Father Sez

My two elder girls are almost ready to join the rat race. I am discussing with them the things they could do to better position themselves to get the job of their choice from the employer of their choice. And not to repeat the major mistake I have made of not managing my career.  

In Part 1, we covered an overview of the process. 

In Part 2, we covered the additional employability skills they would have to familiarize themselves with.

In Part 3, we looked at the realities of life as an employee as compared their past years as students. 

In Part 4, we looked at how to look for and understand the career options available to them.

Now in this Part 5, we talk about the all important resume.

Wikipedia defines a résumé as a document that contains a summary or listing of relevant job experience and education usually for the purpose of obtaining an interview when   seeking employment. Often the résumé or CV is the first item that a potential employer encounters regarding the job seeker, and therefore a large amount of importance is often ascribed to it.

You know what they say about first impressions. As the resume is the first thing a potential employer sees about the applicant, we have to make our resume jump and stand out from the pile of other resumes that the employer would receive.

There are two parts of the resume:

a)    The Content and

b)    The design or style or format, i.e. how the final document looks like.

A) Content

i) The grand daddy rule of the content part should be “Do not lie”.

ii) The second rule is from my favorite career counselor, Free Money Finance and I paraphrase from his very useful “How to write a winning resume””“The way to sell yourself in a resume is to cite specific strengths and abilities that companies need from someone in the job you want and support them with your accomplishments.“

In my daughters’ case, there will be some slight twists. As this is their entry into the working world, the instances they have to quote would be work related or applicable achievements in their extra curricular activities in school and college. Like the instance when my daughter was part of the fund raising committee of the Leo Club in her college and they raised RM200, by drawing tattoos for fellow students and selling herbal eggs.

Another step would be to understand and anticipate the requirements of the job applied for and state our readiness to be able to comply. For example, audit trainees generally have to work quite long hours since the audits usually carry tight deadlines and are bunched up during certain times of the year.

Being comfortable in making presentations to a group of people would be a plus if the job involved marketing or training.

FMF also says that we should do some creative writing so as to make our resume sparkle with accomplishments. This would force recruiters to invite us for an interview. This makes absolute sense.

Yahoo Finance reminds us to keep the resume short and to quality check to eliminate misspellings and other obvious gaffes. I could also do with this advice. I blush with embarrassment whenever I read a post of mine and detect such obvious grammar and spelling errors.

These days lots of resumes are submitted online. Yahoo Finance also talks about the differences between a paper version and its online cousin. The writing of an online resume would be akin to SEO optimization, as it seems that the filters might reject submissions without the required minimum number of keywords corresponding to the skill set of the available position.

“The purpose is not to look like an individual, it’s to look like a match,” says Pat Kendall, a career coach in Tigard, Ore., who optimizes clients’ résumés for online submission.

B) Design 

I am quite hopeless at this. However I ran into 2 very useful guides.  Life Clever’s excellent step by step face lift he did on a typical run of the mill resume. And in about 4 steps he (she??) managed to “Cinderallise” the resume. 

And for even more design options, look at JobMob’s Beautiful Resume Ideas that Work. 

I thank them sincerely for their selfless sharing.

I have sat at both sides of the interviewing table in my career. I know how easy it is to toss out a lousy, insipid resume. I also know that just by reading a resume, you can come to a conclusion that this candidate is the one who would be solving all our problems.  

The resume is the door opener. We have to make sure our resume not only gets the door open, but also get us invited for the interview. 

Actually the resource links that I have used in writing this post were given to my girl just before I left to India to attend what turned out to be my mother’s funeral. My daughter has done justice to these resources and come up with a resume, which I think, I would have opened a door for. 

Her resume is being used now to actively seek interviews. I’ll post on this process in the next installment of this series.

Picture Credit: Google Images

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It has been quite sometime since I posted about this exercise I am doing with my girls.  

Just to recap, my two elder girls are almost ready to join the rat race. I am trying to discuss with and suggest to them the things they can do to better position themselves to get the job of their choice from the employer of their choice. And not to repeat the major mistake I have made of not managing my career.  

In Part 1, we covered an overview of the process. 

In Part 2, we covered the additional employability skills they would have to familiarize themselves with.

In Part 3, we looked at the realities of life as an employee as compared their past years as students. 

The plans for Part 4, 5 and 6 were for:-

a)    My girls to understand the career options available to them,

b)    The preparing of a good resume and identifying the companies and  

c)     The seeking of the interviews and doing well at them.

Well, that is still the plan. And though I keep referring to “girls”, the eldest has yet to complete her final exams which are due in mid May 08. I am sure she’ll understand the principles, as I go through this with her younger sister.

For our second girl, Azah who did Accounting and Finance, the resources used to learn about her career options (in addition to what her University Counselors had talked to her) were basically :

a) Clever Dude’s very useful post on why people work and some of the attributes of career selection and

b) The informative articles in About.com on the definitions of the Finance Function and the Financial Services Industry, the advantages of a career in Financial Services and the differences of the producer and support function in Financial Services.

I also chipped in with the almost exponential growth in Islamic Finance where Malaysia is  acknowledged as being at least one of the world leaders. The International Centre for Education in Islamic Finance (INCEIF) which offers courses in Islamic Finance is based in Malaysia and is widely accepted as a pioneering teaching institution in this field.

Lately, too, Squawkfox has started a series on finding our career calling and discovering the five paths to our perfect job. I have also given the links to my daughters and I am sure they’ll find it useful. (Having worked in ten companies and with seven different career paths, this lady is eminently qualified to be a career counselor.)

Perhaps it’s a little too much to expect my daughter to be able to clearly define her career choices immediately. She is still a little unsure of her career choices. For a start, we have agreed upon that she should concentrate on companies that offer good opportunities for training and personal and career development.

Note:

My daughter has already prepared her resume and submitted it to some institutions which fit the above general description. She has also applied to a few other companies that had adverts for vacancies in the financial support functions. So far, she has attended one interview. We shall write about this later.

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I have written before about my farm. The farm is expected to have its trial runs next month and begin operations in September / October 08. As such, I have been keeping a sharp lookout for tips, suggestions or advice on aspects of running a business.  

I read Jason Calacanis’s post on a list of 17 tips on how to save money running a start up. Though I did not find anything that would be of special interest for me, this post appears to have raised a storm on how the post addressed the issue of workers.  

Ben Yoskovitz of The Instigator Blog went deeper into the issue of whether to hire workaholics for a start up, and lists his choice of character traits he would want his workers to have.  It is clear that we would all want workers who are :- 

-         Honest,

-         Can and want  to work hard,

-         Passionate about the business,

-         Team players,

-         Willing to go the extra mile for the business. 

I’ll certainly need to find such people to work with me on the farm. I am sure, with some adroit searching, I should be able to find someone with most of the above requirements. 

On the other hand, what would the “potential worker” be looking for? Would working in a small goat farm excite anyone enough to be willing to go the extra mile?  

Farm jobs are generally low paying ones. They also have limited scope for upward mobility and none of the usual perks found in working in a city office. In addition, they involve long hours and hard physical work. The usually lowly educated farm workers are easily enticed into other jobs by small increases in pay. 

Mistakes or carelessness may result in death of livestock. And reliable farm staff are not easily available, so when a worker walks off, it is quite painful. 

Considering all these, this is my plan to get workers who fit the “ideal worker” profile.

 a) I have to look for them in places where low pay by Malaysian standards is not too bad a deal. 

Indonesia, Myanmar and Indian workers are quite common in a lot of Malaysian farms, factories and even households as maids. Many of them come from rural background where they’ll have some idea of farm work. 

I have no intention of just getting my workers from the employment agencies. I’ll have to invest time and effort to make sure I get workers whose backgrounds “father authority” figures I get to know.  By “father authority”, I refer to his local leader whose opinion he would respect and obey.  

I plan to visit Indonesia for this specific purpose of finding suitable workers. Before the visit, I’ll get the process of short listing done by asking assistance from our Indonesian partners for the tower project as well as some other Indonesian elders whom we know.  

 b) I have to look out for them just as I would look out for my children.

These workers would have dreams that are not too different from mine. They would want to provide for their families as well as they can. They would want a good retirement fund. They would want to provide better education opportunities for their children than they themselves had.  I have to work out a way where the free funds they would be able to save from their wages would be better than whatever they have legally tried so far.  I would have to provide them with decent accommodation and food. I would have to guide them on some savings strategies such that they see a fund growing. 

c) I have to train and motivate them well 

This will be a little tricky, as I myself do not know much about goat rearing. However, I am confident that the training methods applied in Ghana with my Ghanaian colleagues will work in good stead.  The system I followed then was :-

-         being open with them,

-         discussing with them on what would be the best way to do something,

-         documenting the process in simple diagrams,

-         continuously reviewing this process with them to ensure their comprehension,

-         allowing them free room to improve on this base process and

-         documenting the new improved process and so on. 

Motivation on the other hand is not something where a standard template can be applied. On this I’ll have to tread carefully. I believe that if there is mutual trust and if I can show him that there is a great bright light ahead, I should be on the right track. 

d) Still, I cannot expect to keep increasing their wages as time passes. 

Some years ago, I was working in a hotel chain. The Hotel Staff Union of Malaysia has a good employment contract, with yearly increases in wages. This got to a state, where the bellhops, after working for umpteen years, were earning salaries on par with graduate workers with a few years of experience. Eventually this proved unsustainable and the hotel chain closed down. 

I am planning to open mirror operations, where I put up the finances and they run the farms on a profit sharing basis. Say, after 5 years. By then, both of us should be able to gauge our respective sincerities and trust in each other well. 

This way:-

a) My most experienced and trusted workers have a chance to run their own businesses,

b) I should be able to provide a way out to the problem of high cost people in low cost jobs and,

c) allow me to embark on the expansion path. 

Looks to me like a good win-win situation.  

In the final analysis, I believe that the employer should take care of the employee well and the employee then takes care of the rest.  

The human aspect of my start up is where cost considerations will not be my primary focus. 

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This will be a question that my wife and I will be asking ourselves quite soon. 

Our two elder girls should be graduating next May, and will be looking to join the rat race. 

We have friends who run businesses or are senior level executives in some of the bigger companies in town.  

Should we let our children go through the process of writing a proper resume, apply for jobs, practice selling themselves at the interview and find their first job by themselves?  

Or as parents, should we lend a “helping hand”? 

My wife and I have decided that our helping hand will be limited to helping the children pick up (in necessary, through additional formal education) non academic skills that may assist them in their careers. 

After that, Along and Aja have to do their best to sort themselves out. 

My wife and I, believe that in asking a “friend” to employ our children, we may in some way, compromise our relationships. Our friends, just like any other employer, would have to screen all applicants and chose whom they think are best suited. 

My wife and I just have to focus on guiding and preparing our children as best as we can, so that they fall within the “best suited” or at least “better suited” category

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This is an issue that has nagged me on how I should advise my daughters. 

Jim Citrin wrote an article on this in Yahoo Finance.

(My thanks to Free Money Finance, (www.freemoneyfinance.com), one of my must read personal financial management blogs, who pointed us to this article.) 

Mr. Citrin says that the key to a blazing start would be :- 

a)  Choose the right first job by  

i)                  Going blue chip, i.e. choosing a major corporation to work for. This will help establish your brand, as you will be associated more with the company you work for rather than the job that you do. 

ii)                Follow your passions,   

iii)             Pick your boss carefully, 

iv)              Focus not on compensation. The payoff will come later. 

b)  Get off on a great start by  

i)                  Maintain a positive attitude, 

ii)                Work hard 

iii)             Deliver on your commitments 

iv)              Do completed staff work, i.e. go beyond the rote to understand why something is asked for and how it will be used when completed. 

v)                Focus on the success of others. Look for ways to be helpful. Be proactive and be willing to do extra or unpopular work. Keep focused on the goals of your boss, your team and your company. 

(My wife and I have always been driving the idea to my children of starting their own businesses. So whilst any career option should be merely a stepping stone in this direction, we agree that our kids should start off with a career and they should start it right.) 

To fuel a great career start, I am completely in agreement with the suggestions listed in (b).  

However on (a), it may not be immediately possible to latch on to a “blue chip”, or to know enough to be able to make a wise choice of the boss.  

Rather than to keep rejecting job offers that may come, I would advise my children to take an opportunity that pays reasonably, and is aligned to their passions / interests. 

Then they should :- 

-         focus on adding value to the employer. (The five items of list (b) are a great guide for this.) 

-         Polish and improve their own skills. Learn as much as they can. Pick up new skills, get additional certification, join an association, and build up their network. 

I think this would be great starting blocks for their career. 

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Along and Aja should graduate next year, and then join the employment grind, very aptly named the rat race. 

My wife and I, have long decided that school and university grades are no longer a season ticket for a “good job” and a steady income. These grades are simply not enough. 

The Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory (NWREL), has a mission to improve learning by building capacity in schools, families, and communities through applied research and development.  In one of their publications, they quote extensive research done on employer dissatisfaction with the “employability skills” (defined as skills other than technical skills that make the employee an asset to the employer), of the current entry level workforce.  

They further list the desired skills under three categories as follows  

More tellingly, the research quotes that the employers agree to provide technical and job specific training, but are emphatic in their conviction that the schools should take most of the responsibility for equipping young people with general employability skills.

If the schools don’t and the employers won’t, then who will?

Sigh! The parents, of course.

Some of the above listed skills, my children already have. Over the years, our family values have instilled these in them. The others, like “formal decision making skills”, etc, will have to be taught.

No one taught my wife or me, “decision making skills”. We just picked them along the way and still make some wrong decisions.  Over the next year, my wife and I would have to come up with a strategy to equip our children well.

We would appreciate your sharing your experiences on this. 

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