Community Employment Resource Centre
What’s inside?
Ø
Protecting your privacy
Ø
Apprenticeship Information
Ø
Fearless Interviewing
Ø
Stuff Envelopes at home …
Ø
And the Winners Are…
Ø
Wonderful Wednesdays
Ø
Quote of the Month
Protecting your Privacy
From
Workopolis.com
If you
are composing your resume, applying for
a job in person or on line or attending an interview, be aware of protecting
your privacy. As a job seeker, you must
be vigilant about protecting your information.
Here are some tips:
·
You do not need to provide your
Social Insurance Number (SIN) to a potential employer conducting a background
check. You will need to provide it once
hired in order to get paid.
·
Do not give potential employers
personal information that is not work related.
No credible employer ever needs your bank account numbers, credit card
numbers, mother’s maiden name or identifying characteristics such as eye colour
or race. If an employer requests this
information from you, don’t give it to them.
POSTING YOUR RESUME ON LINE:
·
Do not use a job search site, a
resume writing service, a resume distribution service, or any job search
service that does not have a posted privacy policy on its Web site.
·
If you are posting your resume
on line, focus on quality, not quantity.
Hand-pick just a handful of sites that have good privacy policies and a
good track record. Choose sites that
other people working in your profession have had good luck with, and post only
to sites that allow you to mask your contact information (such as making your
resume Private).
·
Omit references on your
resume. When you post a resume on line,
you are giving their information away without their consent in what can be a
very public forum.
·
If you post your resume to a
database and receive unsolicited email other than from legitimate employers or
recruiters, be sure to notify the site where you have your resume posted and
tell them you have received the email.
Be sure to forward the entire email you received to the site so that it
can take action.
For more information, go to www.workopolis.com
Apprenticeship Information
This
website from the Ministry of Education and Ministry of Training, Colleges and
Universities, is a great place to get information about all kinds of
apprenticeships: Construction, Auto
Service, Manufacturing, and the Service Sector.
In
addition to being able to learn about apprenticeships, a great document from
the website can be downloaded – Apprenticeship
Subject Pathways. Once you enter the website, click on more information and
you’ll see where you can click on Apprenticeship Subject Pathways
and download the file (it is a large document – over 70 pages).
Apprenticeship
Subject Pathways assists in determining which secondary school English, Math
and Science courses would benefit students intending to start an apprenticeship
after high school. The document was
created by aligning the academic skills inventories for trades that are identified
in Evaluating Academic Readiness for Apprenticeship Training, a series of
documents developed by the Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities,
with the learning expectations that are outlined in the Ontario secondary
school curriculum policy documents for English, Math, and Science.
A
secondary purpose for the Apprenticeship Subject Pathways is to generate an
understanding of the trades and the academic skills journeypersons need to do
their jobs.
A copy
of the Apprenticeship Subject Pathways document is available at Port Hope and
Cobourg CERC offices. For further
information, contact:
Ontario
Government Training Hotline
1-888-JOB-GROW
“Fearless
Interviewing: How to Win the Job by
Communicating with Confidence”
~ by
Marky Stein
A quote
by Erica Jong sums it up: “It takes
courage to live a life, any life”.
Being in an interview can feel like a scary situation in our lives; one
we would rather not experience. Marky
Stein begins her book, Fearless Interviewing, by examining why interviews
are so scary. What you might not know
is that you are probably more prepared for the interview than the
interviewer. Did you know that more
than 60% of interviewers have never been trained in the task of
interviewing? One of the most important
tasks, she notes, is gaining control over the interview process: harness your fear into excitement, energy,
and enthusiasm.
As
Marky Stein writes, “the key to fearless interviewing (is) knowing your
strengths, being able to provide concrete examples of those strengths, thereby
building the lasting confidence to present yourself and your skills in the best
possible light”. She writes that
“ninety percent of employers say that the primary reason they do not hire a candidate
is because the interviewee could not clearly state his or her skills.” This didn’t mean that they didn’t have the
skills, only that they could not verbally state those skills in a convincing
way to the interviewer.
Taking
a full inventory of your skills is an important first step. What are your general skills? Your job specific skills? Your personal traits that add value? Your special gifts or talents that make you
unique?
In
addition to discussing the importance of being able to relay your skills, Stein
outlines the importance of making a good first impression. You may know that “you have 20 seconds or
less to impress upon an employer whether or not she should consider
hiring you. From the moment you walk
into her office to the moment you sit down in a chair, thousands of neurons
will be firing in the interviewer’s brain asking one of two things: ‘Is this
person friend or foe?’ It’s an
inescapable reflex, necessary to our survival as a species, to gauge
immediately whether the stranger before us is going to help us or hurt us.” Stein goes on to discuss how to make a good
first impression with some easy-to-follow tips.
This
book is easy to read and makes sense.
Here is a reviewers comments …
“Fearless
Interviewing is extremely optimistic, sparkling, and useful. Thank you, Marky, for the best interviewing
book I’ve seen.”
~ Barbara K. Brauer, Book Reviewer,
Career Planning and Adult
Development Journal
Marky
Stein is founder of her own career-consulting firm, a popular speaker at career
development conferences, and the online Job Search Expert at iVillage.com
You
can find this great book at CERC!
Stuff envelopes at home and get rich – sounds too
good to be true!
Advertised opportunities to earn income by doing work at
home are often fraudulent and rarely result in substantial income. Usually the advertisements promise a
high-income position requiring little experience and no investment, however, in
most of these schemes you must purchase something before you begin work. Before participating in a work-at-home
employment opportunity, make inquiries with the Better Business Bureau and the
police to determine the legitimacy of the company’s offer.
If something sounds too good to be true, it usually is!
And
the Winners are…
The winners of our wellness packages are:
Elzbieta
Szawara of Cobourg &
Sheila
Wright of Port Hope
Congratulations to
both our winners and thanks to the generous donations made by Kraft, SNIPS,
Guardian, First Choice Haircutters and York Super Pharmacy.
Next
Wellness draws:
June
11 and June 18
Wonderful
Wednesdays in Port Hope -
Free Information Sessions
¨
Computer
Basics
June 2 & June 30
¨
Know Your
Resources:
June 9
¨
Automated
Resumes:
June 16
¨
Choices:
June
23
Time: 2:00–3:30 pm at
Port
Hope CERC
To register, please call 885-2832
Limited space available *
Quote
of the Month
“The road to happiness lies in two simple
principles: Find what it is that
interests you and that you can do well, and put your whole soul into it – every
bit of energy and ambition and natural ability that you have.”
~ John D. Rockefeller
Enjoy the start of Summer 2004!