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Job Site LinkedIN Recruitment Social Networks Social Recruitment

How to use LinkedIn Skills Endorsements for Recruitment?

How to make sense of the LinkedIn Skills Endorsements?

LinkedIn Skills Endorsements is not the first time the Skills have been implemented as a part of a personal LinkedIn Profile. Some iterations had a self-scoring of out to 5 or 10 skills. Then just a pure 50 word skills. The current way the skills are implemented is by far the best I the whole history of LinkedIn! Why?

Crowdsourcing

What you say about yourself in your LinkedIn profile if more often than not a TRUE reflection of you. Your LinkedIn profile as your CV or a resume is a reflection of the portion of you that you want to show to the hiring manager of your next dream job. If that is not the case, we need to talk about it!

What your LinkedIn connections tell about you, by clicking on your Skills listed tells a whole different picture about you. In most cases the far more accurate one than the rest of your LinkedIn Profile.

How to use LinkedIn Skills Endorsements for Recruitment?

The challenge is to assess what endorsements are really valid ones, and what ones are the result of the gamification LinkedIn have created in this Skills environment. What it means is that all the skills endorsements are not the same (value).

Here is How to analyse the value of the LinkedIn Endorsement

It is quite similar to the Google PageRank algorithm actually. The more people have endorsed my skill “X”, the more valuable is my endorsement given to someone else for the same skill. Why? The more endorsements I got for a certain skill, the more likely is that I actually know about it. The more I know about the skill the more valid my endorsement for the same skill is.

Categories
Internet Job Site LinkedIN Recruitment SEO Social Networks Social Recruitment

New LinkedIn Profile is good (for Recruiters)!

The LinkedIn haven’t really updated the Profile section for far too long time. It becomes a bit archaic in fact, so a new profile is really welcome. It is far easier to read and more importantly scan, as we consume the web sites. It also tells you far more about the person than the any older LinkedIn Profile version did.

One feature that really helps the recruiter to assess the potential candidate from his LinkedIn profile is the ability to quickly assess the candidate’s connections. You have a choice to display the connections by:

  • Company
  • School
  • Location
  • Industry

By looking at the graphical representation of your LinkedIn connections grouped by and industry the recruiter can quickly get what type of people the candidate is connected to on the social network.

It tells a lot about the person when you can see what schools are the people his connections are from. What companies do the candidate’s contacts work for is priceless. Location and industry profiles of the candidates LinkedIn contacts just add to the complete picture of a candidate.

All this data combined gives you very quickly a profile of the candidate’s connections. This data can help a recruiter profile a candidate much better than by just looking at a very static data, a document like a CV or the (old) LinkedIn profile.

Where LinkedIn could improve the display is in including what the number represents as opposed to displaying just the number of the connections in each group. It is annoying to have to put a mouse over each circle to find out what company or country the contacts are from. A tag cloud would be far more usefully display. A company name printed and on mouse over the exact number of the connections in that company? Would you agree?

Categories
Blogs

Interview Questions: Tell me about yourself

According to the Monster Jobs Site, the most used interview question is:

Are you ready to answer the Tell me about yourself question? If not, you should prepare the answer for that most common interview question.

Here is the advice from Monster Jobs Site:

Tell me about yourself – This is usually the opening question and, as first impressions are key, one of the most important. Keep your answer to under five minutes, beginning with an overview of your highest qualification then running through the jobs you’ve held so far in your career. You can follow the same structure of your CV, giving examples of achievements and the skills you’ve picked up along the way. Don’t go into too much detail – your interviewer will probably take notes and ask for you to expand on any areas where they’d like more information. If you’re interviewing for your first job since leaving education, focus on the areas of your studies you most enjoyed and how that has led to you wanting this particular role.

Be aware that if this is a first question it sets the tone for the whole interview. With a well prepared and planned answer you can steer where you want the rest of the interview to go to. Get your answer ready for the Tell me about yourself – today!

Categories
Career CV Recruitment

JOB SEEKER Workshop in CORK, NOVEMBER 10th

Following the Recruitment Workshop in Dublin, Peter Cosgrove from Hudson Recruitment is holding the same in Cork. There is a Galway Workshop planned as well. Date and location will be confirmed here closer to the date.

JOB SEEKER EVENT CORK NOVEMBER 10th

The National Recruitment Federation is hosting a free job seekers event on November 10th.

Location: Imperial Hotel, South Mall,Cork
Date & Time: November 10th at 6pm to 7.30

The talk will be presented by Peter Cosgrove of the NRF and will cover the following:

• Writing a world class CV
• Where to find the next job
• Advice on dealing with recruitment agencies
• Improving interview skills and techniques
• Networking skills
• Negotiating salaries

If you would like to have a recruiter take a look at your cv please can you bring along a copy as there will be a cv clinic afterwards.

Please email: director@nrf.ie to register your place.

Categories
Career Interview Jobs Recruitment Recruitment Agency

How to: Impress at the interview stage

Applying for jobs can be a difficult business at the best of times, but for many people the most nerve-wracking and difficult part of the recruitment process is getting past the interview stage. After sifting through the various applications, the interview process offers a chance for employers to meet some of the more promising candidates for a particular job in person to try to form a more complete picture of their strengths and weaknesses. A candidate’s performance in a job interview can often be the decisive factor in the success or otherwise of their application, and as such it is important to prepare well.

Before you attend the interview, make sure that you done your research and know something about the history and guiding philosophies of the organisation, as well as their current activities. Find out what the job entails so that you can present your qualifications, experiences, previous jobs, and personal attributes in such a way that you appear to be an ideal candidate for the position. Be sure to brush up on your descriptions and knowledge of all of these things, as an inconsistency between the facts as presented in your CV and your interview could make you seem dishonest. You also need to be prepared to answer stock interview questions such as ‘why do you want this job?’ or ‘what would you say were your strengths and weaknesses?’. It can be both beneficial and reassuring to rehearse an interview situation with a friend or relative, especially if they have any experience in hiring people themselves.

When you turn up to the interview, it’s important that you appear clean, neat and tidy, in attire appropriate to the tone of the organisation, and that you do not smoke or chew gum. It’s better to be a bit early than a bit late, so make sure to set for the interview in plenty of time and plan your route well in advance.
During the interview itself, learn your interviewers name and shake their hand firmly (within reason!) upon meeting them. Be well mannered and polite with everyone you meet, and speak clearly without the use of slang words. Don’t slouch or avoid eye contact, as this can be interpreted as a lack of confidence, or even worse, a lack of interest! Make sure to use body language to demonstrate your interest in what the interviewer is saying, and try to appear confident and enthusiastic without being overbearing. Ask questions of the interviewer about the job and the organisation, but avoid questions that could be answered by looking on the company website as this will smack of a lack of preparation and thoroughness. At the end of the interview, thank the interviewer and be sure to shake hands with them again before you leave.

For jobs and career advice, visit employireland.ie.

Categories
Career CV Interview Jobs Recruitment

How to gloss over gaps in your CV

If you have a large gap in your job history, an employer may well ask you to explain what you were doing during this time. Gaps left unexplained in your CV can show you in a less than positive light, as they can lead the employer to draw their own, quite possibly unfavourable, conclusions about your character and work ethic. Writing your employment history in yearly, rather than monthly, instalments can easily erase a gap of only a few months and help to keep your CV short and concise. Longer gaps are harder to gloss over, but that’s not to say that it’s impossible to do so.

If you left a job to pursue further or higher education, especially if it is relevant to the job you are applying for, be sure to let the employer know, as this will most likely be seen as a positive step. Likewise, if you had to leave your job to have or care for a child, be sure to make this clear. However, if you were just plain old out-of-work during this period, try to think of positive projects you were involved with. Perhaps you helped a friend or family member to set up their business during this time, or you were involved with a local charity of some description. You have to be prepared to back up these stories with details, so be sure to prepare thoroughly for the interview, so that you don’t have to make anything up on the spot, making you seem disorganised, dishonest, or both! If you kept yourself afloat during this period by doing odd jobs unconnected with your chosen career, list these jobs in your CV and be prepared to talk about them if questioned.

If you were fired from a previous job, it would be a good idea to avoid mentioning this in your CV or interview if at all possible. However, if you are unable to provide a believable reason for leaving the job, or it is likely that your story will be contradicted by a reference, it is possible to say that you were fired without losing too much credibility. If you were fired as part of a downsizing or cost-cutting operation, then say so, as this does not reflect nearly as badly upon you as if you were fired for poor performance or a lack of discipline. If you have to say that you were fired for personal or performance reasons, explain the situation truthfully and without bitterness, and highlight what you have learned from the situation and how it has changed your awareness and, if necessary, your attitude, for the better.

For jobs and career advice, visit employireland.ie.

Categories
Career CV Interview Jobs Recruitment Recruitment Agency

Interview: Peter Cosgrove

Peter Cosgrove of the NRF will hold a talk for job seekers on September 30th in the Grand Canal Hotel for up to 100 people. To register please email director@nrf.ie.

This is a pilot test free jobseekers workshop by NRF. The presenter Peter Cosgrove agreed to meet me over a coffee and we had a short chat about the upcoming event.

Interview with Peter Cosgrove

What is Free Jobseekers Workshop?
The National Recruitment Federation (NRF) felt that it would be of great value to the members if we were able to help recruitment consultants in a very difficult period. Given the amount of candidates on the marketplace it is inevitable that recruiters are spending more time speaking with candidates but often therefore not getting enough time to talk with clients. This job seekers initiative is to help recruiters put candidates in touch with a free event that they will benefit, as well as giving recruiters more time to focus on speaking to clients to get new assignments for their candidates.

Why has the NRF decided to run this event now?
I think there is a lot of negative press out there and unfortunately recruitment consultants are getting some of this even though they are often just the messengers. This is something they can do for their candidates that they will hopefully appreciate and improve the overall brand of the NRF recruitment agencies.

What does the event cover?
The event is designed for all levels of candidates and is to highlight that the market is completely different and your cv and approach to finding a job has to be also. Specifically it will cover:

• Writing a world class cv
• Where to find the next job
• Advice on dealing with recruitment agencies
• Improving interview skills and techniques
• Networking skills
• Negotiating salaries

Where and when is it happening and how do you register?
The job seekers workshop will run on September 30th from 6PM to 7.30PM at the Grand Canal Hotel, Dublin 4 and will be presented by NRF Committee member, Peter Cosgrove. A cv clinic will follow the event so bring a cv. To register please email your name and contact details to director@nrf.ie but remember places are limited.

Give one good reason why candidates should attend?
Everyone will learn something from this event and if you are proactively looking for a job there will be tips in this presentation that I guarantee will help every job seeker get their next job!

Categories
Career CV Interview Jobs Recruitment Recruitment Agency

Free Jobseekers Workshop

The workshop will run for 90 minutes and will cover:
• Writing a world class CV
• Where to find the next job
• Advice on dealing with recruitment agencies
• Improving interview skills and techniques
• Networking skills
• Negotiating salaries

The goal is to provide insight and support to candidates who are currently in a difficult job market. Free Jobseekers Workshop is targeted at all levels of candidate, from junior through to senior management.

Where & When?
September 30th from 6PM to 7.30PM at the Grand Canal Hotel, Dublin 4 and will be presented by NRF Committee member Peter Cosgrove.

Register
To register a candidate for the NRF Jobseekers Workshop or offer your services for the CV Clinic please contact the NRF office on 01-8161754 or email name and contact details to director@nrf.ie

Categories
Internet Job Site Recruitment Recruitment Agency

Work in Ireland (WorkinIreland.ie)

work in irelandWork in Ireland (WorkinIreland.ie) as jet another recruitment job portal. Although it is not really publicised, it is owned by a recruitment agency called Work Direct (WorkDirect.ie). The agency is run by the Directors Philip Beggs and Sabina Frontzek.

The Work in Ireland site is not that bad looking. Certainly not that bad as a FAS Jobs Site I wrote yesterday about. There are also about 20ish jobs advertised between two advertisers Alex Harp and Step One Recruitment.

The site has one sole purpose and that is to create a stream of fresh CV’s for the Work Direct recruitment agency. Therefore he advertisers email address and any contact details are hidden. On the page showing a job details there is also no Apply button, but it is replaced by Register Now button. This is to force job seekers to leave all their personal details, and the copy of the CV to the recruitment agency that runs the site before the application is sent to the advertiser.

I wonder will any recruitment agency, when they decide to make a job board, use their experience and knowledge of the industry and create something new? Something that will improve the process of the online recruitment? When will a single recruitment web site really differ from all the others? All the Irish recruitment agencies have jobs advertised on them, and all the sites are exactly the same. Same features, and quite a few actually look the same (Prosperity.ie being the exception). What happened to creativity? Is there absolutely nothing innovative the Irish recruitment agencies can come up with for more than 10 years now?

(hint: think social media)

Categories
Blogs Career CV LinkedIN Recruitment Social Networks Social Recruitment Twitter

Does your CV and LinkedIN Profile Match?

Your LinkedIN Profile is most likely a copy of your CV. If a recruiter does a ‘Background Check’ to verify your CV the same data will be on your LinkedIN ‘Published’ online Profile, and that is great. Your CV is all true. The issue with the CV and the LinkedIN Profile being the same is a missed opportunity for a job seeker.

Your LinkedIN Profile should tell far more than your CV does to a recruiter.

What to include in your LinkedIN Profile?

Link to your Blog. On your blog you can show all different qualities a recruiter is searching for:
Expertise in a subject
Communication skills
Writing skills
Presentation skills
Team Building skills
And much more!

Links to your Twitter account where your conversations with the other influencers in the market and subject matter expert are published and visible are the next essential part of your LinkedIN Profile. Your network of known people and especially their recommendations are what sets you apart from the thousands of other applicants for the same job.

The CV opens the door. It invites the recruiter to start the research about you. Make sure your social media and social networking presence is the extension of your CV. If your LinkedIN Profile is a copy of your CV, it doesn’t really have a great value. It is also an opportunity missed.

Categories
Career Internet Jobs LinkedIN Recruitment

Worky

workyWorky is a Recruitment Social Network. Kind of like LinkedIN, but a few years later. Worky has no people in it jet, but has the pricing model – a bit steeper than LikedIN.

What is wrong here:

RecruitIreland goes FREE and in the same month Worky is goes live more expensive than LinkedIN, that Irish recruiters find too expensive.

Oh,… and also Flexitimers stopped charging for the jobs advertisements as well. There are clear signs more and more sites are going to go free. But not Worky. Worky is more expensive, so obviously better than LikedIN.

But Worky is global, so not in a league with Irish Jobs and Recruit Ireland. Worky is the new Monster. Actually Worky is a new Monster and LikedIN together.

Worky we wish you well!

Here is what Worky says about themeslves:

Why Worky? … The before and afterCandidates
No more dark ages of the job boards
When everybody first started using the internet it was a novelty to see jobs from the newspapers up there
It gave us all a buzz applying for a role online
And for a couple of years that model of offline or newspaper style job adverts stuck up on the internet kept us happy in the dark

But not for long
Very soon it was endless lists of jobs and endless lists of job boards, sites boasted about how many jobs they had but candidates only wanted one job and so lost heart..

Did the agency or the company get my application?
Did my application fall into a big black hole?
Who is looking at my application?
Do they like my application?
Can I not see a bit more about where this job is before I apply?
Don’t they want to know my preferences before we get off the first block?
For employers and agencies it became heartache too
Why can’t I find suitable matches?
Why do so few applicants match what I’ve asked for?
Which job board do I use?
Do these job boards spend anything on advertising?
Which one actually engages with the mainstream everyday candidates?
Along came the Upload your CV era – but full of broken promise

For candidates

Who is looking at my CV?
Is it still live?
Do I have any control?
It’s too complicated to make it anonymous?
Can my boss see my name or our company name?
For Employers

Employers grew tired of seeing that 1458 people matched their job
Grew tired of keyword searches so man who sold java coffee was matched against 1000s of java programming jobs
At last Worky…
Not a job board
Not an upload your CV mechanism
For candidates a place to create your own individual online skills profile and have it seen by every employer for free in the safe knowledge that it is anonymous until you see that they may have a role to suit. A place where once you upload your profile, you can job-hunt while you sleep.

works for candidates… Join in

For Employers A place to copper fasten the skills you want in an employee, a place where you can see with ease who matches your job financially, geographically, by skills and by work experience to name but a few. A place for employers to see first if there are matching candidates before committing to pay

works for hirers… Try it now

Categories
Blogs

CV Magnet or how NOT to advertise a job?

What do you do when you purchase too many job slots on a job board? You use them and fill with the duplicates of the jobs you need to fill or write a generic job spec for the type of the jobs you are hiring for, and publish those.

Duplicates, Duplicates, Duplicates…

The advantage in having the same job published exactly the same more than once on a job board is very low. In taking some time and changing each copy so that it has a unique title, and quite different job description will generate more applications, but will also result in a lot of duplicate applications. (you asked for it!)

Speculative Positions

If you are recruiting for a position where you require a large number of the staff with the similar skills, and they tend not to stay that long with you (students, etc), than you need to have the same job advertised al all times on the job boards.

Just a note on the job title advertised as ‘Speculative Positions’: Putting the ‘Speculative Positions’ as a title of a job advertised on a jobs board will not really do you any good. An DBA Guru is far more likely to click on a job that includes a word DBA than on a job titled ‘Speculative Positions’.

CV Magnet

If you want to get a large number of the CV’s for the job published, just write a loose Requirements. Many job seekers use the Job Requirements to ‘filter themselves out’. If you write 6 separate requirements, and one is ‘6 years industry experience’, you might lose someone how has all the other five but only 5 years experience. And that is certainly no recruiters intention.

If you remove the requirements completely, you just mark them as the ‘Desired Candidate Requirements’, or just note that the candidate should have at least 2 of 6 listed, you will increase the number of the applications, while not drastically decreasing the overall quality of the job applications.

Categories
CV Jobs Recruitment

Resumes – Chronological vs. Functional. Which do you prefer?

An interesting thread on the toppic of the CVs from LinkedIN:

Patrick Myers
Risk Management, Process Improvement, Consulting, Credit and Operational Risk expertise

Resumes – Chronological vs. Functional. Which do you prefer?
There are many opinions as to what resume should be used. Which do you prefer and why?

Answers (18)

Bryan C Webb, P. Eng.
► Technical Product Marketing & Sales Professional ◄

Recruiters ALWAYS want chronological.

On the other hand as long as you specify companies and dates, a functional may be more appropriate to stress the myriad of accomplishments.

Why not do both and use accordingly?

Henrik Brinch
CEO, TriGemini, ProDocumentor, PointGlass, [LION]

To sum up what I prefer in resumes (in this order):

1. Personal information (name, age, contact information, civil status, children)

2. Short personalized summary (photo is a plus)

3. Education (chronological, descending by year), type, place, period.

4. Professional experience (chronological, descending by year), period, company, position, short description on assignments and preferably a connection to the qualifications given in my #5 and a reference person.

5. List of qualifications, each rated by level: Very high, high, medium, low., Years of experience, Year last used. low. E.g. French (spoken), lmedium, last used 1999, 10 yrs. experience.

6. Date of availability´and expected minimum wage.

Given these information in the given order, enables me to categorize the resumes pretty fast. Unfortunately candidates have numerous of different ways of setting up resumes, so I usually reformat into the format above.

Alesia Lewis
Human Resources Manager at The RPM Company

I’m recruit as part of my overall HR responsibilities and I usually prefer funtional. This format allows me to, at a glance, get an clear understanding of the skills a candidate possesses. As long as the employment history is included somewhere, with dates, I prefer this style. I’ve also used it myself, successfully, when job searching.

Functional is also the better format when looking to switch to a field that you have experience in that isn’t readily understandable by looking at a chronological resume, or when seeking a position with increased responsibility when previous titles don’t necessarily show that type of experience.
Clarification added 1 day ago:
Ugh. Editing…it’s a good thing! I meant “I recruit” not “I’m recruit”!

Karl Kabanek
Senior Program Manager

As a hiring manager, I have returned resumes and asked the candidate to put them in chronological order. I expect each entry to pertain to the position and company they are applying for and to. Chronological allows me to see how recent and relevant the candidate’s experience is.

Veronique Serritella (Trusal)
Recruiting Manager at Robert Half Finance & Accounting

There are reasons to use either. Anything other than chronological is used to hide a gap, IMHO. This can be good and bad.

For those with a lot of similar experience with many different companies, I like to see a summary of qualifications, followed by a chronological list of companies with job titles and a very very short description of the tasks. Then the usual education, … It’s a hybrid of the two.

Aggie Gajewska Diamond
Director, Interim Staffing at Smyth Solutions

Need to put my two cents in…
In reply to Henrik’s answer: in US – don’t put your photo on a resume – recruiters and HR managers are uncomfortable that little bonus feature due to anti-discrimination laws that may become shaky if you go there…

Don’t write your resume in first person and don’t list your marital status, number of children, and hobbies unrelated to your professional life.

Chronological resumes make most sense – but you can turn your experience with the same employer into a functional one. Example: You worked for ABC Inc. for 20 years and served in many functional areas of the company. List them.

Let me know if I can help.

John Gravanis
Sales Director @ Ergoman ||| Onwer of ManageIT

Both are great for different candidates, going after different placements…

However, more experienced professionals will tend to write functional CVs, where more junior professionals, favor chronological CVs and taking it a step further (rather a step lower) people fresh out of school/college write chronological with education up top, followed by ‘professional experience’ right after…

Although chronological are easier on my eyes (especially when we are hiring and I need to go through several of them in a short period of time) I find that I give functional CVs guys a first crack at an interview more frequently, & usually endorse/vouch for them easier…

Point is, this one is definitely, not a ONE SIZE FITS ALL matter.

Bob Garrett 3600+ Looking for employment . LION TOPLINKED
> LOOKING < for employment - bobcgarrett@gmail.com

Guess it depends on how much experience you have.
I prefer chronological

Send an invite to connect if you like

Kristen Fife
Technical Recruiter, Author

The *only* time I recommend a functional resume, as both a Resume Consutlant and as a Recruiter, is if you are in a portfolio-based profession and you have multiple concurrent clients or projects simultaneously using the same skill set. Examples would be creative agency/PR, stock broker, actor, public speaker,etc. .

The reason *why* a functional resume is frustrating is because I (and my hiring managers) want to see what you did, when you did it, if it was something you used recently/currently, and how it pertained to the job we are looking at you for now. Listing out a bunch of skills that have nothing but a string of job titles to tie them to tells me *nothing.*

Here’s a recent example. I am looking at an accounting resume, and the candidate sent me a functional resume. I asked her for a chronologic resume, and she told me that she used the functional format because she used the same skills in every job she has had in the last 10+ years.

This says to me that she doesn’t seek out new challenges, doesn’t keep track of projects that can add to her total worth as an employee, and that (perhaps) she is just working for a paycheck as opposed to taking pride in her work. When she sent me her chronologic resume, all she did was copy/paste the information time and again. She had a few different titles and worked in a couple of different industries, so she *should* have had at least some different experiences, and working at different sized companies should have produced more or less responsibility for her, but that wasn’t the case as she portrayed her professional history to me.
posted 21 hours ago | Flag answer as…

Greg Coyle
Experienced information technology and services leader, expert in delivering quality solutions to complex problems.

Functional resumes are useful for highlighting experience in a way that facilitates bridging into an industry or role for which you have no explicit history. However, most people are only familiar with the chronological format these days, and find functional resumes confusing. For cold calls, or any situation where you are not going to have a chance to present (and explain) your resume in person, you’re pretty much going to have to use the chronological.

Paula Cohen
Career Coach and Consultant

Reverse chronological vs. functional… The chronological resume is best for people who are seeking positions similar to, or the same as, they’ve been doing. It’s the easiest format to read, and potential employers can eyeball it quickly and make the most sense out of it. Summary, experience, professional development, education, and professional memberships are the suggested sections in the suggested order. Put accomplishments — measurable / quantifiable, preferably — in bullet points under a brief job description in the experience section. Note: to make them stand out, only accomplishments get bullet points. Ordinary job duties are written in paragraph form; and don’t be too wordy. No one cares what you’re doing on a daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, semi-annual or annual basis, they just want to know the broad outlines of what you do, and what you handle — how many people do you supervise, what’s the size of the budget you control, whom do you report to, etc.

Functional…you’ll need an objective. This is the format you use if you’re looking to do something very different from what you’ve been doing. The objective is necessary because the landscaping company with the position for a gardner will be plenty stunned by getting a resume from an IT person unless it’s clear that the IT person is looking to switch to gardening. The objective comes before the summary. After the summary comes a section just for accomplishments…and those accomplishments can be put into separate sections, for instance “Programming”, “Project Management”, “Operations”, and “Leadership”, with three, four or five bullet-point accomplishments under each.

Then comes a brief section of experience or work history, with nothing but company names, job titles and dates. After that, professional development , then education, etc.

Chronological is preferable if you’re continuing to do what you’ve been doing. Functional is preferable if you’re looking to make a significant change in career direction, since if focuses on transferable skills and expertise as illustrated by the accomplishments, rather than on the specific industries, companies and roles you’ve held within them.

Any more questions? Contact me!

Richard Kirby
{LION} Executive Career Coaching and Recruiting

If you want a recruiter (executive search firm, staffing company, or internal/HR recruiting staffer) to read it, they prefer reverse chronological.

If you think the people who will review the resume are not knowledgeable and you feel a function suits you better, you might get away with a functional one. Sophisticated resume readers/screeners know why people use functional resumes (no clear career progression, lack of career momentum, lots of jobs, blank spaces in work experience, general inability to stay focused in one area, returning to work after being out for several years, etc.) and they LOOK for confirmations for these negatives the writer is attempting to hide. A functional resume, 90%+ of the time, will work against the person.

Anyone who wants an article on this subject can email me at rkirby@executive-impact.com.

Hal Moore (LinkWithHal@gmail.com) LION
Executive Search Consultant

As a recruiter, I have had very little success with my client base using functional resumes. I cannot tell you how many times hiring officials have asked for a chronological resume after first seeing the functional version. Most of my clients want to understand what duties the candidate performed at each position they previously held.

Many people view functional resumes as an attempt to hide something in the candidate’s experience, such as frequent job changes or the real amount of time that someone has experience in a certain field.

Denise Anne Taylor
Expertise in Business Etiquette, lnternational Protocol, Conflict Management, and Career Transition: Speaker, Writer

There really is not an option when creating a resume. Chronological is your best choice. Most recruiters and those that interview do not desire the Functional format. Chronological shows your most recent accomplishments that would be applicable to the current job search process.

Ray Miller
Energy expert, educator, award winning sculptor

I definitely prefer functional resume’s.

Much more informative and more of an expression of who the candidate sees themselves to be versus what they did and when.

Bobbie Rogers
Your Trusted & Preferred IT Services Provider!

It depends on the audience receiving the resume: MOST HR Professionals view Functional Resumes as a RED FLAG! What is this person hiding? So always send Chronological resumes to HR.

Managers with the budget don’t care what TYPE of resume you have as long as you have a stable work history with no gaps of employment and the skills to do the job!

Executives don’t care! Executives only want people who were referred and prescreened. They tend to make their own decision based on the interview & feedback from their trusted advisors. MOST Executives never read or looking at the resume, they rely on others to summarize your expertise for them.

The purpose of a resume is to OPEN THE DOOR to get the interview, if you are not communicating exactly what they are looking for in the top paragraph of the resume you will be screened OUT! You only have 6 seconds to grab the attention of a Recruiter / HR professional & 10 seconds for Managers.

The REAL KEY is to make sure every keyword in the resume matches the specific job description you are applying for; otherwise, you will be screened out NOT “In”! If they ask for an MCSE & you stated M-C-S-E or Microsoft Certified whatever you will be screened OUT Not “In”.

Lavie Margolin (Laviemarg@yahoo.com)
Job Search Advisor, Employment/Career Counselor, Job Developer

Chronological if you are on a smooth path- applying to a job you are currently doing or has just ended.

Functional if you are applying for the type of job you have not done in along time but still have the skills for or have been out of work for a significant amount of time.

Marc LeVine
Owner, Integrity Consulting Associates

Chronological or, at least Chronofunctional. Recruiters look for closure. We want to see career progression (was the current position a step up or step back from the one before it?). We want to see how long the individual stayed at each company? We need to kow if there are any significant gaps or periods of unemployment between jobs?

Problem is…just by using the functional approach, most recruiters can smell that something being covered up.

With the Chronofunctional resume, at least, everything you need is there. It is just listed in such a way as more attention is given to the developed skills of the candidate, while the job history is buried near the bottom. It’s a gamble that scanners andthose with a short attention span will note that the information as present, but may not focus on the detail.

Some people have to use this approach, but the more experienced recruiters can usually read between the lines.

Sooo…. not really a 100% straignt answer, isn’t it? :)

Categories
Blogs CV CV Database Jobs Recruitment

Developing a Jobs Site / Job Board

Jobs Sites are fairly straight forward web sites. Not as simple as a pure presentation “shop window” web sites, but there is not that much to it.

Three basic types of registered users:

    Employers
    Job Seekers
    Job Board Admin

There is also a very small number of pages:

    Home
    Search
    Advanced Search
    Search Results
    Full job description
    Application form
    About / Contact

A few more admin pages in the back end of the job site and that is all you really need to get going. Later on you might ad a page for Company Profiles, Quotes, or similar Jada-jada required for the search engine optimization purposes. You might disguise it under eh title Career Resources, or something sounding equally smart.

Any web development company can do it fairly quickly, and if you stick to those basics, it will not cost you an arm end leg. Outsourcing the development to India will save you quite some money as well. And this is the reason we had more than 20 new job sites in Ireland launched in the same year 2007. Imagine 20 new job sites in the market that to anyone in the industry seams overcrowded.

CV Database exposed on the WebThere is only one problem with the job sites, and that is that they are more often than not built so that they store the CV’s of the candidates. This enables the job board owners to sell access to the CV databases. Holding onto CVs online requires a tough security, and if you have been cutting corners while developing your web site, it might not be there. The end results are that job hunters private data gets exposed. Sometimes their application history and sometimes even the full CVs find their way to the web.

Yes we did contact Karl to let him know and he pached the security hole quickly.

Categories
Blogs Jobs Recruitment

Video CV is here!

Ever noticed how hiring graduates based on their CV’s isn’t fun at all? Same CVs, with lots of education all over and no experience, at least not relevant one? Ever got into the situation where you cannot really determine anything relevant in eth CV, and started basing your filtering process solely on the ‘Interests’ and ‘Sports’ at the bottom of the CV?

If you recognise our self above, you will like what is coming next! A Video CV! You can actually SEE and HEAR the candidate. Now how is that in comparison to the poorly filled CV template with most of the required data for the CV (no Experience?!).

Thanks to a brilliant idea by CVizz.com that is all about to change!

Across the ocean:
A similar service in the US: VISAUL CV just got $5 mill. funding yesterday. Is that the first funding in the Video CV arena?