Tag: jobs

Franklin Paterson Company Inc., Your One-stop Career Boutique.™ for Professional Resume Writing, Cover Letters, Interview Preparation, and Career Strategy Consulting.

Handling Gaps in your Work History

How prepared are you to respond to questions regarding a Gap in your work history? Being laid off or fired is infuriating, especially if you are dumped by an organization that you were thinking of leaving anyway.

Maybe the timing is terrible, but consider yourself rescued and liberated, PLUS you get to keep your “I am not a quitter badge”!

Is there is a plus side? Yes indeed!

You are being forced to reconsider your career options and proactively restructure the next phase of your career. If you got a decent severance package – HURRAH! You are being paid while you make this career upgrade.

Here are some recommendations for processing and handling the work gap in the initial phone call with a recruiter or hiring manager:

1)   Develop a concise non-emotional explanation for the gap. Was there a company-wide layoff, did your department fold, was there a personal health issue, or did you move to a new city?

2)   Do not fudge the truth. Do not change a full-time tenure at the company to a contract or temp role. Lying about your employment can be damaging. The wise among us realize that being dumped can be a good thing. So, evaluate what you have gained from working at the company that set you free.  

3)   One of the funnier moments in my coaching history is a candidate explaining that she was fired, but not really.

In response to my quizzical: Say What? She said that she was the only one laid off in her division, so she felt she was fired. Too much info…. Was the severance reasonable? I asked, she said yes. I suggested that we will call it a “dissociation.” It is incredible what language can do to improve one’s view of things!

4)   Explain what you were doing during gaps between jobs. Think hard. Did you volunteer, take classes to upgrade your skills, travel, or use the time to take care of a relative. Did you attend webinars take online courses etc.? In short, were you productive?

5)   Unless you are good at disassociation, try to subdue your maverick go-it-alone approach. Consider engaging a professional to help you sophisticate your resume and prepare for this and other tricky interview questions.

6)   Invest in yourself and your career, and above all, do not wait until you are at the interview itself to craft a response to what you have been doing the last three or six months. Above all, do not slime the people at your previous employer; they can be excellent sources for referrals.

Happy New Year

  WISHING YOU A HAPPY NEW YEAR!!

To Our Friends and Customers,

We wish you a new year full of happiness and good fortune.

Last year was an expansion year for us, full of interesting lessons, new business lines and partnerships.

We look forward to 2019 and the success it will bring, and we wish the same to our business partners, friends and customers as well.

May endless joy and happiness be with you throughout the New Year…

From, all of us at FPSelectJobs.com
For some of the best jobs anywhere!!!

How to beat the Holiday Job Search blues

Job search during the holiday season can add an additional level of stress to an already stressful time of year.  But there is an upside to interviewing during the holidays.

With over 20% of job seekers opting out of job searching due to the holidays a fifth of your competition just left the market, and an even larger percentage fail to update their resumes and profiles on the job search engines. So now is the time to capitalize on that advantage.

Here’s why job hunting during the holidays, is such a brilliant idea!!

  • Create complete job applications. Resist the urge to send a blind resume, employers seeking to hire are more likely to view resumes in an online format that they are accustomed to, the rest is for the delete button.
  • Please follow the job application instructions. To ignore directions tells the manager that you do not/will not follow directions – and you wonder why they have not called on your resume!
  • If you have created a job application more than three months ago, please go back in and update, better yet create a new resume or profile, you may have fallen to Resume 1005 – nobody reads that many!
  • Most job boards allow you to add up to three resumes/profiles. Every now and again, update to rise to the top.
  • Change or remove your objective or summary so your info looks new.
  • Take a good attitude and lots of business cards to holiday functions. Hint: do not hand out your resume at holiday functions, offer to email it the next day.
  • Still no hits or interviews after three weeks – thrash the whole thing. Create a new resume or profile. Do it yourself or invest in your career, have a professional resume writer design it for you.
  • Some of the best salary offers are made during this upbeat time of year – so hang in there!!.

Visit us often at FPSelectjobs.com, new jobs are added daily.

This Article is a re-post from FPSelectJobsblog 12/03/2017 

Are you a high maintenance jobseeker?

FPSelectJobs your one-stop career boutique The high maintenance jobseeker sees the job search process and interviewing; as highly competitive process, and consequently may make some of these mistakes in an effort to get and edge over other job seekers.

Recognizing the high maintenance jobseeker:

1). Sends resume by snail mail or next day post, in an envelope so large, that the envelope is used for note taking by the recipient and discarded; sometimes with the resume inside; or the envelope drifts away with a visitor who used it for note taking.

2). Prints resume on paper so thick that you can fold up the edges and use it as a tray to hold other candidate resumes.

3). Uses colorful paper and ink that renders a fair portion of the resume, unreadable, and looking ever so slightly like a craft project gone wrong.

4). Once contacted for an interview, says needs to think about it, or look at their schedule. Then bombards the recruiter or manager with a series of I would like to know emails or calls before setting up and interview,.

5). Ignores emailed driving directions to the interview, gets lost and calls from some other building or street location no one has ever heard off.

6). Shows up an hour early for the interview, just in case the manager was not busy; and can meet with them a bit earlier.

7). Brings a series of show and tell items, awards, projects reference letters etc. to the interview, in large briefcase or bag, constantly interrupts interview to show the interviewer items.

8). Is accompanied to the interview by a family member or friend, who sits glumly in the lobby, or worse wanders around, peering into the interview room or other offices.

In an effort to stand out from other candidates many jobseekers inadvertently commit one or more of these interview mistakes.

Qualified for a position, applied, but the interview was cancelled once scheduled, or you are not asked back for a second interview?

Check the items above, did you commit any of these blunders – Are you a High Maintenance Jobseeker?