Be snotty: Confident specialists usually successful.

Be snotty: Confident specialists usually successful 

Published January 25, 2007 in issue 0604 of the HooK. 

Linda Chernoff has the conversational skills of a socialite and team-building talents of a top executive. Her résumé could start with her prized “people skills,” but instead she focuses herself more narrowly: event planner. 

Good move. The best way to ensure you’ll always be in demand is to become a specialist. 

This means you should typecast yourself: action hero, funny guy, tough girl. Ezra Zuckerman, associate professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management, studied actors’ careers and concluded that even though they see typecasting as deadly, it’s actually a ticket to a solid career. Actors who get typecast early on get more work, more consistently. 

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How to impress, in 45 seconds !!!

How to impress, in 45 seconds 

Think of a resume as a personal advertisement in which you’re trying to sell yourself to a prospective match. A resume should stand out to a hiring manager who’s looking for the right person for a company. This is especially important in a competitive job market. Recruiting experts say hiring managers have at most 45 seconds to scan one of countless resumes they receive. In fact, 27 percent of human resources managers say they get on average more than 50 resumes for each open position, according to a survey released recently by Careerbuilder.com, an online job search site partly owned by Tribune Co., parent of Newsday and The Baltimore Sun. And more than 13 percent of human resources managers receive more than 100 resumes per job opening. (The study, which surveyed 360 hiring managers, has a margin of error of 5 percentage points.) “You want to think about your resume as a marketing or sales tool, almost like advertising for yourself,” says Susan D. Strayer, a Washington-based career coach and recruiting consultant. 

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Changing careers is a matter of passion

Changing careers is a matter of passion 

When the time is right to change your career path, you’ll know it. 

A nagging feeling will grab you from the inside, one that seems like boredom or frustration with your current job, but runs much deeper. This is not your average drag-your-feet-in-the-morning type of feeling. It has to do with big choices, life-long dreams and the routines of daily life. This is about happiness. 

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