Open for Business: Video for a job campaign

The “Elevator Speech” is moving to YouTube.  In the big city, where elevators are prevalent, your audience may be captive for 30 sec – 2 minutes.  If you can pitch your business idea, or the value proposition in their hiring you in 30 seconds, you may get the chance to explain further.  Not enough elevators in Morristown?  Produce a 30-sec video instead.

Elevator Pitch tutorial

Videos do not have to be highly sophisticated according to media expert Michael Davy.  A home video camera, even a webcam will suffice as long as it’s a short, cogent story presented well.  “A one minute pitch is 180 words,” says Michael.

Companies are decreasing their use of  newspaper ads or job boards like Monster and Career Builder.  Instead, they are moving towards social media outlets or LinkedIn postings.  Increasingly though, they are scanning the web and LinkedIn to identify candidates of interest and contacting them directly.  Video rises to the top of most internet searches, helping a candidate to raise their visibility to interested employers.

Producing a static video also helps to prepare for an interview by video.   Skype usage has become so commonplace that businesses are using the tool for long distance communication including initial conversations about jobs.

There’s a difference in opinion among job seekers about the use of any advanced media or marketing.

One thing everyone agrees on is don’t make the mistake of Aleksey Vayner, former Yale student and job applicant whose swaggering statements in a video resume made him an Internet meme.  The video did not make him an employed person.

Mike Palestina on Effective Job Searching Feb 28th 9AM

Executive coach Mike Palestina will be speaking on Monday, Feb 28th, at 9 am at the Great Hall at 70 Maple Avenue in Morristown.  Identifying and networking into target companies will be the focus of the presentation.  Mike recommends having fifty (50!) target companies to insure success.  For many, coming up with a list of fifty companies that might reasonably hire someone is a challenge.  So a tour of the database Reference USA will be provided live.

Reference USA is available through Jersey Clicks, which can be accessed online with a valid library card.

Mike’s presentation is sponsored by the Morris County Career Network (MCCN) and is free and open to the public.   We especially invite any and all professionals in career transition to attend what will undoubtedly be an informative and engaging workshop.

Jay Rovert offers the transitional community financial 411

Job transition can be a time of financial bleeding. Don’t wait until you need to dial 911. February 17th at the Morris County Library, Jay Rovert will spend the morning giving advice to job seekers that is both financial and practical.  The presentation is sponsored by Dover Professional Services Group and is open to the public.

Jay is known in Morristown for leveraging his professional network to help others.  It’s sensible business.  His practice is consistently rated at the top of MetLife firms.  His entire career has been in the financial services industry around the tri-state area.

Bring your financial questions.  The later part of the session will be a workshop. Details below:

Morris County Library

30 East Hanover Avenue

Whippany, NJ

Ask librarian for the room

Parking: Free parking is offered.

Time: 9:00 a.m. — ~ 12:00 Noon

To contact Jay:  jrovert@metlife.com

To pre-register (recommended):  mwmuschko@toast.net

Open for Business: Picture your resume as a picture

In the today’s world of five applicants for every job opening, it’s important to be noticed.

Let’s assume you make the initial cut from the screening criteria of an online application database or that you’ve successfully networked into HR or the hiring manager.  You still need to communicate your credentials to a low level reviewer in about 2 seconds.

If you’re still in HR, it’s a good guess that they’re scanning dozens of resumes filled with words.  Here’s an idea – provide a picture instead.  Not a photo, but a table (with color!) that shows how well you match the position.

It’s easily envisioned of course, because you’ve done your homework and you know how well you suit the position.  Furthermore, you know how to build tables.  But here’s the trick – you need it to print well as a PDF.  This is not intuitive.

To successfully create a PDF document that contains a matrix of your skills uses the whole of Microsoft Office suite, but it’s worth it.  PDF documents are compact enough to be accepted by online application programs.  In fact, the matrix by itself can be small enough to be a supporting document (usually > 50kB.)

Start with Excel – set up your matrix in a table.  Then format the cells of the top titles to an angle of ~30 degrees off vertical.   The check marks that indicate where you obtained the experience that meets the requirement can be any color or clip art piece.  To get rid of unsightly lines, color them white.

Now copy that table and past it into PowerPoint.  Don’t use the standard paste, use “Paste Special” and paste it in as a picture – any type of metafile will do.  Now that it’s a picture, copy it again.

You’re ready for Publisher.  Open a blank sheet (A3 portrait.)  Paste in your picture.   Now you can size the matrix, crop it and add text around it.  You can paste in text from your cover letters and add your resume on a second page.

Now for the tricky part – converting to PDF.  Normally doing a “save as” and choosing PDF from the drop down menu will work.  Not this time.  Instead, from the file tab, choose “publish as PDF or XPF.”  Choose PDF, which is not necessarily the default.  The simple matrix you see in this article was 45 kB in PDF form.

A picture speaks a thousand words and managers love checklists.  Now you have both.

Beth Kujan is one of the organizers of the Morris County Career Network, which meets on the second and fourth Monday of each month at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in Morristown to help professionals in transition.

Open For Business: Older job seekers have support in Morristown

By Beth Kujan

Age discrimination is a deep fear running through Morristown professionals in a job transition.  Actually though, the jobless rate among older workers is lower than the average, according to an article published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics last March.

For those over 55 years of age, the jobless rate was 7 percent in February 2010 , compared to the average in NJ, which was hovering around 10 percent at the time.  (It’s now 9 percent.)

Even so, the unemployment rate for persons over 55 has increased sharply since the beginning of the Great Recession.  It is also true that older persons who do become unemployed spend more time on average searching for work.

In February 2010, workers aged 55 years and older had an average duration of joblessness of around nine months , compared with about seven months for those aged  25 to 54 years.

So why the longer transition time for older workers?  Two research briefs published this Fall by the Rutgers Heldrich Center for Workforce Development suggest that lower reemployment rates for older workers may be caused by the job search strategies they choose and the intensity of their job search.

Technologically savvy youngsters  are making use of social networking websites including Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, whereas many older workers report using newspaper classified ads and recruiters.

The Wall Street Journal reports a trend away from job postings in print media as well as online job boards.  Hence the job seeker of 2011 must keep up with the technology.

Fortunately, there are ample ways to learn the latest versions of software via the public library system, as well as at workshops for innovative job searches.  The state offers and administers training grants.  The Morris County Career Network and Dover Professional Service Group offer volunteer business opportunities to keep skills sharp.

For a more intense job search, career coaches are easily met through networking groups.  Accountability groups form around the friendships developed during networking.  Stepping up one’s use of LinkedIn, especially optimizing keywords, will amplify search efforts as well.

Vitality and relevancy are antidotes to age discrimination.  In Morristown, there are plenty of resources to catalyze both.

And job-seekers 55 and older enjoy one big advantage: Youthful indiscretions were not recorded by cell-phone cameras and circulated around the web!

MORE BY BETH KUJAN

Beth Kujan is one of the organizers of the Morris County Career Network, which meets on the second and fourth Monday of each month at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in Morristown to help professionals in transition.

Online resume editing – Free through the Morristown library

Imagine that you’ve lost your job and don’t have an outplacement package. Wouldn’t it be great to have a set of seminars plus an editor to work on your resume?

That’s what we have through the Morristown & Township Library.   Services such as Tutor.com and LearningExpress Library have services specifically for job seekers. They are available online from home with a Morristown & Morris Township Library card.

“The best part of our Tutor.com service for job seekers is the live one-to-one help available from a real career tutor using online chat along with an interactive whiteboard and file sharing,” says Polly Lacey, head reference librarian at the library.

The tutor can look over your resume in real time and give suggestions or help you prepare for an interview. Live tutors are available between the hours of 2 PM and 10 PM.

Available 24/7 are the webinars at the SkillsCenter™ Resource Library within Tutor.com.  I selected the “career” button and chose as the subject “resume and cover letters.”  The webinar “Writing a Resume that Gets the Job” was engaging and gave good advice.

Within the Learning Express Library is a new module called  Job & Career Accelerator. This interactive tool helps one explore different occupations, including those identified as high growth or within high growth sectors.

Keeping technologically up-to-date is another challenge while out of the workplace. LearningExpress Library offers tutorials for applications such as Word and Excel. It also provides sample tests for academic and professional examinations. For an in-class experience, you can attend the county library’s Career Resource Seminars.

Morristown is rich in services, paid by our tax dollars. We should take advantage of these resources, especially during frugal times.

Beth Kujan is one of the organizers of the Morris County Career Network, which meets on the second and fourth Monday of each month at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in Morristown to help professionals in transition.

The 1099 breadwinner, a view from the Morris Career Network

By Beth Kujan

You know a word is important when it steps up from a noun to a verb. “Google” is a famous example, as in the sentence “google my name and you’ll find my work history.”

It did surprise me though to hear a number used as a verb. The number was “ten-ninety-nine,” as in the IRS 1099 tax form businesses issue at the end of the year to report the total amount they paid an independent contractor.

No tax or social security is withheld. The 1099 contractor is responsible for making quarterly installments against his or her projected tax responsibility for the year, based on 15 percent nominal tax rate on earnings.

The sentence that used 1099 as a verb was uttered by a professional sound technical describing the changing workplace of TV news. He said “The best sound and camera guys in the business are permanent, but the companies 1099 them.”

Wow. So in the TV news business there’s steady work, but not as an employee of News Corp or Time Warner. Instead, most of the crew are self-employed independent contractors. Perhaps they all invoice for their time, or perhaps there is some sort of electronic time keeping.

Either way, there’s a shift in the bookkeeping from corporation to individual. It takes discipline to withhold the normal 7.5 percent for FICA tax (Social Security and Medicare), 7.5 percent self-employment tax (which, in the past, employers paid towards your FICA obligation), federal income tax, unemployment tax and 6 percent for the state of New Jersey.

Fortunately, a tax accountant will help you project quarterly tax bills and print out slips for payments on Jan 15th, April 15th, July 15th and Oct 15th. Tax software probably does this too, or it’s missing out on the “camera guy” market.

As the labor market changes, we may well have more IRS forms being used as verbs. Let’s just hope it doesn’t get started with all those incorporation acronyms.

Beth Kujan is one of the organizers of the Morris County Career Network, which meets on the second and fourth Monday of each month at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in Morristown to help professionals in transition.