Act As If

Especially in today’s job market that has left behind the 40+ somethings and less trained. You must remember these words. Everyday act as if. Don’t give up!

Applicant Tracking Systems and Getting Your Resume Found

Applicant Tracking Systems are all the rage and it’s up to you to get your resume past them. You can do this yourself but if you need help look for us at http://www.resumefound.com

It’s Not Your Grand Dad’s Job Market Anymore

In today’s digital age it’s becoming more and more evident that some jobs we used to count on will not be returning to our shores anytime soon.  From the recruiters in India that are outsourced by many companies, to computer programmers; corporations in a global economy will bring their business needs across the globe to become more efficient and see cost savings.

Some of the laid off 40-60 somethings will have to face the fact that they need to reinvent themselves or become stay at home engineers.  But you must not waste time worrying and becoming depressed over the pretty pickle we’ve put ourselves in as a country.  Instead adapt, re-learn, survive!  You must build a brand that can easily show business entities that can pay you for your services, that you are, and how you are different from everyone else.  There is no shame in working as a consultant from your home office until conditions improve or the dust settles.  But you must be ready to still put in the 8 hours a day sometimes more if you can; yet still balance your life with pleasure and family time.  You must also be ready and prepared to keep learning and educating yourself to new technologies and how they affect your field, or a new field you might be considering.

First course of action is to create yourself a personalized list of 25-50 companies that you would consider working for.  Your goal should be to form 2 real live relationships with 2 people within that company and network your butt off.  The purpose of this so if a job you are interested opens up that person can refer you in.  This is realistically the most rock solid way of getting on the hiring short list.  Most human resources personnel and recruiters can see up to 800 resumes for one open position these days.  That’s where our next article comes in on Thursday.  Getting past the (ATS) Applicant Tracking Systems by creating several keyword targeted resumes related to your ideal position.  This is one of the ways to ensure that the ATS spits out your name and credentials when queried by the recruiting professional.  For more on this sign up to our RSS feed or check back often for more tips.

Warm Regards & Luck In Your Job Search,

Mill Montejo
LinkedIn Optimization Specialist

LinkedIn Optimization, Resumes, Mock Interviews, more

Apple Abandons Original iPad Owners

With Apple not releasing its latest iOS6 update with all the new bells and whistles to the iPad 1 or the ‘original iPad,’ the company has placed many users in the spot of wondering whether to remain loyal and obedient, or to jailbreak their iPads. Many have already chosen to download redsn0w to jailbreak their tablets which aren’t really all that old and still an amazing mobile device. But in Apple’s world of rapid change and releases of newer gadgets the poor lonely iPad now kicks back error messages from apps you already own and paid for, but you can no longer use because you “must have iOS6 to run this app.” So many will opt to at least enjoy the freeing tweaks and themes and benefits from the Cydia store on their Apple step child. Get with it Apple and release your updates across the entire retail line of devices or run them from the iCloud. Not everyone upgrades with each of your device releases. Your customers deserve better.

Your Very Own Solar Panel Energy

 With hurricane Sandy approaching the northeast coast we gadget fiends start to think about how we will connect to the internet or keep our gadgets charged if the power goes out for an extended period of time.  So I went into my local Radio Shack store and stumbled upon this little power source.  It’s made by  company called Better Energy Systems Inc, “a private company based in Oakland, California with teams in the United Kingdom and Kenya. The company was founded in 2002 to design, develop, and market power products for hand held electronics.”  They sell this portable solar panel under the brand name “Solio” that is powered by the sunlight, by USB charger connected to your computer, or by USB charger connected to wall outlet.  This little solar panel retails for about $70 and at first I thought it was a bit steep.  But it is capable of giving 2 smartphones a complete charge.  If not used the charge lasts for one whole year.  I’d say that is worth the $70 bucks if you are a power hungry gadget junkie like me.  I’ve read that some in Kenya use this to power their home.  I knew right away that I would not be the only one that would be interested in this product especially with the impending storm and the storms that come throughout the winter in the northeast that could lead to power outages.  I may just go back tomorrow and buy myself a Solio pad.  Sun power is the way of the future!  

Thanks for checking out my blog and sorry the posts have been so infrequent lately.  Working on developing a weekly or bi-monthly tips blogging schedule.  Hope to keep sharing great tips and tools on technological advances.  

Cheers!  Stay safe in the hurricane and don’t forget to vote on November 6th!  

http://www.solio.com/chargers/ 

Dr Mill  

Composition Notebook Still Lives

As techie as I am nothing replaces the ease, speed, sensory happy feeling I still get while making my constant to do lists on my mini composition book in green my fav color and writing in there with a gel pen medium bold point! Ahh the simple pleasures of life for the creativeness junkie.

The Way To An Interview, New Job or Career is Online – Get Seen Get Hired

Happy Friday all!  It’s a gorgeous one in the Northeast after a week of sporadic clouds and rain I for one welcome the beautiful blue skies.  Pool setup later since the painting to the rear wall of the house is finally complete.  I enjoy my backyard oasis immensely in the summer months.  With a small Cape Cod humble home in Clifton, NJ the backyard is the largest room in our house.  So I make it a point to try to do something to beautify it every year.  Which brings me to another topic about beautifying your online presence.

Lots of people today are so scared to be public online for fear of it backfiring in their job search, home search, car purchase…well that last one is a stretch.  I haven’t met a car dealer who wouldn’t take your money LOL!  But seriously folks, if you want to be discovered online by a potential employer you have to be online.  And if they search for your name and find nothing, it can be almost as harmful to your career as them finding negative stuff about you.  They might wonder “is this person so out of touch with the tech world that they cannot embrace Web 2.0 concepts, Cloud sharing, Team collaborating across the globe via online webinars, Skyping, IM, Twitter, Facebook, etc?  You get the picture…it makes you look like a dinosaur.

Sure we all want to hang onto some semblance of privacy in this rapidly evolving, public world.  But you should focus on learning to improve and optimize your online presence weekly.  Google yourself monthly, see what comes up.  Use SEO (Search Engine Optimization) techniques which are based around keywords and meta tags to get your positive search results to the 1st, 2nd and/or 3rd pages of Google thereby burying the negative ones if there are any.  Don’t think you can just write Google and they will immediately remove any unsavory content about you.  They usually will not and will err on the side of caution and leave it up there.  They also came up with a new “Penguin” update which makes optimizing and SEO all that more unpredictable for webmasters and all that more accurate results for the rest of us.  However it is still possible to work within the constraints that Google has put in place to optimize your search results.  Whether it be for your personal or career Blog you write (which is a good idea if you are unemployed to keep writing and staying in contact with industry contacts in your field), your résumé online page (such as on box.com), and most importantly your LinkedIn profile.

Do you need a LinkedIn profile?  Absolutely and positively YES!  LinkedIn is the professional network that can potentially connect you to decision makers at companies you want to work for!  DO NO PASS UP the chance at meeting the person that can help launch your next idea, or career!  Below are the steps you need to take to start building your LinkedIn profile and Career Brand today:

• Create or optimize your LinkedIn profile
• Go to http://www.linkedinlabs.com and install the Signal app (this helps you in searching out companies you want to target)
• Let LinkedIn get you started with contacts by searching your email addresses to see if any of your contacts are on LinkedIn and connect with them
• Those connections could have added connections
• Once you connect with them, you are now connected to all of their connections
• Connect with Super Connectors (those with 500+ or more Connections)
• I you are not connected you miss out on all of that persons connections seeing your profile
• You want to be seen by your Connections connections….sounds funny….believe me it’s not.  You will be amazed at how even you might be connected to a big shot at Apple, Microsoft, or an HR person at Disney, Facebook, or a recruiter at Hewlett Packard.  You name the company you want to work for next and chances are you can at the very least get a phone interview (the standard way for you to be ruled out or move ahead in the process these days), and potentially a live interview.
• Then comes the interview coaching and practice.  Don’t just take a phone interview when they call you or find you online, as you rush out the door to the market!  This might be a quick call to you but to the recruiter it is a real interview and they could rule you out just for the mere fact that you weren’t hip enough to realize you were being interviewed and ruled out.  Instead call or email them and arrange a time where you will have no distractions, your notes and resume in front of you, and can put your best foot forward.  This could mean the difference in moving ahead to a live interview or into the trash pile.

For more tips and info on getting seen and getting hired online stay tuned to this Blog as well as our sister Blog The Talent Mill or follow our Facebook pages https://www.facebook.com/TheTalentMill and https://www.facebook.com/DrMillComputerWiz

*I also offer great rates on Get Seen Get Hired SEO LinkedIn Optimization Packages where I do all the work for you while you wait for your phone to start ringing from recruiters finding you online instead of you sending your résumé and risking it not even being seen because it’s not optimized therefore not making it into the top of the pile.  Don’t let Applicant Tracking Software (ATS) systems rule you out because your résumé was not optimized with the right keywords in the right places!  Get Seen & Get Hired  today!

Thanks for stopping by and enjoy the weekend! ~Dr Mill  :)

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Windows & Operating System Tour For

We’ve been upgrading some client laptops from the old clunky Vista Home Premium or Home Basic operating system that Microsoft threw together around early 2007.  ”Criticism of Windows Vista has targeted its high system requirements, its more restrictive licensing terms, the inclusion of a number of new digital rights management technologies aimed at restricting the copying of protected digital media, lack of compatibility with some pre-Vista hardware and software, and the number of authorization prompts for User Account Control. As a result of these and other issues, Windows Vista had seen initial adoption and satisfaction rates lower than Windows XP.^[9]“

We generally agree with the criticism above about it’s bloated almost restrictive use.  But those with Vista on their 4-5 year old laptops are not stuck with that.  If you’ve taken good care of your laptop and it has at least 3 gigs of (RAM) memory installed it would be wise to upgrade it to Windows 7, and still cheaper than buying a new laptop with the same specs.  Of course you’d get much more memory and hard drive space buying a new laptop for say around $500-600, but if you cannot afford that luxury right now, and you are in the local North Jersey area, NYC, Rockland, feel free to call on us at http://www.DrMillComputerWiz.com and we will give you an estimate.  Generally without the cost of the software our fees range within $160-180 for a full clean, reformat, install from Vista to Win 7 and replacing some of the software you had on there previously.  Of course some of the software depends on you having the original discs, software keys, etc.  But a cheaper Windows 7 upgrade option is also available if you are a student.  Call us for more info and if you have been upgraded take a few minutes to watch the Win 7 Tutorial before you dive in and enjoy your new Win 7 machine!

There’s An App For That!

We ran across this little 12+ app in the App Store and were tickled at how much the cartoon looks like Sarah Palin.

[Infographic] 12 Things to do After You’ve Written a New Blog Post

[Infographic] 12 Things to do After You’ve Written a New Blog Post.

This is a perfect chart for any blogging enthusiast to hang on their wall.  Study it, act on it, and reap the rewards.