Most people spend more waking hours working than doing any other activity so why not be happy while you’re doing it. As the job market begins to pick up, it’s a great time to make a move and one factor that could influence this move is your happiness in your current role.  As a recruiter, my first question is along these lines, are you unhappy with in your current position or what would make you happy in a new position? Is it a boss who is more available? More money? A more flexible schedule?  Do you want more responsibilities?

I came across an article, “The happiest jobs in America” which set out to determine what positions people found the greatest overall enjoyment in their position.  A website, CareerBliss.com, did a survey  and broke overall happiness into these 10 categories

·         Relationship with boss

·         Relationship with co-workers

·         Growth potential and opportunities

·         Company culture

·         Daily tasks

·         How much control over daily tasks

·         Compensation

·         Work environment

·         Company reputation

·         Job resources  

In thinking about a career change, position change or just overall looking for a new company, look at each of these areas and determine which are most important and which areas you might be willing to compromise. This will help you and your recruiter know exactly what will make your next position better than your current one.  I would suggest you actually sit down with a piece of paper and rate of a scale of 1-5 your thoughts on each of these categories. If your current company has horrible culture and your co-workers are awful but you love the responsibilities, ask yourself if you’re willing to leave your job for a better culture.  This will help you tremendously. For instance, if you go into an interview and you know you want better culture, ask about it during the interview.  Also, when you’re in the lobby, pay attention to how people treat each other and when you walk past desks, see if people are interacting or just look miserable.  This isn’t a 100% way to determine culture but will give you a general idea.

When I was reading the article I was shocked to find out who the happiest employees were in America, Software Quality Assurance Engineer. Yup, the folks who do software testing. This is great, an IT career is the happiest job in America. If you’re doing QA in Indianapolis and aren’t happy, please reach out. But really, there are dozens of industries and tons of jobs in the United States and the happiest employees just happen to be in IT. This should everyone working in an IT department hope that there are companies who are hitting the mark in these 10 categories.   My challenge to you is to decide if you’re happy with your current role and if not, decide what you would be happier doing or what type of company would you be happy working for, then give me a ring and let me help you find this new position.

Credit: 

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jacquelynsmith/2012/03/23/the-happiest-jobs-in-america/

 

When a hiring manager looks at your resume, does it present you in the same way that you would present yourself, your job, and your responsibilities in person?  I recently read an article that was rather comical yet had some great things to say about this very topic.  In most cases, we have learned through education or some other avenue, that what a hiring manager wants to see are words that jump out to them, makes your resume stand out, or LARGE words that describe your responsibilities.  Is this really the case or does it make you sound pretentious or even sound as if you are lying?

In most cases, we would never think to describe ourselves in person as we do on paper.  Take my current career for example.  I would never describe what I do as “Passionately and successfully managing the sourcing, delivery, and staffing of incredibly qualified candidates to fulfill client’s needs.”  Believe it or not, I see resumes all day that have statements like this ALL OVER THEM.  To some, that may seem like a great resume “bullet point.”  Statements like that do nothing but make me 1) laugh 2) think you are trying way too hard 3) move along to the next resume.  I would much rather see a statement that reads “Manage sourcing, delivery, and staffing of qualified candidates to fulfill client’s requirements.”  To me, it just gives the statement and resume more integrity when I see statements that I know are not stretching the truth.  A part of the article speaks to straying away from 10 specific words in a resume.  Although I believe that some of these words can be used in a resume to portray you accurately, the author has a great point.  In most cases, the words we use to describe ourselves in resumes are accurate when others describe us, but when we describe ourselves it makes us sound very arrogant. 

The list of words the author dives into are as follows:

Motivated, Authority, Global Provider, Innovative, Creative, Curator, Passionate, Unique, Guru, and everyone’s favorite…… Incredibly

Some of these descriptive words may seem like they would be a good idea.  As I described earlier, in some cases they may be, but take a look at the article as it goes into more detail on his reasoning.  One thing I did take away from this article is that if you are able to accurately depict what you are doing in your current and past work, and you truly are a (Motivated, Authority, Global Provider, Innovative, Creative, Curator, Passionate, Unique, Guru, and Incredible resource), hiring managers will be able to see that simply from your experience and responsibilities.

Here is a link to the article.  I think you will enjoy it!

http://www.inc.com/jeff-haden/10-ways-you-should-never-describe-yourself.html 

I recently read an article in the New York Times (Do Job Titles Really Matter?) regarding the significance of Job Titles, and it made me ponder the question: How Important are titles?

The author pointed out both side of the argument. On one hand, you have the group of individuals who care a great deal about their titles, and believe that titles carry a good deal of weight. The counter argument is that your title doesn’t matter; it’s your day-to-day duties and their impact on the organization. Personally, I prefer the latter.

Working as a Technical Recruiter (yes, that’s my title), I peruse hundreds of resumes each week, so I would like to think that I have seen about 98% of the IT Titles out there. I’ve seen everything from the standards, Senior Project Manager to Application Engineer, but I’ve also came across titles (yes, on resumes) like Master .Net Ninja and Mobile Rockstar. To me this screams that the societal norms surrounding titles are shifting, even if it’s just within the IT sector.

With that being said, I have had deals fall through because the position was titled an “Analyst” and not an “Engineer.” To me that’s absurd, but again there are some valid reasons for placing stock in a title. Some people believe that certain titles command more respect than others or that it means they’ve reached a life goal.  

Honestly, I can see some validity in that. But from my perspective, you could give me the title of “Voicemail Assassin” or “Introduction Facilitator” and that would not change my day-to-day role or view on my position.

There again, that is only my opinion. What do you think? Feel free to comment or drop me a piece of mail with your thoughts.