Volunteering as a tool for Career AdvancementWritten by Scott Brown
Many people will tell you that networking is a good way to find a new job. However, networking often seems like a vague term. In this job searching tip, we will discuss a specific way you can put networking to use to advance in your career. The approach discussed involves volunteering with specific organizations that can help you in business world. Volunteering probably won't produce instant results. But it is a good long-term strategy to maximize your options. VOLUNTEERING AS A WAY TO INCREASE NETWORKING OPPORTUNITIES Seasoned networkers will tell you it's not quantity of people in your network that matters, it's quality. This is why executives and top producing sales people seek out targeted networking opportunities. They often find them in form of volunteer positions. Aside from giving you an opportunity to give back, volunteering provides an extraordinary forum for networking. Most networking situations only give people a chance to get to know each other superficially. However, when volunteering on a long-term project, people can see each other in action and really get a feel for each others' personalities and talents. BOARD MEMBERSHIPS Many executives and top sales people find not-for-profit boards of directors and advisory boards to be especially valuable. These forums are primarily structured as a tool to provide management guidance to non-profit organizations. But in addition to giving people who volunteer for them a sense of having done something worthwhile, they also provide very high quality networking opportunities. If you believe you could provide advice to a non-profit organization that they could benefit from, such as management advice, IT advice or marketing advice, try contacting some local organizations to find out if they could use another person on their board. PROFESSIONAL AND TRADE ASSOCIATIONS
| | Making Sure Your Resume Gets Through to RecruitersWritten by Scott Brown
The Internet has made recruiting more efficient in many ways. It used to be that you'd have to send your resume to a company by postal mail and wait for it to get routed to right individual. Now, with e-mail, you're often able to send your resume directly to decision maker. Overall this is a good thing. The challenge though is that you have competition: it's just as easy for other people to email same hiring manager or recruiter. Most recruiters use spam filters in an attempt to keep offers for drugs, loans, etc. out of their inbox. Unfortunately, many spam filters make mistakes and can classify a legitimate resume you send to a recruiter as a spam message. In addition, even if your resume is not marked as spam, you are still probably competing for recruiter's attention with maybe a hundred or more other resumes recruiter received that day. Avoiding Spam Trap There is no one single rule or maxim for keeping your resume from being misclassified as a spam message. Different spam filters work in different ways. However, there are some general things you can look out for. It's generally better to copy and paste your resume into body of message instead of attaching a document file. First, many recruiters are busy and won't take time to open your document file when other resumes in their inbox are pasted right into message. Secondly, some email filtering systems reject messages with documents attached for fears document could be infected with a virus. Although enthusiasm is generally better in a resume than using boring words and phrases, some words can set off spam filters. Words to avoid include: "free," "mortgage," and "trial." If you use exclamation points in your resume, do so sparingly and don't use more than one exclamation point in succession (e.g. writing "Great!" would be safer than "Great!!"). Also, don't use multiple colors in your emails to recruiters. It looks unprofessional and some email filters see colors as an indication of a spam message.
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