Category Archives: Training

Free Education and Training for the Unemployed

Companies are ready to train for the future applicants. They have been offering educational vouchers that can be redeemed for free training. Microsoft has a program called “Elevate America” to provide free technology training and certification.

This new Web site helps individuals understand what types of technical skills they need for the jobs and entrepreneurial opportunities of today and tomorrow, and resources to help acquire these skills. The Web site provides access to several Microsoft online training programs, including how to use the Internet, send e-mail and create a résumé, as well as more advanced programs on using specific Microsoft applications.

Check here for states that are offering the free education and training.
Microsoft Participating States

Workforce Training For The Unemployed

Workforce training is available for the unemployed all across the states. If you have resume questions or need help making career choices, you can visit these centers and all the information is available to you for free. Career resource centers will walk you through, step by step, from job preparation to maintaining the skills required for that new job.

Being unemployed does not mean you stop trying. Advance yourself until the job offers start coming in and maybe you will be able to elevate yourself towards a higher salary.

Improve Your Online Reputation for that Job Interview

online-reputationAfter applying for a job, the next step in getting that interview is to get filtered by the screeners. The screeners are people who examine prospective job applicants after their resumes have made it through the automated keyword filtering system done by a computer. In order to get to that final important step, the job interview, you need to make it through the screeners. These screeners, however, search the internet for your online reputation and create an online portfolio for you.

They are involved with reducing the applicants to a reasonable, more manageable level. They comb through the remaining resumes, looking for anomalies and discrepancies in each job application, or any indication that the prospective employee would be a poor fit for the company. Even if your resume is perfectly tailored to make it past the filtering system, the screeners can stop your application dead in its tracks based on what they find out about you, which is why your online profile is so important.

Many screeners now look online to learn more about prospective employees. The impression they get from your online profile can affect your chances of being hired. If your resume lists extensive experience with internet marketing but they find a forum posting you made only six months ago asking how to advertise your website, they’ll probably conclude that you’re exaggerating your experience level or putting your whole resume into doubt. Or if they see disturbing and/or inflammatory material that they think you have written, they may decide to pass you over for an interview, no matter how well your resume reads or how long ago you wrote those things. No one’s proud of everything they ever did in high school or college, but those who have grown up in the post-Internet era will see things follow them that they’d rather forget about, something the older generations rarely had to contend with.

Before you apply for a job, take a good look at your online reputation and profile. Do a little sleuthing and imagine where the company might first go to look for information. If your online profile is possibly going to prevent you from being hired, take some steps to clean up your reputation. Remove questionable material from the internet and from search engines. Use professional email addresses with your name and not some cartoon character. Make sure your online identities are truly anonymous and are not linked to your real name.

Be proactive in your online reputation repair. Develop newer and better online profiles for yourself. Participate in forums relating to your job and write replies that can demonstrate your abilities. Create your own resume blog and make it rank on the search engines for your name. The more results you can dominate on the search engines, the less likely they will find your older, potentially damaging information. Companies may have the resources to find information about you, but you also have the ability to make changes.

Transfer your Marketable Job Skills to a New Career

How applicable would your job skills be if they were used outside of your current profession? This was not a question I gave too much thought until I read a job loss article about how a 200,000 Wall Street crude oil trader lost his job and is now working for 25,000 a year in a restaurant.

Mr. 200,000 might be finding it hard to translate his previous job skills into something usable. He should be thinking about how he can show marketable job skills on his resume. What does an crude oil trader do anyway, besides the obvious, trading crude oil. It’s hard not to belittle his previous occupational skills. Did he yell all day and wrestle through crowds of people to fulfill trade orders? There might be some communication skills there. You do not simply lose all your job transferable skills. A lot of finance jobs were unstable anyhow. The jobs were created out of a false money bubble built on bad loans and inflated housing prices.

I do not feel any sympathy for him, considering he never tried to walk in other people’s shoes.

It was a hard reality at first… I used to see unemployed people and think they were lazy, that it was all on them. Now it’s happened to me.

He worked hard from runner to trader but forgot what got him there. Maybe if Mr. 200k worked on transferable job skills, he wouldn’t be in such a predicament.

Transferable Job Skills List

Here is a list of skills that should be on displayed on everyone’s resume.

  • Writing skills – Don’t write that you can write. That would be too obvious and redundant. Rather put on your resume, some projects that involved writing such as business plans, contracts or articles you wrote for your company.
  • Sales – If you had a record year selling a particular product, put that on your resume. If your company or store saw record profits, put that amount onto your resume.
  • Customer service – Discuss how you interacted with your clients. Was there a particular request that went above and beyond normal customer service? The more obscure the request, the better story you tell to your future employer.
  • Technical skills – Transferring technical skills is probably the easiest things to do. Often times, you can put down the number of programming languages on your resume and that is it. However, the list is growing for outsourced workers with the same technical skills if not better. How can you compete with them? The answer and difference is in how you were able to translate these technical skills to others on the same project and to your superiors and clients. Someone who is able to communicate the complex and complicated technical aspect of a project will often be the one who is leading the task. Separate yourself from just the technical skills and mix in a bit of the other marketable and transferable job skills.
  • Interpersonal skills – Did you work in a group and had to organize and assign roles? If you are not respected within the group, you usually won’t get the same commitment and dedication to a specific task. How did you overcome those challenges and what interpersonal skills did you use?
  • Communications skills – Have you ever had to explain a highly technical project to someone outside of the team? Being able to express yourself in a clear and basic manner to someone new to the project is very marketable. I cannot express the countless times, I heard a presentation where people left more confused than informed.

If you are lacking marketable job skills to put on your resume, go and start your own project or volunteer in a field of your interest. Just follow the list of skills and make sure they are in your arsenal when you are job searching.