Say what bloggerman?!? Let me explain! Liz Ryan, CEO of Human Workplace, a human resources industry think tank recently published an interesting post on LinkedIn. (Editor’s note: If you’re not using LinkedIn for your career development, you’re missing out!) Liz explained the two most costly mistakes most people make when searching for a job.
As a recent recipient of nursing assistant certification from the Allen School, you should sit up and take note because you’ll have lots of opportunities to go to job interviews with your newly earned credential.
The first of Ms. Ryan’s two costly mistakes is what I like to call a “repetitive stress injury”. No, not the dreaded tennis elbow or tendonitis. I am talking about the mistake many job seekers make of building one
résumé and then using it to apply to all the jobs they wish to interview for. This is a big mistake.
Ryan says, “You have to customize your résumé to showcase your stories and experiences that are most relevant to the specific job you’re applying for.”
Certainly core pieces of your résumé can be repurposed from one opportunity to the next. However, key pieces of it should be modified and slanted specifically to address functions relevant to the specific job you’re applying for.
“You’ll change the summary at the top of your résumé every time you apply for a job, to make it clear to your hiring manager that although you’re good at lots of things, at this moment in time you’re conveying your expertise in one area in particular — the one your manager is most likely to care about,” writes Ryan.
The second mistake according to Ryan is the failure to share your dragon-slaying stories. Ryan explains that all companies have typical challenges and pain points which they experience day to day.
Ryan says to have your “dragon-slaying stories” — instances where you overcame particularly vexing or challenging problems — ready to share with hiring managers. “Develop your Dragon-Slaying Story list,” advises Ryan, “and focus on Pain rather than the bullet points in a job ad or your own done-to-death list of Skills!”
Take these two simple but important pieces of advice to heart and you’ll avoid two of the things that regularly cost candidates the job.
Yes, cold and flu season is still lingering with the unseasonably cold weather here in the Northeast. So it may be true that students studying medical coding online with Allen School could be fighting off aches, coughs, sneezes and all the misery that these wintertime ailments bring. But that’s not the kind of bug we’re talking about today. We’re talking software virus “bugs”.
Almost as misery-inducing for the medical coding online student is the computer virus. Once infected the online student’s computer will be just as knocked out and immobilized as the student would be if infected with influenza. Particularly vulnerable to infection and hacker attack is the web browser. Yes, the browser, the vehicles we all use to surf the net – Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, etc.) represent a way in for malicious hackers to infiltrate your machine, often rendering it unusable.
We know that all browsers are susceptible to infection particularly well because of the Pwn2Own Hacking Competition wherein hackers gather to (legally) exploit the weaknesses in all internet browsers. The browser companies sponsor the event as a way to learn where vulnerabilities lie in their products and (hopefully) make them stronger and more secure for users like students of medical coding online and other internet denizens.
Security website Threatpost reported on this year’s competition winner, a Korean hacker named Jung Hoon Lee:
