Community Corner
How To Expand Your Network
Knowing more people will lead to job leads and good advice.
Last week we talked about networking and building up or maintaining informal relationships, especially with people whose friendship could bring advantages, such as job or business opportunities. But how can you expand that network?
There are several networking groups in the area but none more convenient than Norton Networkers. The meetings are facilitated by Bill Lippincott, Anne Crawford and Barbara Martin. each Tuesday morning at 7:30 a.m. (a great way to start your day) and end about 9 a.m. Given the amount of time that you will spend in your job search, this will be 1 and ½ hours well spent.
Lippincott, Crawford and Martin also help with interviewing skills and resumes.
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Did you know that the average employer spends only 12 to 15 seconds reviewing your resume before they decide yes or no? You spend weeks making it perfect, and in seconds your future employer makes the decision to read more or move on. That being the case, how can you increase your chances of success? The best way is to have a powerful, knock their sox off summary statement.
In the old days, we used an objective statement. This would tell the employer what we wanted to do when we were hired. “I want to be the president of this company;" “I want to be the director of engineering!" Employers discovered that expense walks in the door on two legs. Today, they want to know what they will get for a return on their investment. “If I pay you, what can I expect in return?"
Find out what's happening in Nortonfor free with the latest updates from Patch.
Other helpful hints with your resume in 2011: Make sure that you have a proper email address. Doglover@hotmail.com or mycatiscool@yahoo.com are not proper emails. A proper email might be your name@hotmail, gmail, comcast, etc. Another hint, leave the parenthesis off the area code (508). Just type 508-285-XXXX. Finally, where as many job seekers have been working for a few years now, full resume experience today only go back 15 years. After all, what were Jon Lester, Tom Brady and President Obama doing 15 years ago? Not what they are getting paid to do today!
Brian Coughlin has lived in Norton most of his life and graduated from Norton High School. He has a Bachelor of Science degree in management from the University of Massachusetts and a Master of Science degree in management from Lesley University. He is a human resource consultant and has been operating his own business for six years. Check out his company page at www.coughlinHRconsulting.com.