Are you one of those who applied for a job with thousand others and have a resume that looks very similar to all of them? If so, then don’t be surprised if you have not heard from your prospective employer. Most resumes look very similar and tend to highlight day-to-day activities, responsibilities. While these are important to be highlighted, it does little to help the recruiter understand how good of a fit you are for the company.

Every employer is looking to hire a “Super Star“. So, they are looking for great stories. Stories that they can relate to with the current situation in the company, the problem they are trying to solve and how you could be the person to solve those problems.

So, why wait? Go ahead and get your story together that talks about these things

• Leadership: Companies are always looking to hire people who can lead i.e. people who actually complain less and takes initiatives without asking for, resolve conflict situations and make it a win-win situation for everyone

• Innovation: Something that companies are always thriving for.  Highlight stuff that shows  you are out-of-box thinker and how you innovated either to improve workplace productivity or how you identified new business problems and came up with ideas to solve these problems.

• Growth:  Companies want their employees to grow, so they could add more value to the company and in-turn drive more profits. Showcase examples where you grabbed opportunities that helped with your career progression, how you are eager to try new things and willing to take risks.

While you are busy working on your story, I will try to find out more on why people stick with resumes that don’t help.

This inspiring blog post Distinguishing Goals and Resolutions from Sharlyn Lauby at HRBartender.com and Want to be a Better Leader? Schedule Some Time For Yourself to Think from Patty Azzarello set a great tone why leaders, management and individuals should set goals for their teams and for themselves.

As a leader, you need to be ahead of the game, understand the overall company and team objectives and align each individual goals to have a better outcome. The job as leaders is to encourage the individuals to write down goals, monitor their progress and keep revising on regular basis. I still remember I would drag once in a while to share weekly goals with the team, I saw it more as an administrative task and lesser priority compared to other day to day tasks. As Patty pointed, you need to schedule some time to think about yourself and not get distracted with low level tasks. The big thing really is to see setting goals as an investment. We as individuals are poor investors in self-growth. Of course, I was lucky enough to have a boss Meg Bear who would look after my back, keep me excited and would push me harder on things I need to work on.

While I’m gone past working for a company as I’m now fully focused on growing Tahlent, the thing that really motivates me now is a sense of accomplishment.There is no management team to keep you motivated. Having set of goals, be able to check them off and seeing progress is what really motivates me and my team.. As Sharlyn rightly pointed out – “Set goals that are important to you“.

Do yourself a favor today, write down your goals for the coming days. Best!

Want to give yourself an edge in your job? Want to be seen as a cut above the rest?

You should focus on getting happy.

According to a recent HBR blog

…happiness is the single greatest competitive advantage in the modern economy. Only 25% of your job successes are predicted based upon intelligence and technical skills, though we spend most of our education and most companies hire based upon this category. The “silent 75%” of long-term job success is based upon your ability to positively adapt to the world: optimism, social support creation, and viewing stress as a challenge instead of as a threat.

Consider how you can not only find happy candidates but also make happy employees. Companies that manage this will have an edge against the competition.

Surprising?

Maybe. But if you think about the alternative, it seems worth the effort to give it a try. Let us know what you do to keep a positive outlook at work and how you have managed to hire happy people.

One of the major decisions in a job search mode is the willingness to relocate. While most professionals are willing to relocate for the right job, the big question remains. How do I inform the recruiter or the company the willingness to relocate?. This question keeps many folks guessing. Is it the resume or cover letter?. While cover letters are nice, most recruiters barely look at them. Unfortunately, all resumes follow a template pattern, the very first thing is summary or objective followed by skill set, then work experience and so on. There is no placeholder as such to talk about big things like relocation.

Here is what you can do

1) If you are applying for the job via the companies career portal, then most systems have a way to indicate if you are willing to relocate. You could use the resume submission form and indicate you are willing to. All the Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) handles this data correctly for searches or

2) You can head over to http://gmaps.kaeding.name/cgi-bin/map.cgi, create Google maps with various locations mapped, take a screen shot and include it in your Visual Profile on Tahlent. Add a link to your Visual Profile from your resume.

Here is a screen shot of multiple locations mapped

What do you think, any other suggestions?

While things may not be hunky-dory, there is a slight change in the US job market. According to the latest Society for Human Resource Management’s (SHRM) Leading Indicators of National Employment (LINE) survey for September 2010, the hiring and the compensation trend in manufacturing and services sector has gone up marginally.

Interestingly, these two sectors together employ more than 90 percent of the nation’s private sector workforce. Thus, an increase in hiring and salary trend in these two sectors is a reasonably good indicator of where the job market is headed. Based on a monthly survey of private-sector human resource professionals in more than 500 manufacturing and 500 service-sector companies, the report highlights hiring trends, new-hire compensation and employment.

Hiring Trends
A net of 38 percent of companies in Manufacturing will hire in September, compared with 13.8 percent that added jobs a year ago. In the service sector, a net of 37.4 percent will add jobs, as compared to 22.8 percent that added jobs previous year. These recent year-over-year increases in hiring are a reflection of poor job market conditions a year ago.

Conversely, 14.6 percent of manufacturers that are likely to conduct layoffs in September, the lowest level for the month in four years. While the 7.8 percent of service-sector companies that are expected to cut jobs in September is close to the four-year low of 6.3 percent in September 2007.

Salary Trends
Just like the hiring activity, the salary and benefits packages for new employees have seen a slight rise in the month of August. In the manufacturing sector, there is a net increase of 5.4 percent in the new-hire compensation as against 0.2 percent decrease seen last August. While in the service sector, there is a net increase of 1.7 percent this August compared to 1.5 percent decrease in new-hire compensation in August ’09.

Even though there is an overall increase in the salary trend, it is still a marginal one. This indicates that most organizations are keeping new-hire compensation rates relatively flat, most likely because many landing new jobs are accepting lower wages and benefits as the labor market remains weak.

Job Opportunities
The survey indicates that job openings for salaried positions have inched up in both sectors this August. In the manufacturing sector, a net total of 13.7 percent of respondents reported increases in exempt jobs this August as against 13.5 percent net total increase previous August.

On the other hand, in the service sector, there has been a net total increase of 4.1 percent this August as compared to 1.1 percent net total increase last August.

Hourly jobs too have witnessed an increase this August. The manufacturing sector has seen a net total increase of 21.6 percent as against 14 percent net total increase previous August. In accordance with federal data, this suggests that manufacturers are adding jobs and production is increasing. Industrial production rose 1.0 percent in July and was 7.7 percent higher than in July 2009, according to the Federal Reserve. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) also reported that manufacturers added 36,000 jobs this July.

While the services sector witnessed a net total increase of 10.9 percent this August from 0.4 net total decrease seen last August. This marked an 11.3-point jump from August 2009. The rise in employment may be partially driven by growth in health care, which added 27,000 jobs this July, according to the BLS.

What have you been doing lately?

a) Worrying and praying
b) Gossiping about your ex-boss
c) Networking

If you nodded yes to ‘c’ you’re in good company.

Today job seekers are not the only ones who go online to look for jobs. Most employers have savvied up to the online game and directed their recruiters to scour social and professional networks to spot the best and the brightest.

This, clearly, is good news for those people who “while away time” on the Web. These compulsive networkers who cannot stay away from LinkedIn, Facebook, SlideShare, Twitter, Scribd, Youtube or blogs for even a minute are ahead of the rest of the pack in the search for their next job.

But really, is effective networking really about spending all your life online? Perhaps not, but the quality of the time you spend does matter.

Social networks have their relative strengths and weaknesses and your success is determined by how smartly you use their features, and ultimately about how you project yourself.

Here are a few tips to get the most out of social networks:

• Separate personal and work accounts by creating unique identities to be used with each set of audiences.
• Tweak your privacy settings to ensure that your work colleagues don’t see what is meant for your friends.
• Divide your team between job sites and building your social media presence.
• Seek out relevant groups or networks and join them.
• Listen to relevant conversations on your groups or communities and participate in them.
• Seek and showcase recommendations from your superiors and colleagues.
• Create an online portfolio of your work. Make digital copies and upload them to SlideShare (presentations), Flickr (images, artwork and photographs), Scribd (works of text for which you own the copyright), YouTube or Vimeo (videos).
• Storyvite’s unique interface allows you to compile a Visual profile by mashing up video and presentation formats.
• As an extra precaution, make sure that you don’t upload any potentially objectionable content even in your non-work identities.

Soon enough, your presence will be felt.