Tips to Becoming the Best Scholarship Candidate

Scholarship application and books on a table. Photo courtesy of Shutterstock.

Millions of dollars in scholarship money is available to college students every year, and among the thousands of scholarships, you’re sure to find at least a few that are a great fit for you. That’s the good news. The rest of the story is that these scholarships may be hard to track down and the competition can often be quite fierce.

Let’s say you’ve conducted your search and successfully identified several scholarships for which you plan to apply. You are likely one candidate among many, so what can you do to make your application stand out in order to secure those much needed funds for your college education? Consider a handful of practical tips: Continue Reading

How do you make your references stand out from the job-seeking crowd?

Carole Martin, The Interview Coach

A RESOURCE WORTH KNOWING ABOUT

How do you make your references stand out from the job-seeking crowd?

5 Steps to make your references a powerful asset on your behalf.

Detroit (Oct 16, 2012) – It’s no secret that in today’s challenging job market, you’ll likely need some less-than-traditional tools in your arsenal. Too many applicants simply use their previous references as a listing to be offered upon request by prospective employers, say the reference checking experts at Allison & Taylor. Continue Reading

Video: How to Get a Job After College Graduation

I recently was interviewed via Skype by Jordie Kern of 1 Degree Hire, which is a resource for first-time job seekers. More specifically, 1 Degree Hire is a 21-day step-by-step program designed to make recent graduates more marketable, better understand what employers want, and give those grads an edge over others who are competing for the same jobs.

The 1 Degree Hire system includes 21 days of intense preparation through a series of eBooks and MP3 audio downloads. Members also enjoy a personal consultation, resume and portfolio critique, e-mail support, and weekly webinars. In addition, they get insider access to an extensive video library of interviews with some of the nation’s most powerful CEOs and human resource professionals, who reveal what they look for in a candidate and what key questions they typically ask in an interview.

Jordie and I talked about CollegeRecruiter.com and what recent college graduates should do in order to increase their chances of being hired. Listen in: Continue Reading

You Prepared for the Interview…Did you Prepare your References?

Do you understand the importance references play in your job search?  If not, the following post explains their role in the process.

A great resume and fantastic cover letter will get you an interview. What happens from there has a lot to do with you, and if you nail the interview, then you need to be sure that the final factor in the job search process – your references – are prepared to help you seal the deal.

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You Prepared for the Interview…Did you Prepare your References?

80% of Employers Call References and 16% of Those Call Before Job Interviews

Rosemary Haefner of Careerbuilder

A new study cautions job seekers about the references they cite when applying to companies. Three-in-five employers (62 percent) said that when they contacted a reference listed on an application, the reference didn’t have good things to say about the candidate. Twenty-nine percent of employers reported that they have caught a fake reference on a candidate’s application.

The study was conducted by for Careerbuilder by Harris Interactive© from August 13 to September 6, 2012 and included 2,494 hiring managers and human resource professionals and 3,976 workers across industries and company sizes.

“You want to make sure you are including your biggest cheerleaders among your job references,” said Rosemary Haefner, Vice President of Human Resources at CareerBuilder. “Before choosing someone, ask yourself ‘Did this person understand my full scope of responsibilities? Can he or she vouch for my skills, accomplishments and work ethic?’ You also want to make sure that you ask your former colleagues if you can list them as a reference. If someone is unwilling, it helps you to avoid a potentially awkward or damaging interaction with an employer of interest.” Continue Reading

The All-In-One Guide To Employment References

As a job seeker, you should not underestimate the importance of your employment references.  Learn more about them in the following post.

Choosing your employment references is probably close to the bottom on your list of job search worries. You just pick a few previous bosses and call it a day, right? Wrong! In preparation for (and during) the job search, we’re often too busy focusing on perfecting our resume and intensely scanning job boards. It&#

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The All-In-One Guide To Employment References

References Can Help Close the Deal

Laura Wagner, Résumé Writer & Career Coach

References are people who can offer informational comments about you to a potential employer and who can offer you credibility. You may include past supervisors, colleagues, personal acquaintances, professors, coaches, and anyone you may have worked closely with in social groups and associations. Relatives are generally frowned upon by hiring managers. Ideally you need to have a combination of work references and personal references who can attest to your character. Continue Reading

92% of Employers Use Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn to Hire New Employees

A new survey confirms what most in the recruiting industry already know: the use of social media sites such as Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn have become an essential practice amongst human resource professionals with 92 percent of U.S. companies using social networks and media to find talent in 2012, up from 78 percent five years ago. LinkedIn continues to be a dominant recruiting network, while Facebook and Twitter have seen major adoption growth in the past year.

Two-thirds of companies now recruit through Facebook and 54 percent use Twitter to find new talent. Jobvite‘s June 2012 Social Recruiting Survey of 1,000 human resource and recruiting professionals also found that employers scrutinize social media activity, noting more than half of respondents would have a negative reaction to seeing a spelling or grammar mistake in a social profile. Overall, social recruiting has become an essential tool for recruiters and can be expected to become even more important as 89 percent of the companies surveyed report plans to increase hiring this year. Continue Reading

Wish Upon a Job – Building Your Job Search Part I

“The minute you’re satisfied with where you are, you aren’t there anymore.” – Tony Gwynn

Not likely to help. Wishing for a job, that is. Wishing is nice from a “positive thinking” point of view but it won’t get you a job without putting in the time. Kind of like wishing to win the lottery when you haven’t bought a ticket. If you are first starting your job search, you have a lot of homework to do before you can effectively start the job search process. The good news is that once you are all set-up, the bulk of your job search time can be spent on looking for opportunities. Building your Job Search Toolkit should be your first priority. Depending on the circumstances leading up to your job search (such as job loss), you may want to hit the ground running as quickly as possible. So what can you do to begin your search immediately while continuing to build out your Job Search Tool Kit? Read on. Continue Reading

5 Reasons Why You Need More Than a Good Resume to Stand Out from the Crowd

“It is better to be prepared for an opportunity and not have one than to have an opportunity and not be prepared.” – Whitney M. Young

You’ve probably heard hundreds of times that your resume is the most important document in your job search, and, that is  so. But if you want to stand out from the competition, I say you need more than a great resume. In the end, only technically qualified candidates will get to interview for any open job. And, while your resume may (or may not) help you get in the door, you will need more than your resume to get the job. So, you may ask, what else do you need? Lots of research, interview preparation and (unfortunately), additional “documentation”. Continue Reading