1000 things you don’t want in your job hunt

GOING ONLY FOR BRANDING

Do you stick only to the top name job boards or portals? If yes, you are denying your chances of getting into specialized positions. Specialized groups or non-enterprise companies often steer clear of top names. Choose your resume posting based on the kind of recruiters that visit a given job boards.

OUTSOURCING YOUR JOB HUNT

If you are getting a peer or a consultant to do your job hunt to the level of making contact with a prospective employer - stop doing this now. You can get help to the level of someone gathering job order description or information for you. You make connect - use the opportunity to create an impression.

RESUME BLASTING

Do you treat your resume like a promotional mailer? Distribute it all over the place or get a group email ID and broadcast? This means (1) Your cover letter or your resume is not customized for the job order in hand - Resume customization in lieu of arranging the skill sets for the given job order. (2) You do not follow up; there are employers who seek to measure your interest with the follow up method that you adopt. Plus your prospective employer or their job consultant knows that you are hunting around, which will reduce your market value.

Another aspect of mindless blasting is clicking the APPLY FOR THIS JOB button wherever you see it. When you submit your resume to a job where you do not have minimum qualifications - and you have a reason to doing so - make an offline connect.

75% of email traffic received by a generic ID such as careers@bestemployer.com is junk. If you rely only on email to get your next job - forget it. Your resume is probably in the junk folder.

PRIVACY

Do not write a tell tale resume with private information. We’ve heard enough and more about misuse of private information. Another aspect of privacy - using Internet at work to coordinate your job hunt. Wake up - Even a mom & pop street corner store can afford a network and a firewall in it.

INTERNET JOB HUNT BALANCE

You do not want to rely entirely on the internet for your job search. You do not want to deny the abundance of information that is available on the internet either. Depending on your skills and where you want to be working next, see if your target employers and their head hunters are hanging out in Print Classifieds or Job boards.

BEING COOL

Email is new age - it has been for over 15 years now :), but an email ID such as kewldude800@xyz.com is not a great identification. Also see what your social networking page is saying about you - from the eyes of a headhunter, hiring manager or recruiter. Please blogpost here about ‘Big Brother is watching‘. Also your resume or your job hunt webpage is a business document; it is not your platform to express political views.

Balance 994 things you do not want in your job hunt come under ‘common sense application’. We do not want to question your CSA quotient by putting down all of those 994. (Actually, 6 things as a title did not sound grandiose enough to attract your attention)

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25 Music Jobs That Most People Don't Know About

You may have heard that music jobs are almost impossible to find, especially if you're young and just starting out. While it may be true that few aspiring musicians will reach the top of the charts, there are hundreds of thousands of music jobs available. Some are for performers, some for teachers, and some for support staff for musicians and performers. Musicians and others in the music industry may work in production, performance, promotion, and education - even medicine. I promised you 25 music jobs that most people don't know about - but that's not technically true. Many of these are jobs that people know about - but don't consider when they think of 'music jobs'. Ready for the list? Here we go:

Music Jobs for Songwriters:

A Staff Songwriter works for a record or media company and writes songs for the artists signed by the label.

A Freelance Songwriter writes and markets his or her own songs. Your hours are your own, but you'll have to work a lot of them to get your songs heard.

A Lyricist writes just the words to songs. He may team up with a composer, or be teamed up with one by a music production company.

A Jingle Writer writes those catchy ads that you hear on the television and radio - you know, the ones that get stuck in your head for days. A jingle writer may not become a famous household name - but he or she will always find work.

Music Jobs in Publishing:

A Music Publisher finds and acquires the copyrights to songs with the intent of licensing or selling them to record companies and musicians.

A Copyright/Licensing Administrator ($20,000 - $60,000) manages the licensing and copyrights for a music publishing company.

A Music Editor ($20,000 - $60,000) works closely with the composer to document, organize and time cues for the musicians in a project.

A Notesetter ($15,000 - $50,000) transcribes music from audio to the page.

Music Jobs in the Record Business

An A&R Coordinator (artist and repertoire) finds talent for a record company to sign. His boss is the A&R Administrator, a position that includes planning budgets for artists, managing reps and coordinators and monitoring the expenses on production.

Public Relations music jobs range from assistant publicist to director of public relations. The PR department is responsible for getting the names of the artists on a record company label out in front of the public often. Pay ranges from nothing for an intern to three figures for highly experienced public relations managers.

An Artist's Relations Representative is responsible for maintaining communication and cooperation between the record company and an artist or band.

A Promotional staffer works with radio stations and video stations to get airplay for a label's records.

Campus representatives are promotional agents - but they work directly to promote a record label's products to college students and music retailers. Working as a campus representative is a great way to get your foot in the door at a record label.

Music Jobs in Education

A music teacher teaches music to classes from pre-school through college, with duties varying depending on the age of the classes. In the elementary grades, the music teacher may concentrate on teaching music appreciation and theory, with some teaching of instruments and performance theory. By high school, the job duties are more varied, and may include directing student performances and organizing and directing a band or choir.

A Music Director or Supervisor is responsible for managing and setting policy for music instructors hired by the school department.

Music Jobs in the Ministry may include part time work as an organist to full time work directing a professional choir and the entire music worship for a parish or citywide.

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Holiday Centerpiece Ideas

A holiday centerpiece would make a wonderful focal point or main decoration for Thanksgiving, Christmas, Hanukkah, New Year’s and other holiday occasions. You can place the centerpiece on your table, entryway table or other large area or space.

Plus there are limitless ways to make your centerpiece special. You can mix-and-match festive objects you have around your house with materials from a craft or fabric store and even add them to wonderful creations from online stores. Then design and create coordinating pieces for nearby countertop or the mantle over the fire place, front porch or other area.

Some mix-and-match ideas include:

Fall Vegetables

Begin with a pumpkin and gourds. Loosely arrange them on the table or mantle. Set a natural-color candle on each side of your display. Finish your free form art center piece by sprinkling colorful fall leaves all over and around your center pieces. Make sure they are not too close to the candles, of course.

Fall & Winter Leaves & Berries

Simply find a large glass bowl and fill it with beautiful fall leaves or holly leaves and berries. Set a candle on each side of the bowl to showcase the leaves. Then, cut leaf shapes out of construction paper and use them as place cards. Of course you could also press small leaves, and glue them to a plain white place card.

Floral Display of Abundance

Make a dried floral arrangement from fall and winter flowers. Gather some of the plastic sticks that the florists use to hold notecards. Stick them into the floral display, but put photos of the things you are thankful for in them, instead. Or, if you don’t have photos, just write words on notecards and display them in the floral arrangement. Some words you may start with are “family”, “friends”, “food”, “laughter”.

Carve A Pumpkin

Yes, you heard right, carve a pumpkin. Of course you don’t want to go with the traditional jack-o-lantern design here. Instead carve some geometrical designs, or some flowers, leaf-shapes etc. on your hollowed out pumpkin. Add a candle inside the carved pumpkin and light it just before your guests arrive.

Holiday Candle Holders

Get some small pumpkins, Christmas or other candle holders and tiny candles to use with them. Group of few of these candle holders together for a festive center piece. Finish your candle arrangement with a few pieces of native corn or festive ornaments placed around your holiday candle holders. Give the arrangement more dimension by using different size pumpkins, ornaments and candles. Use some scented candles to give your room that Holiday smell.

Dig through your holiday supplies or take a stroll through your local craft store and you will come up with your own versions of these suggestions, or even a creation all your own.

Check out books from your local library for more ideas to decorate your home and business environment. You can make your own centerpieces and coordinating decorations or visit fun shops online. It’s as simple as that!

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Computer Consultant Startup: Identify Your Business Skills

Since you're taking the time to read this article right now, it's a good sign that you have what it takes to become a computer consultant. You're in the small minority of people who have recognized that this is a business and needs to be run like one.

A Good Computer Consultant Has More Than Just Technical Skills

It's not about playing with the latest routers or wi-fi device or VPNs or firewalls. Sure, you have to have a certain amount of skills to make a successful computer consultant because people are buying your expertise. At the end of the day, though, it's a business.

In order for the business to be successful, you have to know a few things about getting revenue in and keeping your expenses down. You also need to forecast and be able to bill, negotiate, and network properly.

There are a lot of stubborn techies out there who think that studying the Windows Server Resource Kit is going to tell them what they need to know about running a business. Not true. It's going to teach you about registry keys and directories and things like that.

Even a Computer Consultant Needs a Good Resume

If you're currently self-employed, you may not have an up- to-date resume, but for most people looking to transition into the business to become a computer consultant you probably do have a resume. Take out a copy of your resume and a yellow highlighter marker and go through and highlight every sentence or phrase in your resume that describes a project or a job or a skill that you think would be relevant or marketable to the owner of a small company.

Categorize the Items on Your Resume

Go through it and look for all the phrases and the jobs and the projects that you've worked on for the past couple of years and think about what's going to catch the eye of a typical small business owner or manager. Once you've done that, go back through each highlighted item and mark whether it was IT related, whether it had to do with understanding how to run a business or whether it had to do with being able to communicate effectively.

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