Thanks very much for reading the Resume Machine blog! On behalf of the Resume Machine team, we wanted to let you know that the blog here is going to be inactive for a while, as we mine the content to use for articles we’ll be sending to article banks, archives, directories, and so forth, all across the Web.

In the meantime, the team is still hard at work, making sure your resumes get into the hands of the recruiters, headhunters, and other centers of influence who need to know about you. So please do check out our resume distribution service, and thanks again for your interest in Resume Machine!

Well, it just so happens that the “Required Reading” category on the blog was due for an update, and by sheer coincidence, Monster.com has come out with a 2007 “Career Book Gift Guide.”
With only two criteria for selection (published in 2007, helping people “rethink what it means to work in the 21st century”), this may not be a “best of” list, but it’s certainly an “all-inclusive” list. Just about every manager, executive, or professional out there will find something of interest on this list, with one glaring exception.

There’s nothing here to provide specific aid to the job seeker looking for a new opportunity. And while our 10th “bonus” recommendation is pitched more toward internal promotion than external opportunity, the lessons cross over very well. I’ve added links to see more on Amazon.com about them, along with their current customer ratings.

I hope this provides some inspiration for you or a friend, family member, or colleague this holiday season!

(If no author is mentioned, it means there were multiple contributors.) 

Sylvia Ann Hewlett’s Off-ramps and On-ramps: Keeping Talented Women on the Road to Success (5 stars)

Chindia: How China and India Are Revolutionizing Global Business (3.5 stars)

The Princeton Review’s What to Do with Your English or Communications Degree (no customer reviews)

Jeri Sedlar and Rick Miners’s Don’t Retire, REWIRE! (4.5 stars)

Bill Clinton’s Giving: How Each of Us Can Change the World (3.5 stars)

Responsibility at Work: How Leading Professionals Act (or Don’t Act) Responsibly (5 stars)Timothy Ferriss’s The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich (4.5 stars)

Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams’s Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything (4 stars)

Jeffrey Liker and David Meier’s Toyota Talent (5 stars)

And our “On the nose” 10th book for holiday gift-giving:Susan Britton Whitcomb’s 30-Day Job Promotion by (5 stars)

That’s why we’re offering this little holiday gift - the latest and greatest from some of the most respected online career and resume destinations. Give your inbox a break - unsubscribe from them, and get clicking here:

From Monster.com:

Simplify Your Work Life: Lessons from Life Hacks (link)

360-Degree Evaluations (link)

Dodge Degree-Mill Scams (link)

From HotJobs.com:

Top 10 Ways to Use the Web to Get a Job (link)

‘Green Collar’ Jobs Are Poised for Growth (link)

Holiday Party Fouls Die Hard (link)

From 6FigureJobs.com:

Looking for a Better Job? 3 Tried-and-true Ways to Help You Stay Ahead in an Ever-changing Market… (link)

Your Resume: Does It Sing? Or Does It Stink? (link)

Business Opportunity or Franchising – Which Is Best for You? (link)

Recently, I helped a company carry out their presence at an industry trade show. Without a heck of a lot of experience in this area, I had to pick up some expertise pretty fast.

In my research, I found that (perhaps not a surprise) differentiation was cited as a huge key to trade show success. Yet time and again, I read that the overwhelming majority of companies committed the same crimes repeatedly:

1. Executing their trade show presence the same way they’ve always done it
2. Copying the competition’s trade show presence without bothering to learn why (or if) it’s successful
3. Not looking at any of the reasons or psychology behind trade show success stories
On that last point, one of the things I read (which, if I’m a complete amateur, should have been known by the experienced folks) was never to have seating in the public booth area, because no one wants to sit down and thus be trapped by a booth sales person. Yet I saw more than a few booths with chairs and couches. Not only were they empty, the booths were, too.
This does relate to resumes and your job search - bear with me one more paragraph. 

So with differentiation as a key, the trade show books suggested going to trade shows outside your own industry to look for new ideas. And the same goes for your own career search. There may be a general “form” to resumes, but it’s not a formula. Check out how people in other industries communicate their value, if you want to freshen things up a bit.

In fact, you might discover a whole new set of interesting opportunities by looking into other industries - job opportunities you might never have known about or considered, but that could be even better for the picture you have of your ultimate career success.

At worst, by diving in and sampling the best within other industries, you might learn some insights that help your performance at your current job. If your job search isn’t moving as fast as you’d like, or you can’t find the right position for you right now, an improvement in your current situation could be just the ticket for career satisfaction.

My brother-in-law has been going out on interviews the past couple of weeks. As Fleet Safety Manager for Princess Cruises for six years, he has a certain set of expertise, and while he’s not going to find many cruise ship jobs in New Hampshire, he has a lot of skills which translate well, and he’s looking for similar work.

He called me after one recent interview, and though he said the questions they asked him covered more of his expertise than any other so far, he also (and more importantly) said something to the effect of:

If they make an offer, I don’t think I’ll take it. They were pretty stiff and boring.

Of course, interviews are bound to be more formal, but there’s something to be said for letting your personality shine through in an interview - on both sides of the interview desk. But he got me to thinking about the job search process, and finding something as close to your ideal job as possible on your next career transition.

I know some folks may not be in a position to choose, so to speak - if you’ve been out of work for a while, you may need to jump at the first opportunity. But if you’ve got the luxury of looking while you still have a management or executive position, consider this…

Money isn’t the be-all, end-all for your next job. For starters, it comes in different ways - not just salary, but in gas saved on shorter commutes, better health plans, better retirement plans, and so on. Not to mention work-life balance things like telecommuting, gym memberships, and subsidized day care.

But fun in the workplace is a huge factor, too. And not to be taken lightly, since it affects your job satisfaction. Appropriate humor in the workplace is imperative, and yet I don’t think I’ve heard anyone flag this as a deciding factor in choosing job offers until my bro-in-law brought it up.

To make a long blog post short, don’t sell humor and personality short when considering a choice between new positions. After all, when you go to an interview, they’re not just interviewing you - you’re interviewing them as well.

Okay, I love Wikipedia and I’m not afraid to admit it. My wife likes to tease me about it, it’s become such a joke in our family.I talk about it maybe twice a day, wondering aloud what I might find on there on some random topic.

Shockingly, though, I’ve been writing for this blog for a year, and not once have I looked up work-life balance on Wikipedia. I managed to remedy this gross travesty of justice this week, and found the situation to be as robust as I had hoped it would be. Lots and lots of material on what’s shaped up to be a huge, decades-long cultural battle:

The expression work-life balance was first used in 1986 in the US (although had been used in the UK from the late 1970s by organizations such as New Ways to Work and the Working Mother’s Association) to help explain the unhealthy life choices that many people were making; they were choosing to neglect other important area of their lives such as family, friends, and hobbies in favor of work-related chores and goals. Over the past twenty-five years there has been a substantial increase in work which is felt to be due, in part, by information technology and by an intense, competitive work environment.

It’s actually got roots that go back to the early 1900s in the US, with stories and events I probably never got taught in high-school history classes, but for which the likes of Howard Zinn, Utah Phillips, and others have been chronicling for years.

If for any reason you’ve been operating under the misconception that “work-life” balance is just a little catch phrase people use to complain about work without sounding like they’re complaining, or using it as a veiled way of saying they can’t hack their job, then please, give the Wikipedia entry on work-life balance the 15 minute read it deserves.

Actually, it deserves 30, but you can do it in 15, easy, and go play with your kids for the other 15. 

Ever go to a networking event and leave with the business cards of nearly everyone there? Me, I usually get a few, but a teacher of mine has learned how to do it better. He’s not what you’d call a expert networker - just a savvy guy with a different way of looking at life and business.

His secret? He didn’t go to networking events in his own industry. He’s a marketing guy, but you wouldn’t find him at a marketing trade group meeting. He’d be at the meetings of his target markets - lawyers, doctors, dentists, and other service professionals to whom he directly served.

Naturally, he generated a lot of interest. Why talk to the same old doctor friends when there’s an honest-to-goodness marketer in the room, and you already have to handle your own marketing when - to emulate Bones McCoy - “Damn it, Jim, I’m a doctor, not a marketer.”

I’m not suggesting you dump networking within your industry - far from it. That’s where some of your best new job opportunities are going to present themselves. But there are many benefits to networking outside your field, yet still within shouting distance of your target audience. Here’s my top five:

1. It’s market research on the ground level.

2. It’s continuing education for your current (and future) jobs.

3. It’s grist for your resume writing, showing initiative, drive, passion, and commitment.

4. It gives you great material to use during interviews.

5. It may help you drum up new business – which looks great to your current company, and adds the kind of hard numbers hiring managers love to see from job candidates.

Look, there’s bound to be an industry with mutual clients, and you can help each other by doing a little extra-curricular networking outside your own field. Take a moment to think about who your business’ target audience is, and what complementary (not competitive) industry or business targets the same audience. Then find the local chapter of their trade group, and get networking!

You can break information into three groups - at least, according to Donald Rumsfeld:

As we know, there are known knowns. There are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns. That is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns, the ones we don’t know we don’t know.

So let’s look at a set of information, like that related to job benefits. We all know (I think) that medical benefits are an option at most companies. We also know that we don’t know whether some options are available at other companies, like on-site or subsidized child care.
And for me, I recently didn’t know that I didn’t know about adoption assistance as a benefit. Really! It’s available to about 11% of our nation’s workers, and if you’d asked me to brainstorm a list of unexpected benefits, adoption would never have made my list.
But it’s there in significant-enough numbers, according to the National Compensation Survey: Employee Benefits in the United States, March 2007 says. Released in August, I promise that if you go to the PDF right here, you’ll be surprised at what a quick and non-boring read it is - 39 pages, filled with tables.
The result of a penny or two of your tax dollars, this Bureau of Labor Statistics survey offers a comprehensive overview of one of the main drivers of employee satisfaction in our country. Considering that competition for qualified talent is heating up, you’ve got the advantage as a professional, executive, or manager to find the position that suits your needs right down to the ground.

Actually, you had the choice to find such a position all along, but the Robert Half/Career Builder study linked in the previous paragraph just goes to show the odds of you getting what you want have improved over the past couple of years.

Check out this previous blog post for another list of potential benefits you could be getting, and as you get ready to distribute your resume for your job search, don’t limit yourself to considering what the perfect job looks like – why not try to get closer to your perfect lifestyle?

For another blog I manage, I got a note from HR World’s Amy Quinn to let me know about an article, “30 Interview Questions You Can’t Ask and 30 Sneaky, Legal Alternatives to Get the Same Info,” that they’d just added to their blog.
I read it, and I started thinking how silly it is that we’ve spent all this time and money over the years trying to create laws that set consequences for discrimination in hiring practices, and considering Amy’s article, those laws all seem like a waste of time.

Which isn’t true, of course. Those laws really did cut down on discrimination, and only a few bad actors could and would use the questions outlined by HR World to break the law. In fact, I’ll bet there’s just as many folks out there now trying to use those laws against perfectly innocent companies, just to live off the legal system.

But these meditations on the history of equal employment laws are sort of beside the point. Let’s focus on the real useful meat of what Amy had to offer - real live interview questions that you could be asked in the course of your executive, management, or professional job search process.

That’s gold as far as I’m concerned. Anything that helps you prepare for what you’ll face on the other side of the interview door is benefit that’ll give you an edge in the interview process. And you need every edge you can get in a competitive job market.

Broken down by categories, here’s the list of topics you’ll see addressed in that article:

• Gender
• Health and Physical Abilities
• Residence
• Legal Troubles
• Military Service
• Nationality
• Religion
• Age
• Marital and family Status

Go through them, see if any of them are going to potentially raise red flags for you, and prepare your very smooth responses. Better to be ready for a question you don’t get asked than to be caught flat-footed in an interview, I say.

…well, you could, but email is so 2003. Pick up our RSS feed, and you’ll get to see article links from multiple career websites all in one place! Isn’t technology great?
From 6FigureJobs.com:

Want More Job Offers in Less Time? 2 Power Strategies That Will Magnify Your Effectiveness in This Job Market (link)

Want to Get More Job Offers? (link)

How Did I Get Here? (link)

From CareerJournal.com

Speed Date a Potential Employer And Get an Offer That Same Day (link)

Self-Appraisal Is Vital for CEOs Seeking a Successful Comeback  (link)

What Should I Do Differently to Revive a Stalled Job Hunt? (link)

From Monster.com:

Interview Preparation Quiz (link)

Protect Your Info (link)

How to Decide on Resume Length (link)