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When applying to a job today one of the scariest procedures is the background check or the check for security clearance. You and I know that you are innocent of anything and you are definitely not a criminal. But in todays market employers want to be sure that they are not only hiring the best candidate for the job, they are hiring someone who has a clean slate and are heaven bound. Employers are also beginning to search for you via Google.com searches, Facebook.com and linkedin.com . But have you ever wanted to get an anonymous tip on how the company of your dreams really is from the inside.

What is it really like to work there? How do they treat their employee’s? What is the compensation package like? Is all their propaganda real…can you really move up there?

Well now you can really find out…go check out ratemyemployer.ca and you can get the scoop on the companies… ha ha the applicants strike back!

Take a look at the site,  you can even vote on the entries that people posted. You can vote whether an entry was of benefit or not.

Even I created an entry for the company I work for. I kept it honest, real and positive.

Check out ratemyemployer.ca … hmm …. apply or not to apply that is the question?!

Self-assessment is a great way to get to know yourself and can be essential preparation for a job search, for interviews and for negotiations. To get where you want to go, you have to know where you want to go. Self-assessment can be the first step along the way. Self-assessment is a process through which you become aware of your strengths and weaknesses, skills and abilities, interests, values, goals, and aspirations. For our purposes, self-assessment is aimed at preparing you to feel comfortable in interview situations where the topic is you, in negotiations where you have to be prepared to articulate your skills, and finally in planning your career where knowing where you want to go depends entirely upon knowing where you are.

• What was your favorite work environment? And why?

• What was your least favorite work environment? And why?

• What are your greatest strengths?

• If you were to call your manager what who he/she say are your greatest strengths and your greatest challenges are?

• What are your weaknesses (and what are you doing about them)?

• Where do you want to be in five years? In ten?

• When was the last time you demonstrated leadership skills?

• How do you feel about teamwork?

• What activities do you get involved in?

• What is your ideal job and why?

“Know thyself” is a famous quote from the ancient philosopher Socrates. More than 2,000 years later it’s still sound advice. Self-assessment is a great way to prepare for beginning a job search, for interviews, and for negotiations. Not only does self-assessment help others get to know you; self-assessment helps you get to know you!

For more on self evaluation please click on this link to perform an online exam.

This is the first of many articles on how to find a great job. Searching for a job or making a career change can be a stressful task. My hope is that this series of articles will be able to make it easier for you the applicant. I hope it will increase your chances of landing the job/career of your dreams. Our intent is to cover job search basics, how to develop an outstanding cover letter/resume and how to handle an interview successfully.

In this article we will only go over the task list for finding a job.

• perform an honest self assessment so you are clear

• write a list of contacts you have that you could possibly network with to find a job

• write a list of the type of job you are looking for

• write a list of the companies you would love to look for

• create customized resumes for the different job types

• create customized cover letters for the different job types

• search for a job on the internet, government job bank and employment centers in your area

In the coming series of articles we will be going in depth on each of the above points.

Our hope is that you will share and use this site as your source for career searching and advice.

Stay tuned for more articles to help you reach your desired goal of finding a great job. It’s your fate!

You want to find success in your life. A great way to find success is to find your passion. Successful people are dedicated, hard working people. They push themselves beyond their limits.They believe rather than not. They think positively and find a silver lining in almost all situations. They believe in being good. A trainer in workplace management by the name of Neil Dempster once said “Behaviors are the only truth”. You’re probably wondering what that means…well analyze how you behave and that is who you are. You can promise yourself and the world anything but the way you behave and how you deal with things is your truth. The only way to change the outcome around you is to change the way you behave. To be successful you must behave like a successful person. You must live, breath and be success at all times. Become one with positive thinking. Become your hero. In doing so you will become the successful person you want to be sometimes overnight. Check out this really cool video from TED.

Carnegie Mellon Professor Randy Pausch, who is dying from pancreatic cancer, gave his last lecture at the university Sept. 18, 2007, before a packed McConomy Auditorium. In his moving talk, “Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams,” Pausch talked about his lessons learned and gave advice to students on how to achieve their own career and personal goals. For more, visit www.cmu.edu/randyslecture.

“Journeys” are special University Lectures in which Carnegie Mellon faculty members share their reflections on their journeys — the everyday actions, decisions, challenges and joys that make a life.

Read the rest of this entry »

I’m experiencing one of those annoying technical problems with a brand new product: Microsoft Office 2007. Everything was working fine until, one day, I launched it and greeted me with a message telling me there’s something wrong with my MAPI. “Who the hell is MAPI anyway” I thought to myself. I suddenly felt my blood pressure rising at the thought that I’d have to add another item on my already insufferable “To Do” list. As if I didn’t have enough “to do” already. I wished that I’d taken more IT courses in University to know how to deal with these glitches myself instead of having to call a customer support line. I then thought to myself “why don’t I? How hard can it be anyway?” There are certainly thousands of reliable sources to teach myself the basics, and even find a solution. So instead of jotting down another item on my “to do” list, I decided to turn this incident into an opportunity for learning. I think we often forget that we’re by nature curious beings. I certainly was–my English teacher always called me Curious George (I still despise that mischievous little monkey for having the same name as me). When I look back to my career, I owe much of it to my curious nature. I’m an avid reader of history and technology, giving me a view of the past and the future. When there’s a new trend in my field of work, I learn about. This habit has opened doors I didn’t even know existed. I’m often dismayed at how ultra-specialized professionals have become to the expense of maintaining a solid general culture. More acute is the problem if working in more IT-oriented companies where your boss is an expert at doing her job but clueless as to the wider impact of the technology to society. We don’t care anymore about having an expansive knowledge of the environment that surrounds us so we wallow in our own little circles of information with one goal in mind: mastering it for the sake of salary. Although I’m not against such endeavours, I also think that we become more valuable contributors to society when we “upgrade” our opportunities to learn a piece of information at the boss’s behest, to trying to connect it with the greater scheme of things.

There was a time where scholars merited that title only when they were accomplished, walking encyclopaedias. Connecting the dots is one of our most advanced abilities as humans. You’d be surprised what image you get when you step back after connecting the dots. The more the dots, the greater the image. This I hope can serve you well when working in your current or future positions. Corporations are vast repositories of modeled data, but it’s up to us humans to transform that data into valuable information, intelligence, knowledge and finally wisdom. Who wouldn’t want to hire an employee with a super-brain?

The other day while I was siting in the waiting room for a doctors appointment I picked up a magazine called “ Good Times” it was the February edition. “Good Times Magazine” is a Canadian magazine that has some pretty captivating and informative articles. One article in particular really caught my eye. The article was an interview with Mike Holmes - the infamous host of “Holmes on Homes”. I used to call Mike Holmes the Jack Bauer of home renovations. I have always thought of this guy as being really really awesome, but after reading about him in this article he had moved up for me by a several notches. If you are a hard working person you have probably seen his show or at the very least heard of him. He is a hard working machine of a man that is at the head of the Holmes group which is the parent company of 35 construction companies and about 200 employees and not to mention a great show with a cult following. One might wonder how he achieved all this. Well you know the old expression that hard work pays off, that’s how he did it. Hard work is the life blood of Mike Holmes. In this article Mike Holmes talks about how his father was really hard on him and taught him the true art of hard work, not to mention many other admirable traits. We can learn a lot from this as when most of us are confronted with an obstacle we go around them. While someone like Mike breaks right through obstacles and moves on (literally on occasion). His actions speak the philosophy of hard work, focus and relentless desire to beat the status quo. Like I mentioned before he is a machine who is always looking for a way to improve, grow and succeed at all he does. One of the most admiring thing about him is that he helps as many people as he can along the way. Mike and his TV crew repair about 13 houses a year. He has setup a foundation for people who want to study a trade or skill related to construction this foundation is called “the Holmes foundation“.

He also recommends this site “careersinconstruction.ca” if you seeking a job in construction. I strongly encourage all of you to reflect on how hard work and focus can help you in your everyday life, current job and finding a new job. Some of these old fashioned traits are the very foundation of successful people everywhere.

The other day, my fatekeep.com partners (George and Osama) and I were discussing some of the articles that we wanted to publish on fatekeep over the next little while. One of the topics that kind of stood out for me was the discussion around mothers and their return to the workforce.

Well, for one thing, it’s not easy being a full time parent and full time employee. I feel the demands of our society on us as human beings can sometimes be too much … and I’m a guy. For mothers who manage a household and work, it must be a lot to say the least. One of the goals of fatekeep is to help people find a career they love and one that pays them well. I hope this article brings us one step closer to this goal … but before we bridge the gap in careers for mothers and others lets get back to the meeting I mentioned earlier.

In our discussions about mothers and motherhood we listed some basics skills and abilities that all mothers share that can be applied to the workforce. Skills and abilities that you as a momma already have (yo momma shake what your momma gave ya):

patience

empathy

task oriented

perseverance

attention to detail

time management

dynamic personality

ability to teach and train

positive and encouraging

excellent communicator – great tone

able to work in a fast paced environment

WOW Momma! It looks like you got some amazing skill. It might take a company many face-to-face training sessions and lots of computer based training classes to get one of their employees to acquire a list of abilities like the one you’ve already got. Momma you got what it takes! You got what it takes to make an award winning career that pays you what you need and deserve. Lets get you headed in that direction.

Here are some steps that anyone must follow in their quest for a job:

1. Find your calling - Truly to understand that you are the master of your destiny, ask yourself what it is you want to do and then ask yourself what it is you can do

2. Resume time – start prepping your resume, please get others to look at it to make sure it is good. You can use the word processing templates to get an idea of how to structure your resume. But if you want a winning resume go see a job councilor or some sort of employment professional who can help you. Job placement agencies are a good resource as are unemployment offices.

3. Post it – begin applying online to the jobs you like, you can post your resume to career sites like workopolis.com, monster.com, hotjobs.com and careerbuilder.com . You can also go directly to companies that you like and apply to their jobs directly. Please take a look at THE LISTS page for a list of the 100 best companies to work for in 2008.

4. Seek the opportunities – go to job fairs and employment agencies, ask your friends and family to keep an eye out for you and ask them to put in a good word for you.

5. Interview thyself – always be ready for an interview here is a link INTERVIEW PREP to a document that will prepare for the interview. Also please take note that when you are being interviewed you can also ask the HR person questions about the company or job that are of importance to you. You will satisfy any curiosities you have about the job or the company and you will appear like a person who is serious and eager to work.

6. Vigilance – keep applying to jobs, keep looking for the job opportunities, keep working on improving your skill – never give up and never give in

You know something that I find funny about this article is that while I am typing it, my wife is applying to a company that allows for you to work from home. She is applying to be a home based customer service phone agent…check it out the website is contractxchange.com.

The job sounds and looks cool…take a look at it…because…Momma you got what it takes…