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#CareerAdvice : #LinkedIn Just Added A New Way To Showcase Your Skills. #MustRead !

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LinkedIn’s newest change is one that many people might overlook. That is a mistake. Hiring managers and recruiters are paying attention to this new change, so you need to be too.

Baby Boomers have created a LinkedIn profile that may have lots of skill endorsements, but LinkedIn is now taking it all a step further with their Skills Assessment.

According to new LinkedIn research, more than 76% of professionals wish there was a way for hiring managers to verify their skills so they could stand out amongst other candidates.

As a Baby Boomer, you now have a way to validate your technical skills. These will make you stand out to recruiters and dismiss the myth that Boomers aren’t as technically gifted as younger workers. Of course, if you are like me where you have more specialized industry or soft skills, then you won’t benefit much as I don’t write programming code and I’m not an ace on Excel either. LinkedIn says they are working on the non-tech skills assessment so I’ll be sure to make you aware when they come up.

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What Skill Sets do You have to be ‘Sharpened’ ?

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The new feature called Skills Assessments is short, multiple-choice tests that users can take to verify their knowledge in areas like computer languages, software packages, and other technical work-related skills. If you have any of these strengths, you can take a skill assessment and if you pass you get a badge to add to your profile. This will appear as a button in the skills and endorsements area of your profile.

These assessments were created by professionals who are subject area experts already working with LinkedIn, such as those folks who create content for LinkedIn Learning.

Ken, 56, is a technical director for a large Insurance company. We were working on creating his LinkedIn Profile, and I asked if he wanted to bring extra attention to his coding skills. These are skills recruiters seek so Ken plans to take the skills assessments and if he passes (earning a 70% or higher) he’ll get a badge for his profile use. I mentioned that since he has coding skills, he might want to emphasize these in this new way. These tests measure your knowledge in specific areas, in his case C++, Java, and MS Project. When he passes, he gets a badge that can broadcast to any employer who is looking for people with those skills. The skill assessment is an honor system when taking the tests, but LinkedIn assumes most people will be honest and take the test themselves and not look up answers on the Internet.

What if you fail? Not a problem. No one knows. You have three months to wait before retaking it. LinkedIn will try to upsell you. You will get offered LinkedIn Learning classes to improve your skills. If you have a library card, check to see if you have free access to Lynda.com which is now also called LinkedIn Learning. That way you can brush up on classes at no charge.

For those who pass, they will need to retake tests every year to keep their badges and credentials up to date.

Here is the list of skills they have assessments for: 

Skill Assessment List

· Angular· AWS · Bash · C · C#· C++· CSS · GIT· Hadoop · HTML · Java· JavaScript· jQuery · JSON · Maven · MongoDB · NodeJs · Objective-C · PHP · Python · Ruby · Ruby on Rails · Scala · Swift · WordPress · XML · Adobe Acrobat · MS Excel · MS PowerPoint · MS Project · MS SharePoint · MS Visio · QuickBooks

Advertise your skills

Scroll to the skill section of your profile and select one of the available Skill Assessments you’d like to take. Any results are kept private to you, and if you pass, you will have the option to add a “verified skill” badge to your profile. If you don’t pass, you have complete control over the visibility of the results and can brush up on your skills so you can pass the next time. When you’ve passed an assessment for an in-demand skill, LinkedIn will also send you relevant job recommendations as soon as they are posted.

It’s a new trend moving towards skill-based hiring where LinkedIn hopes to play a significant role. 83% of hiring managers agree that skills and credentialing are becoming more critical for hiring talent. However, 77% of hiring managers agree that it’s hard to know what skills candidates possess without a skill assessment. Recruiters and hiring managers can utilize this new Skill Assessment tool to more effectively pinpoint which candidates are a good match based on proven skills.

LinkedIn Skill Assessments will be ramping to all English speaking members globally over the next few months on both Mobile and Desktop versions.

Author: Robin Ryan

I am a career counselor that helps clients land jobs. I offer Resume Writing, LinkedIn Profile Writing, and Interview Coaching services. I’ve appeared on Oprah, DrPh…

Forbes.com | September 18, 2019

#CareerAdvice : #CareerDirection – Take these 5 Things into Consideration When you’re Trying to Find your Calling.

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If, like many, you are searching for your calling in life–perhaps you are still unsure which profession aligns with what you most care about–here are five recent research findings worth taking into consideration.

First, there’s a difference between having a harmonious passion and an obsessive passion. If you can find a career path or occupational goal that fires you up, you are more likely to succeed and find happiness through your work–that much we know from the deep research literature. But beware–since a seminal paper published in 2003 by the Canadian psychologist Robert Vallerand and colleagues, researchers have made an important distinction between having a harmonious passion and an obsessive one.

If you feel that your passion or calling is out of control, and that your mood and self-esteem depend on it, then this is the obsessive variety, and such passions, while they are energizing, are also associated with negative outcomes such as burnout and anxiety. In contrast, if your passion feels in control, reflects qualities that you like about yourself, and complements other important activities in your life, then this is the harmonious version, which is associated with positive outcomes, such as vitality, better work performance, experiencing flow, and positive mood.

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What Skill Sets do You have to be ‘Sharpened’ ?

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Secondly, having an unanswered calling in life is worse than having no calling at all. If you already have a burning ambition or purpose, do not leave it to languish. A few years ago, researchers at the University of South Florida surveyed hundreds of people and grouped them according to whether they felt like they had no calling in life, that they had a calling they’d answered, or they had a calling but had never done anything about it.

In terms of their work engagement, career commitment, life satisfaction, health and stress, the stand-out finding was that the participants who had a calling they hadn’t answered scored the worst across all these measures. The researchers said that this puts a different spin on the presumed benefits of having a calling in life. They concluded: “Having a calling is only a benefit if it is met, but can be a detriment when it is not as compared to having no calling at all.”

The third finding to bear in mind is that, without passion, grit is “merely a grind.” The idea that “grit” is vital for career success was advanced by the psychologist Angela Duckworth of the University of Pennsylvania, who argued that highly successful, “gritty.” people have impressive persistence. “To be gritty,” Duckworth writes in her 2016 book on the subject, “is to fall down seven times, and rise eight.”

Many studies certainly show that being more conscientious–more self-disciplined and industrious–is associated with more career success. But is that all that being gritty means? Duckworth has always emphasised that it has another vital component that brings us back to passion again–alongside persistence, she says that gritty people also have an “ultimate concern” (another way of describing having a passion or calling).

However, according to a paper published last year, the standard measure of grit has failed to assess passion (or more specifically, ‘passion attainment’)–and Jon Jachimowicz at Columbia Business School in New York and colleagues believe this could explain why the research on grit has been so inconsistent (leading to claims that it is an overhyped concept and simply conscientiousness repackaged).

Jachimowicz’s team found that when they explicitly measured passion attainment (how much people feel they have adequate passion for their work) and combined this with a measure of perseverance (a consistency of interests and the ability to overcome setbacks), then the two together did predict superior performance among tech-company employees and university students. “Our findings suggest that perseverance without passion attainment is mere drudgery, but perseverance with passion attainment propels individuals forward,” they said.

Another finding is that, when you invest enough effort, you might find that your work becomes your passion. It’s all very well reading about the benefits of having a passion or calling in life but, if you haven’t got one, where to find it? Duckworth says it’s a mistake to think that in a moment of revelation one will land in your lap, or simply occur to you through quiet contemplation–rather, you need to explore different activities and pursuits, and expose yourself to the different challenges and needs confronting society.

If you still draw a blank, then perhaps it’s worth heeding the advice of others who say that it is not always the case that energy and determination flow from finding your passion–sometimes it can be the other way around and, if you put enough energy into your work, then passion will follow. Consider, for instance, an eight-week repeated survey of German entrepreneurs published in 2014 that found a clear pattern–their passion for their ventures increased after they’d invested more effort into them the week before.

A follow-up study qualified this, suggesting that the energising effect of investing effort arises only when the project is freely chosen and there is a sense of progress. “Entrepreneurs increase their passion when they make significant progress in their venture and when they invest effort out of their own free choice,” the researchers said.

Finally, if you think that passion comes from doing a job you enjoy, you’re likely to be disappointed. Consider where you think passion comes from. In a preprint paper released at PsyArXiv, Jachimowicz and his team draw a distinction between people who believe that passion comes from doing what you enjoy (which they say is encapsulated by Oprah Winfrey’s commencement address in 2008 in which she said passions “bloom when we’re doing what we love”), and those who see it as arising from doing what you believe in or value in life (as reflected in the words of former Mexican president Felipe Calderón who in his own commencement address in 2011 said “you have to embrace with passion the things that you believe in, and that you are fighting for”).

The researchers found that people who believe that passion comes from pleasurable work were less likely to feel that they had found their passion (and were more likely to want to leave their job) as compared with people who believe that passion comes from doing what you feel matters.

Perhaps this is because there is a superficiality and ephemerality to working for sheer pleasure–what fits the bill one month or year might not do so for long–whereas working towards what you care about is a timeless endeavour that is likely to stretch and sustain you indefinitely. The researchers conclude that their results show “the extent to which individuals attain their desired level of work passion may have less to do with their actual jobs and more to do with their beliefs about how work passion is pursued.”

This is an adaptation of an article originally published by The British Psychological Society’s Research Digest. This article was originally published at Aeon and has been republished under Creative Commons.

 

FastCompany.com | January 10, 2019 | BY CHRISTIAN JARRETT—AEON5 MINUTE READ

Your #Career : Should You Apply For Your Dream Job If You’re Not Qualified?…Recruiters Weigh in with some Surprising Advice on the Importance of Being Qualified to Get the Job you Want.

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 There it is: your dream job. There’s just one problem. You don’t meet all the qualifications.

If your résumé is hard to read, no one will.

It’s a conundrum. Should you channel your inner life coach and go for it? Or should you follow the rules and wait until you have the right experience or credentials? If you sit it out, you may miss a great opportunity. On the other hand, you don’t want to waste your time or, worse, alienate hiring managers by wasting theirs.

It’s a tough question, but you should almost always err on the side of “go for it,” says career expert Cynthia Shapiro author of What Does Somebody Have to Do to Get a Job Around Here? 44 Insider Secrets That Will Get You Hired. After all, everyone has to take a job that stretches skills if they want to move ahead. Before you do, these career coaches and recruiters recommend asking yourself these six questions.

AM I 51% QUALIFIED?

Shapiro’s rule of thumb is that you should meet 51% of the listed qualifications. That’s an arbitrary estimate, but her point is that a job listing is like a house-hunter’s wish list: You ask for everything you want and understand that you’ll likely have to compromise.

“What they’re really looking for is an intangible that they can’t put in a job posting. If you’ve got 51% of what they’re looking for, you should proudly send your resume in,” she says.

 

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AM I MISSING REQUIREMENTS THAT ARE NECESSARY TO DO THE JOB?

Obviously, if you lack a specific degree, license, or specialized training necessary or legally required to do the job, you need to earn that before you apply. But what if you’re lacking the years of experience or some other less objective credential? Still go for it, says Maddie Stough, HR recruiting practice team leader at LaSalle Network.

For example, if the job description requires five to seven years of experience, she says, “You should be looking at it if you have three to 10 years of experience.” Use your resume and cover letter to highlight the responsibilities held and achievements within your job that align with what your stretch job will require.

CAN I EXPLAIN MY JOB PROGRESSION?

A spotty background with a year here and two years there is usually only problematic if it’s not strategic, says James Philip, managing director of executive search firm JMJ Phillip. You should be able to show that you didn’t just change jobs for the next title bump or pay bump, but that you were strategically increasing your experience and developing your skills, Phillip says.

“If they’ve just jumped jobs, there’s going to come a time when they haven’t really honed in on a craft,” he says. Be sure to highlight the career-focused reasons for making the moves you did.

IS MY RESUME A STRETCH?

First, make sure that you’re not stretching the truth on your resume to get your stretch job, Shapiro says. It’s very easy to find out if you actually held a title or hold the degree you have, and employers are increasingly likely to check references or even conduct a background check. So don’t include anything that isn’t true. But you can also show your best side without being deceitful.

When you’re writing your resume and cover letter, think of them as marketing tools, Shapiro says. Companies can usually teach job skills. Many are looking for intangible qualities like emotional intelligence, which is considered to be one of the fastest growing job skills. They also look for enthusiasm, corporate fit, attitude, and approach, which often can’t be taught, she says. Use your documents to convey how you approach challenges, look for ways to improve situations, and achieve success, she says.

HOW BIG IS THE COMPANY?

Phillips says it’s usually easier to stretch into a smaller company than a larger one. Big companies may have preliminary screening that matches resumes with job qualifications. If you’re in the applicant “slush pile,” you could be taken out of the running before you have a chance to shine in person. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try to land that big-company job, he says. However, smaller firms may be more willing to take a chance on someone who is a little inexperienced.

DO I HAVE A CHAMPION?

A champion can change the equation, Stough says. If you have a contact, friend, or colleague who is giving you a warm introduction or recommendation for a stretch job, you’ve got a real advantage, she says. So before you apply, scour your network and LinkedIn contacts to see if you know someone (or know someone who knows someone, an otherwise “weak” connection) who can put your resume in play with a “thumbs up,” she says. That can go a long way toward getting you in front of hiring managers so you can sell yourself.

 

FastCompany.com | GWEN MORAN |  11.23.16 5:00 AM

Your #Career : 15 High-Paying Jobs for People Who Love to Read…Turns out here are a Lot of High-Paying Professions Out There that Require Strong Reading Comprehension Skills.

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Are you a self-proclaimed bookworm? Can you read quickly and comprehend every sentence you consume?  Good news: your passion for books and excellent reading skills may help land you a lucrative job.

editors

Editor

Turns out there are a lot of high-paying professions out there that require strong reading comprehension skills.

Business Insider recently combed through the Occupational Information Network (O*NET), a US Department of Labor database that compiles detailed information on hundreds of jobs, and looked at salary data on the US Bureau of Labor Statistics’ website to find positions with a median annual salary of over $55,000 where reading comprehension is very important to the job.

O*NET ranks how important “understanding written sentences and paragraphs in work related documents” is in any job, assigning each a reading comprehension importance score between 1 and 100.

Here are 15 high-paying positions with a score of 85 or higher:

 

Historians

Historians

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They research, analyze, interpret, and present the past by studying historical documents and sources.

Reading comprehension importance score: 94

Median salary: $55,800

 

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Editors (picture above)

They plan, coordinate, or edit content of material for publication — and may also review proposals and drafts for possible publication.

Reading comprehension importance score: 91

Median salary: $56,010

 

English language and literature professors

English language and literature professors

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They teach courses in English language and literature, including linguistics and comparative literature. Some of these professors also engage in research.

Reading comprehension importance score: 97

Median salary: $61,990

 

Instructional designers and technologists

Instructional designers and technologists

Strelka Institute for Media, Architecture and Design/flickr

They develop instructional materials and products and assist in the technology-based redesign of courses. They also assist faculty in learning about, becoming proficient in, and applying instructional technology.

Reading comprehension importance score: 85

Median salary: $62,270

 

Instructional coordinators

Instructional coordinators

Sean Gallup/Getty Images

They develop instructional material, coordinate educational content, and incorporate current technology in specialized fields that provide guidelines to educators and instructors for developing curricula and conducting courses. This profession includes educational consultants and specialists, and instructional material directors.

Reading comprehension importance score: 85

Median salary: $62,270

 

Sociology professors

Sociology professors

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They teach courses in sociology and conduct research.

Reading comprehension importance score: 85

Median salary: $69,230

 

Molecular and cellular biologists

Molecular and cellular biologists

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They research and study cellular molecules and organelles to understand cell function and organization.

Reading comprehension importance score: 85

Median salary: $75,150

 

Education administrators (elementary and secondary school)

Education administrators (elementary and secondary school)

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They plan, direct, or coordinate the academic or administrative activities of public or private elementary or secondary level schools.

Reading comprehension importance score: 85

Median salary: $90,410

 

Neuropsychologists and clinical neuropsychologists

Neuropsychologists and clinical neuropsychologists

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They apply theories and principles of neuropsychology to diagnose and treat disorders of higher cerebral functioning.

Reading comprehension importance score: 91

Median salary: $94,590

 

Political scientists

Political scientists

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They study the origin, development, and operation of political systems. They may also study topics, such as public opinion, political decision-making, and ideology — and they sometimes analyze the structure and operation of governments, as well as various political entities. They may also conduct public opinion surveys, analyze election results, or analyze public documents.

Reading comprehension importance score: 85

Median salary: $99,730

 

Law professors

Law professors

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They teach courses in law and engage in research.

Reading comprehension importance score: 85

Median salary: $105,250

 

Lawyers

Lawyers

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They represent clients in criminal and civil litigation and other legal proceedings, draw up legal documents, or manage or advise clients on legal transactions. They may specialize in a single area or may practice broadly in many areas of law.

Reading comprehension importance score: 85

Median salary: $115,820

 

Preventive medicine physicians

Preventive medicine physicians

Jim Bourg/Reuters

They apply knowledge of general preventive medicine and public health issues to promote health care to groups or individuals, and aid in the prevention or reduction of risk of disease, injury, disability, or death.

Reading comprehension importance score: 85

Median salary: $187,200

 

Allergists and immunologists

Allergists and immunologists

Anna Jurkovska/shutterstock

They diagnose, treat, and help prevent allergic diseases and disease processes affecting the immune system.

Reading comprehension importance score: 88

Median salary: $187,200

 

Sports medicine physicians

Sports medicine physicians

Frederick M. Brown / Getty Images

They diagnose, treat, and help prevent injuries that occur during sporting events, athletic training, and physical activities.

Reading comprehension importance score: 88

Median salary: $187,200

 

Businessinsider.com | September 14, 2016 |