Angwin, are just "weak ties". They are basically acquaintances that form an important bridge between your close friends. And weak ties are particularly good for job searching because acquaintances can expose a job candidate to a much wider range of possibilities than his or her close friends can.

She wrote about a man who was looking for a developer for one of his startup companies. In the past, this person would conduct informal job hunts by sending out emails to his friends but within days of changing his Facebook status update to "Looking for a rails developer who likes to chat about sports",  his acquaintances had forwarded him two candidates for the job. "The two people I got the leads from were not people I would have thought to include (in an email)," he said.

Click here to read the full story.

Congratulations to our January monthly winners!

We wish to congratulate our January monthly winners for the JobStreet-A1 Team Malaysia Challenge!

The names above are the top 5 racers for the month of January. The race for the grand prize is now hotter than ever as we have more than 1,200 racers registered racers today. The grand prize winner will win an all-expense paid trip to Great Britain to watch A1GP live!

So what are you waiting for? Check out the JobStreet-A1 Team Malaysia Challenge NOW!

JobStreet.com goes to USM Career Talk

To all you university students and fresh graduates up north. JobStreet.com will be at the USM Career Talk. Details below:

Speaker Name: Charles Tan, Sales Team Manager of JobStreet.com
Topic: "Market Update and Getting the Job You Want"

Venue: USM Penang Campus
Date: 28 February 2009, Saturday
Time: 2.30pm - 3.10pm

Make sure you don't miss out on this talk as we will be sharing the latest updates on the career market as well as tips and tricks on getting the job you really want.

For more information and updates on which university/college JobStreet.com will be going, click here.

JobStreet.com goes to UNITEN Career Fair 2009

Attention to all university students and fresh graduates, JobStreet.com will be at the UNITEN Career Fair 2009 tomorrow. Details of this event below:

Venue: UNITEN Bangi
Date: 24-25 February 2009
Time: 9am - 5pm.

There will be lots happening at the fair, including Resume and Career Clinic. You can come expecting our experienced consultants to give you advices on the best job hunting tips and how to give your resume an edge over others.

So if you are around that area, make sure you come and don't miss out! See you there.

Snippets: Get me to the interview on time

This is part of a series of articles to make your job hunting experience more meaningful with JobStreet.com.

Short tip this week. Whenever you have appointments, don’t be late for them. That goes for the interview too. Make sue that you are not late. Be there at least 15 minutes earlier so that you can calm down and get accustomed to the surroundings. Also, there may be forms for you to fill.

Do check back on 28 Feb 2009 for more tips!

A reminder to know ourselves

You need to be fully aware of the roadblocks affecting your career because when you do, you will be able to choose the correct response from among the myriad of choices open to you. For instance, a student can turn his hobby (something he truly enjoys and is good at) into his career, e.g. gaming, Internet-related business, etc. You should be focusing on your strength (moving with the flow) instead of improving your weakness (going against the flow).

This is just an advice given by Desmond Chua who works in a global consulting firm and also coaches people to resolve their problems in career, relationship, communication, health and fitness.

So do you know what your strength is? How can you find and leverage on it to achieve your goals in life? Are you intrigued? If so, just click here to read Desmond's full article in which he also talks about the Enneagram.

Not the way to boost your resume

We wouldn't recommend you to do this but in Florida, a man had himself videotaped jumping off a causeway bridge. No, it wasn't any attempt to escape from the gloomy economy crisis in the United States but just to get himself a little more attention for his resume.

Police there said that the man, Christopher Grima, wanted to apply to a six-month job paying US$105,000 on the Great Barrier Reef in Australia and the bridge-jumping stunt was supposed to make his application shocking so that his prospective employers would give him a closer look.

According to Grima, he tried to leave quickly after making the 40-foot jump but unfortunately for him, the police arrived before he could get out of the water. He received a court summons for breach of peace and disorderly conduct but at least, he got his video made.

Don't act desperate

What should you do if you are an unemployed professional in the job market with years of skilled experience?

According to a placement consultant in the United States, don't act desperate when you approach potential employers. "It's a bad idea," said Arleen Gallagher of Adecco. She said that if you come across as desperate, the employer would think that all you wanted was the pay cheque. You wouldn't be thinking of doing serious work and if anything better came along, you'd be leaving."

So instead of acting desperate when applying for a job, she recommended that experienced job seekers should:

1. Emphasise on your experience and education, meaning you can take on more responsibility later when times get better;
2. Tell the new boss how you can make their life easier; and
3. If necessary, dumb down the resume.

"I would never suggest  that you lie in your resume, but you can simplify it. That's what people are doing right now," said Gallagher. Also, she suggested keeping an open mind and not to be afraid of trying something new as experience in one industry will likely cross over into another line of work.