Q TIPS:
Quick and Quintessential Tips to Guide Your Job Search and Work Life
Job-hunting tips from the December 14, 2009, issue of
QuintZine.
The 10 hardest jobs to fill this year, as reported by U.S. employers, provide opportunities
for those with qualifications in these fields:
Engineers
Nurses
Skilled/manual trades
Teachers
Sales representatives
Technicians
Drivers
Information technology staff
Laborers
Machinists/machine operators
Note: Survey of 2,000 employers
Source: Manpower
Here's a conversation-starter activity to suggest or implement next time you're in a
situation with networking potential: This activity would work well with a group of
people who don't know each other too well or perhaps have met only for the first time.
Ask everyone to write something interesting or quirky about themselves on a name tag
or post-it and wear it as a badge. It could be one word like "Blue" or "Led Zepplin 1989."
Allow 10 minutes for the group to mingle and hear as many stories they can that reveal the
choice of words people have used and in doing so learn something interesting about each other.
Here are a few possibilities from the conventional to the quirky:
your nickname
sports you love to play or watch
the sports team you follow
your favorite biography
what's on the cover of your diary
a thought-provoking quote
your personal motto
the beginning of an interesting story
So create a name badge for yourself for all the conferences, seminars, and workshops you
attend and let the conversations flow.
Adapted from the newsletter of
Anecdote, an
Australian consulting firm that helps businesses harness the natural power of stories to bring strategy to life.
It's not what you know; it's who you know that gets you hired, writes career coach
Wendy J. Terwelp in the CrossRoads Newsletter. Terwelp continues:
We've all heard this phrase so many times our ears are bleeding, right? Here are the facts: 61
to 85 percent of people land new careers through networking.
Terwelp offers the first of 10 secrets to help turn your networking pain into career gain:
Know yourself and your personal brand: Are you hip, trendy, and cool? If you are, then the networking
group you join should match your style and your attitude. Sure, you want to meet different types of people to
successfully manage your career, but you also want them to "get you." And you want them to be fun to work
with, right?
The 10 hardest jobs to fill this year, as reported by U.S. employers, provide opportunities
for those with qualifications in these fields:
