So Close to Reality [Tech Support]

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Beautiful trees blooming is Sacramento.. Too bad they smell like urine.

Beautiful trees blooming is Sacramento.. Too bad they smell like urine.

Mod a Cabinet Drawer to Keep Your Printer Usable but Stashed Away and Out of Sight

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Clever!

How Long You Should Wait to Hear Back About a Job Application [Lifehacker]

How Long You Should Wait to Hear Back About a Job Application

It’s a tough job market, so you might expect to wait a long time to hear back from a company after sending your resume or having an interview. But how long until you give up hope altogether? CNN Money has a general rule of thumb.

Annie Fisher writes that jobs generally stay open for about 45 days, according to research from StartWire (a service we’ve highlighted previously for delivering status updates on job applications). So counting 45 days from the job posting date, you might assume you didn’t get the job.

If you have another job offer but are waiting to hear from a company you’d prefer working at, the article advises you contact the first company and give it two days:

“You should contact the company where you’d prefer to get hired and let them know you have another offer,” advises Annie Stevens, a managing partner at Boston-based executive coaching firm ClearRock. “Frame this as a courtesy to them, and invite them to make a counteroffer.”

What if you do that and still hear nothing? “If you don’t receive a counteroffer within two days,” says Stevens, “then take the other job and make the best of that opportunity.”

It’s easy to feel like your application has disappeared into a black hole, but be patient and, most of all, persistent in your search. Photo by Dani Simmonds/Shutterstock

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How Can I Make Sure My Resume Gets Past Resume Robots and into a Human’s Hand? [Lifehacker]

Automated Resume Screeners Score Resumes on Relevancy to Keywords and Experience

The infographic at right (click to expand) from previously mentioned resume webapp Resunate illustrates the basic process:

1. Your resume is run through a parser, which removes the styling from the resume and breaks the text down into recognized words or phrases.
2. The parser then sorts that content into different categories: Education, contact info, skills, and work experience.
3. The employer’s desired skills or keywords are matched against the results from above.
4. Your resume is scored on relevancy—using semantic matching against the employer’s search terms and your years of experience.

So, clearly, it’s vital to include relevant text in your resume—but rather than just dump all the keywords from the job description in, for best results you’ll need to employ a strategy. (Most savvy job applicants are likely using the same keywords in their resumes.)

How to “Hack” the Automated Resume Screeners

First, don’t just focus on the keywords that are in the job description. Sophisticated resume screeners have gone beyond just keywords to look for semantic matches—related terms (e.g., not just CPA, but also accounting, audits, SEC, financial statements, etc.). Resunate co-founder Mona Abdel-Halim told me that this is how sites like Monster.com and others use technology to help employers find the best candidates (you can see Monster’s concept-matching resume search engine here).

Prioritize the words in your resume. The Resume Help blog recommends auditing the job description to build a list of priority and secondary words to include:

Priority resume keywords: words used in the company’s listed job title, used in the description headlines, used more than twice, called out as success criteria

Secondary resume keywords: mention of competitor companies or brand name experience, keyword phrases (phrases surrounding priority keywords), notable industry qualifications (training, associations)

Consult an insider for help finding relevant words. It never hurts to get friendly with an HR manager or employer in your field—you can go straight to the source and ask them if they could either look over your resume or suggest what kinds of experience/skills they look for in a candidate. Another possible contact to make is a person in a position similar to the one you’d like to have. LinkedIn, which is can be a great resource for job hunters, might be the best place to make these connections, especially in the industry groups forums.

Pepper all the job-related words across your resume. Since the screeners also factor in the depth of your skills (i.e., analyzing your length of experience), it’s also important to place those important words, where appropriate, throughout your resume, in all job positions if possible. Order your bullets in descending order of relevancy to the job description, Abdel-Halim advised.

Create a relevant category expertise section. Make sure your resume matches the special categories for the job you’re applying for. Resume Help gives these examples:

Companies are looking for specialists, not industry generalists, so identifying a category match is a critical first step. One way to do this is by creating a separate section in the top 1/3 of your online resume that captures the relevant category expertise.

Examples of generic category expertise: Management, Operations, Communications, Marketing

Examples of specific, relevant category expertise: Client Relationship Management, Revenue Growth, Risk Management, Negotiation, CRM Program Development

Don’t use photos on your resume. Background images and photos might trip up the system, making your resume unreadable.

Use bulleted lists, not paragraphs, to describe your work. Resume screeners may have a harder time separating long paragraphs. (Bulleted lists are also easier on human eyes.)

Use social networks to enhance your resume. Some resume screeners add other features to check up on you. Reppify, for example, checks your social network posts and how you use sites like LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. So make sure what you post on those networks vibes with what you say on your resume.

Finally, don’t forget the basics: Make sure your resume includes all the job requirements. Your resume should address all the listed job requirements, such as years of experience and education.

Don’t forget, of course, that the ultimate goal will be to get your resume in the hands of a real human. Luckily these tips should also help your resume’s chance of getting past human screeners and hopefully land you an interview.

So while there are a lot of ways to get a job, if you’re concerned that your resume may never actually end up in anyone’s hands, these suggestions are a good starting point. Good luck!

Love,
Lifehacker

P.S. Got your own tips for strengthening a resume and making it more relevant? Help job hunters in the comments.

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Update Your Resume and Get a Better Job [Lifehacker]

You’ve probably heard too many times to count that “in this economy, you should be happy to have any job at all.” Perhaps that’s true, but that doesn’t mean you can’t try to find something better if you hate the job you’ve got. Here are a few things you can do this weekend to prepare to make a positive shift in your work life.

Update That Resume

Before you set out to apply for a new job, you’re probably going to need an up-to-date resume. It’s easy to let resume updating slide while you’re employed because you have a job and it isn’t the most fun thing to do. Fortunately there are some tools to make it easier to get started and make sure it’s in top shape.

First things first, if you don’t want to figure out the exact formatting of your resume and other tedious tasks, Resunate is a service that’ll simply take your information and create a resume tailored to the type of job you want. If you’ve got a LinkedIn profile, you can also use the LinkedIn resume builder to save yourself the hassle of reassembling that information. If you want something a little different, VIsualize.me can create an infographic out of your work experience.

Of course, you want your resume to be unique and not a computer-generated file. These services are good at providing you with a starting point but you should take the time to personalize the document they create and still look for ways you can improve it. To start, resume checking service RezScore will analyze your resume for free and provide you with useful feedback. RezScore will not only point out actual errors, but overused words and which jobs your resume is best geared towards as well.

There’s plenty you can do yourself, too. It’s always good to be aware of bland phrases, redundant statements, and annoying terms. Resume checkers will catch a lot of these things, but they won’t catch everything. It also helps to read your resume from bottom to top to help catch errors.

The design of your resume is also important. You don’t need to revolutionize its look, but often times its a matter of simply choosing the right font and color. For more design tips, check out these design resources.

For more tips on getting your resume read and past the robots, read this.

Find a Great New Place to Work

If you don’t already have a new job in mind, you’re going to need to find one. That is, unfortunately, somewhat of a daunting task. Whenever I’ve needed a job or wanted a new one, I’ve simply thought of companies I liked and that would provide a good learning experience. Then I’d contact all the companies on that list about available jobs. If the company already provided a list of jobs, I’d contact them anyway to just ask a question. It always helps to have your name on the company’s radar and let them know you’ll be applying after they help you out. If you don’t have any real questions, ask them something simple and easy to answer that might not be entirely clear in the job posting. If they can answer in a few minutes and you respond with a thank you, they’ll feel like they helped you and that can make them like you. While you may not have a list of companies you like on the top of your head, if you think about it for a little while you’ll likely find a few. Don’t rule out anything just because it seems unlikely. You may be surprised at the jobs you can get if you’re smart, get things done, and stand out just a little bit. (And if you really want to stand out, this Google trick is very clever.)

But sometimes getting a job can be tough because you don’t have relevant experience. Of course, you can always get a lower-level job to get that experience or simply start in a position you are qualified for and move into the position you want after you’ve proven you’re a great worker. In some cases, you can spin your unrelated experience to make it feel relevant. I’ve never applied for a job for which I was qualified, but I worked my way up through an internship or convinced my employer that my existing experience is relevant. Often times it’s as simple as finding a task or two that you completed at your current job that is actually relevant and focus on those.

When you’re really not sure where you might want to work, however, there are plenty of ways to find new options. Strangely, Twitter is a good option because organizations like Tweet My Jobs post quite a few opportunities. The Labor Department’s Facebook page provides job listings and career advice as well. On top of those options, check out the top five Lifehacker reader favorites for job search sites.

Photo by FotoDawg.

Nail the Interview

Job interviews can be tough. It’s the only part of the process where you really have to think on your feet. If you’re qualified, intelligent, and get things done, the only other thing you really need is charisma. Most decisions are made on a first impression and so coming across as a like-able person is often your biggest asset (which, thanks to body language, is easiest to do in person). If you can pull that off initially, you’ll be in good shape unless you mess something up. So just don’t say anything stupid!

On that subject, you really just need to know what you should avoid during the interview. It also happens to know what to ask and understand the motives behind the questions the interviewer asks you. If you’re asked the most annoying question—that being “what’s your greatest weakness?”—just choose an irrelevant skill.

And once you do nail the interview, consider asking if the company offers a signing bonus. Sometimes that’s all you need to do to get one.

Photo by Ted Murphy.

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