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Archive for professional development

Level Up Your Soft Skills to Grow Your Career

March 5th, 2020

A colleague recently asked about increasing soft skills, including resources and how to go about it. Here is my answer and the link to the article she wrote from it.

Lezlie, thanks for asking about leveling up soft skills.  Blessedly, there are tremendous free and low-cost options for people to obtain professional development online and in-person.  Typically, that in-person training is more at corporate, community college, and community center/library level, whereas online comes from multiple sources, including LinkedIn.  However, individuals must be careful in thinking that any course can transmit into soft skills immediately.  Mentorship is also incredibly valuable.  From interpersonal communication, public speaking, conflict management, and emotional intelligence, to trend awareness, situational awareness, and time management, all of these skills are developed over time and with practice.  This means practicing with others, using it in your daily interactions and approaches in your workplace and personal life, and realizing you can’t work on 10 of these simultaneously.  Just like learning a new language, it is with use that you gain proficiency.  Read about them, take courses in them, and use them.  As a couple of skills start to become more routine to you, add another.  Also, remember that others come equipped with certain skills you don’t have and vice versa, so learn from them.   

https://www.resumelezlie.com/how-to-dominate-your-career-change-with-soft-skills/

Karen Silins is a multi-certified, award winning resume writer, career, business and personal branding coach working with individuals and small businesses. After graduating with degrees in education and vocal performance, she made her own career transition into the Human Resources realm. Karen left Human Resources to become an entrepreneur and help jobseekers, executives and fellow entrepreneurs achieve their goals. She keeps current regarding trends in the resume writing, coaching, HR, small business and marketing industries by working daily with individual clients on resume development and career coaching, executive/career management coaching, consulting for small businesses in business plan development, marketing, blogging, hiring and overall HR processes, and providing 20-50+ seminars and workshops annually to a variety of organizations in the greater Kansas City area. She can be reached via her website at www.careerandresume.com.

Categories Career Coaching, Career Management, Careers, Job Search, Personal Branding
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View Challenges as Opportunities!

November 30th, 2019
View Challenges as Opportunities

Challenges and mistakes are opportunities for learning.  Instead of seeing an issue, error or new software as a pain, see it as learning – an ability to expand your mind, obtain a new skill, or to ensure you don’t make the same mistake a second time.  Your resistance is usually fear of the unknown, or that people will know you were inaccurate or made a misstep.  Welcome to everyone’s life, as we all make mistakes and are called on to learn new things. 

Start small, and chunk your learning into short blocks of time, creating far less stress and far more success.  That seemingly unending maze of difficulty will become shorter and easier to tackle. Embrace anything learning/training as a chance to expand your abilities, career and life, and watch your fear disappear.

Categories Business Coaching, Career Coaching, Career Management, Career Transition, Inspiration, Job Search, Life Coaching
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A Worthy New Year’s Resolution: Invest in YOU!

December 26th, 2018
A Worthy New Year's Resolution: 
 Invest In You

Now is the time we all make that New Year’s resolutions list.  My question to you is how often list includes investing in your personal and professional development?  I’m not talking about buying yourself a present or an espresso, losing weight, exercising more, or the myriad of typical resolutions.  I mean true investment in your career and life?  While many in the workforce claim they want this benefit from an organization they work for, when offered it is often not utilized unless companies force the issue and require training.  This article is to steer you towards investing in yourself for 2019. 

Just like you lose money and essentially work for free a part of each day if your company offers a 401K with a match and you do not take advantage of the “free money,” the same goes for personal and professional development. From taking a cooking or photography course to Business Writing, Microsoft Excel or Stephen Covey’s Seven Habit’s course, you gain insight into you, learn something new, expand personal or professional horizons, and, if professional development, bolster career potential, possibly preserving your job in difficult times.

So, do I follow this rule. Yes, I practice what I preach and hold 17 separate certifications, take several webcasts annually, and I am about to hold gain another certification. Do I advertise all of them? No, as many are antiquated and no longer apply, but I do certainly maintain several of them, and look to strengthen my skillset when possible with new training. Before you think, wow, she is addicted to training. I have been in business over 19 years and some of the certifications took six to eight weeks and some six months, so I don’t spend all my time obtaining them. I do however understand several things very important to coaching. One, I must realize I don’t have all the answers. Two, I must be willing to constantly challenge myself and learn new techniques, assessment types, ways of viewing a client issue, etc. Third, I must be willing to be coached and critiqued if I am to be an effective coach and writer to others. This means professional and personal development and having a coach. Soon, I will be participating in a mastermind group, and look forward to seeing how that might strengthen my business as well.  Of course, that will probably prompt another article.

Where do I find the time? Well, to put it simply, I make the time, and so can you. We choose what we make time for in our lives. I will give you a couple of examples of friends who do this effectively. I have a friend who has four children, all very engaged in a variety of school and personal activities, she takes care of an elderly relative in her home, has a husband who works a great deal of overtime, works a full-time job herself, and is going to back to school to get her masters. Oh, and by the way, she is setting the grade curve in all her classes with her awesomeness. I am, needless to say, truly proud of her.  Where does she get the time?  She decided to make the time.

The second friend is a business woman, has two young children, a husband who runs his own successful business, is highly involved in volunteer activities, and she trains others in her business as well. Both ladies are more than full time, and both make it work because they made a decision.

We are the “excusitis” crowd in this day and age (yes, I made up the word), a multi-generational group constantly saying we don’t have time. Yet, we watch too much television, sit on iPhones and digital devices wasting hours of time, and run ourselves (and our children) ragged with excess activities we have no need to do. Whether it is just hard for you to say no to something or you are someone who simply cannot have downtime, you have created this situation! Stop saying you don’t have time for something as important as your career and personal development. Make time, it will pay huge dividends. That television show you miss, phone or digital device time you give up, or extra activity you should never have said yes to in the first place will not suffer, but if you don’t make time to improve yourself, your life and career will be impaired.

So, I ask, will you make the decision/resolution to create a little extra time in your schedule to be a better you in 2019, both in your career and personal life?  To paraphrase a popular commercial – are you worth it?

Karen Silins is a multi-certified, award winning resume writer, career, business and personal branding coach working with individuals and small businesses. After graduating with degrees in education and vocal performance, she made her own career transition into the Human Resources realm. Karen left Human Resources to become an entrepreneur and help jobseekers, executives and fellow entrepreneurs achieve their goals. She keeps current regarding trends in the resume writing, coaching, HR, small business and marketing industries by working daily with individual clients on resume development and career coaching, executive/career management coaching, consulting for small businesses in business plan development, marketing, blogging, hiring and overall HR processes, and providing 30-70+ seminars and workshops annually to a variety of organizations in the greater Kansas City area. She can be reached via her website at www.careerandresume.com.

Categories Business Coaching, Career Management, Career Transition, Careers, Job Search
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What is a Waste of Space, Unprofessional or Inappropriate on Your Resume?

November 29th, 2017

What is a Waste of Space, Unprofessional or Inappropriate on Your Resume?

I found the above picture yesterday in a search for graphics, and it immediately struck me as perfect for my article. While everyone writing their resume is doing so in earnest and with the best information they have, often the person writing it may have received bad resume advice from friends and family, used poorly written sample resumes or just be winging it to get their resume done for a potential job.  There are several items that jobseekers put on their resumes that are unnecessary, take up excess space, and look unprofessional.  Here are a few I see on a regular basis:

–An Objective:  Instead of putting a tiresome, repetitive objective about how you want to work for a company that loves you and hugs you and will take care of you forever, how about the job title for the specific job you are applying for, and for which the resume is tailored.  There will be no doubt by the reader what you are applying for, and the job title is most likely a keyword in their system.  Then add a list of job/industry related keywords, or three bullet points highlighting great accomplishments, or a one sentence statement of purpose.  Make sure anything you use at the top of the document with your job title is also communicated in the body of the resume.

–References Available Upon Request:  The interviewers already know this, just bring your reference listing to the interview.

–Your Picture:  A picture on LinkedIn is great, but not on your resume.  Not only is there a potential for discrimination but the Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) don’t work well with pictures.

–Fancy Graphics:  Similar to above; this is great for handing your resume to someone, but not for the ATS.  Chances are the ATS won’t be able to read the document, or it will place a multitude of unrecognizable symbols in your resume.

–Personal Information:  I have actually seen the following on resumes:   person is in “good health,” has 10 children, height and weight numbers,  hobbies that are a little too personal and don’t relate to the job or create interest, and spousal details.  Again, there is discrimination potential, and these items are not appropriate for the document.

–Obvious Skills:  Microsoft Office; it is always better to give the specific programs – like Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Access.  You can also do the following:  Microsoft Office:  Word, Access, Excel and PowerPoint, and then you have all the potential keywords.  Phrases like detail oriented, email usage, and problem solver can go away too, they are blaringly general.

–Be Detailed:   Never use general information and vague keywords when you can be precise or explain something in a reasonably short bullet point.  However, let’s not use too short of a bullet point.  For instance, I see the following constantly on resumes: “Answer Phones.”  That isn’t a bullet point, it is a very short statement.  Here is a bullet that describes answering phones.  Answer five-line phone system, including distribution of calls to appropriate parties, and fielding of general inquiries.  A five-line phone system is a whole different animal, and tells a potential employer that the company you worked for was probably very busy, and you had a lot phone calls to manage.  The other merely says you know how to answer a phone.  In this case, more is better.  Avoid one and two word bullet points, they tell the reader nothing.

–Use of Responsibilities or Duties include:  Okay, I will come find you and tear up your resume if you use these phrases to begin a bullet point.  HR hates them, recruiters hate them, resume writers hate them.  Why, because they are overused!  Enough said, find a thesaurus for better action verbs.

–Unprofessional Email:  I actually saw this email address on a resume at a career fair – CMYNPPLRNG, yes, it says “see my nipple ring” in vanity plate parlance.  Also avoid your name and the year you were born – let’s not just give things away.  How about using your name and the last four digits of your phone number or the numbers in your home address?

–Professional development or civic and professional memberships:  Want to provide meaning to your professional development, and professional and civic involvement, put a year, or year-to-year with it.  The date offers context to the reader as to how relevant and recent it is in your career.

–Outdated professional development:  Do you really remember that 1995 Project Management course – probably not.  So, instead go with the last 10 years, and only list the best of the best.  You can always take an addendum to the interview with a comprehensive listing of professional development, if in the last 10 years there are copious amounts.

Space is precious on a resume, whether you have a one-page or three-page document, you want everything on the document to be useful to the reader.  Remember, if your resume makes it past the ATS, and the initial 10-15 second screening, it will be read – make it all count!

 

Karen Silins is a multi-certified, award winning resume writer, career, business and personal branding coach working with individuals and small businesses. After graduating with degrees in education and vocal performance, she made her own career transition into the Human Resources realm. Karen left Human Resources to become an entrepreneur and help jobseekers and fellow entrepreneurs achieve their goals. She keeps current regarding trends in the resume writing, coaching, HR, small business and marketing industries by working daily with individual clients on resume development and career coaching, consulting for small businesses in business plan development, marketing, blogging, hiring and overall HR processes, and providing 30-70+ seminars and workshops annually to a variety of organizations in the greater Kansas City area. She can be reached via her website at www.careerandresume.com.

Categories Careers, Job Search, Personal Branding, Resume Writing
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Sites You Should Be Using

December 17th, 2012

Sites You Should Be Using

Find a Job

I am often asked by clients, seminar and workshop attendees and colleagues to recommend websites to bolster professional development, career and networking/business opportunities.  With the myriad of sites available on the Internet, culling the herd can be exhausting and time consuming.  My recommendations will come in blog posts over the upcoming months in three subject areas:  professional development sites for clients/jobseekers and colleagues, informational sites to keep up on the industry (more colleague focused), and social networking sites-why you need to be on them!  Today I start with two great sites for professional development, particularly for those that are unemployed, underemployed, or lack professional development opportunities in their current career.

Professional Development Sites

www.amanet.org

The American Management Association has wonderful free training for both jobseekers and industry professionals.  AMA may have determined that the paid memberships, while practical, left out segments of the population they felt were important:  the unemployed, underemployed and underpaid.  With large scale, multi-day training programs and memberships often unfeasible for these target groups, what could they do to help?  Offer a free membership and free and low-cost training options.  AMA creates brand ambassadors who, when gainfully employed or in a better financial situation, most likely take advantage of their paid training opportunities.  Furthermore, these individuals would share AMA programs with their new employers – extending the organizations influence, and filling training and development niches and gaps for these companies.

You can join by going to the MYAMA tab on the far right hand side of the page.  Once you are a member go to the INDIVIDUALS tab and click on WEB EVENTS, PODCASTS or ARTICLES AND WHITE PAPERS.  You can then take advantage of the free Webcasts, paid Webinars, free Podcasts, and free Articles and White Papers, which they have catalogued for members, and divided into various sections including Business Enhancement Skills, Communication Skills, Human Resources, Finance and Accounting, Sales and Project Management (to name a few).   Each Webcast lasts about an hour, each Podcast lasts approximately one-half hour and both are well worth your time.  Attention:  Webcasts are free, Webinars are NOT – but are worth the price!  Be sure to stay on the Webcasts unless you want to attend paid web events.

AMA also has a job board aimed at management positions, free monthly newsletters, events calendar, a LinkedIn group, and areas of the site devoted to government and enterprise-wide training needs for organizations.  The site is consistently updated with great content and navigation is straightforward.

www.hr.com

This one should be a no-brainer for anyone in the Human Resources, Recruiting or Resume Writing and Career Coaching industry.  You can keep up with HR trends in hiring, recruiting, interviewing, salary negotiation, and any issues jobseekers and employees/employers face.  One caveat – the site seems to want a company email address and not a Yahoo, Hotmail, etc., personal email account, I am hoping this changes (or has recently changed).  My colleagues HR, Management and Training and Development clients will find this site useful as well.

Free webcasts are the attraction, and although they have paid levels of membership I have had a free membership for over six years with no issues.  Not only will jobseekers and industry professionals have access to new webcasts for free, there is a catalog of 1,500+ archived webcasts that you can access by going to the Webcasts and Events tab, then clicking on the drop down menu where it says Webcasts and the sub-menu on Archived Webcasts and Podcasts.  You have access to recent and upcoming webcasts (upcoming webcasts are also featured on the Home Page), often PowerPoint slides or accompanying presentations, and the recordings of the all the older webcasts.  Bonus:  Each one-hour webcast or archived webcast can be submitted to qualify for HR Certification Institute recertification credits.

Additional benefits include Virtual Conferences, a variety of HR Communities to join with topical blogs, free compliance forms, an HR Wiki, a LinkedIn group, and certification opportunities.  The site is well-maintained, and easily navigated.

 

Categories Job Search
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