Simply Hired Blog

How Trendy is Your Career?

While looking for a job, it can be helpful to research different careers or industries to identify those that are on the rise—as well as those that are struggling. If you are interested in seeing how a particular career or industry is fairing (such as administration trends or healthcare trends), a great tool to use is Simply Hired’s Employment Trends.

The Trends tool displays the percentage of jobs that include your search terms anywhere in the listing as well as the percent increase or decrease since October 2007. This data, taken from millions of jobs in the Simply Hired index, graphs the peaks and valleys of your keywords over time.

If you are changing careers, this is a great way to see scope out jobs and industries that are doing well currently, as well as to see what skills are in high demand. For example, those people who are active and well versed on Twitter have many opportunities available to you. The graph for Twitter trends shows an increase of 3,096% since the end of 2007.

If you are looking at multiple opportunities, you can look at multiple keywords on one graph to compare the frequency of the terms in all jobs on SimplyHired.com. Just insert a comma between search terms to see them side by side on the graph. (Ex: iPhone vs. Android trends)

Also what’s really cool is that if you find an interesting trends graph for a certain keyword, you can share it with others by adding it to your website! To the right of the graph, you will see a “Grab This Graph” section. Just copy and paste the code to your site to embed it.

 

Using Transferable Skills to Change Careers

Finding a job or new career isn’t easy—especially if you don’t have the amount of experience a particular position you’ve been eyeing calls for. This holds especially true for new grads looking for their first job out of college, people facing a layoff, and those re-entering the job market after a long absence.

If you don’t have the experience required for a specific position, you may be able to utilize the skills and experience you do have to get that interview. Look at the job description of the position you are interested in applying for and ask yourself the question, “What have I done in the past that would make me excel in this position?”.  This will help you identify the transferable skills you can use to convince potential employers that you are qualified for a certain job.

So remember that package handler position at UPS you held during summers in college? That could translate into people skills, time management or logistical abilities, opening doors for a number of possible career paths. You could even use SimplyHired.com and search for those transferable skills in the Keywords field to find jobs where you could utilize these skills.

 

Common Transferable Skills
Communication (oral & written, proficiency in multiple languages)
Research and Planning (analyzing, evaluating)
Organization (logistics, handling details, coordinating)
Management and Leadership (motivating, delegating)
Work Ethic (ambition, reliability, positive attitude)

No Experience, No Problem!

So you’re searching for jobs and find one that you think is great. But then you skim down to the experience area of the job description and see: 1-2 years experience required. There’s no need to worry. On SimplyHired.com, there are ways to find jobs where you need little or no experience.

Search for companies with training programs
There are many employers out there with great training programs to help those with little experience get started in their career. Doing a simple search of trainee jobs can give you a sense of these companies.

Some of the companies hiring for trainee roles include:

• Enterprise Rent-A-Car
• Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)
• Wells Fargo

Search for entry-level jobs
You can do this either by including “entry-level” into your search, or you can perform your search using keywords such as skills, industry or company name and refine your results with the Work Experience filter to view jobs where 0-2 years of experience is required.

Example: Searching for company:Verizon then filtering down to jobs requiring 0-2 years of experience.

What’s your type?

If you are looking for part-time work or an internship this summer, there are still plenty of opportunities out there and Simply Hired is here to help!

When performing a job search on SimplyHired.com, you don’t necessarily have to include the words “part-time” or “internship” in your search fields (though you can definitely do that). Instead, you can search for keywords such as skills or industry (like Photoshop or Administration), or a company name if you already know where you want to work (use company:“Aaron’s") and filter your results down with the Job Type filter found on the left side of search results pages. This filter allows results to be refined by type, such as full-time, part-time, permanent, temporary, contract, volunteer, internship, and seasonal.

You won’t be bored at home this summer when searching for internships and part-time jobs is this easy!

Jobs, Delivered Straight to You

We like to think that Simply Hired is pretty, well, simple. Just go to SimplyHired.com, type in your keywords, type in your location, click search and then you’re directed to tons of job listings that match your criteria. But there are ways to stay on top of the latest jobs without having to check back every day.

The first way is to sign up for an email alert to have new jobs delivered straight to your Inbox. Just click the “Get email alerts for this search” link near the top or bottom of your search results page, fill in your email address and click the Submit button. Follow the confirmation link in the email you will be sent to start receiving job alerts. If you ever wish to stop receiving alerts, just click the “Stop receiving this alert” link at the top or bottom of any email alert.

A second way to receive new job listings that match your search is through an RSS feed. On your search results page, just click “view as RSS feed” near the top of the page. Choose the application you wish to receive the alerts through and click the Subscribe Now button. Then you will start to receive job alerts through your reader. Simple as that!

Not just for locals

About two months ago, I relocated 10 minutes away from where I had been living and I haven’t even finished unpacking. In the trunk of my car you’ll find an assortment of random things that I’ve yet to put away including bedding, kitchen items, some board games and a few DVDs. Packing and unpacking can be tough whether you’re moving to Honolulu, HI or Augusta, ME, but finding a new job in the area doesn’t have to be!

If you’ve thought about relocating, or even if you’re curious about the demographics of the area that you currently live in, Simply Hired’s Local Jobs tool is a great way to find information about cities across the U.S. For example, if you look up Atlanta, GA, you will find a brief summary of the city, followed by the city’s top employers (such as Home Depot, Time Warner, and Emory University), top jobs (physical therapist jobs, post-doc fellow jobs, assistant professor jobs), employment rates, Atlanta salaries, and even statistics such as population, marital status (for anyone looking for something besides a job) and average commute time. In addition, you can read up on the area’s news, to get a hint of the local flavor.

And of course, you can search for jobs too.

Covering employment gaps on a resume

Especially during economic climates where unemployment is up and job searches are drawn out, many people look for ways to cover up or explain employment gaps on their resumes. While sometimes a quick formatting change can downplay these lapses, other times it is best to explain them outright. Here are a couple tips on how to de-emphasize those months—or years—without work.

Include Unpaid Work & Continuing Education
Is that gap really a gap? Even if you weren’t a paid employee, you can include positions that you held and activities you were involved in such as volunteer, freelance or consulting work during your employment break on your resume. You may have gained great skills and experience from them that will put you ahead of the pack when vying for a new position.

Many people go back to school to keep updated on latest practices or technologies during their job search. If you took classes in your time off, you can include these in the education section of your resume.

List Years of Employment
If a gap in your employment history will not affect your ability to perform in a certain position well, and especially if you have been spending your “down-time” in resume-boosting activities, a change of formatting can take attention away off months spent out of work. If you’ve spent over a year at past companies, it is perfectly acceptable to list dates of employment by year instead of month/year. By doing so, you won’t accentuate those lapses between jobs and send a red-flag to potential employers. Plus, many hiring managers may appreciate the streamlined look of your resume.

Tell the Truth
If there is an obvious break in your employment (such as time off to care for a sick relative, to raise children, medical reasons, etc.), you can use your cover letter to explain your situation.

Whatever you do, don’t lie about it!

Working where you live: Part 2

Narrowing down your job search results to jobs only in your city (for us, that’s Mountain View, CA), or in the close surrounding cities (San Jose, Santa Clara, San Francisco) is great and all, but depending on how large your city is, that could still mean a lengthy commute! So now it’s time to get to the nitty-gritty of where the jobs you’re interested are really located.

As long as an address is provided, you can map the location of companies you’re interested in during your search. You can compare the distance between all of the jobs you’re thinking about applying to, see exactly which one is closest to your home, find the job nearest to your favorite place to load up on caffeine, and start planning your route to each place when you start interviewing.

So say you’re looking for teaching jobs in your town. To view a particular job on a map, click the More Tools option at the bottom of the job summary preview and click Map This Job. You can do this with as many jobs as you like! Just keep clicking the Map This Job link for each job.

Once you’ve mapped a job, the Map This Job link turns into a View Mapped Jobs link. Click that link and you’ll be taken to your Mapped Jobs page, where you will be able to see the jobs that you have mapped, well, on a map.

Click the blips on the map for information about the job and a link to the job listing. You’ll be working closer to home in no time!

Working where you live: Part 1

In my humble opinion, being able to roll out of bed and walk 5 minutes to work would be an ideal situation. You could get hours of extra sleep each week, save money on gas, be more environmentally friendly, and never have to sit in traffic again. Though it might not be possible to live that close to work, Simply Hired has some tools to help you find a job with a shorter commute time.

Set your Distance preferences
Each time you perform a search on Simply Hired, you not only search the specific location you entered, but you search a set radius around that location (25 miles by default).

To set your distance to search for jobs closer to home, you can change the distance to show jobs closer to home in the search preferences, through an advanced search and even through the Distance drop-down menu on any search results page.

You have the choice to search jobs at the exact location you enter or all jobs within 5, 10, 15, 25 or 50 miles of that location. It might not be long before you find a job closer to home!

What does that MEAN?

If you’re searching for jobs online, it’s inevitable that you’ll see abbreviations like “Sr.” for “Senior” and well-known industry-specific acronyms like “RN” for “Registered Nurse.” You may have even come across some job titles or descriptions where you have no idea what they mean.

One job I came across that made me want to find a translator to explain it to me: E83 Specifications Writer II. The job description wasn’t much more help and included “This position reports to the supervisor of SNVY, A4W RPPY Valves and Technical Publications.” Anyone else need help with that?

To the employers out there: Keep it simple. Our “Best Practice” advice is to use a job title that would appear on a person’s business card. What are the chances that a job seeker will apply to the job if they can’t understand the job description or even the title? By using the language job seekers use while performing their job searches (full, unabbreviated words), your jobs have a higher likelihood of appearing in search results.

To the job seekers out there: If you know of well known abbreviations or acronyms related to the job you are looking for, it’s helpful to include them in your search. So for example, if you’re looking for Vice President jobs, go ahead and search for “'Vice President’ OR VP” to maximize the number of results.

Not surprisingly, many of the common abbreviations/acronyms are from industries with high amounts of jargon, such as Healthcare. The top 5 most frequently searched abbreviations/acronyms include:

• LPN – Licensed Practical Nurse
• CNA – Certified Nursing Assistant
• RN – Registered Nurse
• HVAC – Heating, Ventilating and Air Conditioning
• LVN – Licensed Vocational Nurse

And now for some fun! Points to anyone who can guess what these mean:
PA –
EA –
DBA –
CRM –
PLS –
AIA –