Career Errors: Straight Talk about the Steps and Missteps of Career Development

Career Errors: Straight Talk about the Steps and Missteps of Career Development by Frank Burtnett, a career counselor who has specialized in student services, is a comprehensive tool that professionals can utilize to explore the development process through the life of one’s career. This book outlines eight phases that the professional must recognize in order to achieve success and satisfaction in their career. Following this, the author explains 25 common errors that professionals make while pursuing careers. The topics covered include job searches, terminations, coping with the workplace environment, ineffective resumes, interview failures, and missed growth opportunities. In addition, the author provides charts and simple guidelines for the process of career development, therefore the reader is given a tangible work plan to act upon. The concept of balance is also covered so the reader can understand holistic career and life satisfaction.

Strengths: This book functions well as a tool in place of a live career counselor. It can also be very useful as a training guide for those wishing to become career counselors, or for parents seeking advice for a child conducting career research and preparing to enter the workforce.

Weaknesses: The author writes in a somewhat stern tone, therefore younger readers may be put off. 

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Burtnett, Frank. Career Errors: Straight Talk about the Steps and Missteps of Career Development. Rowman & Littlefield, 2014.

Career Transitions Center West Michigan

The Career Transitions Center of West Michigan is a service comprised of volunteers that provides workshops, informative articles, and one-to-one coaching for area residents looking to hone their professional skills and define a career plan. The workshop sites include area libraries. Some examples of workshops available to attend are:

Job & Career Accelerator

The hiring professionals who volunteer lead the participants in discovering powerful, free tools for creating résumés, writing effective cover letters and informing career aspirations. Attendants will create an online customized résumé, learn to target online searching for open positions, access tutorials for computer skills, write cover letters and manage your successful job search.

Behavioral Interviewing and Effective Negotiating Strategies

In this class, current or potential professionals can learn the essential techniques to a successful interview and negotiate terms of employment.

The website offers articles that give valuable advice for interview preparation, such as identifying strengths, weaknesses, and work styles.

Strengths: The volunteers who work with Career Transitions Center are all hiring professionals, so the coaching they offer in the workshops and individual sessions has real-life value for the job seeker.

Weaknesses: The workshops are the most popular of the services the center offers, but one must attend the workshop to benefit. Materials covering the workshop agendas are not offered through the website.

www.ctcwm.org

Job Searching with Social Media for Dummies

“Harness Social Media to Land your Dream Job”

 Job Searching with Social Media for Dummies by Joshua Waldman is a great tool for the job seeker who is a recent graduate, one seeking a career transition, or one returning to the job market after an absence. In addition, this book contains helpful tips for the currently employed to boost their future marketability. Social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn are proven platforms for facilitating connections and demonstrating passions and interest. This book enables the candidate to use the power of the Internet to research and identify job opportunities. For those actively seeking a position, the steps outlined in this book, such as how to brand yourself online or understanding the latest changes to social platforms and websites, can help the reader create a strategy for getting the job they want.

Job Searching with Social Media For Dummies covers topics that the modern job seeker would consider vital, such as creating effective online profiles and resumes to sell your strengths; maintaining your online reputation and understanding electronic etiquette; using the power of personal branding and building your brand online; avoiding common pitfalls, such as jumping into filling out a social media profile without a strategy; getting to know Twitter, the only real-time job board with literally thousands of jobs posted daily; using social media sites to uncover opportunities in the "hidden job market" ahead of the competition; and much more.

Strengths: This book provides thorough coverage of relevant topics for a job seeker to be competitive in their search, and does so succinctly. It is also possible for the reader to gain benefit from only a few of the chapters.

Weaknesses: There is a heavy dependence on theory in the concepts proposed in this book, rather than on actual evidence of success.

Waldman, Joshua. Job Searching with Social Media for Dummies (2nd Edition). Somerset, NJ, USA: John Wiley & Sons, 2013.

Purdue OWL Job Search Writing

Created and maintained by faculty and staff of Purdue University, Purdue OWL (best known as the premiere authority for research and citation resources by college students worldwide) is celebrating 20 years of providing users with easy to understand, self-guided writing assistance. 

Purdue OWL Job Search Writing (POJSW), a division of the Purdue Online Writing Lab, provides detailed explanations and step-by-step instructions for writing topics associated with the job search process: 

• application preparation
• job search letters
• resumes and vitas
• video resumes (recently added)

In addition, POJSW provides grammar and writing tips, job skill checklists, examples of employment documents (cover letters and resume) and other helpful advice to assist job seekers in landing that coveted job.  Applicants creating resumes are offered tips on explaining both limited and extensive work experience, tailoring resumes for specific positions, resume design, choosing the correct format, and other resume-related topics.

The newest component, video resume creation, was introduced this summer.  In June 2014, Purdue OWL launched the video resume "vidcast" on its YouTube channel. This vidcast (one of over 30 Purdue OWL instructional videos) introduces and instructs users in the creation, content requirements and distribution of video resumes.  These specialized resumes use the integration of images, video and text to effectively demonstrate those attributes that are difficult for job applicants to transmit in print:  personality and creativity.

Dr. Muriel Harris, former director and founder of the Purdue Writing Lab, partnered with graduate student David Taylor to create the Purdue Online Writing Lab.  Their goal was to bring free writing assistance to those who were physically unable to go to the Writing Lab.  Over the years, the site has been improved and updated by Purdue OWL staff, Purdue University Associate Professors and professional writing staff who are experts in providing online writing instruction to Purdue students and worldwide users.

Source:

Purdue job search writing (2014).  Retrieved October 19, 2014 from https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/section/6/

Occupational Outlook Handbook

The Occupational Outlook Handbook (OOH) is a publication of the United States Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLR) that educates users about:

• What workers do on the job
• Work environment
• Education, training, and other qualifications needed to enter the occupation
• Pay
• Projected employment change and job prospects from 2012 to 2022
• Similar occupations
• Contacts for more information

The Handbook is released every two years in a print and free, online version that can accessed on the BLR website.   The BLR is the principal Federal agency responsible for measuring labor market activity, working conditions, and price changes in the economy.

Covering about 84 % of jobs in the U.S. economy, the 334 occupational profiles contained in the OOH are well-organized and searchable by keyword or browsed by category or in alphabetical order (by occupational name). The OOH also contains 2012 Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) information on median pay, entry-level pay and occupation-specific on-the-job training necessary for competency in a chosen occupation.  In addition, users are also provided with relevant work experience that may substitute for a lack of formal education.  Ten-year projections for the number of jobs, projected job outlook , and employment change are also included.

Additional resources include a guide for teachers and students researching occupations along with a list of other career-related information published by the BLR and other governmental agencies.  The Quick-Facts Table provides users with an at-a-glance summary of key occupation information.  The OOH, revised every 2 years by a staff of economists in the Employment Projections program at the Bureau of Labor Statistics, is a trusted source of occupation information in the United States.  

Source:

Occupational Outlook Handbook.  (2014-2015). Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Department of Labor. Retrieved October 19, 2014 from http://www.bls.gov/ooh/

Glassdoor

When applying for a job, it is important to have information on the company. It helps job seekers decide if it is a company they would want to be part of or if it does not fit into their career plans. By conducting research on a company, you will learn their mission statement and focus. That information will assist you when writing a tailored cover letter. Before going into an interview, it is always a good idea to have knowledge and understanding of the company. 

Glassdoor is a great place to begin researching a company, it has 6 million and counting resources to help job seekers. It provides information on many companies, the information ranges from companies' finances to their mission statements. Glassdoor provides employee reviews on everything from the interview process to the CEO. It provides 6 million resources for job seekers in an effort to show what it's like to work in different companies. 

Glassdoor's layout is user friendly and  straightforward. It is easy for users to search for information on companies. The individual company pages are well organized with sections clearly labeled. It is simple for users to locate specific information or browse different sections. It is not only a place to find company information, it also allows users to conduct job searches.

The only downside to Glassdoor is that it does not provide hiring manager information. Job seekers can begin their research on Glassdoor but they have to do more investigating to find information such as the name of the hiring manager and who is addressed in the cover letter. Also, the amount of information available could be overwhelming in the beginning for some people.

Below is a short video that shows many of Glassdoor’s features and how to navigate the site :

SImply Hired

There are many job searching sites available to people but most of them are not effective. Simply Hired is one of the most reliable and effect job searching sites on the internet right now. It connects job seekers with jobs and employers with qualified candidates. The site is user friendly and offers many features that are helpful and beneficial to users.

Simply Hired has a very simple and clean design.

 

On Simply Hired, people can search for specific job titles, companies, or job skills. Users can narrow the search by location or can be worldwide. Job seekers also have the option of browsing job listings by category. There are also “trending jobs” that may interest people. Simply Hired posts jobs from all over the web, from job boards to newspapers and many places in between. There are approximately six million open jobs located in one convenient place for users to access.

Simply Hired has a feature called SimplyApply which is a quick and easy way to apply for many of the job openings.

 

When users find a job they are interested in and it has the SimplyApply button, they can click on it. It will then take them to the job description and requirements. From there, they can fill out basic information and submit a resume and cover letter. For jobs that are not eligible for SimplyApply, it takes a little more time to fill out and submit the job application.

The features of Simply Hired are designed to make job searching more convenient and useful to job seekers. The advanced search option does that by allowing users to narrow down their search to the most relevant job opportunities. 

Simply Hired lets people save, share and hide jobs with the click of a button.

Users can connect to their LinkedIn accounts and sign up for email alerts on different job listings. People can also filter the search results by different criteria for example, date posted, education level, etc. A filter that seems to be unique to Simply Hired is the special filter section, which has categories such as New Graduates, Mom Friendly, Fortune 500, etc.

Job seekers can sign up to make an account so that their search results and preferences are saved. It makes it easier to keep track of which jobs they have applied for and saved. It also lets Simply Hired produce relevant searches for users based on the jobs that they saved and/or hid. People are able to upload resumes, which will save them time when applying for jobs.