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Keep It Simple, StupidPosted by ahc99 on October 14th, 2008

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List by Peter Fischli and David Weiss

Lifehacker recently had a post about How to Work Better. It is a list of ten items to follow in order to work more efficiently and effectively. I like how simple and to the point it is. I liked it so much that it’s now hanging in my work cubicle!

I would also like to add to the list:

• Don’t put off tomorrow what you can do today
• Haste leads to waste
• Remove distractions
• Organize work area
• Prioritize assignments
• Let technology assist
• Read more

Secretly, This is How Business Really WorksPosted by ahc99 on October 4th, 2008

This is hilarious and exactly how business works in real life:

Comic by Toothpaste For Dinner

And if anyone actually does piss on the contract even the slightest bit, then WHAM! they get slammed with a lawsuit.

Then its the lawyers turn to get into a pissing contest with each other while trying to avoid hitting the judge.

Unemployment Rate Highest in 5 Years; Jobless Claims Highest in 7 YearsPosted by ahc99 on September 27th, 2008

If you flick to CNN/NBC/FOX these days you will undoubtedly come across a broadcast about how more and more people are now unemployed. So how much has the unemployment rate actually increased? To answer this question I started digging around the Bureau of Labor Statistics and stumbled upon this graph:

Data by Bureau of Labor Statistics

The X-axis shows the unemployment rate by year

The Y-axis shows the unemployment rate percentage

The statistics only counts workers that are over the age of 16 and displays the data range from January 1998 to August 2008. For more concrete data, here are the numbers by month from 1998 to 2008:

From this data we can see that the unemployment rate has rose from 5.7% to 6.1% in August 2008. It is also the highest unemployment rate since 2003, five years ago.

Reading the most recent August Employment Situation Summary report told me these interesting facts:

• In August, employment fell in manufacturing and employment services, while mining and health care continued to add jobs.
• The number of unemployed persons rose by 592,000 to 9.4 million in August.
• In August, the number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks or more) rose by 163,000 to 1.8 million, an increase of 589,000 over the past 12 months.
• The newly unemployed - those who were jobless fewer than 5 weeks - increased by 400,000 over the month of August.

Overall, what I can glean from the provided statistics is unemployment has recently been rising rapidly. The long-term unemployed people have not been able to find job prospects, but at the same time many new unemployed people are being added into the mix. Thus, the prospects for already unemployed persons should become more dire.

My conclusion is in tandem with the recently released Department of Labor report on initial jobless claims. The report showed that jobless claims jumped to 493,000 for the week ended September 20, 2008. This has been the highest level of jobless claims since the weeks following the September 11th attacks. In the week ended September 29, 2001, initial jobless claims came in at 517,000.

I don’t believe there will be relief forthcoming to the unemployed in the coming months. Economists currently expect the upcoming report to show a decrease of about 90,000 jobs in September, which would mark the ninth consecutive month of job losses.

Time to tie up those purse strings and scale back on discretionary purchases.

Acing the InterviewPosted by ahc99 on September 26th, 2008

Photo by conorwithonen

Following up the previous post about resume writing, here are some guidelines I use for job interviews:

• Quantity is king - If you are a newbie at interviewing, the best advice I can give you is to sign up for a bunch of job interviews. As much as tips can be useful, nothing beats the real experience. Just jump out there and stack up the interviews. After a while they just won’t phase you anymore and every type of question that they throw at you, you would have heard before and know the answer to.
• Know your company - Its sad when you walk into an interview and don’t even know what company you are interviewing for. Besides the fact that you might spend your next five years with this company, you will get major points deducted when you answer “duh?” to the interviewer’s question of “why do you want to work for our company.”
• Firm handshake - Like with everything else in life, the first impression made in a job interview is crucial. People judge you within the first three minutes that they meet you and it is very hard to change it. Part of that would be the handshake greet you exchange. Make sure to have a firm, strong, and dry handshake. There’s nothing worse than meeting someone with a wet noodley handshake. I mean, what would you think of someone that had a handshake like that?
• Body language - Communication is 93% body language and 7% spoken word. So basically what your body does speaks louder than whatever that comes out of your mouth. Your body language can speak volumes about how confident, smart, and enthusiastic you are. Good ways to do this is to maintain eye contact with the interviewer, have good posture, and animate yourself with your hands.
• Wrap it up - Remember to get business cards at the end of the interview. That way a few days after the interview you can thank the interviewer for taking time from their busy schedule to interview you. Make sure to also restate your qualifications, how excited you are about the job, and various other things that were covered during the interview. It is a smart way to give the interviewer both a better and deeper impression of you over the other candidates. The thank you to the interviewer can either be an e-mail, typed letter, or handwritten letter. Whichever you think the interviewer would most likely prefer.
• Practice makes perfect - Every company asks a variety of questions and there will be a few differences, but on the whole the questions are basically the same only phrased differently. Here are some of the more typical questions. Make sure to prepare a response for these questions beforehands so that you won’t have a deer in the headlights look during the interview. It is also good to practice these questions before a mirror so you can see what your own body language says about you.
  • Tell me about yourself.
  • Give some examples of teamwork.
  • How do you handle stress and pressure?
  • Describe a difficult situation/conflict and how was it resolved?
  • Are you a team player?
  • Are you willing to work overtime?
  • Are you willing to be relocated?
  • What is your greatest strength and weakness?
  • What major challenges have you faced and how did you conquer them?
  • What are your salary expectations?
  • Why do you want this job?
  • Why do you want to work for this company?
  • What applicable experience do you have for this job?
  • Why should we hire you?
  • What are your goals for the next five/ten years?
  • What are your career goals?
  • Are there any questions that you have that I have not addressed yet?

Revamp the Ol’ ResumePosted by ahc99 on September 25th, 2008

Photo by _StaR_DusT_

With unemployment on the rise, I thought it would be a fitting time to revamp the old resume, just in case. Here are some guidelines I generally follow when writing up a resume:

• Put most recent information first - This applies to everything, from school work to experience. Most employers want to know what you have recently been working on and don’t want to scan through 15 years of your life before getting there.
• Fill in the blanks - Don’t leave gaps in your employment history, that looks very bad. If you really did not work for a few years, you can type in what you did during that time. For example, if at that time you started a new website, learned a new skill, or traveled, you can still put that in your “experience” section and explain what you learned and how that is applicable to the industry you are applying for.
• List relevant courses - When you give information about the schools you went to and the degrees you received, it is also a good idea to list underneath the specific names of the courses you took that are relevant to the industry you are working in.
• No essays - Employers get dozens of resumes for each job opening, hundreds if the company is big, so if they see paragraphs upon paragraphs of information they will most likely skip over your resume since it takes too long to read and it is not all that legible. It is better practice to utilize a bulletpoint list of the job duties you have performed under each job title. That way the employer can easily read each line and get the gist of the information you are providing.
• Keyword optimization - Most employers won’t spend more than one minute scanning your resume and just like how most websites use SEO optimization, it is necessary for you to use keywords in your resume. Keywords, also known as buzz words, are words relevant to your particular industry. For example, if you are applying for an auditing job you should make sure to have at least these keywords in your resume: reconciliation, balance sheet, financial statements, income statement, statement of cash flows, examination, audit, accounting, analysis, working papers, and GAAP. If you utilize these keywords in your resume, your employer will take notice and it gives you more credibility that you actually have the necessary background for the job.
• Point of contact - Be sure to list your email address (and maybe cell phone number) on the resume so that the employer has a way of contacting you. That would be the worst mistake if you could have gotten an interview but lost it because the employer could not contact you.
• Cover your bases - If you list references at the end of the resume, be sure you let them know you have listed them so when they get called (which is likely they will be) they will what it is for and how to respond.
• No lies - I understand embellishing your resume to make it seem like you were more important at your previous job that you really were/are. Everybody does that, no judgment here. But don’t lie on your resume. Don’t say you got a 4.0 GPA when you really got straight Cs. Don’t say you are the CEO of the company when you were just a technical assistant. Don’t say you worked at a company for five years when you actually got fired after six months. Those things have a way of catching up to you and getting you fired on the spot. And those previous examples? Yea, people really did say those things and got caught in their lies.
• Continuous improvement - It is a good habit to continuously update your resume throughout the year. I generally update it every six months even if I am not going to apply for a new job. The reason for updating it a few times out the year is so you won’t forget what new experiences or skills you have gotten. Assuming you work at a job for three years straight but never updated your resume, when you decide to jump to a new employer and update your resume, most likely you will forget certain tasks, experiences, or awards you have gotten in those three years. As a result, your resume will not portray the most stellar you. Thus, it is recommended that you update about twice a year so you don’t leave anything out of the resume that could help you land a job.