CV Design

Boy, I have read over 3000 CVs in my short time as Recruitment and Selection Specialist. A few stand out and others, well let’s just say need same reshaping. Many people talk about CVs without actually knowing what it is and how it serves. Nor do they know CVs must be adapted to an expressed need which can be professional or academic.

What is a CV?

1. A synoptic document containing detail information on your identity, your training and knowledge in terms of KNOW HOW and SKILLS. It seeks to project you and draw attention to your candidacy.
2. A job hunting tool designed to provide an employer with pertinent screening and qualification information.

As per my experiences and convictions, I put below a guide to help in CV design. 

A. Contact Information: So you can be reached. Make sure the information is correct and you often consult your emails. Thus your Name, Address, Telephone, Cell Phone, Email should be inserted. Optional Personal Information (Date of Birth, Place of Birth, Citizenship, Gender, Marital Status). Like i say the latter aspects remains optional

B. Professional Objective: A precise and concise statement that sums up your professional ambitions.

C. Areas of Competence: List areas you are most competent. This enables the Recruiter know immediately if your Profile suits his needs. If so, he or she reads further. And the text should be attractive. They should SELL YOU. Thus as Peeter Altpere often says, “your CV is a Sales document.”

D. Employment History: List in chronological order, the company, location, include position details and dates as well as your professional research and training.

E. Education: Include dates, majors, and details of degrees, training and certification. Start with the most recent Education qualification. Your academic profile should portray your University, High School and other Professional Qualification information.

F. Miscellaneous: Awards, Publications, Memberships, Interests, Computer and Language Skills.

G. References: Make sure people you insert as references are aware their contact information is on your CV. This way they are not embarrassed if contacted by a prospect for information concerning you. It is advisable to have 3 Referees in your document. Two professional and one personal who knows you outside the working environment.

Related articles:

• How to create a Professional CV with the help of AZZIST (azzist.com)
• CV Keywords – How to get your CV seen (jobcontax.wordpress.com)

Tips for Marketing Yourself/Business

Image via Wikipedia

The million dollar question answered.

Focus on Your Core Competencies: Know your target market and the value your product or service will bring to them. Focus your marketing efforts towards these groups. Avoid spending time trying to meet people you cannot serve or work for.

Develop a Clear and Concise Message: Create a 30 to 60-second statement that clearly explains what you do, for whom, and why your target audience should listen to you. Have this message become your mission statement and raison d’être. Practice your message and notice how your target audience reacts to it.

Create Collateral Materials: Nothing says you are practical more than having corporate gadgets, business cards, etc. Keep it all simple, and do not order more than a 3-6 month supply of printed materials. Once these pieces are in place, do not be shy about using them.

Join Networking Groups: Join or form one or two networking groups with people you do not know very well. Tell people what you do and what your goals and interests are. Help others by connecting them with potential suppliers, employers and opportunities. In time, they will return the favor to you.

Network Every Day: Networking is not limited to groups and networking meetings. Carry your business cards with you at all times and be prepared to talk about yourself at a moment’s notice. Your next hot prospect might be sitting behind you at the next table.

Leverage Your Current Customers (for your business place): Happy customers are your best sales people – ask them to offer testimonials and/or references for prospects. Consider establishing a customer referral program, and offer free/discounted services or a monetary reward for every customer that they recommend.

Develop Alliance Partners: Form strategic partnerships with others who are in the same field as you. These alliances can be as simple as sharing contacts and leads, or they might take on a more formal structure. Either way, the goal is to broaden your reach beyond your own network.

Be an Industry Leader: People like to listen to subject matter experts. Therefore, look for opportunities to share your skills and talents by writing articles or lecturing on a topic within your area of expertise. Even teaching a night course at the local college or community level will give you added exposure.

Don’t be Afraid to Try: If you are serious about growth, spend time outside your comfort zone and try new things. Sometimes new ideas will work, and other times they won’t. Either way, the process will teach you something new and valuable about yourself and your business.

Brainstorm with Others: You are in business for yourself, but that does not mean you need to have all the answers yourself. Whether you are a natural-born marketer or one that sees marketing concepts as completely foreign, kick around ideas with others whose opinions and values you trust. You never know where your next “big idea” will come from.

Knowing and Marketing Yourself

 “Luck is where preparation meets opportunity.” Marketing yourself creates “luck.” Anonymous

During the boom, people with in-demand skills might have been offered a job after a perfunctory interview. Now employers are increasingly selective, so technology professionals – even those with years of experience – must face facts. To get hired you need to become a professional not just at elaborating your skills in documents but at marketing yourself to companies besieged with resumes.
This is no easy task for those who have forgotten how to pitch themselves to employers. “A lot of people are brand new to this,” says Patti Wilson, owner of The Career Company, a Silicon Valley career-management firm. You must know yourself well since you are now a PRODUCT and as such must satisfy the client (your future employer) as well as achieve a sense of satisfaction in your prospective area of activity

Theory: What Is Marketing Yourself All About?
Let’s assume that you have some written goals and now need to get out there as part of achieving those goals. People are constantly looking for opportunities that will help them to achieve their goals. Marketing yourself creates a situation where there is demand for you and for your services that will help them achieve goals. While the connection seems obvious, it’s not always obvious to people outside the realm of sales and marketing. While marketing usually is about generating a sale, it doesn’t necessarily have to be.

For example:
 If you are an employee – you want your boss and your company to implement your ideas
 If you are job hunting – you want to find a company that you want to work for and they want you as an employee
 If you are a recruiter – you want clients so that you can place your candidates and you want candidates for your clients
 If you manage a company – you need to find the hot qualified employees to work at your company
 If you are a financier – you need to explain to companies why your expertise and money is the best solution
 If you are single – you are looking to find your soul mate

But in reality marketing leads to the sale, so the same situations expressed slightly differently: The problem with marketing is that most people feel that it’s tacky to market themselves. Or they think it only applies to a business. This is untrue. Each person, no matter what they do, must market and promote themselves to achieve desired success.
In every endeavor you attempt, think of yourself as a marketing machine. This means that you must continuously help people understand who you are, what you do, and what you stand for. The stronger and better that you market yourself, the more opportunities you will find and the more opportunities will find you. Marketing doesn’t mean telling everyone how wonderful you are, it simply means letting the appropriate people know about your existence.

There are two primary approaches to marketing you can implement.
1. The first is finding ways to reach out and touch others, and
2. The second is to create ways for people to find and connect up with you.

Both of these methods have an infinite number of solutions.
Reaching Out and Touching Others
Reaching out and touching others applies best when you know exactly the kind of people you want to speak with. E-mail seems on the surface a cheap and fast way of marketing yourself. However they are rarely an effective way of marketing and mass e-mail blasts without pre-establishing a relationship with the recipient, is the worst. This is good if you have a very large database. But the more you do it, the less response rate you will get and eventually you can be listed as a Spammer and end up forever in the junk e-mail box, in effect you have spent a large amount of time to achieve very little.

Having People Find You
The other major approach to marketing is to create a situation where people who are looking for a solution seek you out. The goal of this method is for people to seek you out, decide if you can help them, and then approach you to ask for your help.

Now the million dollar question; How do you do that? Marketing Tips, next post

About International Day of Peace, September 21

The International Day of Peace (“Peace Day”) provides an opportunity for individuals, organizations and nations to create practical acts of peace on a shared date. It was established by a United Nations resolution in 1981 to coincide with the opening of the General Assembly. The first Peace Day was celebrated in September 1982.

In 2002 the General Assembly officially declared September 21 as the permanent date for the International Day of Peace.

By creating the International Day of Peace, the UN devoted itself to worldwide peace and encouraged all of mankind to work in cooperation for this goal. During the discussion of the U.N. Resolution that established the International Day of Peace, it was suggested that:

“Peace Day should be devoted to commemorating and strengthening the ideals of peace both within and among all nations and peoples…This day will serve as a reminder to all peoples that our organization, with all its limitations, is a living instrument in the service of peace and should serve all of us here within the organization as a constantly pealing bell reminding us that our permanent commitment, above all interests or differences of any kind, is to peace.”

Since its inception, Peace Day has marked our personal and planetary progress toward peace. It has grown to include millions of people in all parts of the world, and each year events are organized to commemorate and celebrate this day. Events range in scale from private gatherings to public concerts and forums where hundreds of thousands of people participate.

Anyone, anywhere can celebrate Peace Day. It can be as simple as lighting a candle at noon, or just sitting in silent meditation. Or it can involve getting your co-workers, organization, community or government engaged in a large event. The impact if millions of people in all parts of the world, coming together for one day of peace, is immense.

International Day of Peace is also a Day of Ceasefire – personal or political. Take this opportunity to make peace in your own relationships as well as impact the larger conflicts of our time. Imagine what a whole Day of Ceasefire would mean to humankind.

Trust

Damn! I cannot begin to tell you all what has been said about this five-letter word “Trust.” Try typing this word in Google and you will be amazed at the plethora of search results that come your way.

Anyways, this morning while sharing breakfast in the office canteen, a discussion sparked up with my team mates.  You know we are in gear for the Presidential Elections in Cameroon.  Cameroonians are talking, saying many things which I choose to spare you with.  But what struck me in that discussion was a sentence made by one of my friends about Statesmen or Leaders. “For any statesman to succeed, he does not need much; all he needs is trust. His followers must be able to trust him, and he in-turn trust them.” Said Damian.

We all laughed. Well the realities of Cameroon provoked that reaction to such deep words. Cameroonians do not trust their leaders or prospective leaders, at least those I know for now.  However, this led me to ponder on the word “trust”, and my thinking tilted in a different direction. After a few thoughts that saw me playing scenes in my head on situations where I may have failed to trust or how I have abused people’s trust in the past, I decided to get a definition of trust.

Don’t be surprised, my definition is not by the book. It is a story. Hope you get it. And if you do, start working on how to trust people yet remaining wise and on how not to abuse the trust people have put in you.

A little girl and her father were crossing a bridge. The father was kind of scared, so he told his little daughter: “Sweetheart, please hold my hand so that you do not fall into the river.” The little girl said: “No, Dad. You hold my hand.” “Whats the difference?”  Asked the puzzled father. “There is a big difference.” Said the girl. “If I hold your hand and something happens to me, chances are that I may let your hand go. But if you hold my hand, I know that no matter what happens, you will never let my hand go.” 

In any relationship, the essence of trust is not in its bind, but in its bond. So hold the hand of the person whom you trust rather expecting them to hold yours.

Look Before You Leap

 The Fox and the Goat

One day, a Fox fell into a deep well and couldn’t climb out. A thirsty Goat soon came to the same well, and seeing the Fox, called down to ask whether the water was good. Pretending to be happy (and not in despair), the Fox lavishly praised the water, saying how absolutely delicious it tasted, and encouraging the Goat to come down and join him in the well.

The Goat, thinking only of his thirst, stupidly jumped down. As he drank, the Fox informed him of the difficulty they were both in and suggested a scheme for their common escape. “If,” said the Fox, “you put your forefeet up on the wall and bend your head down, I will run up your back like a ramp and escape, and then I will help you out afterwards.”

The Goat agreed and so the Fox leaped upon his back. Steadying himself with the Goat’s horns, he safely reached the mouth of the well…and took off as fast as he could! When the Goat complained of the Fox breaking his promise, the Fox turned around and cried out, “You old Goat! If you had as many brains in your head as you have hairs in your beard, you would never have gone down without making sure there was a way back up. Only a foolish fellow exposes himself to dangers from which he has no means of escape!”

If you expect to grow in life and in business, you should watch out for who you trust. Look before you leap and have a back up plan.

Remember “To be trusted is a greater compliment than to be loved or pitied.”

Influencing change through presentations

View more presentations from Travis Isaacs

JCI CSR Training – Coming Up!

The JCI CSR Course is a half day course designed to create awareness in Active Citizens that individuals have responsibility to their community and the environment, it promotes the principles of United Nations Global Compact in the practice of business, encourages individuals to act responsibly in business and society and encourages the implementation of best Corporate Social Responsibility practices.

JCI CSR is recommended for people who seek to understand their role as Active Citizens within the community and the environment as well understanding the commitment that individuals can make to ensure the sustainability of our planet, and prosperity of people in the community.

Where Is God?!

Two little boys, ages 8 and 10, are excessively mischievous. They are always getting into trouble and their parents know if any mischief occurs in their town, the two boys are probably involved.

The boys’ mother heard that a preacher in town had been successful in disciplining children, so she asked if he would speak with her boys. The preacher agreed, but he asked to see them individually. The mother sent the 8-year-old in the morning, with the older boy to see the preacher in the afternoon. The preacher, a huge man with a deep booming voice, sat the younger boy down and asked him sternly, “Do you know where God is, son?”

The boy’s mouth dropped open, but he made no response, sitting there wide-eyed with his mouth hanging open. So the preacher repeated the question in an even sterner tone, “Where is God?! Again, the boy made no attempt to answer. The preacher raised his voice even more and shook his finger in the boy’s face and bellowed, “WHERE is GOD?!”

The boy screamed and bolted from the room, ran directly home and dove into his closet, slamming the door behind him. When his older brother found him in the closet, he asked, “What happened?” The younger brother, gasping for breath, replied, “We are in BIG trouble this time! “GOD is missing, and they think WE did it!”

Did you have a nice laugh? I did. However, if we want to have a chance at solving our big problems, we must first learn not to run away from them. It may so seem that the solution is very easy though clouded by frightful aspects.

A Good Speech, An Eloquent Speaker

I have been doing public speeches for seven years and many times people have told me I am not that bad. Many people find it complex to speak to a crowd. Of course its normal, tension creeps in. I too get tensed and panic and even shiver, but the essence is to keep on.  I share with you what I do, simple and practical points you could implement immediately you read this.

Imagine for a second we get into the nitty-gritty of Public Speaking and Presentations. I would have to tell you about, Presentation Types, Audience Analysis, Effective Presentations, Presentation Content etc. Well I got all that summed up below. Do these and you would be great at Public Speaking.
A good SPEECH has to be
• Sensible to the aspirations and need of the audience.
• Persuasive to make your audience accept your views as credible.
• Expressive to ensure your audience understands you and what you say.
• Enthusiastic to keep your audience eager to learn more.
• Convincing to make your audience come back to you for more learning experiences
• Helpful to provide knowledge and enhance learning for your audience

A good speaker should have ELOQUENCE
• Earnestness – You should be honest and sincere. Do not tell lies to enhance your message
• Language – Articulate well and be clear in speech
• Observant – To know among your audience those experienced in your topic of presentation and thus use them to enrich your presentation.
• Quick-witted – Be smart
• Useful intention – Your message should be useful, make sure you provide added information for your audience
• Enthusiastic – Be keen to learn from others and make sure you enhance their learning too.
• Need-oriented – Your message should address issues that will go a long way to solve the problems of your audience and increase their knowledge.
• Confident – Master you body, master your speech, control your audience and never forget to prepare.
• Empathetic – Have feeling for your audience. Don’t violate their trust and the fact that they have taken time to come to listen to you.

Remember; “The power of speech is a great blessing of God, and he who knows how to use it well becomes a leader and exerts great influence in society and among friends.”

Related articles

• Public Speaking (octoberrevue.org)
• THE Terror of Public Speaking (socyberty.com)