Dynamic Resume/CV and Static LinkedIn Profile

I teach my job seeking clients that they should consider as if their LinkedIn profile is virtually stapled to each CV that they send out. Ignoring this is a grave danger; recruiters will find your profile on LinkedIn if they invest a small amount of time, and believe me, many do!

If the LinkedIn profile positively complements your resume, everything is wonderful. However, if your persona on LinkedIn is somehow different or adds confusion for a recruiter, you can be eliminated from contention for a job without even being aware of it.

Most job seekers create multiple versions of their resume because they have more than one objective in their job search, and/or decide to emphasize different elements in their background depending upon the specific targeted job. In such real-world situations, the static nature of the LinkedIn profile that is associated with these various versions of the resume creates a problem.

And, since LinkedIn currently gives no means to a person to create the equivalent of multiple profiles, one to match their different resumes/job targets, there is no satisfying solution.

With such an obvious inherent conflict, some people choose to make the LinkedIn profile all-encompassing, essentially a combination of all versions of their resume. Another approach is to use LinkedIn to supplement their primary job search objective, and lose the benefit of LinkedIn as a complement for the remaining career goals.

Either of these solutions is imperfect at best, and until LinkedIn allows for the equivalent of multiple profile functionality, there is no way for many job seekers to fully support their job search efforts using this otherwise excellent employment search resource.

Translating Your CV from English into Hebrew

There are multiple issues in moving from English (or some other language) into Hebrew with your CV in preparation for your Israeli job search.

The initial thing to consider is whether this is even necessary for you to do. There are a variety of opinions.

One is that if you won’t be able to understand your own CV in Hebrew, then there is no reason for you to have such a version, and it is even misleading in giving the impression that your level of Hebrew is higher than it actually is. Others say that you should send your CV in the language that the employer used to advertise the job itself, independent of your own level of Hebrew. I can attest to the fact that in my personal experience of receiving thousands of CVs in Israel, the majority are submitted in Hebrew, with the exception of sales/marketing and technical jobs, where English CVs are a more common occurrence than in other professions.

If you think back to the objective when sending your CV, it is to move forward in the recruitment process. You have 10-20 seconds to make a positive impression. Since you don’t know what the level of English the person(s) reading your CV will have, it is dangerous to send your CV in English, even if the job requires a high level of English. Keep in mind that multiple people may be reviewing your CV, and the first can be a person simply doing filtering on keywords and/or past job titles. Again, since in most cases you can’t know who will read your CV and what their comfort level is in Hebrew and/or English, a safe approach is to send your CV in both languages, and let the reader decide which is preferable for them. The CVs can be sent in two separate files with names that make the contents obvious, or put together into one suitably-named file.

If you do decide to create a Hebrew language CV, then you need to confirm that your CV is designed according to Israeli conventions, meaning among other things, short and targeted. Of course, any English CV that you use in Israel should also conform to the Israeli standard.

The Hebrew output needs to be both grammatically correct as well as using the accurate professional/technical terms. The second requirement is as important as the first. If the translator is not familiar with the current sector-specific words for your employment objective, then the result will generally be a document that gives a clear indication that you don’t know the subject matter adequately, putting yourself immediately at a grave disadvantage.

Certainly for either one of these goals, using an automatic translating service (eg. Google Translate…) is out of the question – there is no chance to generate a suitable document.

The translator must be at a minimum mother tongue level Hebrew with relevant knowledge of sector, in order to ensure the profession-appropriate terms are used. At the same time, if you need assistance massaging the non-Israel-style English CV into an Israel-style Hebrew CV, then the translator must be knowledgeable in this area as well. Sometimes this might even require getting assistance from two separate people, one knowledgeable about Israeli-style CVs and another with the Hebrew skills to perform the translation.

Whether the person is paid or not is dependent upon the cheapest and most reliable access you have to someone that meets the above criteria. Your CV is generally your first impression-maker to the employer – make sure you consider all of the implications of your language decision.

Do you need an initial summary in your CV?

When working with job seekers on their CVs/resumes, one critical issue arises quickly: Is it valuable to include an initial summary/profile?

I receive many CVs from job candidates on behalf of companies that I do recruiting for. About half of them include such summaries.

What is the correct way to begin your CV?

To me, the answer is clear when we review two statistics that arise from studies focused on how CVs are reviewed by employers:

• Average amount of time that a CV is “read” – 20-30 seconds
• Position on CV where the reader starts – top of the first page

The conclusion that I draw from the above is that the job seeker has very little time to get their message across, and that in such a short period of time, there is no way that the employer can read the entire document. However, the initial part of the CV will almost certainly be read.

So, to use a hi-tech term, if I reverse engineer from the above information, I quickly can come to the conclusion that I want my targeted important message to the employer to be at the top of the first page. If the most important details are spread throughout your CV, you can’t have full confidence that you are even getting your message across in such a short period of time.

Another strong reason for opening your CV with a section that summarizes your key skills/accomplishment as relates to your job target is that it allows you to describe yourself in a favorable way to the employer. Without this, you are hoping that the employer will infer your suitability from other parts of your document (work history, education…). Why leave this critical point to chance? If you are qualified for the job which you are applying for, you want this to be obvious quickly, and highlighting the most relevant parts of your background is an excellent way to achieve this objective.

Once you decide that you want to include an opening summary, the question becomes, what to include in this section.

First, you need to understand well what employers are seeking for your job target. You can determine this based upon some combination of your own previous work experience, talking with others in Israel that do the job, and looking for relevant job advertisements. Then, for those relevant skills which you possess, it makes sense to include them in your initial summary.

However, this is not enough. The above is critical to illustrating that you meet the requirements of the job, but it doesn’t distinguish you from all of the other candidates that also have the necessary qualifications. This is one of the most difficult tasks of a job seeker when creating a CV – how to make yourself a three-dimensional person when arriving in a one-dimensional (file/paper) format, while at the same time making you different in a positive way from other qualified candidates.

An excellent way to attempt this feat is by including not only skills in your CV, but also accomplishments. The wonderful thing about accomplishments is that they are unique to you.

People working in sales usually have an easier time with this, as they are oftentimes measured by quantifiable criteria. So, mentioning quota, increasing revenues… can serve this purpose well.

However, for the majority of job seekers, accomplishments are not always so readily handy and bite-size. The goal is to include in your CV relevant benefits that previous organizations have achieved from your efforts. Again, the idea is to distinguish yourself from other candidates, while at the same time helping the company understand what benefit your previous employers received from your work, something that can be more tangible for a company to understand than simply a list of your skills.

For instance, if you introduced a process in a previous role that saved the company time, money…, then this can be something to point out. If you played an integral part of a project that made a difference to the bottom line of your company, then this can work as well.

If your initial statement (some combination of relevant skills and suitable accomplishments) matches the company’s candidate profile, then there is a much better chance that the employer will continue reading your CV, and quite possibly give you more than just a short glance.

The rest of your CV after the summary should include details that provide more detail to what is related in the short initial section and give evidence that what you wrote there is true.

Including an initial summary on your CV is an excellent way to highlight why you are a high level candidate for the job, helping you paint the proper profile for the employer while also including details to make you stick out from the pack.

Is Your CV Perfect?

Job seekers focus their precious time resources way too much on re-working their CVs/resumes.

I have a theory about why this is true.

In the recruitment process, many elements are beyond the control of the job seeker. You send your CV in response to a job listing and then must wait to hear back for an interview request from the employer that in many cases never arrives. You identify and reach out to professionals as a part of your networking efforts, and hope some of them will agree to begin meaningful conversations with you. You go to an interview, and then wait to hear back from the company whether a job offer is on the way.

Sure, you do decide some things, such as which jobs to apply for, which companies/people to target for networking, whether to accept a job offer… , but when you think of your day-to-day job search elements, it is normal for everyone to periodically feel a lack of progress, that your efforts don’t seem to be paying off in the short-run.  This missing control and constant waiting on others is something that can be difficult to live with.

So, to solve this problem, job seekers invariably concentrate on an obvious thing that seems to return control of the process to them, a component of the initial stages of the recruitment process with employers, and oftentimes something that is sent at the early stages once a networking conversation is begun: the CV/resume.

Other reasons for the never-ending focus on the CV:

• Job Application Average Response Rate – The average response rate for applications to jobs from Internet sites is 5-10%, meaning that between one out of every 10-20 CVs you send out will generate contact back from the employer. So, the fact is that on average 90-95% of your CVs sent in answer to employment advertisements will enter into the dreaded job seekers’ black hole, never to be heard from again. With such a high rate of “failure”, it is natural to investigate where you can improve, and invariably the focus falls on the CV.

• Job Search Professional Marketing Efforts – Professional CV/resume writers are plentiful, taking advantage of the above conditions to send the message that by following their advice for CV creation, your response rate will markedly improve. Or, take a look at the cover of this book:

or of many others you can find in the career section of bookstores. In my opinion, to turn around the book title above, you would be a complete idiot to think there is such a thing as a perfect CV. :>) If you ask 10 experts for their opinion of your CV, you will receive 10 very different responses, so the concept of perfect and or even correct has no place in your thinking.

Am I saying that all CVs will serve the same purpose for you? Certainly not! There are many things you need to take into consideration when creating your CV. My point though, is that the goal should not be to create the “perfect” CV, but rather to create a CV which serves your objectives and gives you a proper chance to get to the next stage in the recruitment process. Sure, this is less sexy and will never be the title of a book, but it is a more effective strategy nonetheless.  And once you have done this, you can confidently move on to other aspects of your job search.

Remember these quick facts of CVs, illustrated by various studies:

• Average Amount of Time CV is Read: 20-30 Seconds
• First Place the Eye Falls on the CV: Top of the First Page

You must keep these factors in mind when building your CV, together with Israel-specific characteristics:

• Israeli CVs are short – one page is great; two pages is maximum
• Israeli CVs are focused/narrow – if you are targeting different professions, you will need to create different versions of your CV

To summarize my outlook in one sentence, much more important than the contents of your CV is whose hands you put it into.

For those of you that want to learn more about how to create a CV for Israel, you are welcome to read the following articles:

• A CV/Resume is not an Obituary
• CV/Resume – Chronological or Skills Based?
• Will Including “Good Team Player” on a CV Help Get You Invited to an Interview?
• Women Should Not Include Their Picture on their CV/Resume!
• CV/Resume File Type – Is it Important?

Job Seekers in Israel – Favorable Conditions Abound

The holidays are over, so employees are back from their holidays, and companies are operating full steam ahead, including recruitment departments.

The Israel unemployment rates are at historical lows (5.4% as of July 2011). Compare this with the US (9.1%), UK (8.1%), and France (9.3%).  And, the average gross national salary is NIS 8,900 as of July 2011, never higher.

This is a wonderful combination for jobs seekers in Israel, whether you are unemployed or looking to change jobs.

I have updated the Job Search in Israel site to make older articles more accessible. You are welcome to visit the new pages, which contain articles for the most popular job search topics:

• CV/Resumes & Cover Letters
• Networking
• Recruitment Process
• Sectors/Professions
• Complete Job Seeking in Israel Archive

Best of Success!

Will Including “Good Team Player” on a CV Help Get You Invited to an Interview?

When considering what to include in CVs/resumes, a question oftentimes arises about concepts/terms such as “good team player”, “able to work independently”, “loyal”, “hard-working”, “people-person”… I am sure that you can think of many others that fall into the general category of personal attributes that are beneficial to almost all employers. In some cases, the employer will even list a number of these in the requirements section of their job listings.

Should job candidates include these on their CV?

From my experience, these are typically characteristics that are recognized and rewarded when a person begins working at the company as opposed to during the recruitment process. Furthermore, I have never spoken with anyone seeking a job that doesn’t believe that they excel at all of these. Some probably are capable of making accurate self-evaluations, while others are less so – the only chance that an employer has to truly understand what is correct in the recruitment process is during interviews or via feedback from recommendations.

All parts of a CV are critical in differentiating yourself in a positive way from other applicants and getting the employer’s attention. Especially on a one-page CV, you don’t have any room to waste – it is all valuable real estate. There are two choices; either to decide that these types of characteristics on your CV are the most important use of this space to get yourself invited to an interview, or that you can find other traits that are more important to focus on.

I think that the final decision needs to rest with what the requirements are of the job, and what your work history consists of. If the job demands many specific skills that you possess, then these should take precedence on your CV. If the job is more of an entry level role, then using characteristics as mentioned here can help you get your message across. This can also be true in a skills-based CV – for instance in a case where you applying for a job which you don’t have a lot of experience, but have the skills from other types of jobs/activities which can be applicable.

And if you do decide to convey yourself using these traits, you should consider how to do so in the most effective way. If you are simply using the generic words, you can be sure that your CV will read the same as many others that are arriving to the recruiter. Adding some detail and making yourself unique by providing examples/accomplishments from your past which illustrate these abilities will go a long ways toward distinguishing yourself positively.

Employees that possess these intangibles are usually the ones that excel at their jobs and get promotions. When you are writing your CV though, remember that you are creating a marketing document and think hard about whether these descriptions are the best way to make you the candidate that sticks out in the crowd.

Women Should Not Include Their Picture on their CV/Resume!

According to a study conducted in Israel, the decision of whether to include your photo in your CV depends upon if you are a woman or a man – and how attractive you are! Don’t believe me - take a look at this article: http://www.jpost.com/LifeStyle/Article.aspx?id=197151.

I have always been of the opinion that photos can play a positive role, personalizing a paper CV and helping to bring out the applicant’s three-dimensional reality. Of course, the picture should be appropriate and professional, traditionally a head-shot with a pleasant expression. I have seen CV photos that include half of another person, or where the candidate looks so downcast that it seems someone is forcing them to sit in front of the camera; in these cases the photo does more harm than good. Also, if you are applying for a job and are concerned that your age or religious clothing might make the company less likely to invite you to an interview, then going without a picture may well be the correct decision. I know, some people are probably thinking that if the employer doesn’t want someone 50+ years old, and the candidate is above 50, then they should understand this immediately from the CV and not waste anyone's time. Sometimes though it is possible to overcome such employer restrictions - if you have the opportunity to meet with them, they see that you are composite of many characteristics, only one of which is something that is not to their liking. Therefore, saving this sensitive discussion for a personal interview rather than when you are simply evaluated based upon your CV is always preferable.

The above article introduces a new twist. Stated simply, women’s chances of being invited to an interview based upon their CV goes down when they include their photo, and this reduction is in direct relationship to their attractiveness. Yes, according to this study, the more attractive a woman is that puts her picture on her CV, the LESS likely she is to be called by the employer. For men, interestingly enough, the results are the opposite: including a picture increases the likelihood of being contacted by the employer, and more attractive men have a better chance to get called.

The researchers for the report were very surprised by these results, and did further investigation to try to understand the reason for this situation. The results indicated to them that typically the people that initially review incoming CVs are women (mostly young and single), and that these gate-keepers were negatively influenced by an attractive female candidate. The article says it clearly: the researchers believe that the CV reviewers were jealous of women candidates that were “good looking”. By the way, this reaction only occurred when job seekers were applying directly to the employer; when applying to a placement company where the CV reviewer does not end up working with the candidates that are ultimately hired, there was no penalty for a woman with a picture on her CV being attractive.

So, what are job seekers supposed to make of such statistics? At a minimum, if I were a woman, I would think twice about including a photo in your CV. And can you carry this concept over to LinkedIn? If the conclusions of the researchers are accurate, then before making a decision about including your picture in LinkedIn (which almost everyone does), you need to first consider who your target audience is, not generally, but actually which organizations will be reading your LinkedIn profile, and who individually is the most likely viewer going to be. Only then can you make the final decision.

All the new technologies and options we have available are truly amazing, and absolutely make a job seeker’s efforts much more effective. However, these modern conveniences come with potential draw-backs, and the first step in dealing with them is to recognize they exist. I wonder how universally we can apply these soap opera conclusions, but it is certainly interesting to consider.

Israeli Phrases and Job Search Don't Always Mix

Anyone that moves from one country to another has many things to learn, including a whole new set of idioms. For instance, Yihiyeh B’Seder (יהיה בסדר), which means “it will be okay”, but oftentimes is used to justify doing nothing and hoping for the best, something which should be the antithesis of a job seeker’s creed.

I would like to concentrate on another very common phrase: haval al hazman
(חבל על הזמן). A rough English translation is: “waste of time”. You will hear this often when someone is describing something good. Essentially the meaning is that the thing being mentioned is so great that it is a waste of time to even try to describe it adequately in words. Of course in Israel, typically after a person invokes this phrase, they will immediately launch into a long explanation attempting to disprove the impossibility of the task, but that is another story.

I have found that when people are presenting themselves for employment opportunities, they sometimes misuse the haval al hazman concept, conserving words and sacrificing effectiveness. Here are a couple of examples:

• Cover Letters/CVs – I can’t count how many times I have received job applications with cover letters which introduce critical details that are not contained in the CV. A job seeker can’t assume that a person reading a CV will have previously read the cover letter; the CV must be a stand-alone targeted document. If you have specific experience/knowledge/interests that are relevant for the job and they are not contained in the standard version of your CV, then personalize your CV to incorporate the additional detail. This is not a waste of time, and in fact is quite the opposite.
• Networking – When you finally are able to get a good networking professional on the telephone, or even better in person, don’t waste the opportunity. Sometimes people make a tremendous effort to identify the right person and find a way to get to them, and then somehow become shy. It is not a waste of time as part of the discussion to emphasize your unique characteristics, yet often job seekers will simply hand out their CV and hope for the best.

Don’t fall into the haval al hazman attitude. Deliver the message that is best for you, without forcing the receiver to make inferences that may not do you justice.

Does Your LinkedIn Presence Enhance your CV/Resume?

Recruiters are using LinkedIn to research employment candidates – study after study reveals this to be true, and in constantly growing numbers. The overall percentage of employers varies according to particular research, but it is generally understood to 75%, depending upon the sector. And, almost one quarter of employers have found information about a candidate via social networking which positively influenced them to hire someone.

In such a situation, maintaining an identity on LinkedIn that supports your job search persona is an absolute requirement for a job seeker in the 21st Century. For those that are new to LinkedIn, here is a guide to get you started: LinkedIn – Tying it all Together, and for those that want to learn about maintaining their online persona, see: http://jobsearchinisrael.blogspot.com/2010/01/your-employment-search-persona.html.

I would like to discuss some finer points of the process of fine-tuning your LinkedIn profile to serve as a positive influence on employers, or conversely not to act as a negative influence.

• Multiple Industries – This is a common concern for job seekers in Israel, those seeking a variety of positions. As hopefully most readers are aware, in Israel the convention in CVs is to send very role-focused documents, which means that people targeting different jobs create multiple versions of their CV. How can this be reconciled with the fact that in LinkedIn there is only the possibility to create a single profile? There is no perfect solution, but I advise people to create a more general purpose LinkedIn profile that incorporates their wide range of skills/experience/accomplishments. Employers know that your LinkedIn profile is not the same as your CV, that it enables more details and recommendations, so it is certainly acceptable to use it in this manner.
• Date Cleansing (education, jobs) – I encountered a semi-embarrassing situation recently. I was lecturing about CVs, and had discussed how it was a good idea for people in their 50s+ to cleanse from their CV anything that gave the employer an indication of their age (not to re-iterate this point which I have made in other articles related to CV, but my opinion is that for sensitive issues, including “advanced” age, it is better for the job candidate to hide their age during the CV stage and deal with this in person in an interview). Since I am approaching 50 (boy, that is difficult to write), I also made efforts to remove my age from my CV. Then, I moved on in my lecture to discuss the benefits of LinkedIn, how employers will find you there, and that your LinkedIn profile must be synchronized with your CV. Lo and behold, as I was showing my LinkedIn profile to the group, we discovered together that the years I attended university were listed there, making it simple to understand my age. Since then, I have gone through my profile on LinkedIn and updated what was necessary. I write semi-embarrassing because I am now living in Israel where embarrassment essentially has no meaning – in the US I might have even turned red.
• Search Targets – People that use LinkedIn best do not wait for potential employers to approach them, rather they take pro-active steps to find companies/individuals, and introduce themselves. The question is, who should be targeted in such searches to find suitable people? I have a hit rate of at least one third when I send a simple message to people that I find on LinkedIn, telling them professional-to-professional that I am researching the market and if I can ask them some questions, a pitch to start a conversation. A job seeker contacted me recently and said that he was not getting any responses when he approached people on LinkedIn. After we continued our discussion, I understood that he was targeting executives. LinkedIn is a wonderful resource to identify and reach out to relevant professionals, but it does not change certainly realities. One such reality is that when approaching executives (or recruiters), those in senior positions or those that have many people constantly approaching them, don’t expect LinkedIn to magically allow you full access to them. LinkedIn can be a wonderful resource to identify those in positions of interest to you, but if your target is to get to executives or H/R people, the path that usually produces the best results is to find someone that knows them and/or start conversations with others in the company that are more accessible and try to have these lead to your real objective.

LinkedIn is a fabulous resource; use it correctly and it can be a great asset in your job search.

A CV/Resume is not an Obituary

I know it’s a provocative title, but sometimes this is justified in order bring attention to a subject that most people take for granted.

So, what is the objective of a CV? Simple, to get yourself invited to an interview.

How do you increase your chances of getting such an invitation? By using your one-dimensional CV to jump off the page, highlighting why employers will benefit from your skills, while at the same time avoiding sensitive subjects (age, political/religious persuasion…) that might cause you to be rejected on-the-spot.

When most people create their CV, they typically rely upon the only format that they are immediately familiar with, a chronological style that lists the various jobs they have done in reverse order, detailing the tasks that they performed in each position. A chronological CV is appropriate in some cases, but not universally. In many instances a skills-based CV is better for your circumstances; click here for more details.

In this article, I would like to focus on the second default CV decision: listing the tasks that you did in each job in your employment history section. Let’s go back to the title… Why compare a CV with an obituary? As anyone who reads the newspaper knows, an obituary contains the name of the person, and a brief summary of their life. Some people build their CVs in the same way, a concise overview of their history, albeit one with a focus on employment.

However, does compiling an abbreviated list of tasks you performed in the past and educational institutions you attended really enable you to make the best possible impression to a hiring manager? When I was graduating from an American university in the mid-80s and writing my first resume, one of the things that I was advised to do was start with an objective statement, in my case something like “A recent computer science graduate seeking a challenging entry-level position that utilizes my skills”. Today you will find few people that would advise including such a statement in a resume/CV; why? Take another look at that objective and notice that the focus is on what I (the job candidate) wanted. However, think about it, who is the target for your CV? It certainly is not you; if I was the hiring manager I would have hired myself in a second, with the largest compensation package in the history of college graduates. No, the audience is obviously the prospective employers that you are attempting to impress with your job candidacy.

What you should be trying to do is ensure that your application is viewed by the company as most exactly fitting the profile of the job candidate they seek and/or you are the one that best solves the problem that they have (and thereby the position that they are offering). While listing the tasks that you have performed in the past is one way to meet this objective, such a method requires the employer to make inferences – mentally translating how the things you have done previously can be applicable to them. Why leave things to chance when you can make the hiring manager’s life easier and increase your employment attractiveness at the same.

Instead of opening your CV with an objective, it is much more common nowadays to start with a summary/profile. Maybe something like this, “Computer science graduate available to assist your company meet software deadlines by writing high-quality code in C, Pascal, Assembly Language, and PL/1 – available around the clock and excited to contribute to your company”. [For those of you out there that are software people, I know that this list of languages dates me, but that is what we learned in university in the early 1980s.] Yes, it is a summary/profile of you (the job candidate), but a good summary describes how you match the employee profile that is being sought, and how the company will benefit from your skills. To some this message may be almost indistinguishable from my original objective sentence, but changing the focus from the job candidate to the employer makes a great difference in the way your message will be received and processed. Instead of focusing on what you have done until now, concentrate on what you can do for this new company, including when relevant the benefits that will accrue to the company from your employment. Your CV should focus on the future, not the past. Listing tasks, without tying them together to directly call attention to how they are useful to the company, is a wasted opportunity.

One technique to use on a CV to realize this goal is to include accomplishments in your summary/job descriptions, not just tasks. The advantage of mentioning accomplishments is that you move up a level in positioning yourself, describing not just what you have done in the past, but also how the activities that you performed benefited the company – this is the ultimate in tailoring your CV to the target audience! Sales people have a relatively easy time listing accomplishments (at least successful ones do), as the evaluation of their job is directly based upon quantifiable targets (quota, revenues…). People in other professions can have more difficultly articulating specific accomplishments that they can attribute to their work. For assistance in identifying your own accomplishments, click here.

Transitioning from a candidate-centric task CV to an employer-targeted CV introduces complexity though. When you are focused on yourself things are easy as you know everything there is to know. However, when you are concentrating on the employer/hiring manager, there are always unknowns. How can the job candidate understand what the employer really wants? In order to do this well, you have to do your homework. Research is required, using the job advertisement itself (if one exists), internal connections at the company that you have or develop, and publicly available information using Internet (such as LinkedIn and corporate websites) or other resources. Including accomplishments in your CV that are related to the organization, and indicating how what you are capable of doing ties to the activities of the prospective employer will do wonders in improving the reception that you receive.

Approaching a company with a CV that is focused on them is the best way to grab their attention and distinguish yourself from the crowd.

Job Search in Israel Blog – 6 Months Old

The Job Search in Israel blog (http://jobsearchinisrael.blogspot.com/) has passed the six (6) month mark, and I have kept to my target of one new article a week. The objective with the site is to explore issues related to seeking work in Israel, designed for newcomers and long-time residents, as well as those considering moving here. On the right-side of the blog page, there is an archive of all of the previous articles; here is a quick list of some of them:

• New Immigrants' Employment Issues
• Your Employment Search Persona
• LinkedIn – Tying it all Together
• Employment Networking - Getting to the Other Two Thirds of the Jobs
• CV/Resume – Chronological or Skills Based?
• CV/Resume File Type – Is it Important?
• Cover Letters: Can They Actually Hurt your Chances?
• Interviews – What is the Employer Really Asking?
• Job Seekers – Help People Help You
• Job Seeker Black Hole
• Employee Assessment in Israel
• Freelancer in Israel – What does it Mean?
• Work Permit for Foreigners in Israel
• Transferable Skills & Professions
• The “O” Word – Overqualified
• Online Job Boards
• When is the Best Time to Look for a Job?

There is a shortage of job search material that is lacking from the site, of course there are plenty of areas untouched. However, with so much readily available on the web, I don’t want to simply duplicate what can be found by anyone via a simple Google search. Rather, I am trying to address specific issues related to Israel and your employment search.

So, I am asking for your help, dear readers. Please write to me at jobsearchinisrael@gmail.com with feedback on the site, suggestions for future article subjects, problems you have encountered in your job search, and/or questions that you have about seeking work in Israel. So far, readers' comments are positive and encouraging, and I am enthusiastic about continuing to add new material based upon your interests and needs. So, please do take the time to send me a message.

And, best of success in your job search!