Job Advice Needed Desperately

In My Humble Opinion
1

Finding myself suddenly unemployed again, I need some help folks.

A.) I have absolutely no idea why I was let go from my most recent job. It was literally, they showed up, told me to collect my things and to leave before anyone saw me. When I asked why, I got no answer, only that there was some kind of “investigation” and that when it was done, I’d be informed of what happened. I haven’t been, and when I called the next day, I was told that it was still going on, but the general tone I got from the conversation was that it wouldn’t have mattered what happened, they would have dumped me anyway. So what do I say about that when I have to fill out a job application?

B.) I have terrible luck in trying to find a job, and it usually takes me about a month of rigorous searching to find one. I really can’t afford to take that long this time (not if I want to eat), so I need advice. I don’t know if my resume’s crappy looking (I’ll post it seperately in this thread after I’ve stripped phone #'s and addresses out of it), or if I’m just not looking for the right kind of jobs. Anything you guys can post to help me would be greatly appreciated.

2

GOAL: Full time position in product or technical support with management potential.

SKILLS: Adept at new tasks and teaching them to others. Extensive involvement with leadership groups plus proven ability to motivate team performance and increase productivity. Innovated labor or cost saving handling techniques and safe work methods used by major corporations. Deep personal commitment and contributions made to workplace safety.

HISTORY: Sprint PCS
Position: Customer Care Representative
12/2001-6/2002 Duties: Answer customer questions about wireless telecom products and services, process
payments over the phone, create new customer accounts, and provide technical support.

2001–11/2001 Outfitter Satellite
Position: Technical support representative and product handler.
Duties: Incoming inspection of high-end telecom merchandise. Develop new methods, perform incoming quality control and provide customer support. Generated power-up procedures for product operation and testing.

1997-2001 The Gap
Position: Receiving Technician
Duties: Inbound bulk retail goods handling. Personally created and developed numerous improvements within the department Generated training procedures still in use. Contributed Safety Committee training manual used for induction of new safety associates. Trained employee groups, supported workflow and served on team development committee.

1996-1997 Circle K Stores
Position: Sales associate
Duties: Serving customers, cleaning, and maintaining the store third shift. Set up of new supplier displays, physical inventory, rotation and loss management of stock. Received and accounted for commercial deliveries. Innovated safety procedure applied nation-wide.

1990-1996 Waldenbooks
Position: Service and Operations Technician
Duties: Supported return center, drove forklift plus assisted shipping and receiving, performed data entry and stock picking. Discovered software error resulting in cost savings. Served as resource to department managers providing facilitation and procedural solutions.

EDUCATION: Psychology, and English Major, MTSU
Machine Tool Technology, Tennessee Technology Center at Nashville

COMPUTERS: Computer literate with Windows 98, Word, Netscape, Adobe Acrobat, and some experience with Macintosh. Touch typist with good accuracy and speed for numerical or text entry.

PUBLICATION: Helped prepare Vanderbilt’s Journal of Entertainment Law and Practice, digital edition.

AWARDS: 10 Workplace Improvement Awards from The Gap, during 1997-1999. 4 Outstanding Quality Awards from Sprint PCS from March 2002 to June 2002.

3

You might want to look into a skills-based format, rather than chronological. I know that I would appreciate that when looking at resumes.

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      • It’s such a bummer to have to look through the want ads–you feel so dumb, because you spend most of your time looking at jobs that you can’t do. You can look through a lot of want ads and still only find a few possible jobs that you already know you can do, that you’d want. So don’t do it that way.
  • If you can stand a bit of a career change, try applying wrong: apply to every company you think you might want to work for, that is: every company that possibly has a position you’d want and that you’re qualified for, no matter what position in the want ad is for. Don’t send anything to the e-mail/address in the want ad (it’ll be pigeon-holed for the postition that you won’t have the skills for, and get dropped right there). Find the company’s regular website, and find the HR dept’s e-mail off that. If it’s a real big company, try to find out the name of the person in charge of the division you want into, and try to get their e-mail address. Send a short informal e-mail giving your skills + experience, keep it short and light, 1 paragraph, 4-5 lines.
    ~
    The theory here is that there are always “sort-of-positions” open in companies (especially big companies) where they “kind-of” need somebody, but it’s such a hassle to mount a regular prospect search: research the job requirements, run the ad and then deal with 25, 50 or whatever-amount interviews. If you show up briefly saying what you can do, and “they just happen to need somebody to do that sort of thing”, you are more likely to be considered than if your resume is in the middle of a pile of 100 others.
    ~
    (not any professional authoritative opinion, just my thoughts)
5

You mean functional? That’s used when there are large gaps between employments.

6

Not necessarily. A functional resume works best when one is trying to change fields. What you are telling the employer is that while you may not have held that position before, you have the skills needed to perform the job. My preferred format in reviewing resumes is a skills summary (What can you do?) followed by a chronological listing of positions (What have you done?)

My first recommendation on your resume would be to drop the goal statement, space is at a premium on your resume. It says very little about you and can be better stated in a cover letter or in the interview itself. The biggest thing to remember about a resume is that they will rarely get you the job, but they -can- eliminate you from consideration. When the recruiter is initially reviewing resumes, they are looking for reasons to filter you out. The sole purpose of a resume is to get you in for an interview.

There are a host of career sites on the 'net, but I would start here: http://www.jobhuntersbible.com/ The online companion to What Colour is Your Parachute. If you only use one reference, this is the one I would use. You might be able to check out a copy of his book from the library.

There are two other books I would recommend: The Pathfinder by Nicholas Lore and Zen and the Art of Making a Living by Laurence G. Boldt.

7

I would condense some of the categories. I would get rid of the “Goal” or “Objective” section, then combine the “Skills” and “Computer” sections into a “Profile.” The profile is an overview of you–what skills you have, what technology you can use, other attributes of you that are good–like being customer focused, goal oriented, organized, hard working, dependable, etc. I would put any awards in the “Employment History” section. Two reasons for that–it streamlines your resume, and it puts the award info in its chronological place–that the award happened when you were working at the job. The person reviewing your resume doesn’t have to look back trying to find out where and when you received the award.

Also, I noticed that in your “Employment History” you start out by giving month/year that you worked. Then later you just give the year(s) that you worked. I would go with month/year format (more specific).

For some really great ideas for your resume, I recommend www.resumeedge.com The site has a lot of tips and hints for writing resumes, as well as samples of resumes by profession and samples of cover letters.

8

Tuckerfan, if you need employment right away you might want to consider applying to temporary help agencies. They test your abilities and send you out to jobs you might not have thought of. Also, this is a way many companies have to test out employees before offering them full-time employment. Good Luck.

9

The State Of Tennessee is hiring. The pay sucks, but we are in fact hiring.

www.state.tn.us/personnel

Adobe downloads of applications, & I believe lists of job titles.

Fill out apps for everything you qualify for, even if there’s no openings now. Your name goes on a register of applicants, & you will be considered for several years.

Pay sucks, benefits poor, but you won’t get canned. Only job security around, man.

10

Have you gotten the results of the “investigation” yet?

11

Not necessarily true. Some companies, especially the really big ones, will have the e-version of mail stops for routing incoming submissions. You can usually tell from the ad whether this is the case; are there separate emails for separate positions?

Every company I’ve ever worked for, though, has one email address for incoming resumes. These are processed by a text parser (which makes a plaintext resume the safest option) and added to an applicant database. Internal recruiters, and sometimes managers, will then search this database for potential candidates. In other words, it doesn’t matter which position you apply for, and if you apply for more than one position at the same company, you could be merely duplicating efforts. Does the ad ask for a “response code”? This could very well be a search-text key to isolate specific responses in the database.

In my experience, companies that try to filter applicant submissions by discrete position, without overlap, tend to have a silo-based mentality. In other words, the departments don’t really interact or cooperate. Not the type of company I personally want to work for, but YMMV.

My specific comment on your resume is connected to the database issue: There aren’t enough keywords. When a manager is giving guidelines to the HR person for a resume search, he’ll use specific searchable terms, like “visual basic” or “hobart repair certificate” or “japanese transmission” or whatever. In your job history, I see “wireless telecom products” in the first job, but I don’t know which ones. Refer to the hardware and software by name. If your resume never comes up in a search, nobody will ever know you applied. The days when every paper resume was read individually by a human are long gone.

12

Sort of. I was told that a former cow-orker of mine was upset by something I said. Given who that cow-orker most likely was (my job didn’t bring me into contact with too many people there), and given the fact that the cow-orker had an obvious dislike of me, I’d say it was more likely that he fabricated everything. No doubt I could get my job back with the use of a savvy lawyer, but the job’s not worth fighting for even if I could afford said lawyer.

13

Have you thought about the Air Force? :wink:

14

Hmm, at thirty four years of age, I doubt they’d take me.

15

Why not be a commercial real estate agent like me? If you are good with numbers and computers and can set your own goals and complete them you can make a very reasonable living. The risk factor is that your income is directly related to your ability to analyze real world values and market yourself and the property you have listed. The upside is that oversight is very limited and your time is completely yours to use or waste as you see fit.

see www.ccim.com

16

Update, I’ve found employment! It’s a temp job, but its with one of my old employers, so I’ve got a good chance of getting hired on. In any case, I won’t be starving! I also found that the city has a free job counseling service, so I’m availing myself of that in hopes of getting a better line of work. Thanks for all your help, folks, I couldn’t have done it without you. Let’s hope I don’t have to do this again, anytime soon.

17

Hey! This is great news.

I was going to suggest Ebay… No, really.

I’ve sold a LOT on Ebay, and I’m astonished at how much “STuff” goes for.

Even BROKEN stuff.

Ex:

Broken INKJET Epson 800 Stylus: $30 US
Broken NAD CD Changer : $36

Considering I got them FOR NOTHING… And yes, I DID say they were busted…

Insanity!

I heard of a homeless kid in NY who makes his living getting stuff FREE and selling it on Ebay.

Whatever works, man.

Good luck, anyways.