There’s one vital skill,… that transcends many jobs and fields and may be every worker’s best shot at financial security. Schools don’t usually teach it, and employers don’t usually mention it in job postings. Yet it will help you get hired, outperform your peers, find the best opportunities and stay a step or two ahead of the computers, robots and other machines that are making many jobs obsolete…. employers usually recognize them as creative problem-solvers who see the big picture and make insightful connections in ways even a supercomputer can’t. They might have technical skills, but they also tend to read a lot, write well and show curiosity in many unrelated things.
Category Archives: Uncategorized
Gain a competitive advantage in the job search–it’s not about grades
73% of HR professionals… feel that job applicants do a “bad job” of tailoring their resumes to specific positions…. Only 28% of candidates said they always customize their resumes for a position, which means the majority of candidates are not taking advantage of the opportunity to highlight their most relevant experience.
… keywords are a must with 63% of HR professional respondents who reported that job applicants do a “good job” of including relevant keywords in their resumes.
//The average corporate recruiter manages approximately 20 to 30 open requisitions at a time, so when hundreds of applicants apply to a company posting, that person can only spend less than two hours per position to review applications even if he works a 50 hour week…. If recruiters on average only get to the first 10% to 12% of applicants, the closer you are to the top, the more likely your application will be noticed.
“Whether it’s meeting at a networking event, making an introduction via LinkedIn or having a friend recommend you, networking is your ticket to better job seeking results,”
In this age of social super-connectedness, nothing trumps a warm in-person personality (so make a phone call!)
Read the full article here
4 of the Worst Lessons You Learn in College
Worst Lesson #2. Second chances are a common occurrence
Most colleges have policies that allow students to retake courses they fail without much consequence. This is one college’s policy on retaking courses: “If you earn a failing grade (F, WU, or FIN) in a course and then retake the course in a subsequent semester, earning a grade of A, B, C, or CR, both grades will remain on the transcript. However, the failing grade will no longer be calculated in your … GPA.” Many other schools have similar policies.
At work, if an employee continues to submit work that’s sub-par and doesn’t meet expectations, that employee will more than likely be fired after a short period of time. He or she would not be able to continue to resubmit his or her work until it was correct on the company’s dollar.
The same applies to late policies and missed assignments. Many college classrooms are far more lenient than any workplace would ever be.
Read more:
American made: the new manufacturing landscape
During the recession many companies retooled their operations installing more and more automation. Today, there are many (certainly not a total replacement for those 10s of thousands of “old” manufacturing jobs lost) new and highly skilled–and high paying–jobs in the new manufacturing workplace.
Follow this week-long audio report on the re-emergence of American manufacturing.
Google HR Boss Says 58% Of Résumés Get Trashed Because Of One Spelling Mistake
Google HR boss Laszlo Bock likes to cite a startling figure: 58% of résumé s have typos.
“Typos are deadly because employers interpret them as a lack of detail-orientation, as a failure to care about quality,” he says.
For Google — a company that sees 50,000 résumés a week — the typo is one of five résumé mistakes that will immediately land yours in the “no” pile.
Yet the mistake doesn’t stem from laziness, Bock says, but obsessiveness.
Read more here
Only 59 percent of first-time students at 4-year institutions complete their degrees within six years
Of those that make it to graduation, one-in-three hold a job that does not require a college degree, according to a new report from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Recent college graduates are more likely to be unemployment and underemployment for recent graduates has risen since 2001…. Part of the blame for high college dropout rates and underemployment rests on the shoulders of high schools, he says, which have used a “lazy approach” to push all students toward college.
Read the complete article here
Debunking the “college for all” myth with the 1:2:7 ratio
I am driven to distraction by all the messaging and programming (AVID, Gear UP, AP, etc.) in high school the pimps the notion that everyone needs to go to college (read: a four year university). These two videos make the point very well. The first is just too well done to be ignored and raises the ratio of 1:2:7 (watch the video and I’m sure you’ll agree this is true based on your real life experience/observations. The next is with Mike Rowe of “Dirty Jobs” fame who is both articulate and passionate about debunking this misrepresentation of real economic needs and rewards.
Some Universities Crack Code in Drawing Women to Computer Science
Only 18 percent of computer science graduates in the United States are women, down from 37 percent in 1985…. Carnegie Mellon observed that when women are a minority in the major, they are disadvantaged because men have informal support, like asking a fraternity brother for help on an assignment or advice on an internship. So the university started formal programs such as one for female computer science majors to mentor younger women. The university also eliminated programming experience as an admissions criterion, which opened the door to girls who have not been exposed to it. [read the full article @ The NY Times]
Women in STEM: A Gender Gap to Innovation
Our science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) workforce is crucial to America’s innovative capacity and global competitiveness. Yet women are vastly underrepresented in STEM jobs and among STEM degree holders despite making up nearly half of the U.S. workforce and half of the college-educated workforce. That leaves an untapped opportunity to expand STEM employment in the United States, even as there is wide agreement that the nation must do more to improve its competitiveness.
• Although women fill close to half of all jobs in the U.S. economy, they hold less than 25 percent of STEM jobs. This has been the case throughout the past decade, even as college-educated women have increased their share of the overall workforce.
• Women with STEM jobs earned 33 percent more than comparable women in non-STEM jobs – considerably higher than the STEM premium for men. As a result, the gender wage gap is smaller in STEM jobs than in non-STEM jobs.
• Women hold a disproportionately low share of STEM undergraduate degrees, particularly in engineering.
• Women with a STEM degree are less likely than their male counterparts to work in a STEM occupation; they are more likely to work in education or healthcare.
There are many possible factors contributing to the discrepancy of women and men in STEM jobs, including: a lack of female role models, gender stereotyping, and less family-friendly flexibility in the STEM fields. Regardless of the causes, the findings of this report provide evidence of a need to encourage and support women in STEM.
Xifu On Tech Ed 