• Use action verbs
• Show real results (numbers, percentages, etc.)
• Remember that it’s a sales too, not a history of all the jobs you’ve held.
• And so on.

Below are some things you never should put on a resume as well as tactics that are best avoided.

• Demand that certain requests be met, such as a certain amount of paid time off, tuition reimbursement, etc. before you’ll even consider working at a company.
• A resume longer than two or, at the very most, three pages. One page is best.
• Photos, especially of your family members and pets.
• “Cute” e-mail addresses (examples: sexydancer@, dannylovesbeer@, even JohnSue1@). Instead, aim to have an email address that’s just your name: JaneSmith@, Jane.Smith@, SmithJane@, etc.).
• Including references you know will give you a poor one (such as when you are fired from a position). Honesty is good, but be judicious when it comes to references. Call everyone you plan to list as a reference and ask them if they will give you a good reference. If a reference can’t give you a good one, don’t list it.
• Don’t submit poetry, song lyrics, short stories, etc. (people have actually done this).
• Don’t use the same resume for every job for which you apply. You should tailor your resume to each job, highlighting the skills you have that best fit each position’s requirements.
• Don’t create your resume and send it without sending it to yourself first. How does it look when it arrives as a document? Does the formatting go all to pieces? Consider making it into a PDF.
• Don’t forget to proofread it for typos and grammatical mistakes.
• Don’t lie. Don’t exaggerate. Don’t create jobs, duties and skills you never had/don’t possess.

If you need help creating a great resume, contact a recruiter at RealStreet Staffing. We love helping construction, architecture and engineering professionals looking for work in the Washington DC area and we’d love to help you. We look forward to hearing from you!

But you’re no Google. You’re no Nike or Accenture, either You have no “brand name” to attract new graduates.

So how can you become more attractive to the newly-hatched college grad? Read below for some tips.

Remember back when you had just graduated college? Remember what you were looking for in your first career position? Weren’t the things you sought something along the lines of

• work variety,
• potential for career growth,
• training and education opportunities, and
• interesting and fun colleagues?

Today’s grads are not much different. One thing they may look for that you may not have, however, is a work/life balance. Today’s grads are more concerned with “having a life” than high salaries (although they do want to make enough to pay off those student loans, save for the future and have a bit of fun).  In fact, new grads tend to say they’re more interested in your company’s ethics as well as training/educational opportunities than in benefits and salary.

Take a look at career growth ladders. Do you promote from within? Do you have a mentoring program? Do you nurture employees and help them become all they can be in their positions?

It can be tough to go from the days of sleeping in until 8, staying up until 2 in the morning, having three hours for a lunch break and not having to worry about getting to the dry cleaners before it closest at 6 p.m.

Help new grads acclimate to the world of work by possibly offering flex time schedules, delivery services for dry cleaning, an on-site gym, etc. Whatever can make a new grad’s – or even a seasoned employee’s – life a little easier.

Looking for new college graduates or experienced professionals for your Washington DC construction, engineering or architecture firm? Then contact a RealStreet Staffing recruiter. We can source, check and place new or seasoned workers for your temporary and direct-hire needs. We look forward to hearing from you.

But now you need to return to perhaps at least one or two of the same people – and probably some new ones — and wow them all over again. And you can rest assured that this interview will be “tougher” than the first.

Follow the tips below to help you ace the second round of job interviews.

1. Be especially prepared because the second round of interviews tend to be more intense than the first. The first interview tends to be a screening session. Now your hiring manager/interviewer will get to the meat of what it is you bring to the table.
2. Ask who will be at the second interview. You can ask this when you are notified that you’ve been selected for a second round. Will your direct supervisor be there? His or her boss? Additional colleagues and/or constituents?
3. Once you know names (and you should ask for names), start some online sleuthing. Check out LinkedIn profiles. Google a person’s name and see what comes up. Your aim is to learn about the person’s business past and see where you have commonalities (perhaps you went to the same school, or belong to the same business organization).
4. A second interview often is where hiring managers look to see how well you’ll fit in in the company and, more importantly, the department in which you’ll be working. So expect behavioral questions (“Describe a time when you handled an angry customer”) as well as queries your interviewer will use in order to see how well you think on your feet.
5. Second interviews sometimes can take place in a group situation, where you’ll meet with several people at the same time. These can be nerve wracking, but a great tip to help you relax is to answer questions by looking at each person in the group individually for a moment or two as you give your answer.
6. Don’t forget: you’re interviewing the company/department as well. When you leave the interview, ask yourself how you felt about your potential future colleagues/boss, how the company runs itself and other “intangibles” regarding how well you and your new employer will “get along.” If you don’t feel this is a good fit for you, you may want to take a pass on this opportunity and keep looking for the position/firm that’s best for you.

RealStreet Staffing can help IT, construction, engineering and architecture professionals take the next step up in their careers. Contact one of our recruiters today to learn more about some of the job opportunities we have with some of Washington, DC’s top employers. We look forward to hearing from you!

The first way to innovate is with the kinds of questions you ask, because they set the course for the direction you are going to take, according to business analysts Jeff Dyer and Hal Gregersen. For example, instead of asking what kind of job you can find, ask yourself what kind of job you can create. Dyer and Gregersen suggest spending several minutes each day writing down questions during your job search. You may start out by asking “How can I find a job that will pay a lot of money?”, but over time that may change into “What will make me happy in the long run?”

Another way to innovate, the analysts say, is to look at the work that companies need to have done, rather than focusing on the job that you used to do. You need to look at what people need products and services for. And then ask yourself what service or job are you good at that provides these products or services that people want. In fact, the authors suggest that to find the things that people want, you must spend some time routinely observing what people do to see what you could provide for them.

In the same way, you need to network innovatively by contacting people to create a job, rather than to just find a job. You do this not by talking with the people you would usually contact – those in the same area as you – but with people who are in different areas, people who look at things differently than you do. Then you talk with them about the jobs that need to be done, and in this way you can develop new ideas that might help your search.

Another way to be innovative is to experiment, to try new things, to take things apart, or to take an idea and see if it will work, no matter how oddball it may be. For example, if you want to try new things, you could look at hobbies or at developing skills you currently don’t have that might lead to something new.

Innovation in a job search is important, but don’t forget that a staffing service also can help you land work – and relatively quickly. Contact RealStreet Staffing today for positions in Washington DC’s IT, engineering, construction and architecture sectors.

A behavioral interview simply is an interview strategy in which the interviewer/hiring manager works to find out how you behaved in certain workplace situations in the past. The premise – and it’s usually true – is that how we reacted in the past/what we did in the past is a good gauge of what we’ll do/how we’ll perform in the future.

Some examples of behavioral questions are:

• Describe the most stressful work-related time of your life and how you handled it.
• Tell me about the time you had to deal with an unhappy client and how you resolved it. Looking back, is there anything you would have done differently?
•  Have you ever had to persuade someone to do something he or she didn’t want to do? Describe it for me.

In order to do well with a behavioral interview, you need to prepare. (It’s best to assume that you could be asked behavioral questions at any time during any interview, so be prepared for them at all times.)

To prepare well, you should research the company as much as you can. This is pretty easy to do today via Google and the company’s own website.

Take a look back at your own professional experience for examples of the following:

• When you tackled something very difficult and had a successful outcome.
• When you had to deal with extreme pressure or obstacles and how you successfully overcame them.
• How you were able to persuade someone to do something he or she didn’t want to do (particularly applicable for sales positions).
• How you handled an irate client or colleague.

Aim to come up with a beginning, middle and end of each of the scenarios. Tell a story (one with a happy ending, if possible, or with lessons learned, if not).

If possible, practice some tough behavioral questions with a trusted friend or mentor.

If you’d like more help with interview techniques, contact a recruiter at RealStreet Staffing. We can help our IT, architecture, engineering and construction candidates get ready for their interviews with our clients – some of the top businesses in these sectors in the Washington, DC area. We look forward to hearing from you!

The problem is that research is showing that diversity programs don’t work. For example, one study of more than 800 companies that took place over a period of more than 30 years showed that diversity training really had no effect at all on worker attitudes. Moreover, it also didn’t increase the diversity at the companies.

Diversity programs actually made the problem worse. This is because these programs, instead of highlighting people as individuals, emphasized people as members of a certain category, classifying them by age, gender, race, religion, or sexual orientation, for example. And this actually encouraged prejudice, because that is what prejudice is – shoving a person into a category without looking at him or her as a real human being, an individual. Putting people into categories makes them less human, it reduces the complexity of what it is to be a person, and so emphasizing the categories actually works to increase prejudice, according to business consultant Peter Bregman.

What businesses should be doing, Bregman says, is not focusing on diversity, but on people as people. Employees don’t need training in the concept of diversity, but in how to work with a variety of people, people who happen to have different personalities and backgrounds. What people need to learn is how to communicate well – conveying bad news as well as good with understanding and empathy. And employees need to be counseled against putting other people into categories, to not think of someone as a black person, a Muslim, or gay, but just as a person.

So, instead of focusing on diversity, companies need to focus on communication training, Bregman says. That way, people will learn to listen to each other, to talk with each other instead of talking at or past each other. And they need to learn to do this no matter who the other person may be, which in the end will go a lot further toward creating a diverse environment than any diversity training would.

Let RealStreet Staffing help your company find reliable and skilled IT, engineering, architecture and construction professionals for your temporary, temp-to-hire and direct-hire needs. Contact us today!

The increased concern about retirement comes on the heels of the recent steep recession, which is still a big drag on the economy. Many suffered significant losses in their retirement investment accounts because of the downturn, which, they say, will mean a delay in retiring. Younger workers, seeing what has happened, also are concerned.

But, while many companies are investing in educational programs for their employees to help them plan for retirement, relatively few are doing anything to help smooth the actual transition from work to retirement.

This can be a stressful time for workers because it involves a huge change in their lives. For many, work has been the focus of their lives, the thing to which their self-esteem and even their identity is tied. Leaving it behind can be traumatic. It is an area where human resource departments can make a big impact by adding to services.

Companies can help employees better make the transition by helping them with financial and lifestyle planning.

One of the major concerns of people about to retire is whether they will have enough money for the things they want to do. Helping them with planning for expenses during retirement, planning about what their income will be, and what their healthcare, housing, hobbies, and vacations, etc. will cost, will go a long way toward making a good transition.

Helping workers cope with how the transition will change their lifestyle can be helpful too. Retirees will be facing such issues as keeping a daily routine, staying in touch with people, maintaining a healthy lifestyle, and following their interests, whether it be part-time work, or something such as volunteering.

Also companies can help employees make the transition by supplying them with resources. Companies can help them find information on getting a good financial advisor and even offer something such as a one-year free membership to a retirement organization.

Additionally, companies can provide soon-to-retire workers with material to read, such as Transitions: Making Sense of Life’s Changes, by William Bridges.

If you’d like more information on how RealStreet Staffing can make your Washington Metro business thrive by providing temporary and direct-hire professionals in the construction, engineering and architecture sectors, just give us a call. We look forward to hearing from you!

As companies look for economical and effective ways to help employees stay happy and productive, EAPs now are providing a lot of new and different services, in addition to substance abuse counseling, which has been their traditional niche, according to Rebecca Vesely of Workforce Management.

EAPs now deal with a range of problems that come under the heading of behavioral and mental health, such as helping workers deal with stress and work-life programs. Because of the recession many companies have cut back on their workforce, and those employees who remain are expected to carry more of the load, leading to more worker stress. As a result, EAPs are adapting to help people with this problem.

EAPs also are helping employees with such things as finding a tax accountant, a divorce lawyer, child care, wedding planners, even plumbers. EAPs are helping employees with refinancing a mortgage and sorting through healthcare programs. EAPs are getting a lot of calls about financial and legal services, a sign that workers are still struggling in the down economy.

More than half of the contacts with EAPs today involve some type of financial issue, according to EAP officials. And the issue with which EAPs deal with are more complex than in the past. A survey of EAPs found that about 20 percent of calls involved child care, 15 percent elder care, 30 percent moving, and 10 percent healthcare.

EAPs more recently have begun to get involved in management training programs as employers cut back in this area to save money. EAPs are providing help over the telephone or through Web-based communication for employers dealing with problem employees.

But even though EAPs are doing a lot more, and more people are using them, not many employees use their services overall. Nationwide, only about three percent of the workforce has used an EAP. To get more employees involved with EAPs and what they offer, companies need to communicate better with employees about EAP services.

When you need construction, engineering or architecture professionals for your firm, contact a recruiter at RealStreet Staffing. All of our staff members and recruiters have direct construction or construction-related experience and this first-hand knowledge means that you can count on us to deliver top-notch results. Contact us today!

According to Beth Sussman of Dovetail Human Resources, there really is no special number of workers that a company should have before hiring a full-time human resources manager. Instead, she says, what you need to look at are the conditions in the company and pay attention to certain triggers that will tell you when the time is right.

For example, are you having trouble finding the workers with the skills you need when you need them? Or are you having trouble merging new workers from an acquired company with your workforce? If you don’t have any human resource people, Sussman says, you might not have the kind of practices in place that you need to acquire, develop and hold onto the workers you need. You may need someone with the specific expertise in the process of mergers and how to combine workforces.

Another sign that you may need a human resources manager is when you see that your company is increasingly at risk from legal action for wrongful termination, harassment claims or pay inequality issues. If you see these kinds of issues coming up more often, it may be time to hire someone to make sure you have the best policies in place to handle these situations, Sussman says.

You may need to think about an HR person when you begin to find that your policies are becoming outdated, according to Sussman. You may have a pay and bonus plan that doesn’t fit the way your business is operating now, or a benefits plan that needs updating.

Also, have you noticed that you are spending more and more on outside firms – consultants, attorneys or other administrative services to handle human resource issues? It may be time to take a look at what you are spending on outsourced services and compare that to what your expenses would be if you hired some in-house people to handle the same issues. Comparing the costs and benefits of each approach may show you that you may actually be better off financially by going with in-house people.

Whether your human resources is 50 people large, or you only have 10 employees company wide, RealStreet Staffing can help your architecture, engineering or construction firm find the skilled professionals you need. Contact us today!

But don’t despair because there are tactics you can use, according to business strategist Amy Gallo, that can help you get through a situation like this.

The first thing to focus on, Gallo says, is what you can control, meaning your own reaction to the obnoxious coworker. That is, instead of focusing on how annoying the person is, focus on your reaction to him or her and try to manage it. You can do this, Gallo says, by practicing some methods of relaxation every day, which will help you handle the stress.

Another thing to avoid is griping to other colleagues about the obnoxious coworker. This really accomplishes nothing and only puts you in a bad mood. Plus, if you begin griping to others, you may affect the mood of the whole office. Moreover, it also may reflect badly on you, giving you a reputation as someone who does not behave in a professional manner.

Also, Gallo advises to take an honest look at yourself, as well. Could you be part of the problem?  Is this person’s behavior really that annoying, or are more personal resentments driving your feelings? Is the person just a very different personality type than your own, or does the person just remind you of someone you don’t like? Could your annoyance stem from the fact that the person got a promotion and you got passed over? Focus on the person’s behavior, rather than just his or her personality, to help you determine whether your own prejudices are coming into play.

Another strategy that might seem a little counterintuitive, and definitely harder to carry out, is to actually spend more time with the person. By doing this, you learn more about him or her, and may come to a better understanding of why the person is behaving the way he or she does – problems at home, maybe, or pressure from a boss. It may lead to more empathy.

Also, if you feel the person might be receptive, Gallo says give the individual some feedback about his or her annoying behavior. The problem may be that your co-worker really is unaware of it because no one has ever brought it up.

Finally, in a situation where you have little control, try to develop a sense of detachment, an “I just don’t care” attitude. If the person is being annoying, but you take the attitude that you just aren’t going to care about or acknowledge it, that may help.

When you need great construction, engineering, architecture or IT professionals for your firm, call upon the recruiting experts at RealStreet Staffing. We can find great workers for your temporary, temp-to-hire or direct-hire assignments. We look forward to hearing from you!