TheJobBored

Until last weekend, I had never heard of PaycheckCity.com (h/t NYTimes).

But I’m glad I was turned on to them. They have 3 free and insanely useful online calculators and assistants that are designed to help the average worker.

The most impressive to me is the W-4 form assistant. Isn’t it confusing every time you start a new job and you have to give them info for the W-4? How many dependents should you claim? How many exemptions? Especially for the younger workers out there, what about student loan debt and other considerations?

This W-4 form assistant will help you out.

They also have a Salary Paycheck Calculator and an Hourly Paycheck Calculator, both accessible from the main page.

There’s a lot of literature out there along the lines of: “The 50 Most Common Interview Questions and How To Answer Them.”

I’m not sure I’m a big fan of these articles. I mean, they’re a good exercise… they help you get a sense of the kind of questions that might come up. But an interview is not like a written multiple choice test. It’s a conversation. If you think you can get by with memorized answers and not sound stupid, you’re wrong. Besides, like anything else in life, chances are the interview won’t go like the article says it will. Most of the questions you get in an interview won’t be in any of the books you could have studied.

But there is one common interview question that I think you should definitely anticipate and prepare for. At some point in the interview process - usually near the end - you’re likely to hear something along the lines of:

Do you have any questions?

I definitely recommend you have a response planned for this one.

Why? Well, several reasons actually. [Read more →]

I’ve written before that I’m worried people chained to underwater mortgages will upset the supply and demand balance in the job market.

One of the unique things about the American job landscape is the ability of workers to easily go to where the jobs are. If you can’t find decent work in New Jersey, you can up and move to Washington State (the equivalent distance of moving from England to Syria) if that’s where they’re hiring.

Think about it. Do you currently work in the town (or even state) you were born in? What about the town or state your parents were born in? Or your grandparents? American workers are very mobile and flexible workers.

Maybe not so much anymore.

[D]epressed sales and sinking home prices in many parts of the country are complicating relocations and transfers for thousands of workers … A survey last year by Worldwide ERC, a nonprofit association that represents relocation specialists, found that depressed home values emerged as the No. 1 reason for resisting job transfers for the first time in more than 10 years.

Of the member organizations that reported employee reluctance to move, 71 percent cited the sluggish real estate market as an impediment to a job-related move, up from 16 percent last year.

[Read more →]

There’s a new site for job seekers that has gotten a fair amount of press recently.

Glassdoor doesn’t offer job ads (yet). Instead, the focus is on trying collect and disseminate the inside scoop about a company or a given position. They do this on a give-to-get basis. Dream of being a software engineer at Google? No problem. You can find out how much that position pays, what the work environment is like and even some frank assessments of the management team. But first, you have to offer up the same information (anonymously) about your existing job.

The site is pretty heavy on the tech industry right now, mostly focusing on Silicon Valley jobs and companies. Don’t look for much information (yet) about accounting jobs in Cleveland.

[Read more →]

Just a quick note before I get the comments: there’s no Obama or Hillary bias intended here. I’ve not been a supporter of either candidate.

1) Experience is not always a trump card. There are times when all the experience in the world is not what people are looking for. Because…

2) Sometimes people are looking for new ideas. In this modern business world, the “next big thing” is a powerful notion. Promising innovation and new ways of thinking can be the quickest way up the career ladder.

3) Never underestimate your competition. The truth is, Obama, the relative newcomer to nationwide campaigning, built a more effective and efficient political machine than Clinton, who had decades of experience. Dismiss your rivals at your own peril. [Read more →]

1. First, take the sick day. Stay home. You don’t get any bonus points for being a martyr and trying to work through a cold. And you’re just going to get everyone else in the office sick, thereby destroying the productivity of your whole team. You know how much you hate it when the guy in the cubicle next to you is sneezing and sniffling all over the place? Today, that guy is you. Do everyone else a favor and be a one-person quarantine.
2. Take steps to stay in the loop. If you’re gone for one day or one week, try to arrange things so that you’re not too far behind the 8 ball when you get back. Set up your emails to forward home. Set out of office replies. Have someone check in with you to let you know what you miss. [Read more →]

via Cheezhead, we learn about a new employment website targeting the Life Sciences industry: Beaker.com.

Obviously, I can’t resist posting about this site so I can make the same Muppets gag that Joel did.

But also, because I think this sort of thing will be a trend for the foreseeable future.

Niche Job Boards have long carved out, well, a strong niche serving specific industries. And some of these niche sites have not been proper job boards at all, but in fact, grew organically from pre-existing communities. I’m thinking specifically of sites like CafePharma for pharmaceutical sales jobs. Often, the authoritative job site for a given industry is not a well-known brand name.

In the age of Ning and social-networking software anyone can do, I think that industry-community sites will become more common. After all, where better to search for a job in your industry than at the water-cooler site where your colleagues hang out to shoot the breeze?

This is clearly what Beaker.com is after:

Beaker offers life sciences professionals a dynamic, online community that will help manage all stages of their career. For life sciences organizations, Beaker will serve as a hub for the industry, where they can more effectively and efficiently reach the best talent in the market. [Read more →]

Yesterday, I had a quick post about the one page resume myth.

But what happens if you can’t even fill one page? Usually, you’d only encounter this situation if you a) haven’t had much work experience or b) held only one job for a long period of time.

There are solutions for these problems.

If you’re a student or recent grad, and you don’t have much work experience, the solution is simple: just load up on your grades, academic achievements and other activities. An employer will understand that a young person might not have an extensive career history. They know you’re just starting out. You just need to show them you have something on the ball and are eager to gain experience. Listing grades, courses taken, clubs, sports, activities… that’s the sort of thing you will fill your resume with. It shows you have a pulse. [Read more →]

Let me take the time here to quickly address a pet peeve of mine.

Your resume can be more than one page. Trust me.

I don’t know why this is, but a certain segment of the populations holds fast to the notion that a resume can be one page and one page only. This is simply not true. Of the hundreds of resumes ResumeWriters produces a week, I would say more than half are 2-pagers. Some are 3 pagers.

If you have career or job search question you would like answered on this blog, click here to Ask Brian.

Reader Sarah asks:

I enjoy reading your site and have already learned some useful tips from it. I have a random question that I can’t find an answer to anywhere on the internet: What does the term “confidential letter of interest” mean? I just read a job announcement (one I want to apply for) and it said, “please send a confidential letter of interest and resume…”

I know what a cover letter is. I guess I don’t understand what makes a letter of interest “confidential.” Does it mean that THEY aren’t going to let anyone else read it? Or does it mean I have to do something on my end. It just seems like a pointless phrase that obscures more than it clarifies!

Brian answers after the break: [Read more →]