All about Broadband Faults but you were afraid to ask… Part 2

Now we come to the “How To Fix” part of the guide. I promise I’ll try and make it as painless as possible.

You Can Be Typecast Too!

Have you ever wondered why some of your favourite stars turn up playing virtually the same characters in different shows? Is it because they are popular, are considered “favourites” by casting agents, don’t need as much time “getting into the part”, or is it that they are identified with playing a particular part?

You are just as much at risk of being typecast as any A-list or TV actor.

Top 10 tools for landing a better job

Lifehacker has a great article on the Top 10 tools for finding a better job.

Item #3 is definetely something worth exploring if you want to gain some extra leverage with RSS feeds.

10 Ways to Bide Your Time When You Hate Your Job

Stepcase Lifehack has an interesting article on 10 Ways to Bide Your Time When You Hate Your Job. For those of you who are stuck in unfulfilling jobs than this is for you.

Find Me A New Job and Earn £100

Some time ago I saw an article on Lifehacker on finding a new job by offering a  “bounty” . Now some people may think that this is an act of desparation, however I digress, in the current economic climate with jobs becoming scarce and the numbers of job seekers on the increase I think it actually makes sense… Ask yourself this question, if you were offered a financial incentive to do something would you jump at the opportunity if it was relatively straightforward..? Of course you would! How many people would happily buy a lottery ticket for a chance of winning some money.

I am now offering a bounty of £100 tax free

Now let’s get down to some hard facts, for the majority of people to get a job they have to use agencies due to the nature of the business. And we all know that the key to getting an interview lies with the Recruitment Consultant putting you forward to their clients. Consultants are sales-driven individuals who love making money and will do whatever it takes to keep hitting their targets and earning their commission. After all, a number of agencies now offer rewards for a referral that leads to a placement. So why not appeal to their better nature?

I am now offering a bounty of £100 tax free to any individual (friend, associate or consultant) for a job lead that results in an offer of employment.

Terms and Conditions

• To qualify you must first download a copy of my latest online CV and forward it to your HR department. You must provide a written letter from your HR department confirming recipt of the CV. If you an agency then you can obtain my latest CV through any of the major job boards.
• On recipt of a letter from your HR department and a Job Description I will contact you to inform you if your entry is acceptable. If the position proves to be unsuitable I will inform you that I do not wish to proceed with the vacancy.
• I am looking for a position as a “Systems Administrator”, “Systems Manager” or “Systems Analyst”. DO NOT attempt to put my CV forward for roles which are clearly unsuitable e.g. Refuse Collector unless they pay better salaries than IT!
• The salary will be in the region of £25,000 per annum and the position MUST be permanent.
• The position MUST be based in the North West of England within easy communting distance from Manchester.
• In the event of a formal job offer being made in writing, and subject to acceptance and satisfactory references, the sum of £100 will be paid to the person who provided the initial lead.

I’ve thrown down the gauntlet… So what are you waiting for!

Turbo-Charge Your Job Search

There are those who say that the key to recovering from a job loss is to make looking for work a full-time activity. Whilst this may hold true, I believe that there is only a certain amount of things you can do to find employment in any given day. If you’ve read my previous article “Unemployment 101″ than you will be aware of the necessity of establishing a daily routine to give your life some structure and semblance of normality.

Have you ever spent a whole day starting blankly at your computer and wonder where all the time has gone?

In this article we’ll be looking at what you can do to make using technology in your job search your servant, and not your master.

Have you ever spent a whole day starting blankly at your computer and wonder where all the time has gone? If this is you than you need to discipline yourself and make a point of checking your email at certain times of the day, and then aiming to process all your emails within a given time which you set yourself. How often you check is dependent on what works for you, mid morning and again mid to late afternoon is a good start. This gives enough time for an agency to contact you and for you to exchange several replies before the end of the day.

When searching for jobs there are two main methods. First are the local papers, most of which have online versions with all the job listings published that day. The other method is that of the Internet job boards, while some of these boards aggregate the vacancies from other sources others are directly linked to specific large recruitment agencies.

In order to make job searching easier it is possible to create a custom search that will send you the latest jobs by email that match the search criteria you specified. The important thing here is to ensure that you have covered all the relevant search terms in your search criteria. Doing this is really very simple, as all it takes is for you to spend some time browsing vacancies and building up a list of keywords obtained from the job titles and entering these into the search criteria on the particular job board. You will need to check the results for a few days to make sure that all the keywords are being correctly picked up.

If you use either Outlook or GMail as your email program there is an even easier way to get vacancies direct to your desktop as soon as they are posted without visiting Internet job boards. Both Outlook and GMail support RSS feeds, and most job boards now offer the ability to create and import an RSS feed for specific vacancies directly into your email program of choice.

If you use GMail you can take advantage of Google documents and store an on-line copy of you CV which means you can apply for jobs anywhere you have access to an Internet enabled computer e.g. staying with family, public libraries etc.

So there you have it, by making some changes to your email reading habits and taking advantage of both email job alerts and RSS feeds you have turbo-charged your job search activities and made yourself the master of your own destiny.

On Being Unemployed In A Recession

These days you cannot fail to hear the phrases “Economic Downturn”, “Recession” and “Credit Crunch” everytime you turn on your TV, listen to the radio or read a newspaper. All of these phrases mean the same thing no matter where you live on this planet, the good times have ended and it’s time to face up the harsh reality that when the going gets tough the working man gets laid off!