Just Cause for Turning Down a Job Interview While on Unemployment

Obtaining unemployment benefits may be a standard next step to bridging the financial gap when you're jobless through no fault of your own, but those subsidized paychecks are not automatically tendered without some serious effort on your part. Unemployment compensation is granted to those job seekers who, once deemed "able and available" for suitable work, do not turn down an interview for any job without "good cause."

Proving "Able and Available"
Being able and available means you possess marketable skills. While it's not your responsibility to identify available jobs, you do have to demonstrate there is a market for your specific experience. For example, creating matchstick animals may be an entertaining talent, but there is no demand for it within the labor sector. Able and available also speaks to your physical capacity to actually carry out the work, as well as having a dependable means of transportation to get to and from the job.

Imposing Job Restrictions
Job seekers are allowed to establish certain boundaries when it comes to the type of jobs they'll accept and still be considered able and available. Health issues, for instance, can dictate whether a position is suitable where there is heavy lifting or unhealthful environmental factors, such as allergens. You may also cite lack of transportation as the reason for only seeking jobs within walking distance, but the onus is on you to demonstrate reasonable attempts to rectify the situation prior to requesting a restriction.

Suitable Work
Suitable work is determined by courts and unemployment compensation referees after considering various factors of your specific situation. These can include work experience and training; proximity of home to job; why and how long job seeker is out of work; plausibility of securing a job close to home in skilled profession; previous wages; job market climate; normal occupational pay rate; and residence permanency.

With and Without "Good Cause"
Refusing a job for "good cause" may include a mismatch of skills to position; physical inability to complete required tasks of that particular job; conflict between religious beliefs and job requirements; lack of transportation; and inability to secure quality childcare during work hours. You must make reasonable effort to rectify the latter two before refusing a job. Suitable jobs refused without good cause can cost job seekers their unemployment compensation when, for example, full-time employment is offered yet only part-time is wanted or vice versa, and refusing to accept a lower pay rate than previously earned.

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Originally written for and published by Demand Media

The Best Jobs for Your Personality

Many people tend to enjoy their jobs much more and achieve greater productivity when their personalities are matched to the tasks. In fact, career suitability and interest tests are based on the idea that certain individual characteristics are more likely to bring about greater success and job satisfaction. Heading down a particular career path based on prominent personality traits is an approach that can demystify the whole "What do I want to be when I grow up?" quandary.

Learn About Yourself
Finding the right vocational fit begins with identifying who you are by assessing factors such as interests, talents, hobbies, achievements and desired lifestyle. Pinpointing these traits can be somewhat challenging to achieve, given how people are not always aware of all their unique personality facets. Enlisting the input of friends, family and even school counselors can be one strategy for learning about and recognizing your personality characteristics.

Gauging Your Forte
Whether you're extroverted and spontaneous, or calm and calculated, any number of vocations can complement your abilities. Finding your forte comes from pairing personality traits with career paths that highlight those characteristics. The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, long considered the gold standard of personality assessments, not only provides a finely-tuned psychological insight, but it also identifies the most relevant career options that can steer you toward a satisfying livelihood.

Career Compatibility
Dr. John Holland's career-choice theory is based on the idea that six different personality types gravitate toward different work environments: realistic, investigative, artistic, social, enterprising and conventional. People rarely fall into just one work-related personality type, and are often drawn to and suitable for a combination of categories. Consider your options in more than just one area to find your niche.

Holland's Hexagon
Holland's Hexagon, a model that outlines relationships between personalities and work environments, shows conventional personalities are orderly, systematic and like set plans, making them suited for occupations like bank teller, bookkeeper or court clerk. The dynamic, ambitious, "take charge" enterprising personality is well-suited for positions such as bank president, lawyer or customs inspector. Having a social personality lends itself to the nurturing, helpful and principled approaches seen in nursing, social work, teaching, counseling and physical therapy. Artistic dispositions thrive in independent and expressive environments where they are free to create in such careers as dancing, designing, writing, comedy or composing. The rigorous and intellectual nature of investigative personalities works best in such careers as lawyer, architect, veterinarian or chemist. Practicality and mechanical abilities represent the realistic personality, which include law enforcement, firefighters, pilots and carpenters.

Originally written for and published by Demand Media
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Careers for Hearing People Using ASL

American Sign Language (ASL), which provides a window of communication between the hearing and hearing-impaired communities, is the conduit for many different career opportunities. Hearing people fluent in ASL are poised for jobs in such industries as education, social services, health care, law and linguistics on local, state and national levels.

Interpreter
As the country's fourth most commonly used language according to the University of Rochester, ASL bridges the comprehension gap for several deaf and hearing-impaired populations. Students from kindergarten to university further their studies with the assistance of lecture hall and classroom interpreters, while social events such as theatrical performances and political rallies are more fully perceived when translated into sign language. Courtroom trials and depositions are two of many legal areas where ASL interpreters provide definitive understanding of often complicated processes and subject matter.

Instructor
Interest in learning ASL has grown considerably over the recent past, leading to an increased need for educators. Sign language instructors can have quite an eclectic group of students, ranging from those who are curious about the language, those in a deaf studies curriculum, deaf or hard-of-hearing students, or students who have a hearing-impaired friend/family member with whom they want to communicate. Whether at the beginner level where basic technique is taught, or at the graduate tier where students are ready to embark upon a career, instructors diligently guide students through every facet of ASL and deaf studies.

Tutor
Deaf or hard-of-hearing students who may not have classroom interpreters, or simply require more specialized academic attention, gain considerable benefit from ASL tutors. People who want to brush up on their sign language skills can call upon a tutor's expertise to enhance sign expression and finger spelling dexterity. One of the best aspects of this career choice is that tutors can meet online with students, which allows much more schedule flexibility for both.

Social Services
The gamut of careers available to people fluent in ASL is rich and rewarding. Areas of social services alone offer multifaceted options to help the deaf and hearing-impaired community navigate through myriad health and personal development options, not the least of which includes speech pathology, psychology, counseling, medical, audiology, nursing and language development. Social workers with ASL skills can better aid their hearing-impaired clients.

Originally written for and published by Demand Media
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Criteria for Being a Grant Writer

Finding money for organiza-tions is a career choice that offers considerable satisfaction; whether private or public, the recipients of grant monies can further projects and endeavors that might otherwise never come to fruition. Along with possessing solid communication, research and writing skills, grant writers are also often required to have a college degree and experience in the industry.

Education
A key ingredient of good grant writing is the ability to persuade, which makes all the difference between mediocre and stellar proposals. According to The Education Portal, earning a degree in areas such as English, journalism, marketing or public relations provides the communication nuts and bolts, and fine-tunes additional techniques that aid in crafting eloquent, engaging proposals.

Specific Course Work
Once you have strong and detailed writing skills, it's time to cultivate a greater understanding of the proposal's specific nature. Knowing the proper format and expectations for each grant application is critical to the final outcome; submissions that do not conform to each funder's unique protocol are often dismissed without consideration. Moreover, The Education Portal points out that grant topics can be individualized to a particular organization, which requires an additional layer of knowledge to maneuver through those conditions. Joining professional grant writing groups provides opportunities to network with others for continued education and job prospects.

Cultivate Experience
Nothing speaks greater volumes about an individual's aptitude than having a track record; it's not unusual for employers to overlook your lack of a degree when your past experience is strong. If you are just starting out and need to build your portfolio, you'd do well to approach smaller organizations that cannot afford to pay a grant writer and offer services pro bono, according to The Grant Adviser website. Steadily continue to move up the ladder and demonstrate diversity in the size of grants you seek and the types of industries. Interning within a desired industry places grant writers directly in the cross-hairs of potentially permanent employers.

Industry Experience
If all of your previous grant writing experience has, for example, been securing monies for a family owned preschool and you're now seeking employment with a Fortune 500 company, it's likely the latter will not consider that level of procurement to be a transferable skill. By the same token, employers prefer to hire grant writers who have a working knowledge of the general industry, if not also specific understanding of how that particular company operates. Fund-raising for a small nonprofit that needs seed money to build a homeless shelter is quite different from securing multimillion-dollar funding for a groundbreaking technological prototype.

Originally written for and published by Demand Media

Careers Without a College Degree

While a college degree has historically been the bridge to professional success, there are industries where basic training and hands-on experience are just as valuable as -- and sometimes more than -- higher education.

Hospitality
Many a teenager begins his career path at a fast-food outlet or local restaurant, actively participating in back-of-the-house operations -- dishwasher and food preparation -- or front-house customer service. This seemingly inconsequential experience can open many doors for future advancement throughout a worldwide industry that includes working as a Four Star hotel manager, restaurant owner or concierge.

Detectives and Criminal Investigators
If you have a keen eye for detail and a flair for sleuthing, the lack of a college degree won't stand in your way of a career in criminal law enforcement. Prerequisites for detectives and criminal investigators are more mental and physical than scholastic, calling for rigorous qualifications of sound mind and body. The most common path is entering the force as a police officer after successful completion of the academy program and then moving up the ranks with increased experience.

Real Estate Agent
Helping people buy and sell property can be a very rewarding and lucrative career choice. Indeed, there are few things as intimate as the place you call home, which brings a sense of personal satisfaction when clients are gratified. While real estate agents don't need a degree, they do need to be licensed and stay up-to-date on changing requirements, laws and forms through continuing education.

Computer Technology
The future is strong for those who immerse themselves in technology. With many elementary and secondary schools incorporating computer education in their curricula, young people have opportunities to develop skills that set them on the path toward a solid career without having a degree. Successful computer programmers, for example, are often self-taught. Courses in continuing education do offer advanced certification to further knowledge but in most cases, all you need is raw talent, experience and competence to land a position.


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The Best Career Options After 55

Careers, like relationships, can play out for a number of reasons, and often when we least expect it. This reality can be particularly challenging for people 55 years and older who have known only one, maybe two occupations throughout their entire lives. When starting over in the same field is not an option, the focus then turns to applying your transferable skills to other careers that can be financially secure and emotionally satisfying.

Entrepreneurial
If you've had a life-long dream to open a flower shop, operate a doggy day care, or sell fish tacos from a sandy beach shack, this may be just the right opportunity to realize that desire. According to the Missouri-based entrepreneurship institute Kauffman Foundation, you'll be in excellent company by committing to your passion, because those between the ages of 55 and 64 have held the top spot for entrepreneurial activity since 1996.

Get Paid to Drive
Unlike many industries where youthfulness is a company's unspoken desire, the trucking business opens its arms to the mature population, and even encourages the career to be a family affair. Earn your commercial driver's license within just a few months, and set out on the road, either local or long distance, driving solo, with your pet, or teamed with your spouse. This career choice, a key component in national commerce, is backed by a solid foundation of 3 million people who, according to AARP, make trucking one of the largest occupations.

Degree-Free Careers
Those who graduated from the school of hard knocks are often overlooked for jobs that require a degree. While the lack of higher education in no way means you're an unqualified applicant, it does mean you'll do best to set your sights on industries that look more for life experience or trade school, and even offer on-the-job training. Retail sales manager, tutor, administrative generalist, customer service representative, real estate agent, security officer, and forest fire fighter are just a handful of potential opportunities where previous experience can be viewed as transferable skill.

Feed Your Soul
If finances are solid and you seek more socially valuable career options, volunteering may be the perfect countermeasure. A joint survey by the MetLife Foundation and Civic Ventures found that approximately 31 million people between 44 and 70 want to make a career change into something that benefits the greater good. From walking dogs or brushing cats at the local humane society to tutoring at-risk kids and from serving meals at the community soup kitchen to building low-income housing, the opportunities to engage in more meaningful work are plentiful.

Originally written for and published by Demand Media.

Decisions, Decisions

As kids, we're forever thinking about what we want to be when we grow up, never quite committing to any one idea as we waffle back and forth with such vocations as firefighter, ballerina and veterinarian. The thing with these more popular choices, though, is there is rarely a time when we, as children, can test drive potential careers before pledging our undying loyalty to a single calling.

Sure, we can shadow adult professionals to get a better feel for the work they do, but the honest-to-goodness chance to fight a fire, dance in a professional company or perform surgery on the family dog just isn't feasible for a youngster.

Then we begin the mental, emotional and hormonal under-taking of high school where we have 36-48 months to decide on and plan for a career that's supposed to engage us for the next 50 years. Since we're barely at the point in our maturity to decide if we want fries or onion rings with our burger, it seems sort of backwards to expect teens to be fully aware of the path they want to take.

In reality, the first few years out of school are spent in the service industry just to garner a paycheck. So if we haven't yet experienced life beyond 12 years of classroom education, how can we possibly know what direction to choose?

This question is especially valuable now at a time when, as Jennifer Lee of The New York Times points out, "highly educated 20-somethings, whose careers are stuck in neutral, [are] coping with dead-end jobs and listless prospects."

Sooner or later, says Nona Willis Aronowitz, "we're going to have to accept that not every-one going to college will be using their degree to get a job. In a way, this is depressing. But in another, it's Utopian." Given this new reality of a broken economy, it's becoming apparent how "on-the-job" life lessons can prove more relevant for making important life decisions than aimlessly wandering through the academic maze.

Career Choices graphic from "What Color Is Your Parachute?"

Stay Fresh and Productive on the Graveyard Shift

Graveyard shift is the back-bone of many industries. Grocery shelves are stocked, lives are saved, property is protected, roads are built and the after-hours club crowd is fed by people who choose to work when the rest of the community sleeps. Getting through what can be as many as 12 hours at a time is indeed challenging but not impossible. If you're not a natural-born night owl, some suggestions can help you get through your very next shift.

Trick your mind and body into a more awakened state by buying a bright light that mimics daylight, like those used by Alaskan communities during periods of extended darkness. Ease out of this artificial state by driving home in dark glasses and a hat that shades your eyes, advises Lisa Shives, M.D.

Regulate your sleeping pattern to coincide with after-work down time, says night nurse Tom Trimble. Relax before trying to sleep so your mind can unwind and process what happened during the shift. Stay away from alcohol or sleep aids as they can interfere with, rather than offer more, restful sleep and make getting through that next shift even harder.

Exercise regularly to maintain a constant state of physical stamina. Fortify your body with wise food choices to further bolster your endurance. Pay attention to subtle changes in body temperature throughout the night and drink or eat something warm to offset the hormonal lull. Stay hydrated with plenty of water. Limit your caffeine to those times when you really need an immediate pick-me-up.

Bypass the quick fix. If you feel you can't get through the shift without one of those energy drinks, opt for a low sugar, more adrenal-friendly choice that powers you with B and other vitamins instead of mega amounts of caffeine and artificial stimulants. Even better, consider supplementing with ginseng or capsaicin instead.

Juggle work tasks so you do something that requires a greater attention factor. Take a brisk walk outside while deeply breathing in through your nose and out through your mouth, which will raise your heart rate and alertness at the same time.

Originally written for and posted on eHow

The Positive of a Negative Performance Review

The knee-jerk reaction people often have after receiving a negative performance review is to defensively recoil without really digesting the constructive criticism. An unfavorable evaluation is not necessarily the first step toward unemployment, especially if it's used as an opportunity to improve rather than dig in heels with resentment.

Disregard whether or not you think the poor review is warranted; the fact that your employer sees something negative about your performance is all that matters. Focus instead on what led your manager to reach that conclusion, and figure out how to keep it from happening again.

Go above and beyond what the boss recommends you do to rectify the unfavorable appraisal. Meet with your supervisor(s) to demonstrate you are taking the review seriously and will be acting on those suggestions. Ask if there are any other concerns or improvements not listed on the evaluation. Query your coworkers for their input on how to ensure a better outcome next time. Schedule follow-up meetings to get the boss's input on your progress. Listen and learn.

Seek other employment if you just cannot get past the negative review. Realize your employer is responsible for making sure every facet of workforce performance is aligned with the company's culture and that you just may not be the right fit.

Originally written for and published on eHow
Graphic by Super Stock

Deciding to Drop Out of College

College preparation begins at a very young age as parents instill the importance of higher education. Yet, while a degree has long been the springboard to solid career placement, this conventional mindset has come under scrutiny of late. The advent of new technology has restruc-tured the prerequisites for good-paying jobs to focus more upon life experience, making the standard college education a less likely mandate for success. The decision to quit college, therefore, encompasses more than just the academic aspect.

Turn your passion into a secure livelihood. Recognize that you do not need a college degree to start your own company, according to entrepreneur Nathan Lee. Take a few community college courses to provide you with the right business foundation.

Gauge whether your earning potential justifies paying skyrocketing tuition fees as administrators struggle to offset declining attendance with increased costs. Consider how much of an impact a $30,000 to $50,000 degree will have upon your ability to pay off student loans, advises Lee.

Assess if you're attending college because of social conditioning or because you see higher education as a stepping stone to a desired career. Re-evaluate your perspective if more time is spent struggling than achieving, especially when it comes to meeting financial needs.

Originally written for and published on eHow

Crafting a Topnotch Executive Resume

An executive resume is the lifeline between applicant and recruiter; if it overwhelms or fails to impress, chances are good an invitation will not be extended for an interview. Knowing what to say -- and what not to say -- distin-guishes between a winning resume and one that doesn't capture its intended audience. By the same token, format choice is a critical component; the current economic landscape has fashioned a need for applicants to incorporate creativity with conventionality. As Worthington duly points out:

Sitting at the keyboard and using the template included with the purchase of your personal computer is much like everyone trying to use the same contact lens prescription. While elements of resume content may be similar, dominated by logic and fat-free data, the strongest presentation will be customized.

The Basics
It should go without saying that such resume pet peeves as typos, incorrect grammar, poor spelling and sloppy formatting stop a recruiter dead in his tracks. If a job candidate cannot compose at a grade school level, or at the very least take advantage of technological tracking that fixes some of these infractions, it doesn't bode well for where his resume's final resting place will be. Stellar accomplishments may not be enough to secure that first interview if an applicant lacks the fundamental components of proper written communication.

Similarly, resume length is a sticking point with recruiters who don't want the applicant's life history when a short, concise and interesting synopsis will suffice. Statistics speak to just how important this seemingly insignificant aspect is for those who receive thousands of resumes each year. AccounTemps in Menlo Park, California, who conducted a survey to determine what headhunters consider an appropriate length for executive resumes, found that nearly two-thirds (61%) felt two pages meet the need, while 7% thought it was overkill. 

Develop your executive resume to include a heading with personal contact informa-tion, job objective, work ex-perience and edu-cation. Instead of writing complete sentences, utilize strong action words to paint the right picture. For example, rather than saying "I was in charge of fifty people," change it to "Supervised a workforce of fifty." Likewise, it packs a much more powerful punch to say "Secured three new accounts worth $500,000" instead of "I made a lot of money for the company."

Practice Restraint
Things to omit include salary history (this belongs in the cover letter), photos, unrelated accomplishments, personal information and references, the latter of which can be brought to and discussed at the initial interview. Because recruiters already assume references are available, it's redundant to say so at the end of the resume.

In closing, Calvin Bruce reminds readers that while the most spectacular work history compilation "will help you get your foot in the door for actual employment interviews...how well you sell yourself in person is another story."

Get down to the nuts and bolts of writing a topnotch executive resume with more detailed tips from Business Week's Joseph Daniel McCool.

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