Feature Article: Career Focus Quiz: A Quintessential Careers Quiz
Special Feature: Successfully Implement Your Career Plan
Bonus Feature: A Quintet of Quick Questions: QuintZine's Q&A with a Career Expert
Quintessential Reading: QuintZine's Review of Career Books
Quintessential Site: Featured Career Web Site of this Issue
Latest Additions: What's New on Quintessential Careers
Q TIPS: Quick and Quintessential Tips to Guide Your Job Search
Notes from the Editor: About this Issue...
It takes more than St. Paddy's Day luck of the Irish to plan a career.
As Dr. Randall Hansen conveys in this issue's featured quiz, planning requires a clear understanding of your career goals.
Deborah Brown-Volkmann emphasizes in her article in this issue that career planning is of limited value
if you can't implement your plan.
Finally, Q&A subject Heather Mundell discusses career-planning mistakes and the consequences of
poor planning in our interview with her.
A footnote to our last issue: We ran my book review of Jason
Alba's I'm on LinkedIn -- Now What???, and just a couple of
days later received a copy of his newest book, I'm on Facebook
-- Now What???, co-authored with Jesse Stay. So, I've now
reviewed that helpful book, and
you'll find the review here.
--Katharine Hansen, Ph.D., Master Resume Writer, Credentialed Career Master,
Certified Electronic Career Coach, and editor at
kathy@quintcareers.com
Feature Article: Career Focus Quiz
by Randall S. Hansen, Ph.D.
Having a strong understanding of yourself and your career path plays an important role in your
career and personal success.
We all have certain dreams for ourselves and our families, and for most of us, it's our jobs and careers that help us
attain those dreams.
Having a clear career focus -- a clear understanding of your career goals and your ability to achieve them --
will bring you closer to achieving those dreams and goals.
QuintZine's Q&A with a Career Expert: Heather Mundell, certified professional coach and founder of Dream Big Coaching Services
Heather Mundell told us in the Q&A interview we did with her that one of the biggest mistakes job-seekers
in planning their careers is to "underestimate their abilities and fail to 'think big' enough."
"This is a key piece I assist people with and has a lot to do with how I came up with the name of my business, Dream Big
Coaching Services," Mundell says. "Many people don't allow themselves even to acknowledge how big a game they'd like
to play in their careers, for fear that it won't happen. For example, someone I know has an audacious, wonderful business idea
that she's not pursuing because she can't see exactly how she'll get there, and there seem to be a number of obstacles."
Read Mundell's thoughts on the consequences of failing to plan your career, the biggest myth about job-hunting,
the best ways to discover your career passion, and the biggest mistakes job-seekers make
in our full Q&A with her.
QUINTESSENTIAL RESUMES AND COVER LETTERS is now providing solutions
with unmatched quality in the areas of career planning, professional resume writing, and interviewing, having
successfully helped tens of thousands of clients, from executives through individuals beginning a career,
succeed in their career goals.
Quintessential Careers Announces Plans for Fall 2008 and Spring 2009 Tours.
The Quint Careers RV could be headed your way. We're ready to put on no-cost workshops
at your college, high school, or library!
The Fall 2008 (August-November) Mid-Atlantic Tour will take us through Florida, South Carolina, North Carolina,
Virginia, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia. Specific Dates TBA. Learn more
and contact QuintCareers Founder Dr. Hansen if you're interested in having us make a stop.
The Spring 2009 (Dates TBD) West/Mid-West Tour will take us through Louisiana, Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas,
Colorado, Utah, Nevada, California, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Iowa, Missouri, and Kentucky.
Get more details on this tour or
contact QuintCareers Founder Dr. Hansen.
MyPlan.com helps students and professionals plan more fulfilling lives by making well-informed decisions about their
education and careers. Whether you're deciding on what college to go to, choosing a major, planning ahead for your
first career, or thinking about making a career change, MyPlan.com can help you explore options and bring clarity
and insight into figuring out what's right for you.
The site especially prides itself on being 100 percent independent and unbiased and states that it provides "the truth about colleges,
careers and majors."
The site's navigation includes tabs for Careers, Assessment, Colleges, and Majors.
The Careers section offers a Career Database with information on 900 careers; a Video Library with 1-2-minute
videos for nearly 500 careers and industries; a Salary Calculator; Top Ten Lists (for example, top ten highest paying jobs in America,
top ten lowest paying jobs in America, top ten U.S. cities with the highest average incomes); a Career Community (featuring career reviews,
career satisfaction ratings, discussion forums, and user groups for 900+ specific careers); an Industry Database with information on 77 industries; and
a collection of Online Career Resources.
Careerjet.ie --
a meta-mega job aggregating site for Ireland in which job listings originating
from company sites, recruitment agency sites, and large specialist recruitment
sites are compiled, and where job-seekers can search all these job postings
(by keywords and location). No cost to job-seekers.
careertours -- where
job-seekers can conduct research on prospective employers by watching videos
and reading corporate profiles that includes information on organizational
history, culture, diversity, values, and more. No cost to job-seekers.
Civil Engineering Central
-- an employment for civil engineering professionals, where job-seekers can browse or search job
postings (by job category, location, keywords), post multiple resumes/profiles, and
register for job-search alerts. Also provides visitors with civil engineering resources.
No cost to job-seekers.
MyFirstPaycheck.com --
a unique new teen job site because the site itself is run by teens, and where teen
job-seekers can search for job and volunteering opportunities as well as
find advice and resources to help have a more successful job application process. No cost to job-seekers.
Find even more career and job site additions to Quintessential Careers by visiting our
Latest Additions section.
Quintessential Careers Press New Book!
Quintessential Careers Press Announces a New Book on Behavioral Interviewing.
The Quintessential Guide to Behavioral Interviewing, by Katharine Hansen, Ph.D.
(Quintessential Careers Press). A free book that's like attending boot camp for intensively
learning about and preparing for this popular form of job-interviewing. You'll learn the premise behind
behavioral interviewing -- why employers like to use them. You'll discover how to identify the skills and
behaviors that employers are targeting with with behavioral questions... along with a huge collection of
questions and sample responses. A must read for all job-seekers.
Q TIPS:
Quick and Quintessential Tips to Guide Your Job Search and Work Life
Despite warnings of a slower-growing economy, a number of highly skilled professionals -- software developers,
nurses, sales representatives, and accountants, for example -- remain in high demand to fill critical roles for U.S. companies,
according to new Jobfox Top 25 Most Wanted U.S. Professions rankings.
Software Design/Development, Nursing, Accounting/Finance Executive, Sales/Business Development Representative,
and Administrative Assistant are the top five most active professions in the March 2008
Jobfox Top 25 Most Wanted U.S. Professions rankings. The report reflects the professions most often targeted by
employers and recruiters using Jobfox to search for and find new or replacement workers during
a 120-day period ending February 21, 2008.
Professions rounding out the top 10 are: Corporate Finance, Networking/System Administration, Intelligence;
General Accounting, and Technical Customer Support.
Find the complete list of rankings here.
Along with the rankings of the top professions, the report includes the median salary ranges sought by Jobfox candidates with matching
profession profiles.
According to a new study by Leadership IQ, workers waste 25 percent of their workday, and that number is up 44 percent over last year.
The study also discovered that the biggest reason for this increase in wasted time can be traced to "Recession Rumination."
Leadership IQ conducts an annual survey of workplace slacking, and 6,447 workers completed both the February 2007 and February
2008 surveys. In February 2007 these workers reported wasting 1.6 hours per average 9.1 hour workday. But in February 2008, these
same workers reported wasting 2.3 hours per average 9.2 hour workday.
The biggest time wasters for respondents? In February 2007, the Top 5 timewasters were the typical culprits:
Surfing the Internet for Shopping (17 percent of respondents)
Surfing the Internet for Entertainment (15 percent)
Surfing the Internet for Personal E-Mail (10 percent)
Chatting with Co-Workers (9 percent)
Daydreaming about Positive Topics (9 percent)
But in February 2008, the Top 5 time wasters were quite different and clearly influenced by fears about a potential recession:
Surfing the Internet for Career Improvement (21 percent of respondents)
Surfing the Internet for Personal Finance (17 percent)
Daydreaming about Negative Topics (12 percent)
Chatting with Co-Workers (9 percent)
Surfing the Internet for Entertainment (7 percent)
Despite fears of recession, more than half of 7,000 employees surveyed by Salary.com, Inc., in
its third annual Job Satisfaction and Retention Survey are likely to intensify their job search in the next three months.
This percentage is slowly decreasing; in 2006 nearly 65 percent of employees surveyed were actively looking and in 2007
just over 60 percent of employees said they planned to look for a new job in the next three months.
The 2007/2008 Job Satisfaction & Retention Survey revealed many other interesting results, including that inadequate compensation
is the top reason employees gave as to why they would leave their job.
The Top 5 Reasons for Leaving a Job as Reported by Employees:
Inadequate compensation: 27 percent
Lack of career advancement: 19 percent
Insufficient recognition: 17 percent
Boredom: 11 percent
No professional development: 11 percent
Fifty percent of employers surveyed feel a job offer with an 8-15
percent salary increase from a competitor would be enough to lure
away current employees. Yet on average, employers are willing to
give an average raise of just 7 percent to entice employees to stay.
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.
Need a career expert for a story or article you're working on? Searching for college,
career, and job news? Interested in learning more about Quintessential Careers?
Our Press Room
is your one-stop location for getting the information and resources you need.
QuintZine: Topics in Upcoming Issues
WATCH FOR feature articles on these topics in upcoming
issues of QuintZine:
* Credit Reports and Job-Search
* New Grads: Expectation/Entitlement vs. Reality
* College Grad Job-hunting Readiness Quiz
* Using Mind-Mapping Techniques for Interview Prep
* Interview Post-Mortem
* Hiring Decision-makers' Top 30 Peeves about Executive Resumes
* 10 Critical Interviewing Tips
* Study Skills
* Academic Success
* Wheel of Wellness
* 3 Generations of Workers: Y, X, Boomers
* Employee Healthy Benefits
* College Financing
* Scholarship Do's and Don'ts
* The Academic Job Search
* Perks of Working in Higher Ed
* Signs Your Job is in Jeopardy
* Blogging Way to New Job or Holiday Job-Hunting
* Office Politics
* Maternity Leave
* Jobs on the Cutting Edge
* Job Search IQ Quiz
* Resume Bullet Points: Before and After
* GLBT Job-search Issues
* The Value of Internships Abroad and Study Abroad
* Top 10 Fears of Job-seekers
* For Job-hunting Success, Develop a Detailed Job-Search Plan
* Keep Your Career Dreams Alive
* MBA Career Portfolios
* Pre-Hire Background/Credit Checks
* Financial Aid/Scholarship Timetable
* Build Confidence and Avoid Insecurity in Job Interviews
* Empty Nest Job-seekers
* Lifelong Networking
* Networking for the Shy
* Working Night Shifts/Odd Hours
* Quintessential Career Profiles of YOU, our readers
* Q&As with well-known career experts
* Book reviews
. . . and much, much more...
The Quint Careers RV could be headed your way. We're ready to put on no-cost workshops
at your college, high school, or library!
