thehardworkersays:

Every school course we’ve ever attended, any volunteer work we might have done or active club membership we might have held throughout our lives has transferable skills. By the time we enter in adulthood, we have hundreds of skills.   The qualities that make for success run the gambit across the fields of occupations. Sell your capacity for ideas, creativity and imagination. The things we learn from doing things we enjoy as well as things we don’t like, teach us lessons and skills for success in living and working.   Every job demands the same skills and character traits, whether gravedigger or doctor, engineer or teacher, auto mechanic or accountant and so on. Every job demands that we get something done, whether self-employed or other-employed. We must be organized, detail-oriented, and reliable, adhere to safety, take criticism, and deal with difficult people, conflict and pressure.   Success means selling your ideas, capacity for creativity and imagination and skillfully riding the rough surf on the job.

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From the desks of recruiters…

• Lowballing on Job Offers - Just Because You Can Doesn’t Mean You Should.

You’ve networked with as many people as you could and applied to every job opening.  There is only so much you can do.  After you’ve built your job hunting routine you can do your daily search and apply in less than 1 hour a day.

Our suggestion?  Spend more time learning (or building on) an existing skill.  Here are some examples based on your interest:

• Techie: Learn more about databases like mysql and programming with PHP and Rails.  Read about SEO.  Download the iPhone SDK.
• PR / Marketing: Learn about wordpress, TUMBLR, facebook fan pages, twitter and other ways to get your info out on the web quickly and effectively.
• Finance/Accounting: Improve on your Office skills!  Few people know how to use Excel really well.  It’s easy to impress people with these skills and you can literally save hours.
• Writing/Journalism: Write.  Read.  Say more with less words and work on rewriting bad copy you see.
• Undecided: Building on Word/Powerpoint/Excel is always an option.  Try out basic HTML to build a simple site.

These are all skills you can use in a future job, for class, or to make your life easier.  They give you more to talk about when you interview and may also open up new, unexplored, job opportunities.

Always keep learning.  Stay curious.

Any other suggestions?

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