Staying Positive Is The Key To Successful Job Searching

Over the weekend, I was at Motorola SG participating in a career fair for their retrenched staff. Most of them were in a very down and negative mood. Of copurse, it's understandable that your mood is not going to be churpy and happy when you're retrenched. But I also realized that it's this critical times that you should get your focus back into your life, and start strategizing your job searching plans.

One of the most important element in getting over with a retrenchment crisis and getting yourself into a new job is the ability to focus on the activities that increase your chances of getting a job, and having a healthy, positive mindset to drive you and your family through these tough times.

Here are a few tips to help you get focus and ride through the tough times:

1. Talk to people who'll be of help to you

There're 2 types of people that you'll need to talk and mingle with: 1 is those who've a wide network, and can refer you to others who maybe helpful in getting you a job; the other kind are those who'll encourage you, and gives your motivation to continue your job seeking journey.

Leave those people who'll only whine at the current market situation, and wanting to throw all their negative feelings onto you. It maybe someone who's close to you. My suggestion is to converse less with them, or divert their attention to something else.

2. Be realistic. Set a timeline

In such tough times where the employers are the kings, it'll take a little more time to find a job. Be realistic and give yourself ample time. It'll probably take at least 3-6 months for you to get a job, depending on what activities you chose to focus onto. Don't expect yourself to find a job within 1 month. And if it does happen, it's definitely a bonus!

Setting realistic timeline will definitely help you manage your emotions better. Do share this timeline to your family so that they don't stress you with your job searching activities.

3. Take some time to enjoy yourself

Yes. You heard me. Take some time to do things that you enjoy doing, but couldn't do it while you were working. I don't expect you to send resumes from morning till late nights. Cater a few hours, or even half a day to do something that you enjoy, either with friends or by yourself. Just watch out of the expenses.

This is a good time to refesh your soul, and prepare for the next career. I did missed the times when I was retrenched. I have the whole time for myself, and there was no stress to walk faster, to eat faster, just pure passion to drive me to do what I've planned to do.

Feel free to share with me your successful job searching journey. Remember, the more successful stories, the more people we can motivate!

To Your Success,

Allan Heng

How To Increase Your Chances Of Interviews

By now, I need not say more on how bad and negative the global economy is right now. Retrenchment are no longer something uncommon. And look around you, most likely you find someone who has just been retrenched. Or maybe you've already been one of the victim of retrenchment.

What are some of the things that you can do when the eventuality falls upon you? You naturally want to look for a new job. And that means writing your resume.

My suggestion is that instead of writing it when you need it, update your resume now when you still can afford the time.

To increase the chances of you landing yourself into an interview, your resume is the critical element. A resume will be the first thing that an interviewer used to judge you. So here's a few tips to help you to write a better resume:

1. What type of job are you seeking

Never make the mistake of having a general resume and send to every and any job postings / adverts. You'll only increase the chances of landing your resume into the dustbin.

Write down a list of job that you're seeking first. Different jobs have different job requirements and skill sets. So the first and foremost task is to list down 2-5 different jobs before you write your resume.

2. Understand the job requirement

After you list down the types of jobs you're seeking, the next step is to list down the type of job requirements and skill sets. This will set the tone and overall content when you're writing your resumes. The requirements should be both technical or specialized skills, and the soft skills that is require to translate your technical knowledge into practical actions.

Technical requirement are like softwares requirements (MS Office, AutoCad, SAP, etc.), specific engineering processes, SAP payroll, full sets of accounts, HR compensation and benefits, programming language (C#, C++, Java) etc. These requirements are essnetial for a staff to perform his/her role that is assigned to him/her.

Softskills are like project management, leadership, program management, Research & Development, etc. These skills are the main skills that translate your techniacl skills into execution, actions and results.

This step is one of the most critical as most recruiters will only spend less than 2 minutes to browse through your resume, and they'll always tend to search for keywords and the general contents, the words that you used. And these requirements will form the keywords for your resume.

3. Writing your resume according to the specific job requirements

When writing your resume, stay focus on the job requirements and phraze your sentences based on the keywords that have been generated earlier (see item 2).

For instance, if you're writing a resume for the position of Software Developer, the job requirement should be on the types of programming language you're familiar with, and the past programs that you've written. This position are more technical and you should therefore put in more technical jargons.

But if you're seeking a Software Project Manager role, then you should emphasize more on project management skills, with just the essential technical jargons in place.

4. Rephrazing your working experiences

As per item 3, rephraze your working experience to show more of the required skill sets, both techncal and softskills. If you think a particular experiences may not be that relevant, but you still want to put it it, make sure it is acting as a supporting role, so summarizing it will be fne.

Always put your latest working experience at the top instead of at the bottom, and list it according to chronological orders. Ususally recruiters only look at your last 5 years of wroking experiences, so make sure it's written with a lot of relevant keywords to capture their attention.

5. Writing your summary

The summary inside a resume should be placed at the start of the document, but it's best that you write it last after you've written all the above mentioned items.

The Summary is like a teaser, to attract the recruiter to continue to read on. It shouldn't be more than half a page. Inside the summary, fill it up with as many keywords as you can. This encourages them to read on to find out more.

To Your Success,
Allan Heng
Read more about Writing a Good Resume, and How To Ace In Interviews.