5 Reasons Why All Experience is Good Experience

5 Reasons Why All Experience is Good Experience Since leaving University 4 years ago I, like many recent graduates, have worked in a variety of shops, pubs, clubs and restaurants. Whilst generally considered to be the kind of job you have during school and studying (part time and easy to fit in around classes and lectures), these jobs are also the main or only source of income for many leaving school and university. They were not the kind of job I imagined, whilst applying for universities, to have until age 25, but there can be no denying that I gained a wealth of unexpected experience from these positions. However, low wages, zero hour contracts and a constantly changing rota were not at all uncommon, until when I started working at Newman Stewart as an Administrator. I?d never worked in an office before and the differences seemed phenomenal: 1) Flexible working: By: AlexIbarra73 To start with, I could sit down. Although not the key factor in why I love this job, not being on your feet for 13 hours straight does have its appeals. Then there are the guaranteed hours: 9-5.30 Monday to Friday. No more are the 3 hour shifts, the 13 hour shifts, or the split shifts where you start in the mornings, have a quick nap on the sofa for an hour half way through and then finish at 2am. Now I know when I?ll be working and how long for and it?s far easier, for a self-confessed planning addict, to plan my day effectively. 2) Multi-tasking: Then there?s the style of work. Rather than standing at a till, scanning item after item whilst still managing to hold a conversation with a customer; or trying to deal with rowdy, drunk customers yelling at you to serve them their drink first from all different directions; or balancing prepping, cooking and plating up food, fast and well-presented, and to be out at the exact same time as a dish someone else is dealing with; now I have data to input, calls to make, diaries to keep up to date. They sound massively different and I am now used to the obvious ?How on earth does being a sales assistant/bar tender/chef lead into admin work?? But every one of these jobs has added something to my skillset that I can use in an office. 3) A confidence boost: Almost all of my previous jobs have been customer facing and whilst my new career doesn?t entirely lean that way I do get the opportunity to exercise my conversational skills when on the phone to clients/candidates or greeting people that come in for a meeting or interview. A little bit of social confidence certainly helps at those points. 4) Time management: Having a number of tasks to do in a day and learning which to prioritise and when is made easier after spending countless nights on a bar having to remember who was there first and which drinks should be done in which order (Guinness first; it can settle whilst you make a cocktail). Balancing and remembering orders on a ticket in the kitchen makes remembering something a consultant has asked you to do whilst you?re halfway through another task much simpler. RELATED: 13 Time Management Tips You Ought to Know 5) Give a little respect: There?s also something to be said for the attitude you gain having worked unsociable hours serving other people, some of whom can be a little cold towards ?the staff?. Not only will I never shout at or under tip a waiter/waitress, but I like to think I can be a little more empathetic towards people in general now. You come to realise that everyone has a bad day sometimes. That bar tender that slammed your drink down when you came into the pub 5 minutes before closing was probably on a long shift, is exhausted and had most likely closed down the bar just before you came in. They were no doubt looking forward to getting home and into bed before having to head back to work first thing in the morning. That customer that came in 5 minutes before you closed the bar down might have had an extremely long day at work, and just needed to go somewhere to have a drink and a laugh with their friends to forget the stresses of their day. The person on the other end of the phone, frustrated because you haven?t been able to put them through to whomever they called to speak to is not angry at you, but perhaps had something important to discuss which is now causing them further stress. It?s easy to look at previous experiences in life, jobs included, as singular and disjointed; but it can be so much more productive to see everything as connected and an experience to gain something from. They can be a positive influence on your work, social and day-to-day life. So, yes, the jobs I?ve had in the past seem vastly different to my new career, but each one has given me a skill which can be utilised to improve my contribution now. Author:  Jenny Lewis  is  the Office Administrator  for Newman Stewart, an Executive Search and Management Selection company which finds excellent people for excellent businesses and can be found at  www.newmanstewart.co.uk  or  on  Twitter  @newmanstewart.

Resume and CV Writing For Nonnative English Speakers

Resume and CV Writing For Nonnative English SpeakersWhen hiring professionals, it is important to determine whether or not a potential employee is a native English speaker. Knowing your potential employee's proficiency with the English language will ultimately help you in narrowing down your field of focus. There are some general tips on resume and CV writing for non native English speakers that any resume writing professional can provide. Here are five tips to help guide you.First, non native English speakers are not simply listed as having an 'excellent' reading and writing ability. People who use English as their first language have taken time to master the language and integrate it into their everyday lives. It is therefore difficult to ascertain if a potential employee has read, written, or spoken English for a significant period of time without speaking English. While some employers might choose to hire an applicant based solely on the perceived native English skills of the per son, this is not always a good idea.In addition, people who do not speak English as their first language could possibly be fluent in the language. There are several ways to verify a person's fluency in English. One of the easiest is through an online translator. This translation software can translate the job advertisement for non native English speakers as well as a resume and CV writing for non native English speakers.If you are hiring for a position that requires that a person speaks fluent English, you may want to hire someone with additional training or education. Check out online tutorials to determine if your candidate has acquired a college degree, or you may contact your state's Department of Professional and Occupational Licensing to inquire about an instructor certification. For those with additional training, you may want to interview them before awarding them a job.Although many potential English speakers may be given a spot on a team or a company simply because they sp eak a language that is commonly used around the office, it does not mean that they will be the best candidate for the job. It also does not mean that they will be successful in the job. For example, when one hires another to work on a project, they typically have to pay for the labor of the individual. They may not come up with the project. You want to make sure that you pick the best candidate for the job, and pay attention to the resume and CV writing for non native English speakers.The tips on resume and CV writing for non native English speakers also include not just the skills that a potential employee has for the job, but also the potential skills that the person could apply for that job. A typical resume usually lists experience, education, skills, and educational experience, if any. A CV might list job related experience, job skills, interests, leadership positions, and organizational skills. Ensure that you consider all the types of experience that your potential employee p ossesses when you are looking at resumes and CV writing for non native English speakers.The next tip on resume and CV writing for non native English speakers is to remember that the more specific your skills are, the better. For example, if your candidate works as a graphic designer for a large company, the employer will be more interested in the specific skills that your candidate has than in his or her ability to learn English. A potential employee who has a professional business degree may be more effective if he or she has an industry experience that relates to the job. You also want to ensure that you cover every possible skill your potential employee can provide for the job.These tips on resume and CV writing for non native English speakers can help you evaluate potential employees who do not speak English as their first language. As an employer, you want to hire the most qualified person for the job. Therefore, it is important to determine the level of English proficiency of your employees before selecting them for the job.

How Can Web Data Change the Recruitment Game

How Can Web Data Change the Recruitment Game The recruitment industry has faced a variety of new trends over the last decade. The rise of social media and the economy of ideas has led to the market that is far more candidate driven. Due to sites such as LinkedIn and others, it is now much easier for candidates to approach the decision makers in small to mid-level companies directly. Even larger companies have begun posting jobs on third party websites in an effort to attract more diverse candidates.   Due to these trends, recruiters are finding it harder to identify positions that they can recruit for in time to suggest candidates. The same information on job roles is available for both candidates and recruiters on job aggregator sites like indeed.com, which means that the value to a candidate of a recruiter suggesting a role becomes more tenuous. As companies explore more and more avenues to gain solicitations from candidates, the ability for a recruiter to get in there quickly to suggest quality people lowers. In order to remain competitive, recruiters need to stay one step ahead of candidates by becoming more data driven. Why the existing system isn’t working Web data in recruitment has been dominated over the past few years by the rise of job aggregators. Job aggregators (Indeed, SimplyHired, Glassdoor, reed.co.uk, Jobster, etc) scrape jobs from both careers pages as well as recruitment agency portals and job boards. These aggregators have become so successful because they have mastered the art of search engine optimisation (SEO). Simply by containing many more links and keywords than other jobs sites, they make themselves an attractive source for candidates to use which in turn has driven recruiters to use them too. Unfortunately, as advertising revenue continues to drive the online job aggregator industry, having a large volume of jobs is more beneficial to attracting traffic than providing clean, structured information. This has created a number of issues: Clutter Job listings are often just copied from other sources so the aggregator sites are full of duplicate listings. Incompleteness Most employers only post certain jobs to paid job boards, which means not all of their openings are listed on the aggregator sites. Expired listings Most job aggregators don’t work directly with companies and so cannot know when a job has already been filled or should no longer be advertised. Lack of consistent structure Job aggregators are often organized based purely on keywords, making searches difficult for recruiters/candidates who need to know all the different ways that employers class the same job title. Listings that link to other listings Often job boards link to other job boards and listings creating a long chain of hyperlinks for a candidate to actually apply for a job. Front sites Many aggregator sites have started parsing the jobs they copy into disciplines and then creating job boards for those. This then gives the illusion of scale and the linking to separate, specialised job boards when they were actually obtained from the same place. In addition to having to sort through the onslaught of jobs (which may or may not be legitimate) on aggregator sites, recruiters also need to: Pay to post to a job board Pay an aggregator via PPC bidding to post listings Pay to access a resume database of candidates, only available in the first place because recruiters collectively provided them. Bizarrely, if a recruitment company pays to list a position on a job board, and then bids on an aggregator site, it could be competing against itself directly. Based on this evidence, it is clear that the recruitment industry is broken. If recruiters had better, more structured access to jobs data than candidates, they would have a distinct advantage in finding desirable open positions. Better information in this space would mean more valuable insight, more unique output and increased speed of execution. Data is the answer Existing job listings on the web are all over the place duplicated, unclean, expired and the list goes on. There is no common language, no structure, and no way to learn about attributes and analyse them in a really meaningful, reliable manner. Solutions need to focus on cleaning, de-duplicating and analysing the job postings available on the web. By treating these job postings as data, recruiters can start to build a better, more efficient system for generating leads. If we structure this data, it has the potential to radically change the recruitment industry. Lean data in a regular, consistent format that includes job descriptions, employment types, job requirements, company descriptions, posted dates, min/max salaries is useful because it allows us to create a relational database. Relational databases can be easily filtered, analysed and searched to identify trends and find jobs within given parameters thus solving the inconsistent labeling issue. We can also use the data method to get around the duplication issue by becoming our own job aggregator. Using the same basic web scraping technology of sites like indeed, recruiters can access high quality job postings direct from the source the company careers pages themselves. Companies tend not to keep expired job postings on their website because it slows their HR departments down and ultimately creates real costs from having to screen candidates applying for an irrelevant role. Thus, when a job listing is on a careers page, you can generally assume it was intended to be there, that it is timely and that the position is still open. Data resources for recruiters Recently, a few enterprising startups (such as data platform import.io) have begun providing recruiters with just such a solution. They create live APIs to company careers pages, which allows them to pull the job listings into a structured database in real time. These jobs are then indexed and placed into a comprehensive searchable database, which recruiters can subscribe to. The corresponding dashboard allows a recruiter to quickly track jobs from relevant companies. If the jobs are listed on the website, a recruiter can be notified within the hour and make that all-important sales call to kick off discussions. In bigger picture terms, having a real time web feed of job listings allows analysts and recruiters to understand how a company strategy is evolving, live, and indeed how the nature of business works. For example, if a recruiter knows that a company has been recently hiring a lot of personal assistants, it may be a sign that they are in a time of additional cash. If the company has recently been looking for more senior managers you may be able to guess that there have been some senior departures, or that it’s are also looking to expand. In summary, for a recruiter, having a clean, live, searchable database of job listings offers a value add well above a normal job aggregator. A structured web database contains structured, clean, deduplicated, unique information that can be analysed to derive useful insights to make that recruiting conversation that much more informed, and data driven. Author:  Dhruv Ghulati, Data Product Manager at import.io

Corporate Wellness Retreats - Should You Consider One In 2019 -

Corporate Wellness Retreats - Should You Consider One In 2019 - Finding the perfect way to boost the morale of your team can be a challenge depending on the size. With a number of wellness retreats all over the world, the choice is completely up to you. With a number of stunning locations in Europe, organising your EU health card application should be your first port of call before traveling. In addition to this, picking the location based on the treatments provided is another perfect way to encourage your team and make the most out of the trip. In this article, we are going to give you several reasons why you should consider corporate wellness retreats for your business. They Reduce Stress One of the main reasons for choosing a wellness retreat in 2019 is to help reduce the stress of your workforce. Though this can be costly depending on the size of the team, these retreats are ideal for reducing the stress of the team at the end of a hectic financial year. With several retreats set up all over the world, there are several stunning locations for you and your team to relax and unwind surrounded by some of the very best locations the world has to offer. Encouraging Teamwork In addition to reducing stress, the wellness retreat is also an ideal way to encourage teamwork and get the team working well together. With several cooperate programs in place, there are several ways that you can increase communication in the workforce and get the team completing tasks together. This is key to the success of the retreat as you will all return to the office completely refreshed and a better understanding of overall teamwork. With tasks and swimming pool areas to relax in, the choice is completely up to you as to where you and your team go to relax. Encourages Fitness In addition to promoting teamwork and overall fitness, a wellness retreat will help to upkeep the fitness levels of the workforce. This is particularly important if they are working behind desks as joints can become painful as they are not used. Although this can be resolved with the use of standing desks and a large office to walk around a fitness program at a retreat can help to boost the diet of the team and keep them feeling healthy and refreshed when returning to the office. A retreat is also the perfect idea for those that have multiple offices over two or three locations as it gives you all a chance to meet up and communicate with one another. Boosts Communication The final way that a retreat can help is to boost communication between the higher-ups and people in the lower end of the business. A retreat or a corporate camp can help improve communication at all levels thus allowing the business to thrive. This is ideal for a smaller business as the increased communication helps new starters to feel welcome. Without this, the new people to the business can feel left out and communication can be compromised. Regardless of the size of your business, there are a number of reasons why a retreat is a perfect option to boost the success of the team and keep them motivated. Where will you choose to take your team in 2019?

Achieving A Great Resume Layout

Achieving A Great Resume LayoutA resume layout is very important to make a good impression to recruiters. There are two parts in this kind of application. These are the summary and the cover letter, which should show your skills to the fullest.The summary section of your resume is a great place to start. It should describe yourself in detail and then highlight any relevant skills. Make sure that you include your contact details like email address and your contact number or name. This is also an opportunity to tell what qualities you have and how you fit into the job opening.The cover letter is an essential part to your resume. Make sure that it is professional and contains all the details about your abilities, experience and qualifications. Your cover letter will be read by the employer and with it, it is easier for them to get a clear picture of your current position.Your resume layout is your advertisement and is very important if you want to land the job. If you put in a poor resu me, it may give the wrong impression to the recruiters and as a result, will not get you hired. It is important to keep the layout consistent and focus on it when you are writing your resume.When you know how to write a resume layout, it is also important to know the format of your resume. It is important to think of it as a separate document from the cover letter. This will mean that you need to make sure that you use similar words and phrases throughout to make it easy for the reader to identify and remember the main points of your resume.Remember that a resume can only make a first impression. The information in the first page has to be informative, so be concise and focused on what you want to tell to the reader. Make sure that the resume should include your most valuable qualities. Be brief and avoid long-winded descriptions.Another factor to consider when creating a great layout is the language that you use. Try to make it consistent with the tone of your voice. Use the same s entences can also make your resume appear neat and professional.The best thing about creating your resume layout is that you can edit and rewrite it with different programs. You can also create a cover letter after the resume, which you can then incorporate into your resume.

Staffing Your Lab - What You Need To Know - Margaret Buj - Interview Coach

Staffing Your Lab - What You Need To Know Owning a lab is a good idea, especially if you are familiar with your target market. It helps you operate effectively, and your clients gain more trust in you. Here you want your lab to provide the best services with the quality products. To achieve this, you must make some adjustments for perfection. Staffing your lab is the process of hiring people experienced people with the lab operation either when starting a new lab or shuffling. Hiring people becomes easier if you know what qualifications you require. Here are facts to master about lab staffing: 1) Performance Hiring people for your lab is a long process that requires a more in-depth approach to make sure you get the right people. That is why you are recommended to look for a qualified laboratory staffing consultant to help you interview the right people. For successful staffing, look for people with excellent academic performance. This should revolve on the specific specialty that you want to higher. You are required to look for people with a progressive performance. This way, you will have no trouble in your laboratory operations. The performance involves not only education but also the general appearance of the candidate. 2) Flexibility This is essential, especially if you are time conscious. Flexibility is a quality that every candidate should have to ensure maximum service and productivity. Here you require a candidate that you can rely on at all times. This should be within the working hours. Someone who will not disappoint you once you give out tasks. A laboratory is a bustling place, with numerous activities that require proper attention. This will help your services to be adequate. A candidate who is not flexible enough may be a burden that may cost you high losses. 3) Communication Skills Staffing your lab can be a big step to take since it determines the level of productivity that you will have. It is evident that for you to achieve this, you require competent candidates that are responsive. In this case, you must be knowledgeable in identifying those with excellent communication skills. Here, you have to create a conversation that will prove they are qualified. For instance, you might ask about their goals. If the candidate poses a promising response, you might consider hiring them. Good communication skills in your laboratory help operation to go on smoothly without misunderstandings. 4) Experience Laboratory work is a very crucial work that requires familiarity. Once a candidate lacks experience or exposure, it can lead to ineffectiveness. This is because a lab involves chemicals that require proper care to avoid negative effects. To avoid all this, when you are staffing your lab, try to look for candidates who have experience. This can be from their previous workplace or the level of education. You can also depend on referrals from other people that have a close encounter with the candidate. This will make your process more successful, which is a requirement for a productive lab.

Dont spend sunday night fearing monday morning - The Chief Happiness Officer Blog

Dont spend sunday night fearing monday morning - The Chief Happiness Officer Blog According to this article, many people waste their sundays fearing their mondays. I never sleep on Sunday night very well because Im worried about going to work on Monday morning, said one worrier. My job is very stressful and you kind of have to gear up for Monday and getting back into that. Thats horrible, and I can only imagine what having this experience week after week does to people. But mostly, Im worried that the expert quoted in the article advices people to create some calming sunday rituals ie. to watch TV, play games or talk to a friend, but doesnt say word one about fixing your job or quitting your job. If thats how you feel on sunday, then its obvious that something about your mondays needs to change. Raise your hand if youd rather spend your sunday totally energized and looking forward to monday morning, because work is just that much fun. Thats happiness at work right there! A great big thank you to Tim Raines for telling me about this article. Thanks for visiting my blog. If you're new here, you should check out this list of my 10 most popular articles. And if you want more great tips and ideas you should check out our newsletter about happiness at work. It's great and it's free :-)Share this:LinkedInFacebookTwitterRedditPinterest Related