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Recruiting in the Security Industry is an extremely difficult task. Security Companies often compound these problems by making these 8 common mistakes:

Not posting accurate and clear job descriptions.

Companies tend to make the job description sound more exciting then it actually is, or leave it vague in an attempt to attract more applicants. This strategy may attract more people, but they are typically people you do not want. You could go through the entire hiring process only to have the employee find out the actual job is not what he or she believed it was. Instead post a clear and detailed description of the job functions. This will prescreen out applicants who do not want to perform the specific job and help limit new employee turnover.

Not posting a list of job qualifications.

If you need a specific license or degree to perform the job function then that needs to be posted with the job description. This will force unqualified applicants to screen themselves out. Too many managers waste time sorting through applicants who do not meet the basic qualifications. Don’t be one of them!

Hiring “warm bodies.”

Some companies become desperate and hire candidates simply because they can fog a mirror. While this may be an effective short-term solution, over the long term it is detrimental to the company and its image. Instead time should be taken to find the right person. If your company does not have a contingency plan for times you may be short employees make one now!

Not conducting reference checks.

It is shocking how many Security Companies do not pick up the phone and do basic reference and employment checks on candidates. This is standard procedure in many other fields. So much can be gained from making this simple effort. The Security Industry is full of job hoppers who continually follow the same pattern. Reference checks are an easy way to find out if your candidate has left previous jobs on good or bad terms. If you find that there is a history of upset employers, steer clear of the potential problem.

Not having shift supervisors meet candidates.

If you are a Hiring Manager chances are you will not be working directly with the person you are interviewing. Security Companies will hire individuals without getting the direct Supervisor’s input. This is a recipe for disaster. If the Supervisor is properly trained have that person conduct his or her own interview. If not, have them sit in while you conduct one. Their input could be invaluable, and if they feel like they cannot work with the individual, you just saved yourself a potential headache.

Hiring someone just because they have performed the job before.

This is a big one in the security industry. Managers want to hire employees who have been in the business and done the job before. This limits the amount of creativity and new ideas that are brought to the workplace. In addition, supervisors must help the employee unlearn all of the bad habits that he or she has picked up along the way. Experience could be a plus but make sure it is not the sole reason a candidate is hired.

Hire someone who is just like you.

It is easy to hire someone who is just like you. However, will the company benefit from having your clones running around everywhere? Diversity is the key. Companies need individuals with different strengths and expertise to flourish. Remember if everyone you hire is the same they will all share the same weaknesses!

Looking for Superman.

Superman is the ultimate employee. Who doesn’t want to have someone work for them who is faster then a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, and able to leap tall buildings in a single bound? Plus heat vision is pretty cool too. However, real people have real limitations. If you set the bar too high you will never be able to fill the available position. Instead look for the right person for the right job. The Man of Steel has too many people to save!

Author Bio
Chris Shilling has vast experience in the Security and Business Management fields. He and his partner currently operate the recruitment website www.securityemploymentservices.com.

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It is obvious that many people go to colleges; universities get their degrees and thought that life is going to be good and the future is going to be great. It is after struggling to find a job for months do they realize that it is not as straight forward as it seems. You might be a graduate from MIT or even Harvard but if you don’t have a good and professional resume, it will kill you.

You have invested in yourself by spending tens of thousands of dollars to get your degree. Your whole life had been studying and learning to the point that you are ready to reap the rewards. What do you do then? Go to Google and grab a resume template. It sounds really idiotic but just wait a minute and ask yourself this question. Isn’t everybody doing that too! Oh yes, you’ve just joined the me-too group of job seekers.

In lots of marketing events you will always hear the marketing gurus say this. You need to differentiate yourself. You need to stand out from the rest. It is true. In every industry, only the top 5 players can be guaranteed of survival. Look around you and you will realize that the smaller players eventually fades off and new companies start to come to the scene and this cycle just repeats itself ever since the dawn of time.

That’s the reason why you need to stand out from the rest. It doesn’t matter where you graduated or how good your communication skills are. You need to be able to strike interest and gain the HR executive’s attention. These folks normally spend less than 30-45 seconds reviewing each resume. You could expect at least 100-300 applicants applying for each job.

How Do You Get Your Resume Noticed?
First of all, forget about cover letters. Who reads it anyway? Through my experience serving the likes of large companies like IBM, Accenture, HP, Unilever and many more, there’s one thing for sure. You do not need to send a cover letter. This information just helped you saved 100USD and I hope the resume providers don’t hunt me down for sharing this piece of information.

I am going to share these trade secrets with you and please read it carefully.

Step 1
1. Do A Spell Check
HR executives hate it when applicants send word documents that are not checked and you get all sorts of red and greens from the error from Microsoft Word. Like I say before, they only spend 30-40 seconds reading each email. Their job is to just send the resume to the hiring manager and they need the resume to be perfectly readable. You can make their job easier by spell checking.

2. Never Use More Than 1 Font.
A lot of times, I realized that most resumes that comes from India has got this problem. Apparently there are 4-5 different fonts with different sizes hijacking the resume. This makes my eyes pop up at times. Please avoid that. Don’t use fancy fonts as well.

3. Drop the Cover Letters
Instead of paying hundreds and getting a 1-2 page cover letter that will confuse the HR executives, choose to write a small 1-2 paragraph of executive summary that is around 4-5 lines telling the HR executives what specific job you are applying and what are your strengths. Why no cover letters? Do you know how troublesome it is to file two documents instead of one? I can vouch that HR executives don’t read cover letters. Period.

4. Use A Professional Looking Template
Please get a professional looking template. If you want to get average returns, you can do whatever the others are doing. Know the secrets of what those who work in large MNCs are doing. You need to have a resume that will excite the HR executives. One that is so good that they simply do not need do anything and can forward straightaway.

5. Knowing What A Job-Winning Resume Look Like
If you are applying for a job of an IT Consultant, you need to know what it looks like. Similarly for SAP, Oracle Consultants, Executive Director, Sales Manager, CPA, Account…etc. You need to know what a job-winning resume look like. There are lots of bogus resume providers out there. It’s simple to setup a website and boast you are the best or the cheapest. But you seriously need to ask whether they know what they’re doing about. It is better to work with vendors who walk the talk and preferably in the headhunting industry so that they know what they’re doing. The job of the resume providers are there to fill the gaps and to consult/advise you on how they can best present you to the companies at large.

Coming back to the topic, ‘Who Took Your Million Dollar Job’? I would like to ask you this question. Do you know of anybody who’s in the same job as you who are making another $500 or $1000 extra? What if you can get the same deal or even better? Imagine you having $500 more every month. This adds up to around $6,000 a year excluding bonuses. If you were to multiply by 30 years it would add up to $180,000. However, if you were to compound the bonuses over the 30 years, you would be getting close to 1 Million Dollars. Now you ask, ‘Who Took Your Million Dollars?’

The only fear is to sit around and do nothing. Here’s the paradigm shift. If you always think the others are good and that’s why they get good paying jobs then please go on complaining and bitching about how life sucks. I can assure you that a lot of them don’t deserve the jobs they have but are there because they invested in themselves. They are there because they might have done something right. You might be next.

Author Bio
Edmund Ng is the CEO of a consortium of Headhunting Firms. He also manages multiple job portals and the largest IT-Jobs Yahoo Groups in Singapore. He also runs www.PurchaseResume.com, a professional resume service provider that has helped more than 700 people get their dream jobs.

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I see a lot of teacher resumes. The first improvement I make to all of them is in the Job Objective. This is a statement of intention at the top of your resume. Why is this little piece of information so important to a teacher resume?

Good question!

Job objectives not only tell the employer what kind of job you are seeking (which is very important if they have more than one teaching position open in their school) but it lets them know that you are interested in the exact job they are offering. It makes them feel like you are a perfect fit for them. You can accomplish this even if you are willing to accept a variety of teaching jobs.

Here are a few secrets to a strong job objective for your teacher resume:

If you have the means to tweak your resume, change the job objective to match every job you apply for. This might mean just a one or two word change, or a complete rewrite. Either way, by doing this it makes the employer think that you are a perfect match for them. As an example, instead of, “A teaching position” they’ll read “A third grade teacher in a bilingual classroom.”
If you can’t easily change your resume, opt for listing broader job categories. With this approach I suggest also including a spectrum of responsibility, which reaches from the lower range of jobs you’d be willing work to the higher levels you’d be qualified for. For instance, “A position as a Teacher’s Aid or Pre-School Teacher.”
If you want to include some keywords or job highlights at the top of your resume, I suggest that you allow your objective to stand alone. Include the highlights underneath your objective so that it is still easily seen upon first glance.

You can include a little selling point for yourself if you happen to have multiple years of experience. You can include something like, “A teaching position utilizing 16 years of classroom experience.”

Do not write your objective in the first person (using “I” or “my”).

Resist the urge to overlook your job objective. It should be short and easy to read, describing what type of job you are looking for. It’s small but important, possibly the first thing a prospective employer reads on your resume. Make sure they know what your job intentions are.

Author Bio

Laura Malischke, owner of Great Teacher Resumes is a professional resume writer and an acclaimed teacher resume expert. She has written hundreds of resumes for clients all over the United States and Canada. To learn more about Ms. Malischke please visit www.Great-Teacher-Resume.com.

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Do you work at 9 to 5 job seven days a week? If so, you are probably tied up during the week. In other words, you do not have a lot of time to chase after other money making ventures. But what about on the weekends? If you are up to it there are many things that you can do on the weekend to make a bit of extra money.

If you are interested in earning a bit of extra money on the weekends there are options to consider. And if you play your cards right you may be able to make more money than you ever thought possible. Listed below are just a few of the weekend jobs that you may want to look into.

1. In today’s day and age there is no better way to make some extra money than by using the internet. The internet is the world’s biggest marketplace, and if you know how to use it correctly you can start to make a decent secondary income on the weekends. Research the options that are available online, and then make a decision as to which ones will work best with you and your current schedule. You may even find a weekend job on the internet that you can turn into a full-time job over time if you so desire.

2. Some people think that delivering the newspaper is for kids, but if you want to make some extra money on the weekends it is also a good option for working folks. Check with your local paper and see if they are hiring for weekend delivery people. Doing this a couple of days a week can make you a bit of extra money without having to put in too much time and effort.

3. Become a part-time landscaper. If you like working outdoors, and are good at fixing up people’s lawns, you should look into a job as a weekend landscaper. This can mean everything from cutting grass to planting trees. You can do whatever you are good at.

4. Take your full-time job and extend it to seven days a week by doing contract work. For example, if you work at a web design firm you can do contract work for clients on the weekend. Being a freelancer in your field is a great way to make extra money on the weekends. Plus, you already have the knowledge that you need in order to get started. This makes the start up process much easier.

Overall, making extra money on the weekends is more than possible. Listed above are just four ideas to consider. Hundreds more are available, and you can find them in no time if you start searching today.

Author Bio
Make extra money online – Complete money making site set-up.
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You’ve probably read numerous job interview tips which list the ways to respond to the difficult interview questions: Tell me about Yourself; What are your work-related weaknesses?; Why are you leaving your current employer? These are the usual dreaded questions that we all expect to hear from interviewers. Typically interviewees are advised to create well-prepared and rehearsed scripts to respond to these dreaded questions. And so, during the course of the interview, interviewees sit on the edge of their seats waiting to respond, trying to remember the correct answers. And consequently, the interview becomes a race, a highly tense setting designed to stay one step ahead of the other with scripted conversation and pre-planned positioning and second-guessing. The possibility of authentically assessing the merits of the position and being able to evaluate how you might fit within the company’s culture and mission is minimized in this scenario.

Optimally, the interviewer and the interviewee should operate within the same mental space. To effectively hire someone who fits within the organizational game plan, as well as the specific position, the interviewer needs to ensure that the questions will provide opportunities for detailed, authentic discourse. At a minimum, the interviewer is looking for information regarding situations/projects/tasks/assignments in which you’ve handled, the specific steps undertaken to achieve results, and the direct results accomplished.

As an interviewee, you have to be able to deliver this information….no matter the question. Additionally, as an interviewee, the only way you’ll be able to respond with full confidence (without referring to a script) is by ensuring that you’ve done your homework. To confidently manage the interview, it’s important to know where you’re heading – - to know your vision. Everything else should flow directly from your career or personal vision. Every tactic you undertake to find the new job, the new career opportunity, or the promotion should emanate from your established vision. In this manner, you will be able to hit the answers to those dreaded questions without feeling nervous because the interview is not the most important tactic – - it’s one step within a strategy. It’s your well-crafted vision that’s essential, not a well-prepared and rehearsed script based on someone else’s words. Authentic interviews happen when you’re able to effectively convey your vision, your passion, your success stories.

Have You Created a Personal or Career Vision? More details provided in the next BCM Career Management Guide. Contact me directly with questions, comments, feedback at pwatson@beaconcareermgmt.com
Author Bio
Author: Pamela Watson, Beacon Career Management, LLC www.beaconcareermgmt.com
After 17 years of management , I decided to craft a different vision for my career. I launched Beacon Career Management, LLC in 2005 and have been working towards continually achieving my career vision.

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First of all, if you step into that marble foyer for the first time and realize that you would rather be anywhere but there, you should be. The practice of law is for people who truly want to be lawyers. Those who don’t have their hearts in it will have a very difficult road ahead of them. However, if the smell of all those legal pads really gets you going, don’t lose track of that passion. It will get you through what just might be the toughest 12 months of your life.

Many fresh-faced new lawyers go into their first year on the job with visions of perfection dancing in their heads. They plan to draft perfect briefs and advance perfect ideas while wearing perfectly ironed shirts and smiling perfectly bright smiles. They are usually disappointed.

When it comes to doing the grunt work that first-years are sure to do, it’s usually easier to focus more on getting the job done right rather than getting it done perfectly. There won’t be anyone grading your papers, making sure you’ve done everything properly. There will, however, be a real, live client paying good money for you to make sure that what he/she wants gets done.

In short, you should try to have a broader perspective when it comes to first-year work. Focus on the overall goal of accomplishing a task, and don’t get bogged down in the miniscule details.

Once you start working as an attorney, there will be many things you won’t have any idea how to do. For example, the firm will have its own system of filing, distributing information, and handling day-to-day operations.
Many times, you won’t know where to go, how to get there, or whom to talk to once you do; but instead of spending your days in the restroom mopping your sweaty brow, ask someone for a practice guide that deals directly with the firm’s practice areas. This is a simple, easy way to get your head above the water and gulp in some much-needed air.

Once you have a basic understanding of how things at the firm work, you will gain confidence in your own abilities and become more comfortable doing the work. However, there will most likely come a day when someone hands you an assignment that leaves you baffled, wondering what in the world you spent the last three years of law school learning.

In this situation, take a deep breath, and go with your gut instinct. Do what you think you should do, regardless of whether or not you know that it’s the right thing to do. Most likely, your gut feeling will be correct. After all, you must have developed some sort of legal intuition while sitting immobile in those stuffy college auditoriums.

Also, don’t be afraid to ask a senior associate or partner for answers to questions or for clarification on assignments. Sometimes, you can save a lot of time simply by asking the right person a question.

Now on to arguably the most exciting part of being an attorney (at least in the eyes of new associates): the perks. The best advice in this area is moderation. Overdoing it or taking advantage of the firm in any way will be viewed negatively. Therefore, even if the firm seems liberal when it comes to living the high life, it’s always better to exercise a certain level of restraint.

Another area where restraint should be practiced is in regard to your personal life. Don’t get me wrong. Everyone has issues of a personal nature that have to be dealt with from time to time, but keep in mind that your superiors have their own personal problems to deal with.

Unless you have a personal matter that absolutely, positively must be discussed, keep your private life to yourself. Also, it’s a good idea to talk things over with your family and friends prior to starting work so that they understand exactly what you’re getting into. That way, you won’t have to deal with the added stress of family disagreements and disappointments if you have to suddenly renege on commitments.

And a last little tidbit of advice for newbie attorneys is to take advantage of your status. Partnership will come soon enough, and then you won’t be able to ask dumb questions or get lost on your way to the restroom. Take this opportunity to learn as much as you can while you have the least amount of responsibility. Being teachable during the first 12 months will pay off in the future.

Author Bio
For More Information Visit www.lawcrossing.com

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