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Snippets: Self-promotion

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

Learn the fine art of self-promotion. If you have had major accomplishments or created successful programmes, make sure people know about them, especially the people in influential positions who could help you advance professionally. Let it be known that you are seeking a promotion or the next step up in your career.

Do check back on 20 Oct 2009 for more tips!

Snippets: The pre-interview homework

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

Before you attend any interview -- and normally, you should do this days before the interview -- do your research and preparation. Try and find out more about the job and the company. What's the company background and how does it operate? It will boost the opinion of you in the eyes of the employers if you show the enthusiasm to know more of the company you hope to join.

Do check back on 10 Oct 2009 for more tips!

Wanted: well-rounded candidates with leadership skills

As the labour market tightens, organisations worldwide are strengthening their employer value propositions to appeal to young talents, writes SUZIEANA UDA NAGU in The New Straits Times this week.

She quoted British American Tobacco (Malaysia) Berhad (BAT) human resources director Cheryl Wong as saying: "In the spirit of diversity, BAT prefers hiring a mix of foreign and locally trained Malaysians. We believe that diversity brings better solutions, which translate into better business sense. People with different experience will bring something unique to the table."

She comes across impressive local graduates among the shortlisted candidates. However, she admitted that they were getting harder to find. "We want well-rounded candidates who possess the leadership skills we look for, as well as good academic qualifications and effective communication skills. Being a multinational company, we do need people who communicate well in English," says Wong.

She feels it is a shame when some local candidates show "impressive track record in academic and extra-curricular activties but cannot express themselves well."

Wong is not the only employer faced with the challenge of finding suitable candidates. Despite the global recession and the weakest employment outlook in decades, employers worldwide are still finding it difficult to hire young people to fill positions which require critical skills such as leadership, teamwork and problem-solving.

The newspaper article quoted the United Nations as stating that "one of the top three socio-economic issues facing the planet is the lack of talent despite population increases,"  underlining the worry that talent shortage is indeed a global concern.

In the United States, human resource experts predict a critical skills gap in organisations in the next five years. Possibly by 2014, there would be a 30 per cent decline in young workers entering the workforce and a 50 per cent growth in retirement of skilled knowledge workers. Their concern was that as the situation grew more serious, it could threaten "the engines of world economic growth and prosperity." Governments globally are taking measures to mitigate the impending shortage such as improving educational and vocational training provisions, adopting strategic migration policies and encouraging experienced older workers to remain in employment.

Snippets: Stepping stone

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

That first job you do may not be your dream job but it is a stepping stone to a successful career. And it is the satisfaction that you get from working and the quest for knowledge that will make you work hard.

Journalist Quentin Lim said the first job was not a time for fresh graduates to demand for high salaries and benefits. He adds: "At this point, they have no experience and so salary should not be the most important factor. What is most valuable is the experience you can gain. Fresh graduates also cannot afford to be lazy. We have to work even harder to stand out from the rest, as there are so many graduates these days. During my parent's time, being a graduate was enough to guarantee a job but today, that’s not enough. You need to pick up skills which are good enough for the employers."

Do check back on 10 Sep 2009 for more tips!

Preparation and research

Through a local recruiting firm, Cindy (not her real name) had landed a meeting with the chief financial officer of a retail company that she hoped to work for. After exchanging small talk, the CFO asked her: "So, what do you think of our stores?"

The candidate replied honestly that she'd never been in one.

Oops. Needless to say, she didn't get the position.

Preparation and research are always important when trying to land a job, and this is even truer in today's competitive market.

Employers have long commented that today's interviewees simply do not do their homework before they turn up for interviews. "We like people who knows a little of what we do, even though their knowledge may be very basic," one employer said. "Anything you can learn about the company is going to give you a leg up in the interview process. It helps you understand the business, know if it's a good fit and shows that you've taken the extra time and effort that every employer wants to see."

So where do you start? The Internet is a great tool, and a simple Google search and visit to the employer's website is a logical place to start.

At the very least, go to the company's website. If it's a consumer products company, find out what they make. If they're a financial services company, learn about types of services they offer. If it's a retailer, see what products they sell and where their stores are, and and make sure you go to one.

A Google search can turn up news coverage about the company, along with information that might be useful to know. If the company is publicly listed on the local stock exchange, there's usually a wealth of information available.

Making yourself more marketable

What can you do to make yourself more marketable to prospective employers? Here are a few tips to consider:

• Take a little time off to get your head together. A week or two, maybe longer. Then, tackle it head-on. It is a numbers game. The more contacts you make, the better chance you have of finding a job.
• Get involved in networking groups. Talk to friends, family and all the people you know. Tell them your story, plant lots of seeds. Eventually, one of those seeds will sprout. Draw your geographic circle wider and expand the search territory. Are you willing to relocate? If your family is not willing to move, are you willing to work somewhere during the week and come home on the weekends?
• An old favourite of ours: compose or update your resume. This is fundamental because it’s the first opportunity to impress a company or hiring manager. Weed out the typos and mistakes in punctuation. For such an important document which is like your professional name card, it should be well thought out and thoroughly proofread. It’s money well spent to work with a professional resume service.
• Express your email address and mobile number prominently in your resume. Today, front and centre, prospective employers need the ability to contact you electronically.
• Include a well-constructed chronological list of companies and positions. Your career experience and education are the most critical elements.
• Tailor the resume according to the audience. Have a good professional layout to set yourself apart from the rest of the pack because you’re competing against a lot of different people.
• When getting ready for an interview, practice, practice, practice. The more you practice, the more confident you’ll be and the more prepared you'll be to look the interviewer in the eye.
• At the interview, listen and be thoughtful and responsive when answering questions. Pausing to think about an answer is not a bad thing.
• After the interview, send a handwritten Thank You note. This is somewhat more powerful than just an emailed Thank You message.
• Lastly, keep a positive attitude because being on a job search is a full-time commitment.

JobStreet.com in Perak for Resume and Career Clinic

We organised a Resume and Career Clinic recently with KPerak in Ipoh and received overwhelming response with over 300 candidates signing up for the clinic. The Resume and Career Clinic gave the attendees more effective ways in writing their resumes. Generally, as HR Managers would only spend 30 seconds on an average per resume, it would be utterly important that a resume does just that. Too short may mean insufficient information but too long may mean that the resume may not be considered.

 The majority of the candidates were from the working population and some of them were managers who have not written a resume in ages!

Also, attending an interview without the right interview tips may prove to be a disadvantage. With the Interview tips presented at the Resume and career Clinic, the candidates would be better prepared. As they say, preparation is everything and if we fail to plan, we have just planned to fail. Many questions were asked during the Q&A session and it was indeed a session which benefited the job seekers. 

 The event was well organised and both JobStreet.com and KPerak certainly would want to do more for JobStreet.com members in Perak.  So, see you soon at the next event.

Snippets: Salaried jobs or entrepreneurial jobs?

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

It’s an employer’s market out there. Many graduates have the perception that there are lots of better-paying jobs and it is the norm for them to look for salaried jobs rather than improve their entrepreneurial skills. However, they should also think about going into sales and marketing jobs, which pay well, instead of complaining about low salaries and then keep on changing jobs.

Do check back on 20 Aug 2009 for more tips!

Getting hungry on the job

There's a debate going on that says local graduates are not hungry enough to look for work and their attitude could be a reason for the high unemployment among this group of people.

According to a report in The Star in Nov 2005, there is truth in the observation that local graduates are less competitive when it comes to looking for jobs. Even those who have found employment are often not serious enough in their work and they expect quick promotions because they are graduates. Thus, many employers are put off by some job seekers who expect good pay and perks when they should be trying to convince the management of the advantages of recruiting them.

Employers are choosy as they must be sure that their prospective employees meet the company’s requirements and can make positive contributions once hired. But some fresh graduates are choosier than the employers because, coming from a middle-income background, they can afford to be out-of-work longer as their families have the financial means to look after them.

On the other hand, there are many graduates in desperate need of jobs. They need to look after themselves and their families or to repay loans they borrowed to finance their education. But due to their shortcomings, they are unable to convince companies to hire them or to give them a chance to prove themselves.

Lack of communication skills and a weakness with languages, especially English, are among the handicaps faced by many applicants. Even though the government pours in millions to retrain them over a few short months, these handicaps cannot be overcome easily.

The newspaper suggests that instead of worrying about their global rankings, local universities should be more concerned with providing the right courses to make their undergraduates more marketable and competitive. There is still no light at the end of the tunnel, the newspaper commented, and the public universities must start serious work in dealing with it. It added that a sure sign of success would be that local graduates could fit into both the local and foreign job markets and those involved in such a project must make this happen as quickly as possible.

What makes you more employable?

Two recent overseas surveys posed questions to employers to find out what they want from their graduate recruits. The consensus is that employers want intelligent and enthusiastic individuals who can organise and plan their work and interact with others effectively. Some of these skills are already honed in the university or college, but others will need to be developed outside your studies. Your applications will be more convincing if you can point to a range of situations in which you developed the skills the employers seek and make yourself more employable. Here then are the highlights of the surveys.

University of Central England’s Employer Satisfaction survey
Recruiters were asked to rank 60 skills in order of importance. The top 12 listed as most important were:

    * Willingness to learn
    * Commitment
    * Dependability/reliability
    * Self-motivation
    * Team work
    * Communication skills (oral)
    * Co-operation
    * Communication skills (written)
    * Drive/energy
    * Self-management
    * Desire to achieve/motivation
    * Problem-solving ability

Yet another research gave the picture of a complete graduate as requiring another set of skills which are rather similar to the UCE survey.

Read more here!