BLOGStreet, from JobStreet.com

Snippets: Catching attention

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

The resume is not the place for you to write an essay. Leave that behind you. In the resume, your personal description should be brief and concise. Your achievements should be highlighted as bullet points. This little open secret will allow interviewers to read faster and understand you better. Remember, your resume is likened to a stepping stone. It’s the first critical piece to lure interviewers to consider you. So don’t let them fish for information in an essay. Help them to catch their attention with brief, precise bullet points.

Do check back on 10 May 2009 for more tips!

JOBapalooza '09

You are Invited to the BIGGEST Job Fair in the Philippines!

Featuring career talks, seminars, trainings, skills demonstration, scholarships, a raffle, concert. All on May 1, 2009 at the Mall Of Asia, Pasay City

Presented by TUCP, FFW, ALU, PTGWO, AWATU, TUPAS, AFW, POLO, ECOP and the Department of Labor and Employment, and brought to you by JobStreet.com Philippines!

Be seeing you there!

JobStreet.com winners head to Brands Hatch, UK for A1 race

Left to right: Simon Si (Regional Head of Communication, JobStreet.com), Ang
Kai Juan (competition winner), Azrai Razuan (Manager, Fanzone) and Aaron Lim
(Driver, A1 Team Malaysia)

Six lucky winners are having the trip of a lifetime this weekend, joining A1 Team Malaysia at the UK round of the A1GP World Cup of Motorsport. They are travelling to Brands Hatch, Kent in the British countryside where they'll get a very unique insight into top level international racing as guests of A1 Team Malaysia.

As A1 Team Malaysia's partner, we ran an online competition earlier this year that attracted thousands of entries to an innovative racing game. Ang Kai Juan was crowned racing champion in this promotion and won himself an all-expenses paid trip to the Brands Hatch race weekend, a prize which needed him to apply for a passport to make his first journey out of the country.

The prize-giving ceremony for the JobStreet.com promotion was held at the JobStreet.com office in Kuala Lumpur with driver Aaron Lim and Fanzone Manager Azrai Razuan presenting the prizes.

Two runners-up received prizes of a driving course at the Sepang circuit. They will be given tuition from specialist race driving instructors. Lim is expected to be giving passenger rides to the winners as part of their special day.

Owen Leed, Commercial Director of A1 Team Malaysia, commented: "We’re looking forward to sharing the experience of A1GP with our prize winners. I know they will be given a very unique experience and treated as very special guests when they visit Brands Hatch. Not only will they watch all the racing action but they'll have an exclusive 'behind-the-scenes' look at the team operation and meeting Aaron and the A1 Team Malaysia crew."

A1 Team Malaysia will be on track at the Brands Hatch circuit in the UK on 1-3 May 2009. For further information visit www.a1teammalaysia.com.my.

Time out: junk mail wisdom

Do you find that Junk mail has permeated deep into our society and has become an unavoidable way of life? It's not only the physical junk mail and junk brochures that we find stuffed into our letter boxes at home. At the office, I find that I have to delete about 20 to 30 percent of the messages in my inbox. Electronic junk mail. No amount of filtering can ever eliminate them.

But once in a while, there are some hidden gems. I almost routinely delete one recently but somehow, the message caught my attention first. From the perspective of the job hunter and careerist, the message would be worth sharing, I thought, before I consigned the junk email to the (where else) junk bin:

• Winning isn't everything. But wanting to win is.
• You would achieve more if you don't mind who gets the credit.
• When everything else is lost, the future still remains.
• Don't fight too much or the enemy would know your art of war.
• The only job you start at the top is when you dig a grave.
• If you don't stand for something, you'll fall for everything.
• If you do little things well, you'll do big ones better.
• Only thing that comes to you without effort is old age.
• You won't get a second chance to make the first impression.
• Only those who do nothing do not make mistakes.
• Never take a problem to your boss unless you have a solution.
• If you are not failing you're not taking enough risks.
• Don't try to get rid of bad temper by losing it.
• If at first you don't succeed, skydiving is not for you.
• Those who don't make mistakes usually don't make anything.
• There are two kinds of failures: those who think and never do, and those who do and never think.
• Pick battles big enough to matter, small enough to win.
• All progress has resulted from unpopular decisions.
• Change your thoughts and you change your world.
• Understanding proves intelligence, not the speed of the learning.
• There are two kinds of fools in this world: those who give advise and those who don't take it.
• The best way to kill an idea is to take it to a meeting.
• Management is doing things right. Leadership is doing the right things.
• Friendship founded on business is always better than business founded on friendship.

Snippets: First impression

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

Job interviewers can usually tell whether or not you are an ideal candidate for the job within the first minute. It’s called the first impression. Your personal appearance, outfit, facial expressions and body language can make or break you. To make a great first impression, walk in with confidence but not cockiness, give a firm handshake and not a limp one, introduce yourself in a pleasurable tone of voice, make eye contact, sit up straight, show your enthusiasm and take a deep breath! Always dress for success with a nice pant or skirt suit, even if the position or job is casual. Lay low on heavy cologne, perfume and makeup. And whatever you do, don't be late!

Do check back on 30 Apr 2009 for more tips!

Breakfast with JobStreet.com's Mark Chang

I was having breakfast with Mark Chang the other day and our conversation turned to PitchYourTalent, the latest product on offer from JobStreet.com. How would he explain PitchYourTalent to job seekers? Here is his take on it:

"Well, obviously it's a new service for both our clients and members. As you know, JobStreet.com is well known in this region as one of the prime movers in the online recruitment business. We've successfully run our business since 1996 and we have grown to six million members and 50,000 clients in eight countries.

"Traditionally, our business model has always been to have clients advertise their positions online and then we would get job seekers to apply to these jobs from the JobStreet.com website. We are very satisfied with this time-tested model but of course, we are never one to sit still. We are always looking at alternatives to improve our services and one day, we were struck with this novel idea.

"What if we turn the process upside down? What if we have job seekers advertising themselves? That's what we are trying to create with PitchYourTalent. It's a new excitement where job seekers now have an opportunity to pitch their talent to the world. Let them tell the world about their experience, achievements, skills, qualifications .... and then let companies who are in search of good talent come to get them."

To know more about PitchYourTalent, click here.

An open letter to a graduating daughter

This is a career article from the JobStreet.com vault. The writer, Danny Pancho, was -- and still is -- a well-respected senior Human Resource practitioner in the Philippines. When we first published it a few years ago, we received many comments about its message. Today, we find the article has retained its ability to inspire people. To all graduating students out there, please read and understand the article.

Dear Elynaea,

Today is your day. As you sit barely listening to the endless stream of graduation speeches, a lot of things must be rushing through your head and producing a mix of emotions.

You must be recalling those days of struggle -- the countless hours spent studying, doing research, preparing projects, agonizing over possible test results -- and relief passes through you as you realize that they are finally over.

Too, your mind must be trying to peer into the future. You daydream of landing your first job, of earning your first salary, even of eventually getting your own car, acquiring your own flat and traveling to different places.

But as you gaze around, the sight of your classmates must dampen your enthusiasm and fuel feelings of anxiety. So many new graduates soon to go looking for a job, just like you. And you must be wondering: How will I fare in the job market? Will I be another jobless statistic? Or will I be among the lucky ones who find a good job right away? How tough is it really out there? Will I be successful in my chosen career?

To read the whole article, please click on the links below:

Malaysia | Singapore | Philippines | Indonesia | Other Countries

Done anything with your New Year resolutions yet?

Yes, have you done anything to follow through with all the New Year resolutions or goals that you made at the beginning of the year? I know the steely resolve was there when you sat down on 31 Dec last year or 1 Jan this year to think about all the things you want to do this year. However, many people tell me that their resolve would start wavering by 2 Jan. By 3 Jan, all thoughts about their resolutions would have disappeared from their minds.

If you can identify yourself with this situation, perhaps you need some push to help you move along and attain your goals. Desmond Chua, in one of his contributions to JobStreet.com, emailed me recently to share his nine sure-fire steps for anyone to achieve their goals.

One of his observations he made was that we must identify the challenges. They are preventing us from reaching our goals. The challenges can be anything, such as fear, self-doubt, envy or lack of faith. Whatever they are, he recommends that we list them down in writing in order to put the goal attainment in their proper perspective and assist in laying out the different possibilities of resolving them.

I think this is a useful piece of information. If you want to read more, here are the links:

Malaysia | Singapore | Philippines | Other countries

How soon can you submit a resume?

I'm sure we all understand the importance of getting our resume ready whenever we want to apply for a job. Last week, we were rather intrigued to find out the level of preparedness of our job seekers. if a dream job comes along, would you be excited? Would you want to apply for it? I would, but would you?

However, wanting to apply for a job is not the same as applying for the job itself. If our resume is ready, it's really no big deal. Just log into your MyJobStreet account and shoot off your electronic resume to the employer. If the job vacancy requires a hard copy of the resume, no problem too: just print it out and send it along. But then, we suspected that some job seekers may not actually have an updated resume ready at hand. They would still require time to update it.

How long will it take them to update their resumes? On our websites in Malaysia, Singapore, the Philippines and Indonesia, we've been asking this question in a poll since last week. Here is a preliminary result from these polls:

By and large, we can safely conclude that the majority of job seekers do have their resumes ready at hand. They are quite up-to-date with their latest job information and if a dream job were to come along, they are able to send off the resume to the employer. Indonesian job seekers are the most prepared, scoring 80 percent on the graph whereas Singaporeans seem to be the least prepared with their resumes, scoring only 62 percent. More evidence of their level of preparedness: Singaporeans scored highest when they admitted that they would take about a week to update their resumes. By comparison, job seekers in the other three countries indicated that if they cannot send off their resumes immediately, just give them a day or so to spruce up their resumes before they apply to a job. It's an interesting poll which gives a fair insight into the minds of our job seekers.

The poll will still run on our websites until next Monday and you still have time to cast your votes. Here are the links to the four polls:
Malaysia: click here
Singapore: click here
The Philippines: click here
Indonesia: click here

Snippets: Building rapport

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

Doing business is a lot about building a rapport, and building a rapport with a job interviewer is equally as important. Studies show that job interviewers tend to hire candidates based on whether or not they are like them, as well as whether or not they seem like a match for the company culture. So the trick at interviews is to emphasize the similarities between yourself and the interviewer. Take notice of the way they speak and what kind of vocabulary and phrases they use, as well as their expressions and seating position. While subtle mimicking can unconsciously go a long way, don’t forget that at the end of the day, you have to be yourself.

Do check back on 20 Apr 2009 for more tips!