Networking? Start using social media!

woman using computer

Post by Julie Remington and Shirley Fenlason

woman using computerEven though networking is a very effective job search method, it can be daunting to pick up the phone or walk into a room and start talking. Online networking offers another way to reach a large group of people who can power up your job search.

Networking 101

Networking is essentially communicating with others, whether in person or online, about your job search and career goals. By connecting with your network of friends, family, neighbors, former co-workers, supervisors, etc., and also their contacts, you reach a pool of people who increase the odds of turning up information about job prospects.

The goal is to ask your network for ideas, contacts in different organizations or industries, and recommendations of other people to talk to. Offering your help in exchange is a good practice. To focus communications with your network, jot down these points before you connect:

  • What kind(s) of job(s) you are looking for
  • The skills and experience you have for these jobs
  • Specific companies or industries you want to connect with
  • Which local area you are focused on
  • What information would help in your search, that your contact would be likely to have
  • How to ask for the information you want

Use social media for online networking

Online networking starts with creating your profile on key social media sites, then reaching out to others. Both job seekers and employers use social media sites to learn about each other and communicate about opportunities.

Recent research shows that 52 percent of employers use social media to look for new employees. These range from major corporations, to smaller companies and non-profits. They also use social media to research candidates they have already identified. More than 35 percent of employers who participated in the survey said they are less likely to interview a job candidate if they cannot find information about her or him online, so having an online presence is definitely to your advantage.

What are recruiters looking for? Employers were impressed by postings about career, volunteer, and social engagement work, and seeing evidence of creativity, communication skills, and a professional image. They were turned off by postings involving alcohol or drug use, inappropriate photos, profanity, discriminatory comments, and badmouthing a previous employer.

Social media tools

The most-used social media sites are LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. You could start your online networking by exploring these sites if you’re not already on them.

LinkedIn is used by over 400 million people to keep up-to-date about their industry or career, and find job openings. You can use LinkedIn to:

  • Create and maintain an online profile that describes your education, training, skills, career goals, and work experience.
  • Establish relationships by connecting with other LinkedIn users and share information.
  • Join LinkedIn groups in your industry, or create your own networking group. Groups are a good place to ask questions and learn about job leads.

Facebook, with more than 1.5 billion users, has been primarily a tool to share personal information. However, it is increasingly used to connect with friends about job contacts and career information.

  • Keep privacy settings as high as possible to avoid the risk of employers seeing private information, and potentially hurting your job prospects.
  • Keep your profile and online behavior clean of any posts, comments, language, photos, or online games that could give an employer a poor impression of you.

Twitter, with 320 million active monthly users, allows you to follow other Twitter users and search their  posts (called tweets) for job openings, or send a link to your resume or website in some of your tweets.

From your Twitter account home page, you can search tweets using the # symbol (hashtag) followed by a keyword or phrase that describes what you are looking for. Tweeters “tag” their messages to make searching easier. You can also click on a hashtag in a tweet. Twitter will pull up all the recent tweets with that hashtag. Common hashtags used by job seekers are:

  • #jobs
  • #jobhunt
  • #jobsearch
  • #jobsearchtips
  • #resume
  • #jobinterview

Blogs are a common way for people and companies to get information out. Search for blogs that keep you up-to-date about your career or industry by using your favorite browser and entering related terms.

Online networking tips

Most sites only let you see or add content after you’ve created an account. To manage your account effectively, keep these tips in mind:

  • Only post comments, photos, and videos you would feel OK about an employer seeing.
  • Check your grammar and spelling.
  • Think of everything you put online as public information.
  • Google search your name to see what comes up on the Internet; clean it up if need be.
  • Scams for fake job positions, training, or job search help may be posted; try checking for website user reviews, and read the “About Us” section to learn about the website sponsor.
  • For online group discussions, review previous posts and read available FAQs to familiarize yourself with the group’s style. Start your entries by keeping clearly focused on the topic and matching other users for brevity and pattern of responses.

Visit Networking on CareerOneStop for more ideas.

 

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Welding as a Career: Exciting, Rewarding and Secure

Welder welding metal in workshop with sparks

Guest post by Audrey Jenkins

Welder welding metal in workshop with sparksYou are at a critical time in your life and evaluating different career paths. You know you don’t want to wait four years before making real money, but you want to enjoy what you do for the next 30 or so years. You also want to develop skills that make you increasingly more secure in your work and able to enjoy increasing income based on those skills and your experience.

In short, you want to get to work as fast as possible in a solid career and have a promising future. If that sounds like what you’re looking for, have you considered welding? This infographic from Tulsa Welding School provides some intriguing insights into welding as a career. Read on to see what they have to share.

Welders Hold the Economy Together 

Your perception of the welder might be limited to the guy in the funny helmet creating sparks at the new building going up downtown. While that is one important role filled by welders, you will find these highly trained professionals in every segment of the economy doing a wide range of jobs. These include sectors like:

  • Engineering
  • Project Management
  • Robotics
  • Sales
  • Inspection

Additionally, if you are looking to try out new horizons, this infographic also explains a variety of career opportunities such as:

Ship Building and Repair. You can find jobs needing skilled welders in shipyards and on ships in the United States and around the globe.

Military Support. Companies that supply and support our military use welders for a number of functions around the world, from tanks and airplanes to nuclear subs. You can provide these services as a civilian under contract to the military.

Pipeline Installation. The secret to supplying gasoline, crude oil, natural gas, and even water is in modern pipelines. This means the need each year for thousands of miles of new pipelines and the replacement of older pipelines will provide ongoing demand for qualified welders.

Underwater Welding. Welders with the ability to work underwater on bridges, pipelines, oil rigs, and dozens of other applications are often in high demand and earn higher salaries

The annual income you can generate in these specialty fields of welding range from $50,000 to as much as $200,000.

An Industry in Transition 

One of the more significant aspects of a welding career is that is an indispensable occupation increasingly in demand in higher-paying specialties. As robotics take over some of the more traditional and routing welding functions, welders are needed for tasks and assignments that no robot can handle in the foreseeable future.

Interestingly, the infographic shows that as more robots are used for mundane tasks, more qualified human welders are needed to train, oversee and maintain those robotic welders. With an expected growth in this industry segment alone of more than 20 percent per year, the opportunities will continue to expand for welders experienced in robotics.

If your goals include a little excitement in your work and the ability to grow, take some time to evaluate what welding could mean for you as a great career.

Want to find a welding program in your local area?

Visit CareerOneStop’s Local Training Finder

Audrey Jenkins is a skilled freelance blogger covering a range of topics from careers to travel and leisure, along with everything in between.

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Ideas for a new career

man using laptop

man using laptopDo you secretly believe a career assessment might reveal the “real you,” show your hidden potential, or true purpose? Many of us hope so! But though those hopes probably overreach the limitations of even the good career assessments, they can provide important feedback about finding a career that suits you.

Specifically, a good career assessment will:

  • Answer a specific question, like which occupations might be a good match for you
  • Offer a framework to think about career options, with good reasons to consider certain fields
  • Doesn’t offer a guarantee that you’d like the work or be able to find a job in that field

The most prominent framework for career assessment today, used in a many different tools and formats, is based on one career theorist’s research and is known as the Holland theory of type.

Dr. John Holland believed that people’s interests, and work environments, could be categorized into six different groups. After testing a large number of people, he found that most of them were drawn to two or three of the areas more than the others. He also found that occupations could be classified as most related to two or three interest areas.

His assessment gives you a shorthand method to match your interests to similar careers so that you can focus on work environments you are more apt to like. While there isn’t a guarantee you’ll like all the occupations that come up as matches, it’s pretty likely you will have a lot in common with other people who work in those fields.

Is your curiosity piqued yet? Good news: the U.S. Department of Labor Employment and Training Administration developed an Interest Profiler based on Holland’s theory to make it easy for people to take a reliable career assessment for free. Keep in mind that your results will be gauged on around 800 different occupations, so don’t panic if your results include careers that don’t interest you! It takes between 20-30 minutes to complete.

Want to feel more solid and expand your ideas further before making a career decision? It can be helpful to take more than one assessment to get additional feedback. Try CareerOneStop’s Skills Profiler to identify your job skills and match them to careers.

For more assessments and help interpreting assessment results, meet with a career counselor at a community college, community agency or your nearest American Job Center.

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Hottest jobs for 2016

Male And Female Nurse In Discussion At Nurses Station

Is a new job on your list of goals for the new year?

Male And Female Nurse In Discussion At Nurses StationWith the economy looking up and the holiday season in the rearview mirror, many companies are ready to ramp up hiring this month.

Sounds great, right? So what kind of job should you be looking for? The best job for anyone is always going to be one that you’re good at (i..e. uses your skills), that inspires you (by matching your interests), and that meets your salary requirements.

It also helps to consider the demand for jobs you’re interested in.  (After all, if you can’t get hired, the best-fit job for you is pretty meaningless).  CareerOneStop offers several ways to learn about demand for different careers.  You can find the occupations with the most openings, the occupations expected to grow fastest, or the ones with the largest employment.

Another way to understand employment demand is to look at employer job postings.  That’s what CareerBuilder and Economic Modeling Specialists Intl. (EMSI) did late in 2015.  They analyzed 700 occupations by comparing monthly job postings to the number of actual hires (they also looked at a range of other data including earnings, job growth, and more; see their full report.)

Of course no one method of measuring job demand is perfect, but the CareerBuilder/EMSI results are a good starting point for exploring careers where you have a good chance of getting hired.  Take a look at their top ten lists below—one for jobs that require a college degree, and one for jobs that don’t.

Top 10 in-demand occupations that require a college degree

  1. Registered nurses
  2. Software developers, applications
  3. Marketing managers
  4. Sales managers
  5. Medical and health services managers
  6. Network and computer systems administrators
  7. Industrial engineers
  8. Computer systems analysts
  9. Web developers
  10. Financial managers

Top 10 in-demand occupations that don’t require a college degree

  1. Heavy and tractor trailer truck drivers
  2. Food service managers
  3. Computer user support specialists
  4. Insurance sales agents
  5. Medical records and health
  6. Surgical technologists
  7. Bus and truck mechanics
  8. Transportation, storage and distributions managers
  9. Purchasing agents
  10. Medical secretaries
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Finding direction for the year ahead

2016 with arrow pointing forward

2016 road smallerThe Greek philosopher Socrates once said “The unexamined life is not worth living.” Maybe he’s right. I know I’ve found writing in a journal and reflecting on my experiences enormously helpful.

But whether or not your habits include a regular review, his guidance seems especially meaningful as we meet the new year. Before you leap into 2016 goals and intentions, see what you can discover by reflecting on the year that was. Choose your favorite questions below to answer on your own, or with a friend:

How you spent your time

  • What was the single best thing that happened this past year?
  • Most challenging thing that happened?
  • What books, blogs, or other reading stand out from the past year?
  • Which part of your life saw the greatest change in 2015?
  • How did you waste time this past year?
  • What activity was the best use of your time?
  • If you set 2015 intentions, which were met? Which were not?

If you keep a planner, you can review it for appointments, scheduled activities and events. Or you may bear witness to your life in other ways. Perhaps you have saved photos, posts or emails from the year that tell your story.

What went well this year

  • What did you really enjoy?
  • Where did you create new work or opportunities?
  • How did you connect with exciting people, ideas or experiences?
  • How did you grow or change in ways that support your well-being?
  • What did people seek you out for? –  an expertise, mentorship, kindness?
  • What is one way you made a difference in the world?

What didn’t go well

  • Where did you struggle or feel resistance?
  • Have you outgrown some events, activities or relationships?
  • What is uninspiring you?
  • What were you afraid might happen, and didn’t? Or did? And then what?
  • Have any of your dreams come to an end?
  • Are there ways in which you are failing to respect yourself? Or allowing others to disrespect you?

What do you want to be different?

It makes sense to do more of what works well, and less of what doesn’t. Let’s use diet as an example. Experts say most diet decisions are made at the grocery store. If you buy a selection of appealing vegetables and fruits that fit your preferred diet, you’ll increase your odds of success. But loading your cart with cookies, ice cream and pizza will make it harder to eat well at home. In other words, if all the options you give yourself are reasonably positive, then any one you choose will be OK.

If there are necessary but unpleasant activities you really can’t control, you could explore how to improve them (such as putting on music when you clean the house or rewarding yourself for finishing a task.)

And now, for the future!

Imagine it’s a year from now. Picture sitting down to this kind of review of your 2016 experiences. Besides using insight from your answers to the previous questions, consider:

  • What do you most want to see when you review 2016?
  • What do you want to learn this year?
  • Which skills or habits you want to share, contribute, or develop this year?
  • How could this year be more inspiring and satisfying than last year?

May your own new year reflect what will make you truly happy, healthy and successful.

Best wishes from CareerOneStop.

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Top 10 career-boosting certificates

image of sign saying careerIs 2016 going to be the year you take that next step in your career?

Whether you have a high-school diploma or an advanced degree—or anything in between—earning a certificate is one of the best ways to boost your career.

A certificate can help you get promoted in your current job, qualify for a new job, or even prepare you to enter a whole new field. Best of all, you can earn a certificate in an in-demand specialty in as little as a few semesters of classes.

Sounds great, right? Now all you need to do is choose a certificate program and get started!  That’s easy if you’ve already identified the right area of specialization for you: you can head over to CareerOneStop’s Local Training Finder, enter a keyword for the type of training you’re looking for, and find a list of programs in your local area.

But what if you’re like many people—you know you want to get more training but you aren’t quite sure what would be best for your career?  You can do a little research to find out what kinds of certificates are in demand. Often, professional associations are good sources of this information. Also, you can search job listings to see what employers are looking for. And of course, networking is always a good idea when you’re thinking about your career.

You can also take advantage of research done by others.  I recently came across this list of popular specialty certificates compiled by Coursera, the online education platform. They analyzed LinkedIn profiles and collected the most-shared certificates of 2015.

Take a look at their list below—if you see anything that’s relevant to your field, visit Coursera.org to search for free or low-cost online courses, or Visit CareerOneStop’s Local Training Finder to search for local training programs in your area.

LinkedIn’s most-shared certificates of 2015 (as reported on Coursera.org)

  1. Digital Marketing: strategic planning and analytics for digital marketing channels
  2. Data Science: GitHub, RStudio, and data visualization techniques
  3. Interaction Design: prototyping, user testing, and visual design
  4. Business Strategy: strategy formulation, execution, and assessment
  5. Strategic Business Analytics: marketing , supply chain, and human resources analytics
  6. Data Science: SQL, NoSQL, data mining, and machine learning
  7. Genomic Data Science: Python, R, Bioconductor, and Galaxy
  8. Organizational Leadership: motivation, self-assessment, and conflict management
  9. Social Media Marketing: campaign management, brand positioning, and content development
  10. Strategic Management and Innovation: goal setting, value creation, and diversification

 

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When I grow up, I want to be a…

children thinking about careers

children thinking about careersDo children still grow up dreaming of being an astronaut? What careers does the average 3-year old aspire to? In a survey conducted last month by the website Fatherly, children ages 1-10 were asked what they want to be when they grow up. While a few set their sights on a career as “a kitty cat,” most talked about the kinds of jobs parents might hope for. Here’s a summary of the survey results.

We aspire to what we know. Lots of children said they’d like to grow up to be doctors, teachers, firefighters, veterinarians and police officers. These are occupations children are likely to come in contact with, and many relate to children’s desire to help others.

top 10 professions kids want to be

The #1 career choice was professional athlete. Many of the kids who chose this career will dedicate themselves to developing skills and discipline throughout their school sports career, so maybe it’s not a bad thing! Later, show them how likely they are to earn a living as an athlete (fewer than 1% of high school athletes will go pro), but for now, take those dreams and run!

Regionally, doctor tops the list in both the northeast and southwest, while teaching is the most popular profession for children in the midwest. Veterinarian wins out in the southeast, while professional athlete is tops in the west/ northwest.

Overall, girls’ top choices were doctor, followed by teacher, scientist and chef/baker. Boys led with pro athlete, then firefighter, engineer, astronaut. About 35 percent of all kids expressed interest in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) careers. Interestingly, girls indicated more interest in STEM careers than boys. It looks like efforts to encourage children’s interest in math and science careers may be paying off.

What happens to dream job hopes with age? Between launching into school, participating in activities, and media exposure, children encounter new occupations every year.  Results suggest that a broad range of experiences can give children the opportunity to dream in many directions.  Reassuringly, there are lots of candidates for Superhero positions, at least in the 3-year old set.

graph2

Some answers to “what do you want to be when you grow up?” didn’t show up on the charts, but are worth noting for posterity, including:

  • Fixer
  • Mattress Tester
  • Dinosaur
  • Hedge Fund Manager
  • Gold Miner
  • Taller

Career counselors encourage adults to reach back to early childhood imaginings for the nugget of who they really are. Take note of your children’s career hopes; there may be a seed that will bloom into a satisfying and successful career.

Check out CareerOneStop to explore your own career dreams.

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Top 10 in-demand IT skills

youn African American man on laptop

IT workerIt’s the third annual Computer Science Education Week, a national call to action promoting computer science education and computer careers. From December 7 to 13, kids across the country are diving into opportunities to learn IT skills at schools, nonprofits, businesses, and even government agencies.

It’s a terrific opportunity for kids to learn about and expand their computer sills—but gaining those skills isn’t just for kids.

Why learn IT skills?

In just a few years, computer information technology (IT) skills and what’s called computational thinking will be needed in more than half of all jobs, according to Megan Smith, U.S. Chief Technology Officer. Learning or brushing up on an IT skill can have a huge impact on your job prospects.

Which IT skills?

So you know you want to gain some tech skills—but how do you know exactly which skills to brush up on? You can learn in a few ways.  If you currently work in a field that you want to stay in, ask around, and take notice of the emerging tech skills at your work place. Once you identify a skill you want to learn, you can visit CareerOneStop’s Local Training Finder or Certification Finder to research training options.

You can also can ask any employers or employees about skills that are in demand in their industry—whether it’s your current field or one you want to break in to. Or you can search job postings to see which skills employer cite most often.

CareerOneStop staff did their own analysis to see which IT skills are most wanted by employers.  After analyzing thousands of job listings on US.jobs and other websites that feed into CareerOneStop’s Job Finder, our researchers determined that the most common IT skills mentioned in job postings are specific programming languages. They compiled this list of twenty most in-demand programming languages, or skills, wanted by employers:

  1. SQL
  2. Java
  3. Linux
  4. .NET
  5. HTML
  6. JavaScript
  7. UNIX
  8. Python
  9. XML
  10. CSS

  

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Solve the interview mystery

Job applicant giving thumbs up

Everyone knows about the great mystery of interviewing that every job candidate wants to solve:  How can I demonstrate that I am perfect for this job?

Job applicant giving thumbs up While your employer research and review of common interview questions are important, they aren’t enough. You need to go deeper to show that your abilities, character, and understanding of the position will dovetail with the job and serve the organization.

In a recent blog for employers, Robin Reshwan outlined three interview questions that help uncover the likelihood of a job candidate’s long-term success in a job. Job seekers can turn the same questions to their advantage, whether you’re an experienced professional, a recent graduate, or have been out of the workforce for a while.

1)  How would you handle this situation? (The employer describes a business scenario and asks the candidate to role-play their resolution.)

To answer this question effectively requires familiarity with the typical challenges of workers in the field, such as running over budget, angry customers, missed deadlines, physical risks. Review related experiences from your past. How were they handled, for the good and the bad? How do you wish you and others had handled them?

The most important take-away for the employer will be the values demonstrated by your answer. Did you emphasize a strong commitment to customer service? Keeping costs down? Restoring team morale, leadership of others, handling conflict calmly? Consider what your response tells the employer about how you will contribute in their environment.

2)  If you aren’t hired for this job, then what will you do?

A surprise question! Will you binge watch old tv shows on the couch? Start a garden? Haven’t given it any thought? This question is designed to ferret out the genuine, unpolished you.

The best way to prepare for surprise questions like this one is to actually have a plan for your career, and think through how positions you apply for align with it. Then your spontaneous answers will come from a positive, well-positioned place. An ideal response shows that you’ve done your research, understand the industry, and intend to pursue your career whether with their position or somewhere else.

3)  Describe what you think this role is about and why it is important to our company.

Your answer will demonstrate your understanding of the key needs of the position—the skills and qualities it takes to be effective and successful in this role. Your company research will help, but you may need to do your own analysis to describe the position’s importance. Consider the company’s mission and key commitments. Is it involved in new projects that require more workers or different skills? Are new credentials or talents needed to keep up with industry changes?

You aren’t expected to know everything about the position, but your understanding of the nature of the job and how it serves organizational priorities, will help you solve the great interview mystery, and show your suitability for the job.

Learn more about preparing for interviews on CareerOneStop.

 

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Create your personal brand

personal branding

personal brandingWhy take the time to develop a personal brand? Besides helping you identify your personal strengths, having a brand can pull your resume to the top of the pile, make you shine in interviews, and leave your LinkedIn readers positively wowed.

Personal branding is about communicating your identity and showing what sets you apart from others in your field. It combines the personal with the professional, since a brand encompasses your skills and talents, along with personality and style.

Developing and owning your brand can be uncomfortable. It requires you to deeply consider your unique attributes and the value that you bring to a customer and workplace. And personal branding is definitely about promoting those qualities wherever you bring your job search.

Corporations take great care to develop a brand that concisely defines their product and niche, hoping to inspire trust and commitment in consumers. If you apply similar thinking to your personal brand, you can distinguish your value in a way that inspires an employer’s interest in you.

In a nutshell, creating your personal brand is about identifying the most unique ways you bring your talents and abilities to bear in a workplace:

  • Are you friendly and always the one to organize social events at work? Your brand could include “an inveterate team builder and initiator.”
  • Do you take unusual care to ensure details are thoroughly thought through, and accurate? Your brand could be “willing to take on the precision that scares other technicians away.”
  • You might be an outstanding supervisor who makes operations flow and brand yourself “a problem solver who excels at developing talent.”
  • Have you worked at organizations in turmoil and kept an even keel? Your brand might read “an optimistic worker who can handle any situation.”
  • Maybe you like to shake things up in a bureaucratic workplace: “I turn things upside down to reveal opportunity and leverage our organization’s resources.”

To develop your own brand, consider several of your best work experiences and how you contributed to them. What skill or characteristic is reflected in your best work stories? How did you use it? With what result? Ask yourself: “Why do people like to work with me, or employ me?” What earns you compliments or accolades? What do people depend on you for?

You can identify these answers yourself, or work with a career coach or counselor to help you identify them. It’s a good idea to ask for some feedback on your ideas from a few trusted friends or colleagues before you go public with your brand, to avoid a mismatch of how you see yourself and how you may come across to others.

Use your brand in all your job search communications to help an employer formulate a clear idea of who you are. Reiterate your brand in your cover letter, in interviews, and in thank-you notes. For your LinkedIn or other social media profile, your brand should stand out as the key take-away about you. If you blog, your brand should be reflected in your topics and style.

Learn more on CareerOneStop about how to Take Your Network Online, and Do Your Research to prepare the strongest possible job search materials. And find your nearest American Job Center for individual help to develop your personal brand and resume.

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