Since October of 2008 when the US Economy took a nosedive, the advantage has shifted to the hiring side. That means that we are in a strong buyer's market. Companies are more selective than ever, and mainly for one reason: they can be. There are a lot more great candidates out there than great jobs, so the companies that are hiring are doing all they can to make sure that they hire the best and the brightest from among all those who are candidates for a particular position.
One of the tools that companies use is a "personality assessment." Certainly they want to know that you have skills and talents and can do the job well, but once they establish that, the bar is raised considerably in the selection process. You see, they want not only bright, talented, skilled employees...they also want those bright, talented, skilled employees to fit in well with the organizational culture and the other people who already work there.
So, enter the personality assessment. These assessments measure things like compliance, independence, patience, creativity, leadership, attention to detail, how you process information, problem solving, your need for stability, and how you react to stress among other qualities as well. Different positions require different qualities, so when a hiring manager is considering, for example, someone to work in the accounting department, attention to detail would be a very important quality. An outgoing personality might be just right for the sales position they need to fill, while the Chief Technology Officer position might require someone who is a creative, independent thinker. There is no single personality type that is right for every position.
With the cost of making a bad hire higher than ever, companies want to get it right. The money they invest in training, benefits, compensation, and opportunity cost of hiring the wrong person can be a crippling sum. So, I think you can see that when they are considering making an offer to a candidate, they want to know all they can possibly know about that candidate.
Do you think it would be valuable to you to know how other people perceive you and to know without question the "soft" skills you bring to the job? In other words, would you like to know the same things about yourself that the companies who interview you will know? What if you learned that how you think you are perceived by others is nothing at all like others really perceive you? Would it be valuable information to know what, if anything, you need to work on and improve before you go to an interview? If you are already great at something and do not realize it, would it be helpful to you to know about yourself what others have seen for years?
I think that knowledge would be very valuable, indeed. In fact, I think it would put you in a very advantageous position relative to all the other candidates to have that information. In addition to all that I have already described, you will learn which historical figures had the same personality type that you have.
What if I told you that you can have this information immediately, and that it would cost you nothing? FREE, in other words. For a very limited time, that is exactly what I am telling you.
On my website (http://www.newwaveresumes.com) you will see an offer on the home page that can make the information I just described available to you for free. These reports normally go for $100 to $150, but from now until the end of September I am offering the best personality on the market...the DISC Report from Peoplekeys (http://www.peoplekeys.com)...for free with every résumé order. There are a lot of good reports out there, and I have used most of them over the years, but the one I find most useful, most accurate, and most reliable (meaning that if you take it more than once, you will get the same results) is the DISC report.
The assessment will take you, literally, about five to seven minutes to complete online with an access code I will provide. Once you complete it, you will receive your report online immediately.
A great résumé and the knowledge you need about yourself to go into any interview prepared and confident...I think that is a combination that is hard to beat.
Friday, September 5, 2014
Tuesday, September 2, 2014
Don't Let Ignorance Cripple Your Career
There is a lot to be said for stability and security in a career. After all, there is a certain degree of comfort and relaxation in knowing that you are in a job that you can keep for as long as you want it and that you will have a steady paycheck coming in until you retire. Maybe it's not your dream job, but the familiarity with it and your expertise in doing it offers a low or no stress environment. Maybe it doesn't give you the rewards that you thought you would receive when you started on this career path years ago, but it could be a lot worse.
Here's some news...it very well could get a lot worse. If you are in a position with any institution in the private sector in today's environment, you are not in nearly as stable an environment as you may think. Capitalism is a brutally efficient system for rewarding the innovators and casting aside those who think things will always be as they are now.
It has been a common cliché for a long time now, but we really are in a world economy, and because of the tremendous advances in communications technology and the ability to move things...almost anything...to somewhere else in the world quickly and inexpensively, no industry and no company is assured of staying in business or maintaining their position within their industry.
It used to be that graduates from the local schools competed with other graduates from the same or surrounding schools for jobs in the area. There is still some degree of that, but it is rapidly disappearing. Why? Because more and more jobs that used to require being on-site at an office or manufacturing facility can now be done remotely from just about anywhere in the world. It is just as easy for an architect in Mumbai, India to design your house and send the plans to your local contractor as it is for another architect down the street from you to do the same thing.
It is not only a possibility, but a promise that someone, somewhere is working on a way that your job can be eliminated. It's nothing personal, it's just the efficient market system at work, and the most efficient companies that can operate at the lowest cost will always win in the long run. Do you want examples? Here are two: Wal Mart and Southwest Airlines. Both companies are their industry leaders in low-cost operations.
So what is the take-away from this realization? It is simply this...there is absolutely no assurance that your job will still be there tomorrow. Just as it is always a good idea to have some money saved for a rainy day, it is also advisable to have a Plan B in place if your Plan A disappears.
There are many experts out there who say that we live in a world today where those who are starting their careers will have eight to eleven jobs in their working life. A few others predict even more than that.
A good place to start getting ready is to do an objective assessment of your skills that would be valuable and transferable to another organization if your job disappeared tomorrow. We specialize in helping people identify just what those skills are and putting them in a document that can help you market yourself most effectively if the need or desire to do so occurs.
Ken Murdock
New Wave Resumes
http://www.newwaveresumes.com
Here's some news...it very well could get a lot worse. If you are in a position with any institution in the private sector in today's environment, you are not in nearly as stable an environment as you may think. Capitalism is a brutally efficient system for rewarding the innovators and casting aside those who think things will always be as they are now.
It has been a common cliché for a long time now, but we really are in a world economy, and because of the tremendous advances in communications technology and the ability to move things...almost anything...to somewhere else in the world quickly and inexpensively, no industry and no company is assured of staying in business or maintaining their position within their industry.
It used to be that graduates from the local schools competed with other graduates from the same or surrounding schools for jobs in the area. There is still some degree of that, but it is rapidly disappearing. Why? Because more and more jobs that used to require being on-site at an office or manufacturing facility can now be done remotely from just about anywhere in the world. It is just as easy for an architect in Mumbai, India to design your house and send the plans to your local contractor as it is for another architect down the street from you to do the same thing.
It is not only a possibility, but a promise that someone, somewhere is working on a way that your job can be eliminated. It's nothing personal, it's just the efficient market system at work, and the most efficient companies that can operate at the lowest cost will always win in the long run. Do you want examples? Here are two: Wal Mart and Southwest Airlines. Both companies are their industry leaders in low-cost operations.
So what is the take-away from this realization? It is simply this...there is absolutely no assurance that your job will still be there tomorrow. Just as it is always a good idea to have some money saved for a rainy day, it is also advisable to have a Plan B in place if your Plan A disappears.
There are many experts out there who say that we live in a world today where those who are starting their careers will have eight to eleven jobs in their working life. A few others predict even more than that.
A good place to start getting ready is to do an objective assessment of your skills that would be valuable and transferable to another organization if your job disappeared tomorrow. We specialize in helping people identify just what those skills are and putting them in a document that can help you market yourself most effectively if the need or desire to do so occurs.
Ken Murdock
New Wave Resumes
http://www.newwaveresumes.com
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