Feature Article: Proof of Performance: Career Portfolios an Emerging Trend for Both Active and Passive Job-Seekers
Special Feature: Marketing Yourself (in Your Career) Quiz A Quintessential Careers Quiz
Quintessential Site: Featured Career Web Site of this Issue
The Career Doctor: Answering Your Questions
What's New on Quintessential Careers: Latest Additions
Q TIPS: Quick and Quintessential Tips to Guide Your Job Search
Notes from the Editor: About this Issue...
This month, QuintCareers turns 9, and we're feeling fine.
We feel especially fine about our record-breaking month
of October, when 1.04 million unique visitors graced Quint Careers,
and we enjoyed 3.6 million page impressions. This issue of QuintZine goes out to
7,000 subscribers. Thousands upon thousands of visitors have taken
our interactive quizzes and partaken of our practice interviews.
Icing on the cake -- or shall we say whipped cream on the
pumpkin pie -- was the news that Quint Careers is among the top 6,500
sites in the world based on traffic.
In this Thanksgiving week in the U.S., we are thankful for all those who visit and find Quint Careers useful.
We've marked the occasional with some revealing original research about
career portfolios, and yet another interactive quiz, this one on marketing yourself
in the career search.
Enjoy, and Happy Thanksgiving to our U.S. readers.
Actively or passively searching for a job? No talking turkey here... just jobs.
Find jobs to interview for at our job portal.
--Katharine Hansen, Master Resume Writer, Credentialed Career Master, Certified Electronic Career Coach,
and editor at
kathy@quintcareers.com
Feature Article: Proof of Performance
Proof of Performance: Career Portfolios an Emerging Trend for Both Active and Passive Job-Seekers
by Randall S. Hansen, Ph.D. and Katharine Hansen
Job-seekers learn more about themselves and their qualifications by preparing a career portfolio, thus boosting
their confidence and preparing them for job interviews -- regardless of whether they actually use the portfolio
in the interview -- according to a recent study titled Career Portfolios: Proof of Performance, and conducted
by Quintessential Careers, one of the Web's oldest and most comprehensive career development sites.
"And, I think it is not just self-confidence that the process creates; it is also self-knowledge of what skills and strengths
they have, which can help them make a better choice of what jobs to apply for, and then to analyze the match between those
jobs and their qualities," stated one participant, a university career counselor. Further, a portfolio "is a useful tool for
preparing for the interview, even if the applicant does not have the opportunity to present it to the employer," stated
another university career professional.
In a time when many employers are skeptical of the claims many job-seekers make on their resumes
concerning their experiences and contributions -- lying and misleading information on a job-seeker's
resume ranked as one of the top recruiter pet peeves in a survey conducted by resumedoctor.com -- a career
portfolio can be just the tool to use to show rather than tell.
What is a career portfolio? It's a job-hunting tool that job-seekers develop to give employers a complete picture
of who they are -- experience, education, accomplishments, skill sets -- and potential contribution to the employer's organization
-- much more than just a cover letter and resume can provide. Job-seekers can use a career portfolio in job interviews to
showcase a point, to illustrate the depth of skills and experience, or to use as a tool to obtain a second interview.
Marketing Yourself (in Your Career) Quiz: A Quintessential Careers Quiz
by Randall S. Hansen, Ph.D.
With fewer corporate ladders to climb and a more decentralized structure of many businesses, hard-working
and ambitious workers can easily get overlooked for advancement and promotions.
Getting ahead today not only requires being good at what you do, but also being good at marketing yourself
within the organization. Workers need to build their own ladders for success and advancement.
Call it self-marketing or career-marketing -- some call it self-promotion or even bragging -- but whatever you call it,
you just need to do it if you want to get noticed for the next promotion. However, there is a fine line between bragging
and self-promotion, so be careful about taking too much credit or sounding as though the whole organization would
collapse if you were not working there.
This quiz is about helping you gauge whether you are doing enough marketing of yourself on the job to help
you advance your career. Remember that self-marketing is about building and enhancing the product (your
professional -development activities) as much as it is about good promotion (making people aware of your
accomplishments).
Keith writes: "I am currently moving up the ladder in my career in the IT world. I have a lot of varied experiences and think my
skills are in pretty high demand. I've been thinking of putting together an online portfolio to showcase my work experience.
Any thoughts? Pros? Cons?"
Janet writes: "I have a question about following up on job leads: If a job posted on the organization's web site requests 1) that you
email in your application, and 2) 'No phone
calls, please,' I assume I should not *call*
a week after emailing in my resume and cover letter.
I am assuming it would be better to *email* my follow-up. What do you think?"
Anonymous writes: "I was fired from my last position after only four months. I have four years of good experience prior to this. I do not want my last
employer contacted for a reference. Do I have to include the job on my resume? And what about on an application? Can a prospective employer
run a background check using your social security number or by other means that would turn up the omitted job?"
Desired-Careers.com --
a global job site, where job-seekers can search for job listings in any country and
in any industry (as well as by keywords). Job-seekers can also register for new job
alerts as well as find a nice collection of career resources. No cost to job-seekers.
JobsinTherapy.com --
where professionals searching for jobs in physical therapy, occupational therapy,
speech therapy, radiation therapy, respiratory therapy, and other related job fields can search
job listings (by state, job type, speciality) as well as post your resume. No cost to job-seekers.
Lunch-Money.com --
a great site for college-bound teens, with all sorts of great tools, including:
scholarship search, college search, career exploration tools, and more. One of the
more comprehensive sites for life after high school. No cost.
WorkReno.com --
a job board for job-seekers who want to find jobs in Reno and the greater Northern
Nevada area. Job-seekers can search job postings (by keywords, job category, and job type),
as well as posting your resume and registering for a email job-matching agent. No cost to job-seekers.
Find even more career and job site additions to Quintessential Careers by visiting our
Latest Additions section.
We Now Produce Two Job-Search Blogs!
Get the latest career, college, and job-search news you need!
And then there is the Quint Careers Blog.
It consists of career and job-search news, trends,
and scoops for job-seekers, compiled by the staff
of Quintessential Careers.
The blog is a great way to stay posted on the most
recent events occurring in the career and employment fields.
Q TIPS: Quick and Quintessential Career & Job Tips
The internship hiring picture has really turned a corner for MBAs. According to a recent WetFeet research report conducted by WetFeet's
president, Steve Pollock, recruiters are slugging it out on campus for top talent to build their full-time hiring pipeline. Not only are more
companies from a wider range of industries developing organized on-campus recruiting programs, but the traditional big
recruiters -- consulting firms and investment banks -- have increased their number of offers for the past three years.
Companies are continuing to dedicate more and more resources to internship programs, giving students many
more options, but also making it more important that students participate in the internship recruiting process, even if it is to
simply practice interviewing skills or learn about various companies and industries.
Money magazine reports that, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, one
great factor that is driving the direction of hot jobs and fastest growing fields is the baby-boomer market,
77 million strong. They are using services as they reach 50+ that they didn't use in their
younger years. Particular focus is on increasing opportunities and careers in the health industry, as
baby boomers remain active longer than previous generations, and want to maintain their
healthy glow and physical abilities.
The Labor Department projects more than 600,000 nursing jobs will open in the next 10 years,
a 27 percent increase by 2012 from 2002. Registered nurses earn about $52,000 on average,
physician assistants (PAs) average more than $63,000, physical therapists more than
$61,000, and occupational therapists average $53,000.
The projected fastest-growing fields through 2012 are:
Network systems and communications analysts: 57.0 percent
A survey of 1,400 CIOs by Robert Half Technology found that industry-specific experience is the most valued
qualification when it comes to choosing among technology job candidates with otherwise equal skills.
Most valued qualifications:
Industry-specific experience: 43 percent
Soft skills: 32 percent
Certification in a relevant technology: 15 percent
If your school, organization, business or other
entity has a Web site, we welcome you to link to Quintessential Careers.
If you already have a link from your site, we want you to know we
appreciate it. If you don't have a link to us, please
send a request to your site's Webmaster to establish a
link to Quintessential Careers. Thanks so much!
For more details (including sample HTML copy), see our
Link to Us page.
QuintZine: Topics in Upcoming Issues
WATCH FOR feature articles on these topics in upcoming
issues of QuintZine:
* The Value of Internships Abroad and Study Abroad
* Top 10 Fears of Job-seekers
* For Job-hunting Success, Develop a Detailed Job-Search Plan
* How to Build a Personal Advisory Board
* Keep Your Career Dreams Alive
* MBA Career Portfolios
* Pre-Hire Background/Credit Checks
* Noncompete Clauses
* Practice Career Management to Avoid Career Crisis
* Financial Aid/Scholarship Timetable
* Build Confidence and Avoid Insecurity in Job Interviews
* Empty Nest Job-Seekers
* Baby Boomers Beware
* Are You Sabotaging Your Job-Search/Career?
* Marketing Yourself with Internal/External Promotions
* Lifelong Networking
* Networking for the Shy
* Converting a Seasonal Job to a Permanent Position
* Working Night Shifts/Odd Hours
* Quintessential Career Profiles of YOU, our readers
* Q&As with well-known career experts
* Career, College, and Job-Search Book reviews
. . . and much, much more!
Don't ever want to miss another issue of QuintZine? Get a free subscription to
the email version of QuintZine by completing our
subscription form.
Ad: Quintessential Careers Career Coaching Services
We now offer two types of career-coaching services!
Are you...
feeling stuck in an unsatisfying job?
facing a major change in career or job status?
searching for your ideal career or job?
seeking help in developing a job-search plan?
looking for a solution to job-search obstacles?
desiring to bounce ideas off of a career expert?
trying to discover the keys to career success?
Let Dr. Randall S. Hansen, The Career Doctor, help you work through all your college, career, and job-search concerns,
issues, and problems. He has helped hundreds of teens, college students, and experienced job-seekers identify obstacles, develop
action plans, and achieve success -- and he can help you!
And for an economical online-only career-coaching alternative,
visit The Career Clinic.
Quintessential Careers Advertisements
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we can prepare an English-language CV for you that conforms to the CV traditions of your target country or countries.
Quintessential Careers also offers writing services
for those who have been asked to give a speech and
need assistance in researching and writing their
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Need a speaker for your career-oriented conference or
event at your college or organization? The Quintessential
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career-related topics.
This month, QuintCareers turns 9, and we're feeling fine.
