Participants in my resume workshops have sometimes expressed an almost mystical belief in keywords. They urge each other to inscribe keywords like a magic charm at the front of the resume, at the back of the resume, in profiles, in summaries, and in hidden text – anything to make themselves pop out in a search.

Deconstructing Resume Keyword Folklore
Full text search engines have been in routine use longer than many folks’ working careers. You don’t need to woo the search function with a strategically placed list of keywords. (And the hidden text trick has caused agencies to remove the applicant from consideration.) Full text search engines will pick up any words anywhere, in your resume – depending on what the user of the search application has entered as search terms.

Using Keywords Properly
Let’s agree on what we mean by “keyword”. In job terms, a keyword is any word that will convey your “fit” to any of the people who will scrutinize your application for a given job. Typically, keywords relate to skills, knowledge or experience, and should reflect your desired next customer’s terminology (not necessarily the terminology used in your last job).

At the computer or the clerical level, it may be sufficient that your resume uses identical words to those in their requirement. However, the person with the power to recommend or hire you looks for meaningful content built around the keywords to tell them what you have done with a particular skill, knowledge, or experience that makes you a good match for the position they are advertising.

To this end, make sure that you
1. Your resume summary or profile on the first page tells a succinct story about your fitness for the position, using the keywords from the job ad in context
2. Use keywords, as appropriate, in your descriptions of related work experience
3. Include either a master or a tailored list of related skills and knowledge as the last page of your resume.
This gives the reader an idea of the whole span of your knowledge and experience, and may qualify you as suitable for more positions than you initially applied for. (I recommend this list go at the end of your resume, so you avoid being prematurely commoditized and hired for a lower-level job than your work experience warrants.)

Don’t make the mistake of using terms specific to your previous job if the job advertisement is using different terms to describe the same function. The first screener may not look for synonyms, and won’t spend the time to understand what you mean. So, for example, if you were called a “Software Designer” in your last job, but the advertisement asks for a “Software Developer”, match the wording of the advertisement. Your work experience is not a listing of previous idiosyncratic job titles, but a description of prior function and experience, with the goal of conveying as much as possible why your past responsibilities and experience suit you to take on the new job.

Who Loves Resume Keywords?
Staffing companies love keywords. The more you can match the language of their requirements, the more likely you are to get to the next step, which is often a phone call with the recuiter. At that point, you will need to demonstrate that you have the
experience they’re looking for, not just the ability to match language.

LinkedIn, which has become more and more driven by the requirements of its paying customers (recruiters, staffing agencies, HR) has recently put more pressure on members to supply a grocery list of keywords. Your profile will now not display to you as “complete” until you supply a Skills list of at least six skills. (Other elements also affect profile completeness, such as your picture, your work history, and your education.)

LinkedIn allows you to add one skill at a time, and even prompts you with suitable terms as you type. This facility gives you the opportunity to match your terminology to the terminology already in use; and reflects how recruiters and other users search LinkedIn to find people with your skills. For the same reason, make sure you have selected your description in the Headline section and the titles of your previous positions carefully.

Resume keywords are important signals, but don’t pile them on indiscriminately. Choose where you use them, and tailor your language carefully, not just to screen in, but to demonstrate matching, relevant experience to the person with the power to recommend or hire you.
Jennifer

Wondering if your resume is up to the job? I work one-on-one with my clients to make sure all your qualifications stand out. Contact me for a free preliminary consult.

You might also like:
Why Including a Competency “Grocery List” Doesn’t Work
Three Audiences – Three Questions

Guest blogger, artist and author Elizabeth Creith writes several popular blogs, including the Northern Knitting Goddess and Elizabeth Creith’s Scriptorium. Her recent post Going Up – The Elevator Pitch is highly relevant for readers of our blog, and for anyone working or considering working as an independent professional. The Portable You is delighted to be hosting a guest post from Elizabeth the second Tuesday of every month in 2012.

I’m big on self-sufficiency. I like to be in charge of whatever I’m doing. Recently I’ve realized that there have to be limits. I’m speaking specifically of social media and maintaining my profile on the web.

When my first book, “Erik the Viking Sheep” was published, the sum total of my required involvement was writing the story and signing the contract. Oh, sure, I did a few readings and book signings, but it wasn’t something my publisher (Scholastic) expected of me.

Things have changed; now any serious author needs to have a platform and a web presence. Even the big publishers expect it. When you’re working with a small press, it’s absolutely essential.

And Time to Write?
Website, blog posts, Facebook, LinkedIn, email lists, professional memberships, schmoozing, socializing and keeping that all-important profile as prominent as Cyrano de Bergerac’s – when’s a girl gonna get time to write? It’s the books and stories and articles and poems that pay the bills, and are ultimately the reason for all this frenetic social activity.

I have a dialup connection, and social media is not dialup friendly. Most of the time I can’t even get Twitter to load, and while I’m tearing out my hair waiting for it, I’m not writing the books, stories, articles and poems that all this social media is supposed to promote. It’s all sizzle, and damn little time for steak.

I’m a smart woman, and I know I can deal with the Internet. I have a blog and a Facebook page. I belong to several online forums. I have clients I’ve never met, with whom all my interactions have been by email. I use PayPal. I can even use some html tags, and upload photos. Certainly I could learn how to use Twitter effectively. The question is, should I?

Setting Limits
The answer is – maybe not. Does a winemaker design their labels? Or blow the bottles? Or harvest the cork? No – the winemaker makes wine and delegates the rest to those they know and trust to be good at it. This is an arrangement that any author would be wise to consider. I call it “the other D&D” – Delegate and Disappear.

There are people whose passion and expertise is in navigating cyberspace and dealing with all the denizens thereof. For every minute they spend updating Facebook or retweeting something, I’m going to spend ten, or fifteen, or maybe more, and without the assurance that it’s been done correctly – or done at all. In the meantime, my real work – the writing that nobody but me can do – is left undone.

This week I finally realized that self-sufficiency has its swampy bits, and that I was in serious danger of bogging down in peripheral activities. I did a D&D and hired an expert who knows my work to do my tweeting. I’m not rich, but while I can make more money, I can’t make more time. Giving the bottling to someone who’s an expert at it frees me to make another batch of literary wine.
Elizabeth Creith

Not using the Internet was easy. My work – writing about proprietary telecommunications equipment – was not impacted in any way.

In 2011, Cisco surveyed almost 3,000 college students and young professionals about workplace behaviour and their expectations about how, when, and where they access information. They found that one in three believes that Internet access is a basic need, and that two in five would take a lower-paying job with more flexibility with regard to device choice, social media access, and mobility over a higher-paying job with less flexibility.

It’s Not Just the Millennials
Are these choices a peculiarity of millennials, the children of the Sesame Street children? I think not.

A developer friend over 50 joins RIM and uses an I-Phone so as not to be subject to the policies governing company phones (including being always on call). An SaS developer of the same age spends personal funds to buy proxy access to bypass the corporate Internet filters – and accomplish his assigned deliverables. An 75 year-old investment counsellor travels to clients’ homes with a laptop and a pocket-sized rocket stick, allowing access to the Internet anywhere his mobile phone works. A migrant worker, asked by 60 Minutes where he was going next, pulls out his smart phone to check commodity prices before answering.

All of Us Want a Favourable Environment
Millennials, who have grown up with constant access to entertainment, information and communications, have put their collective foot down. Employers must listen to them, because employers will have no effective alternative sources of labour.

Meanwhile, the rest of us have taken a good deep bit of the apple (we *grew* the apple, as Steve Jobs might say). My generation is no more content than millennials are to stay nailed to a chair, virtually blind and deaf, delivering 37.5 hours a week of bulk and texture to reassure our employers and collect a paycheque.

Boomers and their successors have fought – and partially won – many workplace battles – flex hours, equal pay, health and wellness benefits, parental leave – to name just a few. Just like the millennials, we want exactly the same freedom at work, to work.

An Alternative: Outcome-Based Success
How have we coped? We gravitate to young companies where the focus is on getting the job done, not on where you sit when you do it. We educate and negotiate with our employers. We compromise. Sometimes we subvert (the 2011 Cisco study showed seven of ten employees admitted to knowingly breaking IT policies on a regular basis).

To get the working environment we want, many boomers have become independents. I left the regular workplace voluntarily 20 years ago and conduct business from my home office and in boardrooms and coffee shops. I set my own company policies and work rules. Using the Internet and social media is part of my job. What I need for my job, I buy or set up. My success is outcome-based, and directly measurable.

Forward-thinking employers will understand that this shift in workforce expectations and preferences is not so much generational as it is a sign of changing times, across all sectors and demographics. We’ll negotiate deliverables and outcomes with you; you give us the flexibility to do our best work for you. Information wants to be free. And so do information workers.
Jennifer

Have you needed to work around workplace restrictions on electronic communications?  Please share it with our readers here.

We’ll assume want to join LinkedIn for career reasons, and are seeking more qualified contacts and more opportunities leveraging a more formal, visible and businesslike presence online*.

Why Being Unemployed is a the Worst Time to Join LinkedIn
Being unemployed is the worst time to join LinkedIn, for two reasons. The first reason is discussed in Never Tell Them You’re Looking. By suddenly appearing on LinkedIn – with no current job – you are more likely to appear needy.

LinkedIn is not a job board – it is a marketing forum. The attitude you need to bring, as my friend Michelle Iseman (Queen Schmooze) would say, is that you are not a question, you are a solution.

The second reason is that when you have recently lost your job, or you have been looking for some time, you may be very demoralized. (The only person who ever walked out on one of my presentations was someone who had lost their job the day before.) When you are down on yourself, it is hard to look for work, and it can be even harder to write positive self-marketing material.

Plan and Write When You’re Happy
When you’re happily employed, you have more confidence in yourself. It is easier to do career planning, and it is easier write about present and past successes. Realistically, I know a large number of people only do career planning – or join LinkedIn, or update their resumé – when they are unhappy or looking for work.

If you’re not happy – one of the reasons you now want to advertise yourself – try brainstorming your profile and your work experience statements with a capable friend over your favourite beverage. Have your friend ask you the key questions we ask Portable You resumé clients: “What Did You Do?” “Why Was It Important?”, and then have your friend test whether you really have talked about the benefits and outcomes you brought to your previous work, by asking the all-important question “So What?”.

How to Join LinkedIn When You’re Happily Employed
If you’re happily employed and you’re a gregarious, keeping-in-touch sort of person, or have the type of job that depends on networking, go ahead, join, and network to your heart’s content.

If joining LinkedIn might signal to your employer or co-workers that you are not happy with your job, you can turn off LinkedIn’s notification settings until you have an established presence and are not updating your profile every day. Remember you can control to whom you’re connected. If you’re not already connected to a person, they’re less likely to search for and keep tabs on you.

* Some independents do better business from having a more informal Facebook presence. Examples include some writers, artists, performers, and mom-preneurs.

If you’d like help creating an attractive LinkedIn presence that brings you more inquiries and opportunities in your preferred field, come to a LinkedIn workshop or Contact us for one-on-one or one-on-two coaching.

Related Posts:
1. Never Tell Them You’re Looking
2. Don’t Be a LinkedIn Wallflower
3. Tasks – Achievements – Outcomes What’s the Difference? Why Does it Matter?
4. Sleeping on LinkedIn?

Get this small detail right and you’ll receive more calls and invitations to connect from the potential employers, clients or collaborators. Get it wrong and nobody calls, and nobody asks you to dance: you are invisible.

Make the Most of Your Headline
Your *Headline* is a short descriptive phrase that displays with your name and picture in your profile wherever you are active in LinkedIn, including Group membership directories, Q&A forums, status updates, and “People You May Know” suggestions. It’s what people see first in your profile. It telegraphs that you’re “ready to dance”.

Remember, LinkedIn is not a job board: LinkedIn is a marketing forum. In this forum, your headline should declare, as precisely as possible, what you offer to your target or preferred customer (and not the whole span of everything you have done, or could do, from rocket science to babysitting). Think of your headline as a short elevator speech, aimed at the organization or type of person for whom you want to work *next*.

Three Ways to Waste Your Headline Space
Your headline is a key selling point. Don’t let a bad choice sideline you.
1. “Looking for Work”
Stating that you are “looking for work”, “available for opportunities”, “now accepting clients”, or any other phrase that indicates that you are expecting someone else to do something for you.

While there’s nothing wrong with looking for work or accepting clients, your LinkedIn headline is *not* the place to say it. The places to announce that you are looking for work are the job boards (Monster, Workopolis), your agencies (you are registered with staffing agencies, aren’t you?), and everyone in your network, especially at the edges.

2. Cute or Unusual Title
Some people adopt an offbeat title in LinkedIn to “stand out”. This would work better if there weren’t over 100 million LinkedIn members. Far better to pick a recognized term for your specialty, simply to increase the chances of being found in a search. (For example, fewer employers go to LinkedIn looking for a “Guru” or a “VP of Fun” than for a “Strategic Advisor” or “Human Resources Director”.)

An exception to the funky title is when you are *already* famous. Then you may call yourself anything you like, because your own name is the preferred search term.

3. Current Job Title
Using the title of your current job and employer looks like the obvious way to go if you believe:
(a) your current title is a standard and valuable search term
(b) your current title will never change
(c) your work will never go away

Responsibilities change. Dances end at midnight. As career expert Robert Bolles says, most people change careers 3 to 5 times in their lives, and job titles more often than that.

If you use your current job title and employer as your headline, then lose your job, what can you now put as headline? Certainly not “unemployed” (that looks needy). Besides, defining yourself in terms of your current employment limits the opportunities that might come your way, and makes it harder to persuade people you have changed, or plan to change your career focus (which most of us will do, on average, 3 to 5 times).

Use a Functional Title or a Description of Your Services in Your Headline
This approach is easy – if you know what services you most want to offer, or what function you exercise when doing your preferred type of work (e.g., Strategic Advisor, SAP Specialist). Stay at a meta level, and don’t get into huge detail. Remember, LinkedIn is not a master resumé, it is a marketing document, an invitation to find out more.

To give you an idea how people use headlines that describe function or services, have a look at these LinkedIn profiles:

Neal Schaffer
Rudi Asksim
Sharon Graham
Jennifer Robinson

Use the search function in LinkedIn to help you find out what your colleagues or others with your specialty call themselves.

It may take time to figure out your headline. Don’t be afraid to experiment, and to change the wording. LinkedIn can be a powerful catalyst in figuring out what you do and how to say it. You’ll know you’ve got it right when your dance card starts filling up.
Jennifer

Interested in using LinkedIn to attract employers, clients or collaborators? Sign up for a LinkedIn small group workshop this Spring.

As a career consultant who works extensively with project managers and government job seekers, I have no trouble interpreting this development. It’s the beginning of the new year. Numerous senior and middle managers from high tech are still looking for work, and more people than ever are looking for work with the Canadian federal government. If they apply for a contract position as a project manager with the federal government in Canada, chances are about one in three that the position will require a PMP certification.

What’s a PMP and why do they ask for it? Could a PMP make a difference between employment and unemployment?

What Does a PMP Involve?
“PMP” (Project Management Professional) is a designation awarded by the Project Management Institute, an international body headquarter in Pennsylvania, and requires a combination of education, experience, and study hours, with an application, before you sit an expensive exam.

The study hours can cost you well over $1000 from a professional training institute, or you may find training at a substantial discount through a community college or government-subsidized career centre. You also require continuing education credits to maintain your certification. The PMP is not quick, and it is not cheap.

Why Do They Ask for a PMP?
A certification is a third-party affadavit that you have the experience you claim and that you are conversant enough with the terminology and concepts of project management as defined by PMBOK (project management body of knowledge) to pass an exam. It should allow you to sit down with another PMP or person familar with PMP terminology, and discuss work you have done, or are going to do, using a common language.

That is a major reason why the certification is valued by the Government of Canada – which is in business not as a software shop, nor as a manufacturing or aerospace company – but to deliver services to the people of Canada. When you work for the federal government as a project manager, you will be working with people from a variety of disciplines, who may have little or no exposure to your technical background, or even to formal project management. Thus, the PMP carries an implicit reassurance that (1) They got what they paid for (2) You can talk to each other and mean the same thing.

Is Getting a PMP Right for Me?
If you are considering a PMP, here are three questions to ask yourself:

1. What is Meant by “Project Manager?
Spend some time understanding what the federal government means by a project manager, and how PMBOK describes project management. Note that a hands-on development or design manager in high tech is *not* a project manager, although they perform project management tasks (e.g.,time management, people management, risk management). In high tech, the equivalent of project manager is often called a “product manager”. While usually technically knowledgeable, they function more on the business and marketing side of the business. Government has a huge need for managers that have both technical and business savvy.

2. How Far Along Am I in My Career?
If you have under 10 years experience and are able to commit the time and money, a PMP may be a helpful differentiator in landing the work you want.

I’ve talked to experienced project managers who’ve indicated that if you have 10+ years of experience, mastering PMBOK is largely a matter of assimilating terminology to write the exam.

3. Is Not Having My PMP the Real Stumbling Block?
Including PMP certification as part of the mandatory criteria allows screeners to disqualify you without further consideration. But you need to look critically at a number advertised opportunities to see what other criteria* might disqualify you. This can include prior years of experience with federal government projects, prior experience with the client department, and domain knowledge (e.g, health, security, the environment).  Is not having a PMP consistently the sole disqualifier for you?

If you’re wondering why you’re not qualifying for the jobs you’ve applied for, and would like some professional help, Aurelia Consulting Services works with federal job applicants to identify any weak points and position your winning points, so that you waste less time chasing after work that doesn’t fit, and make the eligibility list more often for the work that’s right for you. Aurelia also offers regular workshops on positioning yourself to win work with the federal government.

This post has focused on how PMP certification might – or might not be – helpful when applying to work for the Government of Canada. What has your experience been with government or the private sector? Please leave a comment!

What do the Greek goddess Athena, Professor Xavier, Morpheus, and Rooster Cogburn all have in common? Each of these characters is a mentor who, by their teaching, support and example, inspires and empowers their mentee, or protege to grow, to take successful action – to be a hero.

Business studies demonstrate the difference having a good mentor can make to your career (as well the bottom line of companies who use a mentoring system). Experts emphasize the importance of picking a mentor carefully, and provide selection guidelines to ensure a good fit between mentor and protege.

What kind of career mentor are you looking for? Have mentors in popular culture skewed your expectations?

Is Your Model Derived from Popular Culture?
Television, the movies, comics and other works of fiction are full of mentor figures. Some mentors are powerful magic users; others are all-too-human, wounded or flawed.

Fictional mentors usually follow one of four tropes:

• Magic Mentor
• Childhood Mentor
• Unlikely Mentor
• Advisor/Mentor

Magic Mentor or Guardian Deity
The word “mentor” comes from the Odyssey, where the goddess Athena, patron of Odysseus, appears to advise his son in the person of a servant named Mentor (Odyssey, Book II, 257-258).

In many fairy tales, fairy godmothers play role of mentors, watching over their charges, and stepping in to produce everything Cinderella needs for the Prince’s ball, or transform the death curse on Sleeping Beauty to a hundred years’ sleep.

Modern-day examples of “guardian deity” mentors include characters such as Mr. Waverly in “The Man From Uncle”, Charlie in “Charlie’s Angels”, Professor Xavier of the X-Men, and Hettie Lang in “NCIS”. These mentors are, in essence, magic. They are often invisible, off the scene, physically or emotionally remote. They initiate the action and equip the protege with advice and tools to execute their mission.

Sometimes they intervene as a deus ex machina to rescue or help the protege (“the hero) in times of crisis (Glinda the Good Witch of the North in “The Wizard of Oz”; Angel in early “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”, various gods in Greek, Roman, and Norse mythology).

Guardian deity are typically “good guys”, fiercely loyal to the hero, but mysterious and somewhat unpredictable. They intervene to initiate the action or turn the tables in the hero’s favour. Then they’re gone. This type of mentor is not the most useful in career and life, because you cannot easily learn by following their example. Too many rescues and you never have to grow up.

Childhood Mentor
Childhood mentors are the teachers and parents of the hero in childhood, who appear briefly at the beginning of the story, if at all, having taught the hero as much as they could.

Examples of this type of mentor include Master Po (Kwai Chang Caine’s teacher in “Kung Fu”), D’Artagnan’s father in “The Three Musketeers”, and the parents in many fairy stories. They are good people, who may have taught lasting lessons, but they are unavailable to us today.

Unlikely or Flawed Mentor
This mentor shares something in common with the magic mentor – they appear fortuitously on the scene when the hero has a critical need for help.
Examples include Obi Wan Kenobi and Yoda in Star Wars, Mr. Miyagi in the Karate Kid, Rooster Cogburn in True Grit, all the scenarios where an unlikely, apparently down-and-out “has-been” coaches an unlikely contender to overcome their adversaries. They encourage and motivate the hero to accomplish the necessary task, but you don’t necessarily want to grow up to be like them, or to tread the same career path.

Mentor/Advisor
The mentor/advisor helps the almost adult protege understand and adapt to new surroundings and circumstances. The protege wants to grow up to be like them. This mentor enlightens and prepares the protege to meet new challenges. Through this experience, the mentor often learns and grows too.

Once the challenges have been met, the protege may have changed or advanced so much that they have outgrown a given mentor/mentee relationship. Then the mentor is left behind, or the relationship may be reversed or transform into one of equals or near equals. Examples of this type of relationship include: Socrates and Plato, Morpheus and Neo, Stilgar and Paul Muad’Dib (“Dune”), Professor Dumbledore and Harry Potter, Dr. Larry Fleinhardt and Charlie Epps (Numb3rs).

Working With a Real-Life Mentor
A good career mentor is not magic and is not primarily a “rescuer”. Lisa Quait, in her CareerWoman blog, says: “A mentor is generally someone farther up the career ladder than you, someone you admire for their professionalism, for their knowledge and for their ability to succeed in difficult situations….They act as your advisor and provide suggestions and guidance on development opportunities, career paths, and leadership strategies.”

Your company, university, or professional association may actively promote mentoring or be willing to help broker a mentor/protege relationship. If this service is not advertised, ask.

A good mentor knows when to let go. If you continued to be dependent and did not, or could not move forward into your full responsibilities, you would have failed, and (to a greater or lesser degree) your mentor would also have failed.

Once you hit your stride, your relationship with your mentor may change or cease. Later you may seek another mentor, or become a mentor yourself. Your successes may equal, surpass or be completely different from those of your mentors. (Holly L. Roberts notes that “One of the most famous mentor-protege chains starts with Socrates, the Greek philosopher whose protege was the philosopher Plato. Plato, in turn, mentored Aristotle, whose protege was Alexander the Great.”)

Does Everyone Need a Mentor?
Many people are successful in their careers without mentors; however, mentors can make it easier by helping you connect the dots, more quickly. If you decide to seek a mentor, make sure you are at the right stage of your career to benefit from such a relationship, and that you share similar values.

Also examine your motives: Is a mentor is actually what you want – and need right now? If you’re experiencing stuckness or wanting to increase your effectiveness in your chosen field, a personal or career coach may be a better way to go. If the stuckness seems to stem from emotional issues, you may get more out of psychological counselling. (A coach friend of mine once remarked that well over 50% of the people who came to her for career coaching, she sent away to get marriage counselling first.) If you discover the issues are spiritual, spiritual direction or pastoral counselling may be a better choice. Revisit business mentoring as, and when, appropriate for you.
Jennifer 

I’ve worked as an independent writer and career consultant, for 20 over years. I am most grateful for the Mentor/Advisors in my life. Have you had a good (or a challenging) experience as a mentor or protege? Please share it here.

No Phones or TVs in NOA
It was Christmas week, and I had undergone successful neurosurgery at the Civic Campus of the Ottawa Hospital. As a higher risk patient, I required the drain to keep inter-cranial pressure down. I spent a week in the neurosurgery observation (NOA) unit before being discharged. There are no in-room phones or tvs available in NOA; this is a place for people who need constant care. With my nose packed and on medication for swelling and pain, I was in no shape for talking. I kept trying to sleep (!) so the lights were frequently as low as I could negotiate.

Social Media Connected Me With My Support Groups
Even surrounded by superb care and visited twice a day by our nearest and dearest – as I was – recovering can be lonely. However, I was not lonely. The evening of Day 2, Henry (my spouse) brought me my purse with my fully-charged Blackberry, and that changed everything. We could message each other and coordinate through the chat function. I could read the emails of encouragement and join with the prayers of thanksgiving from the friends and supporters (of varied faiths, persuasions, nationalities, and degrees of affinity) I had involved in my journey. I could communicate in the dark, without changing position, for four or five minutes at a time, and then rest again. I cried a bit. I smiled a lot.

Facebook was a huge encouragement. I would post some small progress and 27 friends over five days would “Like” it. I traded encouraging stories with a friend who had her operation just days before me. Louder than words, the day I left hospital, I posted a picture of my right arm with the bracelets cut off.

Social media is neutral. How it is used determines whether it is a good or a bad thing. Social media doesn’t make friends for us, but it can draw like-minded people together, and help us cement friendships and maintain bonds. I am thankful for countless people whose creativity and foresight – from Vannebar Bush to Marshall McLuhan, to Steve Jobs and his contemporaries – for their role in seeding a technology and culture that have helped me heal.
Jennifer

Illustration created using Wordle (www.wordle.net) by Jonathan Feinberg. The names represent some of the many people who helped me before, during and after my stay at the Civic hospital.

Five weeks before the end of semester, and my friend’s 17-year old is having an existential crisis. It’s the same crisis many of you have had: it’s about study, work and work/life balance. What he’s going to do next, why he’s doing it, and who he’s doing it for. Something Richard Bolles, the author of What Colour is Your Parachute, talks about eloquently in the Three Boxes of Life.

One of the problems facing students, whether they are graduating from high school, university or graduate school, is that today’s jobs don’t have distinct boundaries. You could say, they don’t have a distinct, or a “hard” hat, associated with them.

What do I mean? I mean that it’s harder to find examples and models of people doing specific types of work. Look at the icons we use. Many icons show analog devices. Analog has become digital. Physical has become virtual. There is a disjoint. You may not be able to go out and observe someone doing exactly the job you want. And you cannot do what your Dad did, because even your Dad isn’t doing the same job he used to do.

When my mother entered the workforce in 1938, women were nurses, secretaries or teachers. My mother was a teacher. Men could be firemen, policemen, engineers, construction workers, office workers, mailmen, milkmen, bus drivers, soldiers…I remember kiddy colouring books where everyone had a hat. That’s how an intelligent child could tell what someone “was”: they had a hat that identified them.

Today’s jobs require a blend of skills, and the blend changes almost monthly. It isn’t just harder for new workers; it’s harder than it used to be to re-enter the workforce.

My parents taught me that I could be anyone I wanted to be. I opted to be an archaeologist, a profession that fascinated me, was relatively gender neutral, and allowed married couples to work (and wear hard hats – or Panama hats – together.

After a few years of grad school and a year off to travel and think, I decided to become a technical writer, a profession that was dominated by men at the time I entered it, but in the last two decades has swung in the other direction with the rise of formal technical writing training (technical writing was once largely staffed by failed or semi-retired male engineers). I realized my dream of working beside my husband, a software engineer.

I’ve gone from archaeologist, to job description writer, to technical writer, to career and business consulting. Everything I have done and learned has contributed to making me superbly effective in my current work – but only because I came to realize that what I wanted to do was “hat-independent”, and that all jobs are less about wearing many hats, but rather about being hat-independent. Manufacturing isn’t what it used to be. Farming isn’t what it used to be. Every occupation requires more education, but not necessarily in 2-, 3- and 4-year chunks.

Today’s work/life model is a far more about a balance between study and work, just as much as a balance between work and leisure. You won’t see it on TV. You won’t likely meet it in school, but some of us are out there living this model, working it out. I told my friend to let her son step back from study and take some time to think, work some, play some (he’s musical) and do some forward planning. He’ll find his way , though it will likely be just as different as the way we’ve found was different from our parents’ way. Thanks Mum and Dad for believing in us.
Jennifer

The golden opportunity requires you to tailor your resumé with sufficient pertinent details to match the job/contract requirements, so that you make the shortlist for an interview.

Are you ready to put a stop to the periodic frantic bursts of activity whenever someone indicates an interest in you? Tired of trying to re-remember exactly where and when you last used esoteric skill X with specialized tool Z?

Here are five steps you can take to avoid update panic and the all-nighter:

0. Define the types of work or position you most want to apply for
The criteria can include specific organization or type of organization, specific subject matter, specific role type / position level. WRITE THIS DOWN AND KEEP IT HANDY.
This step comes even before step 1. You must define your target customers, or you will never be able to demonstrate in your resumé that you are an obvious match for the job, and you will chase after any opportunity that seems remotely plausible.

1. Create a master resumé
In its crudest form, the master resumé is a long CV (the very opposite of a resumé!) that contains details of work experience, expertise and skills related to everything you’ve ever done or might want to do, written in reverse chronological order, most recent experience first

2. Create and save tailored versions of your resumé
As you create them, save the versions with a unique identifier. For example if you are applying for jobs that involve either editing, writing, or testing, you might start with three folders with those labels. The individual resumé versions might have names such as Ed-pwgsc-May2011, or Test-RIM-Nov2011.

Use names that will be memorable to you two years and more down the road.
Remember: when you submit a soft copy of your resumé, rename it in a way that is meaningful to your potential employer, e.g., JSmith-HW-Tester.)

3. Create an Excel file (or a database) of work experience statements
Map them to past roles, project types and organizations.

This step is optional, but can be extremely useful if you do a lot of contract work, for example, in project management for the federal government for which you typically need to fill out a requirements matrix (grid) to demonstrate skills or years of experience. When an opportunity arises, you pick the paragraphs you’re going to use to substantiate your experience from the Excel file or database.

4. Pre-create work experience statements
Use the employer’s language for the role or position to describe your experience. This step, like the zeroth step, is often ignored, because job seekers either don’t know how useful it is, or where to look.

As you look for work in a particular area, there are certain criteria that come up again and again. Save the job ads, and make a list of these criteria and how they’re described. Don’t neglect jobs that would be OK for you, if only they weren’t in Timbuktu or already staffed. Don’t overlook a group of jobs at the same company – what language is used to describe the work, and the company’s requirements?

For any federal government job or contract position, there is a related category and classification. Look up that category and classification to see how it is described in generic terms. Now go back to your resumé and look at your experience statements, and edit, add and rewrite as needed to reflect the language of your target employer. (Reminder: This does not mean parroting behavioural competency statements. Behavioural competencies are evaluated through interview – of you, or your references.)

If you follow steps 0-4 diligently, you will not need to spend hours tweaking your resumé because 80% of what you need will already be in there. As well, provided your specialty is in demand and you continue to apply with a tailored resumé whenever you are well qualified, you make the shrotlist for an interview. Once you’re in front of the employer, you’re more than halfway to your next job.
Jennifer