Hello, my name is Anna Tulchinsky. I am the editor of this newsletter as well as all other stuff that gets published on the PulseHR website. If you find this newsletter interesting and helpful, feel free to forward it to your friends and colleagues.
Issue 07
November 26 , 2002
C O N T E N T S:
1. Health related goodies
2. Decorating your Christmas tree or how to use formatting tools in your resume
3. Nobody ever tells you how to get those first few orders
4. Why job boards are good for you?
5. What's missing?
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Health related goodies
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Low fertility and frequent pregnancy complications may be the price that humans have paid for evolving a large brain. For the fetus to get enough nutrients to grow a hefty brain the placenta has to aggressively invade a mother's uterus, says a new theory. But that can also provoke her immune system, causing dangerous complications.
The Canada Health Act is Canada's federal health insurance legislation. The most striking difference between the old acts and the new Canada Health Act was the addition of provisions aimed at eliminating direct charges to patient in the form of extra-billing and user charges, with respect to insured health care services. These charges are discouraged under the Act by being subject to mandatory dollar-for-dollar deductions from federal transfer payments to the provinces and territories.
An Australian scientific research team said on Tuesday it had identified 153 genes affected by schizophrenia in a step toward discovering the causes of the illness. The 153 affected genes were identified after completing high-throughput screening of 12,000 genes in post-mortem studies of brain tissue from schizophrenia sufferers. "Within that affected group will be the core genes that actually cause the symptoms of the illness, and clearly that is what we are trying to get at," Mental Health Research Institute Associate Professor Brian Dean told Reuters. The research team at the institute's Rebecca Cooper Laboratories outlined its plans to identify the core genes to the Australian Health and Medical Research Congress.
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Decorating your Christmas tree or how to use formatting tools in your resume
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The most important rule is not to confuse these two things: Christmas tree decorating and resume formatting.
Men usually use less formatting tools than women, but boy, if they do, then their text is really hard to read. Women, on the other hand, tend to overdo their formatting, using bold, underline and italics way too much.
Here is a quick list of 10 rules that you might find useful.
1) use as less formatting as possible. The formatting tools should be used as visual guidelines for you reader, not decoration.
2) treat your formatting like your clothes, your *tie and suit*, so to say. Make sure you don't look like a bum or a clown. All you need is to look decent.
3) scale your information into various classes and arrange it accordingly. Identify - from the employer's perspective - what should be your primary info, what is secondary and what is supplementary. This applies to *subsections" as well. For example, do not start your entry with the dates, this is not what's important for your employers. You employer wants to know *what* you were doing first, then *where* and only after that *when*.
4) fill all pages in full, never 1.5 or 2.5. And do not break up a section from one page onto another. Always start a new page with a new section.
5) use footers. Include page count (# out of # is the best choice, since it tells your reader how many pages there are in total and helps, in case your resume gets printed and one of the pages is misplaced), your name and the position you are applying for.
6) do not use tables, colors or photos. Your resume should never look like a web page, even if it is in .html format
7) do not use .html format. It might become the norm in the future, but at this time, it isn't. Your employers are not teenagers, they are used to certain standards and expect their future "employees" to have the same approach. Use formats everyone is accustomed to (Word or Plain Text).
8) use one line per point when describing your achievements. Do not run over onto the second line.
9) do not bold anything longer than 2-3 words. The best thing to bold is the name of the position (not dates, not name of the organization, not addresses).
10) use a lot of space and make it "easy on the eyes" for your reader. If your resume looks *neat*, it will be easy to read.
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Nobody
ever tells you how to get those first few sales
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If you have ever wondered through the business book sections in Chapters, I am sure you noticed that there is a lot of books on how to start your own business, how to write a marketing and business plan, how to find financing, etc. But there aren't too many books that teach you how to make your first few sales, if you have never done that before. Nobody ever tells you first do that, then do this, after that do that, and then send an invoice. Why? Simply because they either don't know (someone else made those first few sales before they joined the company) or because all other stuff will be virtually useless. It's not hard to start your own business, it's very easy to write business plans, it's not hard to establish your own network, nothing is really hard, except for those first few sales. The most difficult and important thing to know is how to *make* people buy your stuff. How, really?
Despite the fact that all of us find ourselves in the position of a job seeker at least a few times throughout our careers, very few of us realize that getting employers to hire you is virtually the same thing as making people buy things from you (imagine selling large and expensive things, like refrigerators, for example!). It might sound somewhat unpleasant, but in fact when we are looking for a job and sending our applications to employers we are *selling* ourselves (our time and skills, to be precise) to them. From my experience, the one thing I suggest job seekers always keep in mind is that employers don't need you no matter how good you are, it is always you who need them. The customer is always right. The labour market is still a market. You may be great, you may even be a genius, but if you can't sell yourself right, nobody will "buy" you.
If you keep this simple rule in mind all the time while you are doing your job search (I mean all the time), you will be surprised how quickly you will notice "marketing" flaws in your resume and cover letter and will be able to correct them. Just ask yourself "will I buy this?". You will no longer feel "hurt" by employers not replying to you, you will be patient and persistent, since you know that on every 100 professional targeted applications one can expect a maximum 10% response rate, that's response, not purchases, and for "targeted and professional" applications! [Are you doing it in a professional and targeted way or simply clicking the 'send' and 'apply' buttons every now and then?]
Just think like a salesman and always have a consumer perspective in mind, and your job search will move on faster.
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Why job boards are good for you?
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- Simple, it's a market place. A labour market place, to be precise.
When employers need to "buy somebody", they either use the services of their "sales agents" (recruiting or search firms) or use the malls (job boards). At the malls, they get tired quickly of walking from isle to isle (specifying keywords to look for profiles), so they subscribe for a "delivery" service (have profiles delivered to them). It's as simple as that and does not get more complicated. With one clause. Employers always want quality staff and they more and more often prefer to do their shopping at "boutique" places (specialized job boards like ours). Once they join a boutique, they use the delivery service. That's why specialized job boards are good for you. They place you where your "customer" is.
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What's missing?
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As I write this newsletter every week, I bring up points which I think would be most useful to our users, all of whom are looking for a job, of course, otherwise, they wouldn't be our users. I base my information on observations I make as I receive resumes and requests from job seekers from all over the world. However, I can't possibly guess all questions and difficulties our users may have in regard to their job search. Therefore, if you would like me to cover a specific topic, which would also be useful to all other users, let me know. You can write to me at anna@pulsehr.com .
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- The End -
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To give me your feedback or ask a question, write to me at anna@pulsehr.com . I personally reply to all questions in the hope that my information and advice will be of help to people seeking employment, i.e. means to advance in life while supporting themselves and their loved ones. If you send me an email and do not receive a reply within two business days, there might have been a communication error or our server may have rejected your email, in which case please re-send your message.
Anna Tulchinsky,
Ph.D.Can. & PulseHR Co-founder
+1(613) 231-6308
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