Francine Fabricant | 29 May 2017 | no comments

Ready to hit send?

Getting a resume ready for employers in today’s job search may start with clearly written job descriptions and spellcheck, but today’s most successful resumes also get past high-tech recruiting tools such as applicant tracking software (ATS) and online job boards.

Today’s best resumes are written for people and robots.

The time you spent on font selections and spacing will pay off later on. Real people will read your resume once it makes it to their computer. However, if you can’t get your resume past the robots “screening” it, employers may never see it. Effective resumes now work just as well with the latest, high-tech recruiting technology as they do in the hand of a hiring manager.

Surprisingly, this is easier than you may think.

This list will help you make sure your resume is attention-grabbing for robots and also sets you up for a great interview in person.

Want more resume-writing tips for today’s high-tech job search, or resume-writing tips for an internship search or your first resume? Click here for tips on your first resume, and here for more advanced resume-writing tips and samples.

If you’re ready to share your resume with employers, but just want to check it over . . .

Use this resume checklist to hit “send” with confidence!

Francine Fabricant | 18 February 2017 | no comments

Using Creating Career Success at Home or In Class

With all the resources in Creating Career Success, I want to make sure that you’re getting the the most out of the book, so that you can better manage your career, make decisions, and move forward.

You may have challenging questions, and not know where to start. What skills will I need? What jobs will I like? How might those jobs change over time? What education is helpful?

The resources in Creating Career Success help you explore tough career questions like these, find real answers, and build your own career success.

What resources are part of Creating Career Success? 

Creating career success is not just a book, it is a comprehensive career program.

The program starts with self-assessment. This section has exercises and activities to help you consider what’s important to you in your career. Have you been thinking about taking a career test? We help you use results from 4 popular, evidence-based career tools in each of these important areas: Skills, Values, and Interests. Two of these are included with your purchase of the book. To access these, go to Cengage’s website, and open CourseMate, the student online companion. Interested in additional tools? Chapter 3: Preferences helps you use RIASEC Theory – a career theory that helps you identify careers that are consistent with your interest, and for which you can take an assessment called the Self-Directed Search(r) – and results from the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator(r) — also called the MBTI(r). While these tools don’t tell you what you should (or shouldn’t) do in your career, they can help you consider a wider range of careers and gain insights about yourself.

The program continues with a section to help you explore careers and make decisions. In this section, you explore the careers that sparked your interest in Part I. With tools to research, network, and make decisions, this section helps you evaluate your options, and put yourself in the position to take advantage of opportunities.

Finally, the third section prepares you to market yourself in a job or internship search. Included are sample resumes, cover letters, thank you letters, networking suggestions, emails, and suggestions for using social media in your job search.

Can I do this at home if I’m not in a career course?

Yes! The program is designed for use in a career course or at home. Career counselors and career coaches also use Creating Career Success with their clients.

At the end of each chapter, you complete a one page Q & A called “My Flexible Plan” to help you summarize your thoughts and feelings. This is your plan of analysis or plan of action, and it will help you move forward.

Are you an instructor, career counselor, or career coach?

We have resources for professionals, including an Instructors Resource Manual (with sample syllabi, suggestions for ice breakers and classroom activities, suggested videos, and more). To access these, create an account on Cengage Learning’s instructor companion site.

We also share career thoughts, resources, and insights on our Facebook page.

Do you have questions about using Creating Career Success? Let me know!

CCS_authors | 02 October 2013 | no comments

I am currently teaching an internship class where I require the students to blog about their internship experiences. I have been doing this for a couple of semesters now and this semester I have decided to blog along with them to give them examples about what they can blog about. My blog posts allow me to communicate with my students about some of my experiences which I might not have time for in class or may not feel is appropriate for the class.

Below was my first post to the class.

Is this your first internship? If not, write about your other internship experiences for your first blog post. If it is then what are you expecting to gain from this experience? My first internship was at the Waterman Conservation Education Center in Apalachin, NY in the late 1980’s. I was an Environmental Studies and Economics double major at SUNY Binghamton. I found what I was studying to be rather dismal and depressing; so I found myself a credit internship at a Nature Center. It was a great experience and I learned a lot. I remember that there was a class that I had to go to and I had to write and present a paper. There was a requirement of how many hours I had to intern.

After this internship I was still interested in environmental education as a possible career … so I did another internship. This one was full-time and I lived at the nature center. I didn’t need the credit so I took a semester off from school to do it. It was at the NYS DEC’s Rogers Environmental Education Center in Sherburne, NY. I received a $50 a week stipend and a place to live. At those two internships I worked with some of the nicest people l have ever met.

Those two internships led to a part-time job at another nature center in Johnson City, NY. Eventually, I decided that this wasn’t the right direction for me partly because my major was so policy focused and I still didn’t feel like I was really prepared. Also, being from the Bronx, I didn’t see myself living in the remote types of places where many of the jobs were located.

My love of nature and the environment are still important in my life even though its not my career. I regularly go hiking and for several years I served on the FIT’s Faculty Senate’s Ad Hoc Sustainability Committee. Internships can teach you a lot about what’s important to you even if you decide to pursue a different career.

Tell us about your internship experience.

About The Author

Jennifer Miller, MBA, MSED is an Associate Professor and Counselor in the Career and Internship Center at the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT) since 2001. She is very knowledgeable and passionate about sustainability and social media. In addition to counseling she taught Career Planning for several years and currently teaches internship courses on Career Exploration and Career Planning. She holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from Binghamton University in Binghamton, New York and she has two masters degrees; one in Guidance and Counseling from Hunter College in New York City, and one in Business Administration from Binghamton University.

CCS_authors | 05 October 2012 | no comments

We decided to write Creating Career Success: A Flexible Plan for the World of Work to help you create success on your own terms.

To do this, we knew we had to do three things.

• We had to help you decide what’s important for you in a career.  This would involve learning about yourself, including what you do well, what you like to do, and what’s important to you.

• Next, we knew you’d need skills to understand the current and evolving world of work. This would make it easier to identify careers that interest you and take advantage of opportunities throughout your lifetime.

• Finally, we wanted to give you effective tools to market yourself—online and in person—for the opportunities that interest you most.

Using these three steps as the book’s foundation, the flexible plan began to take shape, and we created a plan of analysis and action in every chapter to help you make decisions and move forward.

We know that careers evolve and shift in the real world, in real time. Even as we wrote the book, bringing you examples from the real world, tips from the latest research-based findings, and suggestions for using technology in all stages of your career development, we were already looking forward to the changes ahead. That is exactly why we are starting this blog.

Our blog offers resources to teach a career course or create your own career success directly from us, the authors of Creating Career Success: A Flexible Plan for The World of Work.

Follow the blog and join us in a conversation about careers.  Here are just a few of the items already on our to-blog list:

• Current issues in the news
• New resources and tools
• The latest technology
• Fascinating research
• Websites, blogs, and online resources
• Topics that impact careers, from friendships to politics

With your feedback and input, we can share our thoughts, concerns, and adventures.  We hope this will enhance your interaction with the book, and also give you new ideas to consider. We look forward to helping you define your own career success and take the steps to create it!

What do you want to hear more about?