Monday, April 20, 2020

Best Ways to Writing an Attorney Resume

Best Ways to Writing an Attorney ResumeIf you're interested in working as an attorney, then it's important that you do all you can to get the best possible resume. Your first step should be to learn how to write a resume that isn't going to cause you more headaches than it's worth. We'll discuss a few of the best ways to writing a resume.First, you should have a goal in mind when you write your resume. For example, if you want to write a resume to land a position in private practice, you might have to spend some time looking at your options and researching the process. Once you know what you want to do, you'll have a better idea of what you need to include in your resume. Make sure that you have all of the information required in your resume, including anything relevant to your experience.Second, think about your career goals and your level of skill at reading and writing in English. If you have limited knowledge of other languages, then it will be even more important that you consid er your level of proficiency with a second language. Again, this is something that you should take into consideration before you start writing your resume. Another thing to keep in mind is that if you don't know the basics of grammar, don't assume that you will automatically know how to create a resume with a proper structure. If you really want to excel at writing a resume, then it will be important that you learn from someone who already knows what they're doing.Third, when you're thinking about your career goals, make sure that you're covering all of them. Sometimes, it's helpful to have different options open up so that you don't have to worry about what kind of attorney you're interested in. If you have a particular area of expertise, then make sure that you include it in your resume. This makes your resume stand out because you're highlighting what you've already done.Fourth, think about what you need to cover when you're doing copywriting. If you're writing for the internet, then you'll want to have a strong grasp on how to write a business card. You'll also want to have a feel for how to write a website that will be user-friendly. Having an understanding of the structure of these types of documents is important if you want to have a better chance of landing the job. It will also help to give you an idea of the type of audience that you'll be writing for.Fifth, you should always remember that there are many different things to consider when you're writing a resume. You'll want to consider the size of the company, how much experience you have, what years of experience you have, and anything else that you want to include. If you have any questions about the resume you're creating, you should find someone who knows what they're doing. You'll also want to consider your education and experience, as well as whether or not you have a certain specialty.As you can see, there are many ways to get the best out of your attorney resume. Be sure to think about what y ou want to achieve with your resume before you begin writing, so that you have a better chance of getting a job.

Tuesday, April 14, 2020

Ask the Expert Job Search as Revenge Porn Victim

Ask the Expert Job Search as Revenge Porn Victim Q: How do I look for a job when the revenge porn of me might show up in an online search? About a decade ago, when we were seniors in college, my now-husband was studying abroad on the other side of the globe. As part of his long-distance Valentine’s Day gift, I emailed him a bunch of dirty selfies…and then my account got hacked. It took seven years for them to surface, but when they did it was brutal. These explicit photos with my full name and other personal information were everywhere. If you googled me, the first dozen pages were these pictures on various disgusting websites with tons of sickeningly cruel comments. It was one of the worst experiences of my life, and it took me a while to recover. At this point, it’s basically under controlâ€"I used advice from endrevengeporn.org and most of the time my search results are fine, but a few times a year there are flurries where the pictures get posted again and show up on the third or fourth page of Google for a few days while I get it all sorted out. When it happened, I had been at a job I liked for about a year and wasn’t planning on going anywhere, but now I’m starting to look for new opportunities. If a recruiter or a potential boss came across one of these terrible websites, what would that do to my chances as a candidate? On one hand, it seems like society is becoming more sympathetic to victims of revenge/non-consensual porn, but on the otherâ€"don’t most reasonable people recoil when they come across sexually explicit materials at work? Do they automatically imply bad judgement? Do people even google to page 3 or 4 when researching candidates? If you meet me in person, I believe it’s obvious that I was much younger when the pictures were taken, but it makes me cringe to think about a recruiter even knowing about it. A: How horrible. I’m sorry that happened to you. If we’re talking a few days a few times a year, this will probably never even come up. If an employer does happen to Google you during that fairly narrow window, there’s also a very good chance they won’t go beyond the first one or two pages of search results. And if they do, they will be sufficiently unsure that it’s actually you (as opposed to someone else using the same name), that â€" taken altogether â€" I think you can give yourself a pass on having to worry about this, as long as you’re staying on top of whatever steps you’ve been using. You have a lot of company in this awful boat; it’s a terrible thing. Q: I’ve been told to implement a decision that I think is unethical. I’ve been working in Human Resources for about four years, two of them in my current organization. I work in a small team of four â€" my coworker and I handle most of the day to day, as well as projects, and we also have an administrative assistant who handles the clerical functions. A director oversees us, but she has a few other departments so she is not always very involved. The organization I work for is a nonprofit focusing on homelessness, hunger, and poverty. I feel strongly about the mission, which was a primary reason I made the move from a corporate environment to here. However, over my two years here, some decisions have been made regarding employees that I feel are unfair and inconsistent with our mission. For example, we often underpay employees, don’t give raises, and push healthcare premium increases onto them. I realize nonprofits are always short on money, and I’ve chalked most of it up to that and tried to make a difference where I could. That said, the director shared with us recently that senior leadership has decided that the four employees who were identified through our ACA compliance process as needing to be offered health insurance, despite being coded as per diem employees (meaning they’re working full-time hours on average but are still coded as per diem and therefore were not previously offered health insurance through us) will not be moved to full-time status because this way we will only need to offer them health insurance but not PTO, dental insurance, life insurance, etc. Essentially, they want to keep them incorrectly coded to skirt around having to offer them the benefits our other full-time employees receive. For reference, we already have about 200 staff who are full-time, so this wouldn’t be a significant increase. My director is insisting this is okay because it’s not illegal. It’s not illegal, but I still think it’s wrong. It doesn’t foster positive employee relationships or speak well to the type of employer we are. It certainly doesn’t help retention and employee engagement, which are all things I care deeply about as an HR professional. However, even more of a sticking point for me is the fact that one of the services we provide as a nonprofit, in an effort to prevent homelessness, is trying to find people stable employment. Yet here we have an opportunity to offer four low-wage workers better hours and benefits and a more stable position, and they won’t do it because it’ll cost a few extra dollars. It feels hypocritical. I’ve been asked to communicate this to the four employees and I just don’t know if I can. It feels ethically icky to me. Am I overreacting? A: I don’t know enough about the ACA compliance process to know if this is legal or not, so I’m going to take your word for it that it is. But yes, the law aside, if someone is routinely working full-time hours over a sustained period of time, the right thing to do is to treat them as a full-time employee, meaning that they should have access to the same benefits as other full-time employees. If there’s truly good reason not to do that, then it should be explicitly addressed and explained so that everyone is clear about the reasoning and can see that it’s being applied logically and consistently. And yes, it’s especially messed up for an organization that works to alleviate poverty to try to skirt the line on this. I’d say this: “Given that these employees are in fact regularly working full-time hours, I’d argue it’s at odds with our mission to try to keep them off of our full-time benefits, and that it could cause real employee morale issues if people realized it, as well as PR issues if donors or the public heard about it. I think we have an obligation to pick up these costs, and that there’s real potential of eventual fall-out if we don’t.” If you’re overruled, there’s not much more you can do about it; at that point you’d need to decide if it’s a deal-breaker for you or not. I’d probably consider it in the wider context of what you know about the organization’s ethics and how it operates. If things are otherwise pretty good, that’s worth considering. But if this is part of a larger pattern of ethical issues or problematic treatment of employees, I’d weigh that all pretty heavily. These questions are adapted from ones that originally appeared on Ask a Manager. Some have been edited for length. More From Ask a Manager: My coworker shared nude photos of me at work What do employers look for when they monitor your Internet usage at work? Can an employer require you to keep your salary confidential? Close Modal DialogThis is a modal window. This modal can be closed by pressing the Escape key or activating the close button.

Friday, April 10, 2020

Interview gone wrong It might be the interviewer. Heres how to judge.

Interview gone wrong It might be the interviewer. Here’s how to judge. When you stroll out of a good interview, it can feel like you’re walking on air. When you walk out of a bad one, it can feel like you have the weight of the world on your shoulders. Usually, where you land on this spectrum can tell you how good your chances of getting the job are. But sometimes, you can have a “bad” interview without botching your chances at getting hired. The fault for a bad interview can lie not with the interviewee, but with the interviewer. googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('div-gpt-ad-1467144145037-0'); }); Bad Interviewers versus tough interviewersWhat you need to understand is that not all businesses are pros when it comes to screening potential employees. Some have had their interview and background check policies in place for years. Others have only recently implemented processes for vetting new people and are working to refine those processes. As a result, it’s more than likely that you will run into at least one or two inexperienced or downright bad interviewers while you are on the job search.The tricky thing is knowing how to distinguish truly incompetent hiring managers from interviewers who are tough but fair. You might be inclined to dislike a tough interviewer if the interview doesn’t go the way you want it toâ€"especially if you have been searching for a job for a while and are running low on patience. Still, knowing how to tell the bad interviewers from the tough interviewers is essential. It can tell you how you should feel about your interview, which steps you need to take to improve your interview technique, and whether you are still interested in the job. After all, a truly bad interviewer might indicate bad management or sloppy administrative organization.The symptoms of an incompetent interviewerSo how can you tell when a hiring manager is really dropping the ball? Below, we’ve listed some of the most common symptoms of bad interviewers and what they might mean for you.Unbalanced conversation sA job interview is a chance for employers to learn more about you and for you to learn more about the job opportunity. While interviews are often thought of as glorified QA sessions (with the interviewee giving most of the answers), there should be more back and forth than that. Some interviewers deliberately shift this balance one way or the other. Some talk a lot, rambling about their business, going off on tangents, or putting words in the mouth of the interviewee. Others are borderline silent, relying on the interviewee to drive the conversation.Both techniques can sometimes be employed to test the assertiveness of the interviewee. However, in most cases, they create awkward or combative interview situations. No applicant should be put in the position of having to interrupt their interviewer to get a word in edgewise. Similarly, no candidate should have to meander through a one-sided conversation hoping they say what their passive interviewer wants to hear.Either way, you’re probably dealing with a rude person who doesn’t respect your time or your right to ask questions of your own. If you still want the job, you need to take control of the conversation. In a situation in which an interviewer talks too much, keep your answers to questions rolling with no pauses or openings for an interruption. In a situation in which your interviewer doesn’t talk, accept the challenge. Answer questions pointedly and concisely, retain eye contact at all times, and don’t ramble. If you finish a response and the interviewer doesn’t engage with you, take the opportunity to ask a question of your own. Even an interviewer with a good poker face won’t outright ignore a direct question.MultitaskingThe business world is busy, but not so busy that interviewers can’t give you their full attention for 20 or 30 minutes at a pre-scheduled time. If your interviewer is multitasking during your interview (e.g. checking their phone, responding to emails, taking calls, flaggin g down passing coworkers or subordinates, or eating lunch), that’s a huge red flag. These distractions can kill your focus, derail your answers, and keep you from getting in the groove. They also make it seem like the interviewer doesn’t care about what you’re saying.Bottom line, interviewers who multitask could be self-absorbed shmucks who think their time is more valuable than yours. If your interviewer won’t give you his or her full attention, gently ask if there is some sort of emergency going on and whether it would be better to reschedule. This query gives the interviewer the benefit of the doubt, shows your flexibility, and gives you a chance of getting a better interview later if there truly is a fire to put out.Keeping you waitingInterviewers often refuse to see candidates who arrive even five minutes late. They expect interviewees to respect their time. Every so often, though, you’ll run into an interviewer who can’t practice what they preach. Again, emergencie s do happen, and there might be a good reason for your interview starting 10 or 15 minutes late. However, your time is valuable, too, and if an interviewer makes you wait for 20 or more minutes with no explanation or apology, then that’s probably an indicator of a bad boss.Lack of preparationPreparation is another area in which interviewers and interviewees are often judged based on different standards. As an interviewee, you are expected to know a bit about the company you are applying for and to have good questions prepared about the job. Interviewers can sometimes get away with being unprepared just because they are holding all the cards.If it seems like the interviewer hasn’t ever looked at your resume, that’s a red flag, but not a deal breaker. Interviews in which the hiring manager asks you specific questions about past work history are certainly the easiest and most welcoming. However, they aren’t necessarily standard. Interviewers often meet with several candidates a day during the hiring process, so it makes sense than resumes could start running together.The key is not to let the interviewer’s obvious lack of preparation throw you off your game. Assume the interviewer knows nothing about you and affirm key details about skills, qualifications, past jobs, and former employers in your responses. Bring a copy of your resume to the interview. Most hiring managers print off their own copies, but it’s never a bad idea to have one you can give to the interviewer if necessary. This act shows your preparedness while also subtly jogging the interviewer’s memory.ConclusionBad interviews are going to happen from time to time. Sometimes, the blame may fall on your lap. Other times, a bad interviewer is to blame. By familiarizing yourself with the symptoms of bad interviewers, you should be able to figure out the truth of the matter. While that bit of knowledge might not change the outcome of the interview, it can change elements of how you perform, how you feel about the experience, and how you learn from your interviews to improve in the future.About the author:Michael Klazema has been developing products for criminal background check and improving online customer experiences in the background screening industry since 2009. He is the lead author and editor for Backgroundchecks.com. He lives in Dallas, TX with his family and enjoys the rich culinary histories of various old and new world countries.