business writing

Reader’s Digest Gets Into the Job-Loss Act

I was sitting in the living room last night flipping through magazines while the boy was watching Spongebob Squarepants. For some reason, I just can’t get into watching the same episode repeatedly, but Gregory has no trouble with that at all. One rag under scrutiny last night included the latest issue of Reader’s Digest (March 2009). Though I don’t often think of this publication as a source for high-tech information or advice, there’s an article in this issue that bears reading for those who might be looking for work right now, and for those who might be worried about losing their jobs.

The story is entitled “What To Do When You Lose Your Job” and is available online so you needn’t run out and buy a copy of the magazine just to access this lone item. You’ll find an interesting catalog of euphemisms for pending or actual layoffs and a discussion of the types of jobs most likely to disappear when layoffs actually hit.

The story goes on to tout the benefits of working with a career coach to get back into the workforce, and to make sure you, your resume, and cover letter make the best possible impression when you put yourself back out there to pursue a new position. There’s also some useful  discussion of the time it takes to get back on the job (the old “one month for each $10,000 of salary” has apparently been revised to “one to two months for each $10,000 of salary” in another telling sign of the state of this economy), along with use of e-resumes, use of personal Web presences, and resume tune-ups.

Be sure to check out this links on this page to other related stories as well, including:

• Negative cover letter and resume examples (what NOT to do).
• How to Find a New Job
• 9 Recession-Proof Careers
• Career Experts Offer Advice to 6 People Out of Work

It’s a truism that by the time news hits Reader’s Digest it’s attained the status of “something everybody knows.” For this kind of news to hit its pages, therefore, may very well be a sign that that bottom of this trough is now in sight. Here’s hoping so, anyway!

Write a Better Resume

I’ve gottne lots of email in response to two recent postings: Pros and Cons of Resume Posting Sites and Looking for Job Search Info: Try These “Ace IT” Books (which makes mention of Paula Moreira’s excellent ACE the IT Resume title). Most of it has been positive, thank goodness, but much of it has also reminded me that there are countless great sources of resume writing help available online and in both virtual and real classrooms as well.

In fact, those looking for input, ideas, examples, and instruction on crafting a quality resume could do a lot worse in starting such a quest than searching Google on “resume writing workshop.” Lots of useful information pops up in response to this query, including:

• lots of college sites that offer instruction, information, examples, and more. For example, try this resume workshop page at Perdue University.
• Susan Ireland Resumes free Resume Guide (a teaser for her commercial services); ditto for the Top 12 Workshops from ProvenResumeS.com.
• A Federal Résumé Guide (PDF file), designed to help applicants for technical government positions with the National Guard, turns out to be a pretty good set of guidelines and advice.
• Numerous online course offerings on resume writing, including companies such as Ed2Go, Universal Class, Cosmic Coaching, and more.
• Oodles of free resume builders, including offerings from e-resume.us, resumeimproved.com, pongoresume.com, BuildaResumeToday.com, and many others.

In short, there is no reason for me not to mention the vast array of resources available to would-be resume writers online, or to short-change the many other excellent information and service providers who ply this virtual space with quality wares and information. Dig as deeply as you like in fact, and you’ll never run out of new sites to visit or learn from.

Pros and Cons of Resume Posting Sites

If you’ve looked for a job, or even just thought about looking for a job recently, you’ve probably visited one or more of the resume posting sites on the Web. A large number of such operations exist, at the same time that more and more companies are using similar technology to field direct applications from interested parties as well. In today’s blog, I want to explore the pros and cons of using those sites that serve multiple employers (as for those that belong to a specific employer, pros and cons don’t matter: they’re now a fact of working life for anybody who wants to apply for a job nowadays).

Promising All Kinds of Pros, Delivering How Many
If you check out the hype or hyperbole that so many sites surround themselves with, there aren’t many stones that go unturned in their breathless and relentless quest to persuade you to post with them. These range from broad exposure to numerous employers, search capability by geography, job description, pay range, automatic e-mail alerts when new jobs post, plus access to job hunting advice, information, and resources to name just a few. There are even meta-sites (for example, ResumeRabbit.com) where you can upload your resume and broadcast it to over 80 different job search/resume posting Web sites.

Despite all of the aforementioned benefits, the biggest draw for these sites is that they’re convenient, relatively easy to use, and help you get the word out about your availability to a broad and geographically dispersed audience. Even with all their promises of rapid and voluminous response, be warned that your own personal results may vary as and when you use these services, and the quality of your experience will depend on how well you match the target audience and demographic that these sites seek to service.

Considerable Cons Can Pose Problems, or Cause Frustration
If you look closely at the kinds of positions that get filled through these resume posting sites, you’ll observe some interesting phenomena:

• The real action is clustered “down-market,” very much on the entry-level to mid-career side. Once you’ve put 8-10 years or more of service into IT (or whatever trade or industry you work in), opportunities become more scare and responses more sparse whether you use a resume posting site or not
• Flexibility remains the key to success: the more kinds of positions, the wider your acceptable salary range, the greater the geographic area in which you’re willing to accept a job, and so forth, the more likely it is that you’re going to generate a response. Flexibility is another quality that is relatively easier for younger, less encumbered (and experienced) workers to manifest than for older, more encumbered (and experienced) ones.
• Quantity is no substitute for quantity: just because you cover a lot of possible positions you might occupy doesn’t mean you can cut back on the quality of the materials you use to sell yourself through introduction, interview, and selection phases. You still need a strong, well-crafted resume and cover letter, and you need to be able to communicate clearly and effectively about what you can do, why you want to do it, and what appeals to you about any particular position under discussion. A foot in the door is not the same as an offer: that first foot must be followed by lots of quality information and materials to make a worthwhile offer materialize.
• Protect yourself against unwanted disclosure: If you’re currently employed, but also looking for something else, make sure you read and understand the disclosure terms for any information you share with a job site. You may not want to get too public with your resume and other information if your current employer’s recruiters or HR staff can then find you on the Web. They may do so entirely innocently in seeking to fill other positions, but you can rest assured they’ll share this news with your management once they learn about your intentions. Unless you’re ready to go public you may want to keep your postings private, and only make them available on a case-by-case basis when a particularly good match appears through your own online job search efforts.

If you keep these pros and cons in mind, you can make these sites work for you, without wasting too much of your own time, or that of prospective employers you really don’t want to hear from right now. Your consideration will not only pay off with better, more focused results, it may also pay off in the future when your situation changes and you are ready to talk to those employers.

Soft Skills (Part 2 of 4): Written Communications

It’s no exaggeration to say that written communications are important to nearly every job. This is especially true or IT, where reports, analyses, evaluations, and even plain, humble e-mail messages, are part of the regular grind. Though it’s rare to hear of IT professionals garnering promotions or new jobs solely on the basis of writing ability, a knack for clear, cogent communication never hurt anybody’s prospects.

I’ll assume you buy into the idea that improving written communications is good for you and your career development. What can you do to boost yourself in this all-important area? You must look for opportunities to exercise and improve on this ability. For laughs and reinforcement, remember the old punchline about how to get to Carnegie Hall–namely: “Practice, practice, practice.”

That said, constant repetition of bad habits only reinforces them, so there’s another ingredient that must come into play to make sure that practice leads you in the right direction (toward improving your writing skills, that is). This ingredient is feedback. You can provide some of this feedback to yourself, in fact, if you’re willing to take the time and expend the energy. This means running spelling and grammar checker tools on your text to make sure you’re not breaking obvious rules (and you’ll find that even tools such as Microsoft Word can be helpful ). It also means taking the time to re-read your writing and to ask yourself if your writing is reasonably clear, accurate, and compact.

Feedback from others is also good, because it exposes you to input and points of view that you might not come up with on your own. This goes double if you can enlist the support of someone who’s a better writer than you are, who sees your weaknesses and failings, and helps you overcome them. As somebody who’s trained more than a dozen practicing IT professionals to write professionally, let me recount the five most common failings that such people must often overcome:

1. Passive voice: a terrible affliction among academics and professionals of all stripes, those who want to improve must learn to recognize the passive voice and learn how to make their writing more direct
2. Inverted sentences: Many inexperienced writers like to put the object before the subject in their sentences. State your subject first, then modify or explore it afterwards, for clear exposition.
3. Misuse of apostrophes: Especially when distinguishing the possessive of it (its) from the contraction for “it is” (it’s), aspiring writers often tend to use apostrophes when they shouldn’t, and fail to use them when they should. As a start, expanding all contractions that might involve an apostrophe is a good way to steer clear of such errors.
4. Organize your thoughts: especially in educational materials, but more generally in any kind of expository writing, the old “tell ‘em three times” approach remains a good one. Lead into your subject material by describing what you plan to communicate (tell ‘em once). This also has the advantage of providing a map of what lies ahead. Next, cover your subjects one at a time, in the same order you laid out in the initial description (tell ‘em again, in detail this time). Finally, summarize your key points to complete your coverage (tell ‘em a third time, and leave them with the most important information reinforced).
5. Keep it simple: when you review your work (which is probably the most important activity you can perform to sharpen and maintain writing skills), ask yourself: “Is this sentence too long?” “Do I really need to use this many words?” “Am I getting my points across?” If you always seek to communicate as quickly and effectively as possible, you can count on keeping your readers’ attention, and occasionally, on earning their gratitude for not wasting their time.

One of the best ways to improve writing skills is to take a writing class. Most local community colleges offer evening or weekend classes to accommodate workaday schedules. Most of them also cover a variety of topics at reasonable prices, including technical writing, business communications, and even creative writing. A class puta you in contact with a trained professional (your teacher) who can provide regular feedback. If you’re lucky, you’ll learn some new techniques and better communication skills by example along the way, but at a minimum you should receive detailed, informative feedback on your strengths and weaknesses as a writer. This lets you to build on the former, and work to correct or overcome the latter, both of which should help you improve.

If taking a class doesn’t fit your schedule, consider acquriing and working through some books to help you boost your skills. That old Strunk and White standby, The Elements of Style, remains as relevant today as it was nearly 50 years ago when it first appeared in print. Other useful titles you might consider include:

1. Only as Good as Your Word: Writing Lessons from My Favorite Literary Gurus by Susan Shapiro (Paperback - Sep 28, 2007)
2. In the Middle: New Understanding About Writing, Reading, and Learning (Workshop Series) by Nancie Atwell (Paperback - Feb 11, 1998)
3. Letting Go of the Words: Writing Web Content that Works(Interactive Technologies) by Janice (Ginny) Redish (Paperback - Jun 11, 2007)
4. Keys to Great Writing by Stephen Wilbers (Hardcover - Jul 2000)
5. The Book on Writing: The Ultimate Guide to Writing Well by Paula LaRocque (Paperback - Sep 1, 2003)

A final piece of advice: a writing book is deeply personal. Rather than buying any or all of these titles on the strength of my recommendation alone, hoist yourself out of your chair and check them out at a nearby bookstore. You may not like any of them, but you should be in that section of the bookstore where you can browse for others that may be more to your taste.

–Ed–