Career Corner

Hey everyone,
I created this topic so that we can post anything related to Jobs, Resume'', Cover Letter, Recommendation Letters, Job search tips... Anything related to Career.
Our posts can be collected or you can post your resume'' and ask others for advice.
I''m about to graduate and will look for a job, so I think this gonna benefit me. And I hope it will benefit you, too.




Career Planning


Who am I . . . and where am I going?

Though some people may seem to have it all figured outâ?"their major, their career goalsâ?"the majority of us aren''t bestowed with such clear-cut answers. Whether you are undecided on a major or are unsure if your current major is the right fit, exploring your personal interests along with your academic and career options will help you clarify your goals and identify a plan of action.

"Choose a job you like
and you''ll never have to work a day in your life."
Confucius


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An excellent way to select a great major and a great job is to develop a career plan.

To start the career decision-making process, follow the three steps below:

- Conduct self-assessments
Bring your values, personality, interests, and skills to light in order to determine your career wants and needs.

- Explore and research majors and careers
Learn more about the different options available and which path is best for you.
- Decide on your next steps
Incorporate what you have learned to create an action plan and make the best career-related decision.

Self-Assessment
Self-assessment is a way of understanding yourself and your goals by defining your core values, personality, interests, and, skills.
The goals of self-assessment are to help you to:
Identify your strengths, skills and interests.
Target occupations and fields you might not have considered before.
Clarify what you want to do next.
Find a career path that would be truly interesting and satisfying.
By spending some time and effort now, you will maximize your chances of picking a major and a career path that fits who you are.
Just remember...
It''s perfectly normal if you feel stressed or confused about which career direction to take.
It''s okay to continually re-evaluate yourself throughout your college experience.
You can choose or change your career path at any time, depending on your situation.
There''s more than just one "right" job for you.
Don''t let false assumptions about yourself and the work place stop you from finding a fulfilling career.
Before you take a self-assessment test, understand which aspects of yourself you need to investigate...
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Interests
Interests are activities you pursue for pure enjoyment. They can include elective courses, hobbies, extra curricular activities, or anyway you use your free time. Your interests are clues to the type of career you will excel in. Remember that you will experience the greatest job satisfaction when you are doing what you like to do and working with others who share similar interests.
Take an interests test to pinpoint what really interests you.
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Values
Values are the core principles that should determine what you do, who you spend your time with, and how you think about the world. Knowing your values is crucial for making wise career choices. And when you choose work that reflects your priorities, you will feel more committed to what you are doing and will be more satisfied in your workplace.
Examples of values include job security, open communication, and high income. Take a values test to better understand what you think is important.
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Personality
Your personal style helps you choose work environments that allow you to perform well and be content. For instance, some people need work settings where they have lots of time for quiet concentration. Others thrive on a combination of quiet time and group work. Your personal style will help you choose your preferred work environment.
Take a personality test to determine your preferred work environment.
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Skills
Motivated skills are abilities to do something well; they come from talent, training, or practice.
- Self-management skills are your abilities to exist and work in certain environments with certain people. Examples are time management and collaboration.
- Transferable skills are those skills you use in you schoolwork that can also be used in a professional environment; some examples include research and analytical skills.
- Work-content skills are the specific tools you need to function in the workplace like math skills for accountants or drawing skills for graphic designers. These may also include knowledge of computer programs or other equipment required on the job.
You will perform at your best when your skills match your job''s requirements.

Interest Test
Check out this very interesting link:
http://career.missouri.edu/holland/

Values Test
The Ordering of Work Values
In their book, Values and Teaching, Rath, Harmin, and Simon offer a representative list of work values. Read the list and do the following:
1) Check off the work values that are important to you.
2) Rank the top ten work values that you have checked off.
___ Help Society: Do something to contribute to the betterment of the world I live in.
___ Help Others: Be involved in helping other people in a direct way, either individually or in small groups.
___ Public Contact: Have a lot of day-to-day contact with people.
___ Work with Others: Have close working relationships with a group; work as a team toward common goals.
___ Affiliation: Be recognized as a member of a particular organization.
___ Friendships: Develop close personal relationships with people as a result of my work
___ Competition: Engage in activities which pit my abilities against others where there are clear win-and-lose outcomes.
___ Make Decisions: Have the power to decide courses of action, policies, etc.
___ Work under Pressure: Work in situations where time pressure is prevalent and/or the quality of my work is judged critically be supervisors, customers, or others.
___ Power and Authority: Control the work activities or (partially) the destinies of other people.
___ Influence People: Be in a position to change attitudes or opinions of other people.
___ Work Alone: Do projects by myself, without any significant amount of contact with others.
___ Knowledge: Engage myself in the pursuit of knowledge, truth, and understanding.
___ Intellectual Status: Be regarded as a person of high intellectual prowess or as one who is an acknowledged "expert" in a given field.
___ Artistic Creativity: Engage in create work in any of several art forms.
___ Creativity (general): Create new ideas, programs, organizational structures, or anything else not following a format previously developed by others.
___ Aesthetics: Be involved in studying or appreciating the beauty of things, ideas, etc.
___ Supervision: Have a job in which I am directly responsible for the work done by others.
___ Change and Variety: Have work responsibilities which frequently change in their content and setting.
___ Precision Work: Work in a situation where there is little tolerance for errors.
___ Stability: Be assured of keeping my job and receiving a reasonable financial reward.
___ Fast Pace: Work in circumstances where work must be done rapidly.
___ Recognition: Be recognized for the quality of my work in some visible or public way.
___ Excitement: Experience a high degree of (or frequent) excitement in the course of my work.
___ Adventure: Have work duties which involve frequent risk-taking.
___ Profit/Gain: Have a strong likelihood of accumulating large amounts of money or other material gain.
___ Independence: Be able to determine the nature of my work without significant direction from others: not have to do what others tell me to do.
___ Moral Fulfillment: Feel that my work is contributing significantly to a set of moral standards which I feel are very important.
___ Location: Find a place to live (town, geographical area) which is conducive to my lifestyle and affords me the opportunity to do the things I enjoy most.
___ Community: Live in a town or city where I can get involved in community affairs.
___ Physical Challenge: Have a job that makes physical demands which I would find rewarding.
___ Time Freedom: Have work responsibilities which I can work at according to my own time schedule; no specific working hours required.
___ Community: Live in a town or city where I can get involved in community affairs.

Values Questionnaire
Diane Byster, MFT, NCC
Adapted from Utne Reader, â?~Oâ?T Magazine,
Soul Prints, and Luck is No Accident: Making the Most of Happenstance in Work and Life
1) On a scale of 1-10 how passionate am I about my life? What could I do to fan the flames of passion?
2)What desires/dreams are unlived in me? What actions could I take during this week to unleash them?
3) What ignites my curiosity that I havenâ?Tt yet explored?
4) What person, group, issue, principle or goal would I commit to uncon***ionally? How could I express my concern more fully?
5) What or who makes me envious and why?
6) How much money do I really need?

Personality Test
Five Lives
- Gain insight into the relationship between personality and work -
Imagine you have 5 opportunities to live out your fantasy careers and do anything you want. What would your 5 lives look like? What a paragraph on each of your five lives.
Make sure to answer the following questions:
õ? Where geographically would you be?
õ? What setting would your dream job/career take place?
õ? How would you spend a typical day or week?
õ? With what kinds of people would you spend time?
õ? What is it that makes this career path a satisfying life for you?
1)
2)
3)
4)
5)

Hi guys and gals,
I''ve been quite busy the last few days, and really exhausted
I just came across some very interesting articles on personality tests and would very much like to share with you guys. But usually I "censor" before posting them. I''ll send them this weekend then.
Until then,
Have a great week !

Understand your personality: the Four Temperaments

The Rationals
Einstein
The Idealists
Gandhi: An Idealist
Eleanor Roosevelt: Counselor Idealist
Mikhael Gorbachev: Teacher Idealist
The Artisans
Hemingway: An Artisan
The Guardians
Washington: A Guardian
Truman: An Inspector Guardian

A Rational - Albert Einstein
"To me it suffices to wonder at these secrets and to attempt humbly to grasp with my mind a mere image of the lofty structure of all that there is."
These are the words with which Albert Einstein concluded My Credo, a statement of his philosophy of life he made in 1932, and they express the essence of his fascination with science. Einstein''s insatiable curiosity about the secrets of the natural world, coupled with his prodigious (and reportedly rather arrogant) ability to grasp mentally the structure of "all that there is," enabled him to change fundamentally the way in which, not just physicists, but all of us look at the universe. From 1905 to 1925, Einstein''s genius ranged wide, not only conceiving the theory of relativity, but making indispensable contributions to new understandings of thermodynamics, the nature of light, atomic structure, and quantum physics, and creating in the process -- and with a rigorous mathematical formalism -- nothing less than the first new model of the universe since Isaac Newton''s, over two centuries earlier.
A truly astonishing achievement for any human being, but particularly for someone who was considered a slow-learner as a child, who dropped out of (and then was expelled from) his secondary school, who graduated from a mere technical college with a teaching diploma, and who, of all his classmates, was passed over for a teaching position and postdoctorate appointment. Rejected by academia, Einstein went his own way and took a job at the Swiss Patent Office as a technical expert, evaluating the plans of would-be inventors, correcting errors of design, and deciding (he could do this almost instantaneously) whether an idea would actually work. In his youth, Einstein had greatly enjoyed building models and playing with mechanical devices, and so his work at the Patent Office taxed him very little, and left him free in his spare time, and on his own, to do the theoretical work that would change the face of physics for the rest of the century.
As his fame grew so did the legend of his eccentric character. Shy and introverted as a child, with a calm detachment from all personal ties, Einstein grew into an emotionally and intellectually independent young man, quite popular with his colleagues and students, but always remote, enjoying the company of other highly intelligent human beings, but letting no one get close to him. And then in his later years he became very nearly an icon of the absent-minded professor, the abstract, fuzzy-haired scientific genius all but unaware of the people and social "reality" around him. Stories about his forgetfulness are legion, but one is delightfully succinct: on his way to an important meeting, Einstein telephoned his wife and asked, "Where am I and where am I meant to be?"
Einstein was also out of touch with manners and etiquette, often going off into a vague, abstracted mood at social gatherings, as if oblivious to those around him. It may well be, however, that he was inattentive more out of rebelliousness than obliviousness. All his life Einstein resented orthodoxy and resisted authority, and he used his reputation for forgetfulness to defy social decorum. Thus he would appear at formal university functions wearing dress shoes but no socks, an oversight quite consciously designed to needle the pretensions of his hosts. In all aspects of his life, Einstein''s aim was calmly to ignore conventions and to avoid emotional subjectivity, doing instead what he called the "never-ending task of reason".

What Your Body Language Says About You



In the corporate realm, old adages tend to fly out the window. Never judge a book by its cover. Looks can be deceiving. Other common words of wisdom we heard as children, however, take on a whole new dimension. Sit up straight. Don''t slouch. Keep still.
Body language is a significant indicator of your work ethic, enthusiasm and attitude at the office. More than the words you use or the tone of your voice, your physical behavior communicates everything to the keen observer. That person, more often than not, is a superior who can make or break your career.
Like it or not, in the professional world, people are evaluated on their exterior and permanent reputations are cemented based on nothing more than looks and body language. It can literally determine your future within a company and whether you make an impact during an interview or flame out with zero chance of a call back.
There are many scenarios on the job that call for different types of body language in order to make a positive impression on clients, peers and management. Some are more formal than others but overall, your guard should be up no matter what the circumstance. Here''s how to proceed in the most common workplace social interactions:

Interview


No other situation is fraught with more potential body language hazards and imperative interpretations. This is the time to hit a home run and deliver an attitude of utter confidence and sheer composure. As we know, however, too many people hit into a double play and wind up out at first base. Why is that?
Poor approach: When you meet someone for the very first time -- especially someone who has the power to open up a door of tremendous opportunity -- every single detail counts, from eye contact to a firm and dry handshake. A polite acknowledgment of gratitude, with a relaxed but upright posture, should set the right tone as you make your way into the interview room. And no matter how the interview goes for you, leave as you came in.
Shabby appearance: Proper attire adds so much to an overall impression, especially in a formal interview. However, the point here is not the cut of your suit and the shine in your wingtips, but the look of your body in the seated position. The rule of thumb is alert and erect, with a steady dose of eye contact throughout the question period.

Company meeting


Weekly or even daily meetings at work can become so routine that we fail to recognize the importance of our body language as we sit around the conference table. In ad***ion, if our rapport with colleagues is familiar and friendly, we can very easily lose track of the fact that we are still in a professional setting and should conduct ourselves accordingly. Thus, a company meeting is the perfect environment to run a quick body language checklist.
Posture: An ever-important indicator of a confident and vibrant personality, good posture commands respect. It projects strength of character and conviction. Anyone who doesn''t believe that is probably mired in a dead-end job, has no ambition, and will end up with osteoporosis. Or something like that.
Excessive movement: Fidgeting is a trait that hyperactive children have. Unless you''ve been clinically diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder, is there ever an excuse for playing with your pen, shifting in your chair, doodling, or generally behaving like a moron? This is a company meeting. For the love of your career, pay attention and sit still. And don''t assume that people don''t notice that annoying tapping of your feet under the table. If it will do any good, lay off the caffeine before any scheduled meeting.
How to act when hobnobbing with clients, and what to avoid when it comes to female colleagues...

Client rendezvous


An encounter with a client is just as crucial as any with a colleague or superior within the confines of your office. You may feel the urge to let your guard down if the environment is a restaurant, or worse yet, a strip club, but that is not an advisable course of action. Nor is an extreme sense of conservatism, which can plague those unaccustomed to face-to-face business deals. All in all, the same rules apply when you powwow with a client.
Your physical demeanor: Be on your best behavior and bear in mind that you want to appear nice, but not too nice. Body language can reveal that. In ad***ion, you want to keep aggressive body language to a minimum. That just turns people off. If you appear overeager to close a deal or make a sale, any smart individual can string you along. More crucial, however, is the fact that they will lose esteem for you. Build a professional rapport and foster mutual respect with a positive attitude.

Informal office scene


Even as you gather around the water cooler or nosh in the cafeteria with co-workers, assumptions about your character do not cease. In fact, there is more cause to keep your body language in check in such an informal environment. You never know what inference someone with clout is forming in their head about you. For that reason alone, you must take care not to stoke the flames of bad reputation.
Gestures: When the interaction is more social and less professional in nature, some people feel the need to gesticulate like a chimpanzee on crack. Not a good sign of a mature and intelligent mind. Keep your arms in check.
Intimacy: In the same vein, when the topic of conversation is not work, a certain segment of the population start to demonstrate an affectionate side. This may not leave a negative impression in certain work environments (or if the perpetrator is an attractive female), but overall, a company is not the proper place for a hand on the back, a shoulder rub, a caress of the arm, or even a congratulatory smack on the behind. This is not the typical PC, ***ual harassment argument. Rather, this is a disclaimer to increase awareness of basic body language behavior that may not be kosher where you work.

Watch yourself


Wherever you work or whomever you work with, it is wise to keep non-verbal communication in mind whenever you interact. Some people have bad habits that are so entrenched in their character that they cannot possibly realize what a terrible impression they''re making on others. This is where self-realization and correction comes in. When you can identify body language red flags, you are way more likely to prevent them down the road. So straighten up and keep those elbows off the table.