As you create your resume there are certain things you should make sure you do:

• 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!

In today’s economy, the time to innovate isn’t when you begin your new job, it’ when you want to create an effective job search.

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.

As you make your way through the interview process, you’ll undoubtedly find yourself going through what is known as a “behavioral interview” at least once.

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!

A number of business experts argue that human resource departments need to take the lead in implementing sustainability programs for their companies. Human resource departments are best positioned to spearhead this type of initiative, they say.

Sustainability generally refers to the efforts made to enhance quality of life for employees, society in general and making efforts to help the environment. To really be effective, these kinds of initiatives, business analysts say, should not be just some afterthought for advertising purposes, but well-thought-out efforts that are part of the company’s overall strategy.

Sustainability programs have many benefits for companies – they can help with employee engagement, they can improve a business’ processes and they can improve the image of the business. They also can actually help add to the bottom line.

While business analysts believe that a firm’s human resources department is in a good position to take the lead with sustainability, not many HR departments are involved with such efforts. Only about six percent of human resource departments responding to a recent survey said they helped to create such programs, but about one-fourth said they are helping to implement them.  Moreover, the survey showed that three-fourths of the organizations responding were involved with some kind of sustainability program.

Companies are implementing sustainability programs for a number of different reasons – to make a contribution to society, to give themselves a financial advantage over their competition, to help the environment, to help save money on their operations, and out of concern for the health and safety of employees.

But there are obstacles that need to be overcome in starting a sustainability program. Some of the most common are the cost, problems with figuring out how to determine the return on investment, lack of support, and a lack of knowledge about how to go about starting such programs.

But the positives are undeniable. Most of the companies that had sustainability programs and responded to the survey cited better employee morale, more efficiency in the workplace, a better image, and higher loyalty among employees as the major benefits.

But to make sustainability most effective, it should be codified into a formal company policy with goals and policies that are connected to the company’s overall strategic planning process.

When you need to sustain your productivity, turn to RealStreet Staffing when your Washington, DC company needs to ramp up production. Give one of our recruiters a call when you need engineering, construction or architecture professionals on a short- or long-term basis. We look forward to hearing from you!

One growing trend in the workplace is that employers are using recruiters more to look for workers as part of their hiring process. If you are looking for a job, it is to your advantage to know how to work with recruiters, and to know how they work.

Preparation is key here. If you have never been contacted by a recruiter, or it’s been some time since you’ve talked with one, do some research and learn about the process, or to refresh your memory.

Although the recruiter is working for the employer, he or she can be very helpful to you as a job seeker. The recruiter can give you advice about the process and be used for feedback for your own impressions.  The recruiter also can be a go-between for employers and job applicants.  The recruiter can pass along information or respond to other concerns even before actual contact between the parties occurs.

Find out the payment system that the recruiter is using.  Is he being paid on a retainer basis, where he will receive payment regardless of the outcome, or on a strictly commission basis, which tends to make the recruiter work to close the deal as quickly as possible?   Knowing this as a job candidate is important because if the recruiter is working on a retainer, you can be more confident knowing that he will not be in a rush to close the deal and will be more concerned about finding the right person for the job.

You need to be able to sell yourself to a recruiter.  You need to give the recruiter a solid understanding of your skills and experience, as well as what kind of position you seek.

It’s also important in dealing with a recruiter to be yourself.  Trying to create an appearance that is not the real you just to fit a job description will sooner or later lead to problems because you may end up in a job that is not a good fit.  Try not to come across as too eager, which might be seen as desperation.  You need to be poised and confident in dealing with a recruiter.

As with any job search, you also want to investigate your potential employer and make yourself as informed as possible about the company.

You need to let the recruiter know if you are following up on any other job leads. The recruiter and the employer know that candidates are pursuing as many opportunities as they can find, so this is not a problem. It might also make you look better to a company if it knows you are being sought by other employers as well.

You also have to be willing to take suggestions and even criticism from the recruiter. Don’t take it personally because the recruiter is simply trying to improve your attractiveness as a job candidate.

If you’re looking for work in the construction, engineering or architecture sectors in the Washington, DC area, contact a recruiter at RealStreet Staffing. We have many temporary, temp-to-hire and direct-hire assignments with some of DC’s best companies. We look forward to hearing from you.

As most people know, there are different kinds of interviews, and different interviewing techniques. Most of the attention given to interviews goes to those where a job is at stake.

But there is another kind of interview –  the informational interview — that doesn’t get as much attention as it deserves, because it too can be an effective way to land a job or boost a career.

The informational interview can be used to help you gain real, practical knowledge about an industry or help you expand your network of people. More people need to use them, according to Annie Favreau, a career counselor.

She offers some advice on how to get the most out of the informational interview, beginning with doing the proper research. You should never go into these kinds of interviews without doing research on the person you are interviewing and the industry in which he or she works. You need to have some idea about what the individual does. You can perform this research in a number of ways, looking through books, on the Internet, or even talking to family and friends.

You should also have a specific reason for meeting with the person, a purpose in mind. Yes, you are gathering information, but for what, and why? You need to answer these important questions before you ever approach the person for a meeting. This is important for making a good impression on the person, because he or she will probably be a little frustrated if you are unclear why you want to talk to him or her. For example, are you interested in learning the specific duties of a certain job, or what the hurdles are to getting into a certain profession, or what you need to do to be successful in a certain job? Prepare questions in advance that relate to your reason for requesting a meeting.

And don’t waste the person’s time by asking questions you can find the answer to yourself by doing a little reading. You are there to get information that only this person can provide, the answers that come from actually working in the industry.

Finally, this is an informational interview, not a job interview, so do not ask for a job. This is a kind of bait-and-switch tactic that will only annoy the person you are talking to.

If you’re looking to find a new position, the recruiters at RealStreet Staffing would love to meet with you to discuss what types of jobs are out there. We have many terrific temporary, temp-to-hire and direct-hire positions with some of Washington, DC’s top construction, engineering and architecture firms. Contact us today!

When writing a resume, we have a certain image of our career in mind, an image of how it has progressed, and what we have done. It is this version that we present to employers when we apply for a job.

But career counselor Penelope Trunk says that if we are looking to switch careers or change jobs, we need to reevaluate the standard interpretation of our career, the one we have always used.

There are different ways of looking at the same events, depending on what you want to highlight or what perspective you are looking from. And this is something that many job hunters overlook. They continue to tell the same story about their career, when what they need is a new narrative, which may be completely different, Trunk says.

It’s not like a math test, where there is a correct answer or version and an incorrect one. Depending on what you emphasize in your background, you can fashion your resume to fit multiple scenarios. As Trunk says there is “no one correct story of your life.”

Say, for example, that you worked in the human resources department, but that over time you became the IT expert for the department, mastering the applications and databases used. Although your field is human resources, you could just as easily fashion a resume highlighting your expertise in information technology.

Trunk’s plan to look at your life story for your resume is, first, to figure out where you would really like to be with your career. Then, think back over your life and what you have done, pulling out the things you have done that have a bearing on what you would like to be doing right now. Toss out everything on your resume that is not relevant to what you want to be doing right now. Then, pull things together – work backward in a sense from what you want to be doing right now, using all those things that relate and linking them together into your personal story, your personal narrative.

As Trunk says, the important thing to remember is that your career is not something static and immutable, but dynamic and something you control. You need to tell that story from different perspectives, and not let the one perspective that is your current resume rule your life.

Come to RealStreet Staffing when you’re looking for work in Washington, DC in the architecture, construction or engineering sectors and tell us the story of your career – we’ll help you take it to where you want to go! We look forward to hearing from you.

It has become a common lament among job seekers, one you hear often. They send out hundreds upon hundreds of resumes, all to no avail. There is no doubt that in their job search they are working hard, but the question is, are they working smart?

If you send out several hundred resumes and do not even get one response, you might want to take a look at your resume and what you might be doing wrong, rather than simply lamenting how tough the job market is, says career coach Priscilla Claman.

The problem might be a simple one – such as a misspelling on your resume. But you need to confront the fact that something is wrong and take steps to correct it.

There are three questions you need to ask about your job search, Claman says.

The first – Are you getting five or six interviews for every 100 resumes you send out? (This ratio should not be taken as uniform. It may vary depending on where you work or what type of work you do.) If you are not getting this many interviews, the probability is that the problem lies with your resume, or you are not targeting the right kinds of jobs. If you simply take a scattershot approach to sending resumes, giving it to anyplace that is advertising a job opening, the odds are you are not going to have much success.

If you are not getting any bites after sending out batches of your resume, stop the mass mailings.

First, have someone take a look at your resume for errors or any other problems.

If you’ve been focusing on job boards like Monster, get away from that and move toward other job search strategies, such as using social media and networking through friends, or using company websites. Zero in on companies you really want to work for and go after them, even if they are not interviewing. Get your name out there. Find what works and stick to it.

The second question to ask, according to Claman, are you getting at least one follow-up interview for every eight initial interviews? If not, again, stop and think about what you are doing in the interview process. Are you preparing properly? Do you know why you want the job and can you express your reasons well?

The third question to ask, Claman says, have you been a finalist for eight or nine jobs and still not received an offer? Again, if not, you need to assess why not. At this stage, since all candidates are likely very qualified for the position, you may not get a sure answer, but you need to examine the situation.

The important point, Claman says, is that if something is not working, you need to change what you are doing, not simply do more of it and hope things will be different.

If you’ve applied to dozens of jobs with no results in the Washington, DC area, bring your resume to RealStreet Staffing. We’ll take a look at your resume and offer pointers on how to improve it. We’ll also help you find temporary (long- and short-term) assignments in the construction, engineering and architecture sectors that often can lead to full-time employment. Contact us today!

With the job market as bad as it is, most job hunters are looking at ways to make themselves stand out from the crowd. In other words, doing something that is unique and creative as part of the job search.

This obviously is not anything new. Job seekers always have tried unusual ways of getting themselves noticed, using gimmicks of some sort or another. But, with the unemployment rate higher than it has been in some time, and likely to stay that way for a while, many are reexamining the issue again, grasping at anything that might help.

Most professional career consultants frown on such gimmickry, saying it does little to help an applicant. Better to spend the time on polishing the resume and cover letter, making them as compelling as possible to the hiring manager.

Their advice has been to keep the resume and cover letter simple and professional – using good quality paper, a professional typeface, a neat, organized layout. Black lettering on white paper. And they advise that an applicant be sure to avoid misspellings or grammatical errors. This, they say, counts for much more than any gimmickry.

But, some might counter, is there really anything to lose? There is no simple answer to the question. It may depend on the type of job for which you’re applying. For example, something in a more creative, artistic type of business or sector might lend itself to some kind of trickery. But using gimmicks would probably be more detrimental in applying for a more traditional, conservative kind of job.

So, will using some kind of gimmick get you noticed? Certainly. But will it produce any results? Not if you don’t have a dynamite resume and cover letter with which to back it up.

To land a job, you still need to rely on the tried to true, and, yes, rather mundane, job search strategies – doing a self-assessment to sharpen your own idea of your strengths and what you can bring to the job market, networking with as many people as you can, researching the places where you want to work, and writing the best resume and cover letter that you can.

Contacting RealStreet Staffing is another proven way to find work. We can place you in temporary, temp-to-hire and direct-hire assignments with some of Washington DC’s best companies. We look forward to hearing from you!

There is a lively debate going on in the business world about the idea of certification in human resources. Namely, does it enable an increase in effectiveness or does it just represent a body of knowledge steeped in old, conventional ways of thinking.

At some companies, certification is mandatory, while other companies wrinkle their noses at it, saying they don’t want to go near any human resource person with an alphabet soup after his or her name.

Officials at the HR Certification Institute contend that certification has always been desired by employers, and that it is more and more becoming a requirement, leading to an increase in demand for it. One Institute official said she is hearing from recruiters that employers want the credential, which is more proof of how important it has become.

But others are not so enthusiastic about it.

One business school professor is unimpressed with certification, noting that it really won’t help anyone in the current job market. A person with a master’s degree in human resources will certainly be more sought after than someone with a Senior Professional in Human Resources (SPHR) certification, he said, especially by bigger companies. He added that experience also will hold greater weight than certification.

If you already have an advanced degree, certification in human resources is essentially useless, the professor added. What is more important, he said, is what a person can bring to the job, the ability to take on managers and challenge their viewpoint, to bring something new to the table.

Netflix is one company that is unimpressed with credentials in the human resources field. A recent job advertisement on the company’s website states that it’s not looking for an OD practitioner, a person with a certificate, or a person who specializes in policy guidelines. These are all signs that the person is steeped in the old ways of doing human resources, the type that is not done at Netflix, the job posting says. These are designations that the company really does not assign much value to.

So, the debate continues – between those who believe that the credential lends greater knowledge and expertise, and those who believe it locks a person into an old-fashioned way of thinking. But, as with any position, on-the-job performance will most likely be the deciding factor in this debate.

Check out the job performance of the recruiters at RealStreet Staffing. We have the expertise and knowledge to find you top-notch performers in the engineering, construction and architecture sectors in the Washington Metro area. Contact us today!