Audio From This Week’s Call Is Here!

On this week’s call, Rick and I addressed many of the questions that we have received from those who have been registering. If you would like to hear what we covered, click on this link:

Call #3: Rick and Terry Answer Your Job Search Questions

Hope you can join us again on March 3rd when I will be discussing How to Find Your Ideal Career.

Terry

Register for Tuesday’s Teleseminar

Just a quick update. You can register for our next Art of the Job Search Teleseminar by clicking on the link on the right side of this page. When you register you will be given the call in details as well as an opportunity to ask us your most important job or career search question. Knowing which issues are on your mind helps Rick and I tailor our topics to address what really matters to you.

Terry

Creating a .txt Version of Your Resume For Online Applications

During our call this past Tues, I promised that I would tell you how to create a .txt version (also referred to as ASCII or Rich Text) of your Word resume.  Why is this important to you?  Well, mainly because you want to be able to control the look of your resume when you copy and paste it into those little blocks that are often find on job boards. 

Now, rather than reinvent the wheel, I am copying here a document prepared by our good friend Jim Sandham.  For those of you who don’t know him yet, Jim is the leader of the ZIP Lunch Bunch, a wonderful networking group that meets every Friday at 11:30am at Strack Farms on Louetta.  If you’ve never been, I highly recommend that all job seekers join this group.  You will learn so much as well as have the opportunity to meet and support others who, like you, are in the middle of a job search.

Anyway, here are the details of creating a .txt resume, straight from Jim:

You’ll need to have an MS Word version already completed in order to change into a .TXT version.  Here’s what you do:
 
1.  Open both MS Word and MS Notepad to full size.  Mark (copy) ALL of the resume text from the .DOC version of your resume.
 
2.  Toggle from Word to Notepad (press Alt/Tab once with your left hand).  Now paste ALL of the text from the .DOC version into the blank Notepad screen.
 
3.  Fix everything in Notepad that looks wrong (columns, bullets, breaks, etc.).  This will take a while, sorry about that!
 
4.  Try to have each line of text not exceed 70 characters.  Count 70 characters to the right for the first full-page-width line of text you have, then hit Enter.  Scroll this line of text up to the very top of your screen.  Put a pencil mark on the frame of your monitor/LCD to show you just how wide 70 characters really is.  Now you won’t have to count characters for each line, and you’ll have a visual reminder for all subsequent .TXT versions!
 
5.  Hit Enter at the end of EVERY 70 characters in order to force each line to NOT word wrap.
 
6.  If your bullets went away, try substituting the asterisk symbol (*, Shift 8).  Put 1 or 2 spaces after each asterisk before the text begins.  Things like bolding, underlining, Italics, and such are gone in Notepad, sorry about that.
 
7.  Notepad doesn’t have a Spell Checker either, so when you’re all done fixing the document, mark all of your newly fixed .TXT text and paste it all into a new blank MS Word page where you can run Word’s Spell Checker.  Once it’s all spell-checked mark all of the text a second time and paste it back into Notepad.  I know, I know, just do it!
 
8.  Save the new .TXT version in Notepad using the same filename as your Word version, except leave off the .DOC extension. 
 
9.  Print copies of BOTH the .DOC and .TXT versions of your resume.  The new .TXT version will be very tall, and will likely exceed two pages, but don’t worry about that, it’s OK.  Compare them side by side, making sure everything survived the transfer process.  Do any final tweaking to make sure they both contain the exact same text.  If you made any final changes, save the document a second time. 
 
10.  You now have a .TXT version of your resume that you can paste into a ‘Paste you resume here’ field on a Web site.
 
Terry here again.  That’s all there is to it.  This process really only takes a few minutes but will have a big impact on the appearance of your resume when it’s not feasible to upload your “official” Word version.

If you have any questions about this procedure, please post them here on the blog so everyone can learn and benefit.  And should you want to contact Jim to get more information on the ZIP lunches, drop him a note at 
jsandham77@hotmail.com.

On this Tuesday’s call, Rick and I are going to devote the entire hour to answering as many of your questions as possible.  We will be focusing on the questions submitted when you registered for the calls.  If you’d like to be sure yours is included, jump on over to www.artofthejobsearch.com/ts1 right now and sign up!

See you on Tuesday!

Terry

Audio from This Week’s Call is Finally Here!

Ah, Victory is sweet!  Finally figured out how to get the audio from Tuesday’s call to upload!  Thank you all for your patience.  If you click on this link and you should now be able to listen to and/or save the file: 

Call #2: The PreResume

For those who were on the call, I haven’t forgotten that I was going to explain how to prepare a .txt version of your resume.   Just got waylaid by upload problem.  I’ll be posting the information soon. Terry

Having Trouble Uploading Last Night’s Call Recording

For those of you who are looking for the recording from last night – please bear with me.  It’s coming.  I’m just having some difficulties getting it to upload.  It will be posted as soon as I figure out a work around. 

Thank you for your patience.

Terry

Tonight’s Call

Welcome to all who have joined us for tonight’s teleseminar.  Here is the template tha Rick has provided for the PreResume:

the-pre-resume-handout-notes1

Feel free to send us your comments or questions on this format.

Next Week’s Teleseminar Details

Thank you to all who participated on tonight’s call!  Rick and I enjoyed it and hope that you were helped.  For those who missed the call or want to upload it to your computer, here is the link:

Call #1: The Accomplishments Worksheet

If this works correctly, you should be able to right-click and then open or save the file. I will post the details for next week’s call soon.   In the meantime, if you have any comments you would like to share from tonight’s call or if you have a question that you didn’t get to ask, feel free to post them/it here.  We would love to get a dialog going. Til next time.

Terry

Files for Tomorrow’s Teleseminar

Hi All!

Rick and I are really looking forward to starting our teleseminars tomorrow night.  In order to help you follow along, here are 2 files for you to download.  The first one is related to the Accomplishments Worksheet that will be the main topic for the evening.  The second gives you a template for preparing your PreResume.  Go ahead and print them out now so you can have them handy when the call begins.

personal-accomplishments-worksheet-2009

the-pre-resume-handout-notes

See you soon!

Terry

New Teleseminar Series Starting Tues. February 10th!

It’s finally happening!  Join Rick Gillis and me for the first in our new  series of FREE teleseminars.  We begin next Tues., Feb. 10, 2009 at 7pm Central.  You can either call in or listen in through your computer.  The details are at:  http://www.artofthejobsearch.com/ts1.  (If for some reason this link doesn’t work for you, please email me at terry@artofthejobsearch.com and I’ll get you the info. you need.)

In these weekly teleseminars, we are going to be covering all kinds of issues relating to job search, in an effort to help make your search successful and as short as possible.  Because an effective resume is THE most important piece in your job search toolbox, we will be starting there.  We will teach you how to structure a PresumeTM that will get noticed, both in person and online.  You will also learn about the Accomplishments Worksheet – what it is and why you absolutely must have one.

When you sign in, you will be given the opportunity to share with us your most important question regarding your career or job search.  We welcome all your questions because we want to be sure that these teleseminars address the issues that YOU think are most important.

We look forward to “seeing” you on the calls!

Terry

The ART of the Job Search Team

Terry Atkinson and Rick Gillis