- A workforce.
(murmurs)
Building a resume.
I'll just say something about building a resume,
working on interview skills,
all to find that perfect job.
Okay.
- [Man] Cool, all right.
Stand by.
- Hello, everyone, and welcome to Decibel.
I'm Leslie Rhode, and we've been talking
about Workforce Solutions and the workforce development
in the Austin area.
And today we're getting nitty gritty with the job hunt.
We're going to talk about how to build that resume,
how to do mock interviews,
all in the search to find that perfect job.
(quiet acoustic guitar)
- We are so glad you've joined us here live today.
Jay Cruz is with me, welcome, Jay.
- Thank you.
- Employment specialist with Workforce Solutions.
And I guess we've talked about Workforce Solutions,
but those who may not know what you do,
what is the mission?
What is the goal of the organization?
- Well, the organization is designed
to help people get back to work.
So we help people find jobs in the Austin area.
We also help people with their resumes,
and developing their skills.
And if they need help with those skills,
we have available funding to get them into certain classes
that they would be able to increase those skills.
- I know you have certain classes that you have ongoing,
which seem to be very helpful.
They're full of information, and just
one-on-one help with job seekers.
Tell us a little bit about those
classes that you have, I guess you call them workshops,
that occur every other week or so.
- So, we have them every other week.
They start on Tuesdays.
You can choose where you wanna come.
I always recommend to my folks,
those that are trying to change careers
to come to the measures and meeting class,
which kinda assesses skills that you've got,
and see if you've got the skills
to move on to the next job.
Or whether you've got the skills to take the job you want.
Then we have a class on diversity and ethics,
customer service, which is really important.
Effective communication at work, and active listening.
- That's a lot.
- Yeah, two years one mouth, give or take.
Purpose and Patterns is day three.
We do workforce trends and career planning,
career exploration, networking, that sort of thing.
And then day four I really recommend,
is the resume building and the networking.
- A lot in there.
But you can come to one of the classes,
or all four, right?
Is there a cost for them?
- It's free for all Texas.
- That's amazing.
- And it doesn't matter if you're
collecting unemployment or not,
you can just come to the office and we have to help you.
- Okay.
So, who is the client?
Who's the audience here?
Who's coming to these?
- Most of the folks who come to these
are people who are unemployed.
They're the ones who are coming in to get help,
to move their next job.
But we're open to anyone whose looking for work.
So, a stay-home mom who hasn't been in a workplace,
needs to get back in the workplace,
we can help with that.
Somebody who's been out of work for a long time.
We help people with offender backgrounds, too.
Anybody with barriers, we help them also.
- That's great.
So, if a person is getting back in the workforce,
maybe, who has been out for a while,
or did lose a job, and has just
had a hard time finding something,
how do you help them evaluate their skills?
Maybe they want a fresh start,
and they don't wanna look back where they were?
- Right, right.
So, we do have funding from different sources.
WIOA is one of them.
That's a workforce orientation innovation program
that we've got.
We've got a work program that's called WERC,
which also helps people get back in the workplace
by retraining them and giving them funding.
By the way, this funding is a grant,
it doesn't have to be paid back.
You have to qualify for the funding,
it doesn't come in easy.
So if you've got a doctorate, your chances are very slim
that you're gonna get help.
But if you don't have a doctorate degree,
if you have a master's degree, or bachelor's degree,
and say you wanna increase your skills,
let's say, a software skill you don't have.
You might be able to be funded to get that.
- Okay.
Let's mention, before we go on,
if those of you watching now have any questions,
maybe you're on the hunt for a job,
or you know someone who is,
there are many questions, I know, that we can't get to,
but please comment below, what question you may have.
About resumes, about interviews,
about what the jobs are, maybe,
that are hot out there right now,
and we'll try to get to those as we can.
What are the jobs that you hear about the most,
as far as, when people come to you,
what are they looking for?
- Well, usually hot jobs.
Technology jobs are really hot,
if you've ever wanted to get into technology.
Medical jobs.
So, phlebotomist, hygienist, medical aid,
CNA-certified nursing aid, home health aid,
easy jobs to get.
There's a huge market for it.
I've got someone right now who is calling me every day
asking for me to send people to them.
- Take note.
- Take note, yeah.
But, you know, they're not easy jobs.
You have to have the stamina to do some of them.
Caring for the elderly is a very specific skill.
You gotta want to be able to do it,
and you gotta have the knack to do it.
But there are other things out there, you know,
the usual jobs, a job with Chipotle
or with the local McDonalds is out there,
but they also have the administrative jobs.
The doctor's office jobs.
There are tons of jobs in that area.
- And the pay range must be varied.
- It varies.
I mean, I see jobs at $10.00, I see jobs at $50.00.
But the average individual is probably, working wage,
probably 15 and 12 dollars an hour.
Marketing jobs, you know,
inbound calling outbound calling type of jobs.
- You mentioned the home healthcare worker
a minute ago, and we talked a little bit, before this,
about soft skills.
It takes some social and emotional strengths
to do those types of jobs.
And what are the other social skills, soft skills,
that people really need to think about?
Because that's not always what we consider
when we think about training.
- Right.
There's a question I see in a lot of applications
that really throws people off.
And it's kind of a question, it says,
"Tell me about your skills
"and your abilities that you have."
People think they're talking about their master's degree,
or whatever, they don't answer the question.
But the reality is, what they're really asking is,
what do you know?
Do you have customer service skills?
Are you diplomatic, are you tactful?
Are you easy to get along with?
Do you work in a diverse environment?
Can you work with diverse people?
Do you have the ability to
communicate with all kinds of people.
Are you bilingual?
Are you a consummate professional?
All of things--
- Things other than your--
- Things other than your skillset.
Those things we need to know about.
And those are soft skills that are transferrable
from this job to that job.
So just about everyone who's worked outside
has customer experience,
whether that's internal customers or external customers.
How do you answer the phone?
We talked about that earlier.
You pick up the phone, you get someone there,
and you know exactly if that person is nice or not nice.
So is that a skill? Yeah, that's a skill to have.
Dealing with difficult interaction
is an amazing skill to have,
because people are stressed out.
We do see that every day.
People have lost their jobs.
How do you deal with that?
Because that person could be angry,
now they're angry at you.
So you have to have those skills to deal with that.
- Let's talk about resumes.
Those all-important resumes.
They've changed a lot over the years.
- They have.
- So, we've gone mostly digital, now.
What are some of the biggest pitfalls that you see,
when people come in with a resume,
what are the things they need to fix the most?
- I always ask, do you have a one-page resume?
Because if you have a one-page resume, I'm gonna read it.
Do you have a two-page resume?
Excellent, I'm gonna read that.
You got a three-page resume,
you better got something to tell me on that third page,
and it's not referrals or where you went to school.
So keep your resume to one or two pages.
No more than 10 to 15 years in a resume, as you're older.
- Wait, what does that mean?
No more than 10 to 15 years?
- 10 to 15 years if you're an older worker.
- So you don't go back beyond that.
- Don't go back to--
- Too much information.
- Yeah, to 1969, nobody needs to know that.
Resumes.
Make sure your email is something professional.
I've seen a lot of crazy emails.
Talked to a lady the other day
who had many years experience in a doctor's office
and she had just been let go when the doctor retired.
And her email was, you're gonna love this,
hotstuffcutiepie at gmail dot com.
Hotstuffcutiepie is not a great email to put on your stuff.
- Depends on what job you're applying for.
- Exactly, right.
So, the other one I saw from a young guy, it says
worstguyintheworld at gmail dot com.
- Oh no.
- Change that, okay?
What I say to people, don't put the,
if you graduated, like I did, from high school in 1969,
don't put it down there.
You were in college in '72, don't put it down there.
Because someone's gonna look at that and say,
that's an older worker, right?
If you've got gaps in employment,
which happens a lot, especially with, say,
moms or dads that have stayed home for a while,
put that down.
Put that down that you've been a homemaker,
and this is what you did while you were.
You budgeted, you organized, you managed a household,
you cooked, you prepped, you did all those things.
What else?
If you are ...
A lot of folks stay home to take care
of their elderly mothers or grandmothers.
That is a skill.
That is a tough skill.
So what did you do?
You maintained records of patient care,
you took care of patients,
you gave them medications,
you read to them, you changed bed linens,
you helped them in and out of beds,
you conversed with them, you entertained them.
Those are all skills.
And people don't think they can put that down,
but it is a skill, and it is work.
- Oh, yes, it's work for sure.
- One more thing I want to say.
If you're fired, please don't tell your job
that you were fired or terminated.
Use another word.
Workforce reduction.
- Workforce reduction, okay.
- Yeah, that's a good one.
My job went away.
- All right.
But you wouldn't really have to put it there.
If you're talking about an interview, perhaps.
- In an interview process,
or the application process.
Let's talk about interviews, then.
You help people with those, as well, right?
That's part of the class, right?
So what happens when you are
training someone for a mock interview?
Do we have any questions as to, just ...
Not yet, okay.
- So, when we're training people for mock interviews,
what we do is we pull the job they're going to go to,
assuming they have one,
and we look at the job description,
and we set up a panel of peers
to sit down and ask questions.
And one of the first questions you're gonna get is,
tell me a little bit about yourself.
Have your pitch.
Have it ready.
I'm a consummate professional, I'm bilingual,
I've got fifteen years of management,
I've worked for A, B, C, D.
- And we're talking about your basic elevator pitch.
30 seconds or less.
- 30 seconds or less, that's all you have to say.
The next question they're gonna ask you
that comes up in interviews all the time is,
tell me a bit about your strengths.
You should have those right away.
Great communication skills, I speak Spanish and English,
I've been working as a manager, blah blah blah.
And have those ready, don't go, mm.
And then the next question after that is,
tell me about what you're working on.
Tell me about your weak skills.
And know what that is.
And please don't tell them
you have a tough time getting up in the morning,
because you won't get the job, right?
So you have to say things like,
I'm working on coaching people,
I'm working on being more of a team player,
and have an example of that.
Because these are tough questions
that you're gonna get asked.
Also, you'll see a job description that says
"you must have 5 plus years experience
"working with Microsoft Word."
Excel, Word, Powerpoint, whatever.
If you don't have those skills, don't fake it.
Tell them you have knowledge of it,
don't tell them you have it.
Because chances are, they'll give you a test.
And so you need to be prepared.
And if you're a stay-home mom or dad,
this is a great time to get those skills online, right?
Go online, go to YouTube, find it, train it, learn it,
so you can say, yes, I have knowledge of doing that work.
- The interviews themselves, do you tell people to,
I imagine you tell people to not just
write down those things, be ready for those questions,
but to actually practice speaking to someone else.
That's why you do the mock interview like that.
- Exactly.
Have a conversation.
And go online.
There's tons of, I pulled this offline today.
They're great questions.
There's like 10 questions here.
What other companies are you interviewing with?
Have an answer for that.
What is your dream job?
How do you deal with pressure and stressful situations?
Somebody told me they were asked that question,
and they said, "I just take it easy."
Well, no you don't.
They ask me that question, I'd say,
I usually do wine therapy, but I can't do that at work.
Making fun, you know.
But the reality is, you may need to take a break,
and go and sit down and read something, or get outside.
But these are all questions you can find online,
and have an answer for them.
Because a good interviewer will ask you these questions.
- And they can be for any job.
- Any job, any job.
I don't care if it's a technology job.
Now, if you're a technology guy,
and you have to have certain skills,
again, if you're an older worker,
don't put down things like 4tram and Cobalt.
Because they'll tell you that, gosh,
you graduated when dinosaurs were still roaming the earth.
But the reality is, you wanna bring that up later on,
so they know you have those skills.
But put the most recent skills you have in your resume,
and be prepared to be asked those questions.
- What about the cover letter?
Now that we've gone digital,
do you always need a cover letter too?
- 90% of the time, big businesses
are asking for a cover letter.
And a cover letter shouldn't be a repetition of your email.
It should be something more.
Hey, my name's Jay, I've worked as a banker for many years,
I've also done a lot of recruiting, and interviewing,
and just a simple idea of
something more than you have in your resume, right?
Because your resume should be a quick study
of what you've done, right,
not a detailed study of what you've done.
It's the detail you're getting into in your cover letter.
- Is it more of the elevator pitch type thing?
An introduction? - It is.
It is.
And usually with cover letters, they will sometimes
tell you what they want to hear in the cover letter.
But don't repeat your resume.
Make it fresh.
And it doesn't have to be grandiose.
It can just be a simple introduction.
It could be an elevator pitch, really, what you've done.
- I know, also, we've gone digital so much.
Many jobs don't allow you to mail in anything anymore,
they want it all online.
So how do you help people with that?
Because I know a lot of people,
maybe the older worker, or somebody that is
getting back in the workforce, doesn't have those skills.
- We do have a computer class, actually,
for folks that are not comfortable with computers.
But we do have several customer service reps
in the workplace that actually will help you
download your resume, come up with a resume format,
we do have resume formats that work,
and download it, put in the computer desktop,
so you can download it into your webpage.
- That's perfect.
- Yeah.
You mentioned applying online.
One of the secrets to being noticed when you apply online
is to make sure you answer
every question on that application.
Because who's looking at your resume and your application?
No one is anymore.
The computer is.
The computer is the one saying,
hey, she just ranked a 95, so let's put her in the stock
to be able to get interviews.
If you're not answering questions,
and you don't know what you lived
or what the phone number is,
either look for it or make it up.
Because you need to fill out that time, that whole.
If you don't fill up the whole
the computer nicks you a point.
And if you don't grab keywords from the job description
into your application, into your job duty,
it does this, right?
So you wanna be able to collect with that job,
so you an answer those questions.
- So does your training include
maybe looking at some of those key words, as you mentioned?
It scans, it just looks for those.
- Yes, it looks for those words, yes.
And we tell them, hey, you did that?
Make sure you put that down somewhere.
Make sure you say, yes, I have
five plus years experience using Excel.
I have five plus years experience with SQL,
or Oracle C++, or whatever.
- How many times should a person redo his or her resume?
- Keep it fresh, keep it fresh.
I had a resume two and a half years ago,
I looked at it the other day,
and it was really pretty old.
- Just two years, two and a half years ago?
- Two and a half years old.
I've seen so many great resumes that it's really wonderful
to see other people's resumes.
I do see a lot of great resumes.
I see a lot of poorly done resumes.
And I think of something too.
Don't get your resume done by someone so professional
that you have a high school degree
and you sound like you have a doctorate degree.
Because then, if it doesn't match, you sound phony.
So make sure that your resume sounds like you.
And it should be worked on by professionals,
but don't make it so grand that
it blows you out of the water.
- And I think you can think about your resume
so much that you never get it out.
There has to be a point, too, where you say,
this is as good as it's going to get right now.
- The biggest resume I saw was seventy pages long.
Yes, I think that person's still looking for a job.
- You've been working with resumes a long time, now,
in your field.
- I have, I have.
I love a good resume, because I can always copy it for me.
- Okay.
That's, you're telling your tricks now.
What about the person who has never done a resume?
Maybe they're trying to get a job that's high in demand now.
You mentioned healthcare, and those in the medical field,
skilled jobs.
- I work with subsidized employment, too,
and I help a lot of folks who don't have necessary skills
to make a really nice resume.
And I help with with the resume, I get it out of them.
Someone'll tell me, "hey, I was a cashier for a while
"at the Dollar Store."
I said great.
They said, "All I did was count and give change."
Well, no, that's not all you did.
You stood on your feet eight hours,
you balanced your till,
you gave customer service, you merchandised,
you put away theft.
There's lots of stuff.
They're always like, yeah, I did all that.
- They probably did some crisis communication, too.
- Yeah, right there at the store.
So, yeah, I think that we all need help with our resumes,
and that's what we're there to do.
- Okay.
Any other part of what Workforce Solutions offers
that you want people to know that's there for them,
if they need help in finding that perfect job?
- We do event staffing every week,
and if you log in to workintexas.com,
you can get those notes every week.
There's also a way to text us.
If you just go to wfscapitalarea.com,
you can find out all that information,
and you can get a text where
every time we do event staffing,
you can come in with your resume.
So, next week, Tuesday, I can tell you,
from 9:30 until 1:30, we have an event staff
stacking event with about 15 employers.
- Okay.
So, a wide variety, or--
- Wide variety.
From housekeeping to technology and medical.
- And that's Tuesday,
we'll put that in the comments as well.
And we should make sure we put the website as well.
You said it's--
- Yes, I do have one here.
- Okay, that's perfect.
Jay, thank you very much.
Jay Cruz from Workforce Solutions, employment specialist.
You have helped a lot, with some resume questions.
- Any time, please call.
- Thank you all for watching.
I hope you had a great day.
- Thank you.
Không có nhận xét nào:
Đăng nhận xét