Top 7 Ways to Kickstart Your Twitter Job Search

Top 7 Ways to Kickstart Your Twitter Job Search I love Twitter and not because I’m an exhibitionist with a short attention span. I love Twitter because it’s an amazing social search engine. I follow people in HR, employers, recruitment consultants, my clients, people who follow me, and lots of other people who just keep me amused. People are always tweeting interesting information, with links back to blogs, Facebook, LinkedIn and the like. They tell me and the rest of the universe what they like, who they talk to and what they’re up to. Well, the bits they’d like me to know at least. So I use Twitter a lot for ideas and contacts. But there are lots of other uses for Twitter as well, including finding a job on it. If you are struggling to find a job, or even just randomly looking, you’d be mad if you overlook Twitter, even if you can’t stand the thought of exposing yourself on social media. You don’t actually have to expose yourself, to get interesting information out of it, or even a job. You can just use it as a research tool. Here are a few basic tips and things to think about to get you started. Top Twitter Job Hunting Tip # 1 Sign on. You can use your own name if you are open about your job search and happy for people to know. If not use something else. If you want to use your own name but it’s taken, you could also use a name that represents what you do, your industry or what you’d like to do. If you don’t want people to know that you are looking for a job, use another name, and set up and use an email address that doesn’t have your name in it. Top Twitter Job Hunting Tip # 2 Fill in your professional bio. You are only given 160 characters so you’ll need to be precise. Have a look at what I’ve done with mine. I use a mixture of the professional and the personal. You don’t need to write your bio this way, but for me it’s a nice point of connection for anyone who chooses to talk to me. Bio: Careers journalist, job search and interview coach, resume writer, author, random tweeter and SEO online profile tweaker. Prefers salt to chlorine on hot days. Top Twitter Job Hunting Tip # 3 Link your URL back to your LinkedIn profile, website or blog if you have one. Make it easy for people to find out more about the information you’d like to present publicly about yourself. Top Twitter Job Hunting Tip # 4 Learn how it works. Unlike LinkedIn, linking up on Twitter is not so personal. You can choose to follow whomever you like. Sometimes people follow you back. Sometimes they don’t. Don’t take it personally they don’t. It’s easy to be swamped by too many people. Top Twitter Job Hunting Tip # 5 Don’t panic. With “@”, “#”, “RT” and “FF” just to name a few, a Twitter conversation can seem like a jargon convention for the hyperactive, where you’re left on the sidelines. Here are a few quick translations. @ is a message you can post on your profile in acknowldgement to someone else, or when you are having a public conversation. # helps tweeters organise their tweets so other people can find them. Sometimes groups of people use this to have a conversation. I plan to join #blogchat at some time, for tips on blogging. “RT” allows you to tweet out someone else’s tweet, that you may think is useful “FF” is a random twitter code â€" Follow Friday. It’s a way of acknowledging people who you like, or who have helped you. There are hundreds more than what I have just mentioned. That’s the thing with Twitter, cracking the code can get you hooked into it. Top Twitter Job Hunting Tip # 6 What to tweet? If you want people to follow you as well, you’ll need to say something. Otherwise you’ll look like a spammer. If you tweet about work, be careful though about whether your employer has any privacy policies. Some are explicit about who can be public spokes people for companies and Twitter can be in the public domain. Even if your employer doesn’t have privacy policies, you saying something about your work may simply not be acceptable. Plus it could be sackable. There are also dumb things people have done on Twitter, to get them dismissed. Have a read of this post by resume bear. It includes things such as: Bragging about fooling your boss into thinking you worked late the night before. Bragging about using twitter in work time when it’s not allowed. Talking about when they will resign I’ll be adding on to this list on this blog as time goes on. If you post links you can use URL shortening services like bit.ly When you tweet, do remember that Twitter is public and becomes part of the public record. Recruiters look at what in the public domain about you. Digital screening is becoming more and more popular. So a good rule of thumb is to remember everything on the internet can be archived. At some point it may come back to bite you. Top Twitter Job Hunting Tip # 7 You don’t have to use Twitter publicly to use it to job search. You can set up a profile, protect your tweets, or not even tweet, and follow anyone you like for information. I’ve found Twitter works for me when I engage in a conversation with another tweeter, but anything that I want to discuss privately, that I think could be confidential for the other person or myself, I say offline. It’s a good rule of thumb. Who should you follow on Twitter to help you get a job? You’ll be surprised who you find here. Many job boards, recruitment consultants, major employers and HR managers are on Twitter. You may sign up to a job board and receive an email once a day or once a week, however job boards will often blast out jobs on Twitter as they have them listed. This means you get first jump on jobs before other people do. Like LinkedIn you can follow colleagues, friends and people in your broader network. It’s a way of keeping what they’re up to in the present for you. Again remember if you follow them, they can click on your profile and see your tweets. So do be mindful of what you are sharing. If you want to make contact, Twitter makes it easy to pick up a thread of a conversation and have a point in common. I’ve also known people who’ve needed staff really quickly to tweet out the job to their network. Those jobs have never landed on a job board. Final thoughts The bottom line with Twitter is that it’s only one job searching tool of many. More and more recruiters and employers are using these to track you down, or check you out, so it’s worthwhile at least understanding these, even if you choose not to use them. There are more advanced Twitter tools job search tools that you can use. However if you’re like most people I know, you’ve barely thought about LinkedIn, let alone Twitter at this stage. So I’ll introduce these gently. Related: List of 140 Employers Posting Jobs via Twitter.

Writing a Resume For Freshman College - Tips On Writing A Resume For College

Writing a Resume For Freshman College - Tips On Writing A Resume For CollegeWriting a resume for freshman college is a lot different than it is for students who are already in their junior or senior year. It's not that the information is important, but it should be tailored to the job that is being sought. In order to find out what you need to do to write a resume for freshman college, follow the steps below.Juniors and seniors are already in college. They already have most of the information that they will need when filling out a resume, especially when it comes to their education. The most important thing to remember is that they already have all of the information that they need to fill out a resume.As a freshman, you will need to be proactive about finding new jobs and trying to get noticed. This is where the tips on writing a resume for freshman college will come in handy. For one thing, you can learn how to write an ad, online or through a student career center.You can also lea rn how to write an ad as well as create an outline so that you can begin thinking about the content. This way, you know what to expect and what questions to ask when applying for jobs. If you know what your options are going to be, you will feel better about getting started on your resume.You can also learn how to go about going about the process when applying for jobs at schools that you are applying to. The first thing that you need to do is figure out if the school offers your major. Sometimes schools will offer specific majors and you will need to find out which ones they offer. If the school is not listed as an accredited institution, you should avoid applying.Once you find out the major that you are interested in, you can start working on writing a resume for freshman college. When you are looking for jobs, you will want to make sure that you have a broad range of skills. You want to make sure that you can demonstrate your abilities to a prospective employer. You can use this as an opportunity to show your versatility and talents.One of the best ways to do this is to take a class in one of the courses that you are taking. Since so many universities offer this type of program, you should look for an opportunity that will allow you to do this. It will be well worth the investment of time and money since you will be able to showcase your skills and interests.Writing a resume for freshman college is not as hard as it might seem. You just need to keep an open mind and know what you are seeking. Once you have an idea of the type of jobs that you are interested in, you will be able to put together the perfect resume.

Empower Brand Ambassadors to Complement Your Career Channels

Empower Brand Ambassadors to Complement Your Career Channels It goes without saying that Brand Ambassadors are needed as much as your own career channels to drive your employer brand. Brand Ambassadors offer an organic representation of your company that can be perceived by some job seekers as an even more trusted source than the communications that come from your company or career specific channels. Your employees have their own personal networks online, some bigger than others, but each has the opportunity to become influential Brand Ambassadors online. The reason why Brand Ambassadors should be complementing your careers channels is simple. Trying to explain this in context, if you think of a huge rock (representing your corporate career channel) being thrown into a pond, you’ll see one big set of ripples from the impact (representing the impact of your audience engaging with the post). This action represents your corporate career channel posting to its large following online. Now if you can imagine having other smaller rocks (representing your brand ambassadors) being thrown in the same direction, smaller ripples would appear and start to overlap with other ripples and the big set of ripples from the huge rock in the pond (representing the impact of your Brand Ambassadors audiences engaging with the posts). This action represents the impact of multiple Brand Ambassadors pushing your message online to their own networks and potentially overlapping with other networks of their peers and the audience of the corporate career channel. If you’re struggling to get buy-in from your leadership team to build and implement a Brand Ambassador training program, one question you must ask them is, “Would they rather have one big splash, or do they want to make it rain?” Get them trained Yes, you will have employees ‘who know what they’re doing’. They’ll know how to optimize their social profiles, post engagingly, engage with others, and share all the best content to best represent your company. Leverage these people as ambassadors to help educate their fellow peers and ensure there is education available to the rest of your workforce who need it. Brand Ambassador Training should cover the basics around what your company expects as a minimum from its employees when it comes to representing the company online. The training can be one of the following or a mixture of; 1:1 face to face training, group training or presentations, webinars or recorded training and refreshers that can be housed on a learning management system for example. You’ll need to ensure that the training covers general best practices on social media as well as channel-specific tips for the channels that are best suited to your target audiences of talent. If your talent prospects don’t exist on Instagram, then why would you train your employees to use a channel that will not have the appropriate engaged audience to attract talent? Aside from general social media best practices and channel specific tips, your training should also be covering aspects of how to optimize your profile, where to find the best content and how to construct the best posts, as well as how to engage with others and repurpose the companies content and follow the company online. Brand Ambassadors don’t just share your latest blog posts online, they generate their own organic content and engage with others. You need to ensure this training drives that behavior of best practice. Identify who they are, measure their success and champion them Once you’ve done all you can to train up your workforce, it’s important to know who’s taken the training. If you’ve launched training on your LMS, partner with your company’s education team to look at the reporting of who’s taken the training in the first place. Once you’ve got that information, it’s important to then identify who needs to be retargeted and trained. From the reporting, you want to obviously see who’s taken the training and is now in a position to do a great job in being an ambassador externally for your brand. To see how well your employees are doing you need to use influencer tools, some of which are free online. Leveraging tools like Buzzsumo or SocialBakers where you are able to search for certain hashtags and keywords as their tools scrape keywords in bios and content shared. This is why it’s also crucial to have an employer branding hashtag like #LifeAtCA (that we use at CA Technologies) to track those users and traffic around those conversations online. Someone can say something positive about your company as an employer online but without the use of hashtags to taxonomies this traffic, it makes it increasingly more difficult to identify and measure the reach of your Brand Ambassadors. You can track traffic by searching for these types of hashtags by using the search functionally on individual social channels or using social listening tools like Hootsuite. If you’ve also invested in a social / employee advocacy tool that distributes content autonomously, be sure to check the statistics around gamification to see who’s being active in using the tool. This approach will enable you to measure the reach and how often they’re sharing content.  Identifying the success of these Brand Ambassadors and championing them should go hand in hand. Do not take these employees for granted; they’re there to be championed. When championing your Brand Ambassadors, at a minimum you should be doing the following; engaging with their posts, reposting their content on your career channels (with their permission), collaborating on careers content and promoting them internally to raise their profile for the great work they’ve done to drive your company’s employer brand. If you need to hand out a monthly, quarterly or annual award, why not? Track who’s making the most noise around your employer branding hashtag through measuring tools and always champion them to ensure you have a wave of Brand Ambassadors complementing your own career channels in driving your employer brand. About the author:  Stuart Hazell, is an Employer Branding and Recruitment Marketing leader at CA Technologies. His work helps to increase CA’s employer brand through bespoke recruitment marketing strategies.

Handling Change the CIO Model

Handling Change the CIO Model Change is the Only Constant. I once read an editorial called ‘Everything Has A Shelf Life.’ The author’s premise was that nothing lasts forever; change happens every day. Expected and unexpected, good and bad, change is part of life. Handling change is essential in the workplace.  Just look at the headlines of your company’s recent press releases. Chances are you’ll find topics like strategic re-alignment, consolidation, new management, outsourcing, even acquisition or sale. These are triggers for big changes that could affect you directly. Likewise, friends and family can change jobs, marry, divorce, move away or move nearby. These are change triggers for your personal life. Handling change is necessary, and it’s not always easy. My simple CIO Model can help you manage the changes in your life more effectively. The CIO Change Model The model breaks changes into 3 kinds: Changes within your span of control, changes within your span of influence, and changes outside both of these circles.   Picture it like a target with 3 rings. You approach each type differently.  The most important step in the model is figuring out which kind of change you are dealing with. Once you understand whether you can control or influence the decision, or not, you can react accordingly. Control Changes within your span of control are the simplest to approach. You make the choice to move to another city, change jobs, or sell your home. Although the choice itself might be difficult, you are the decision-maker. What you say will happen, happens. This powerful feeling of control takes much of the stress out of the change. Think through your options, including the reason to change and the implications, and the effects on people you care about. Rely on facts, not solely on other people’s opinions. Then make the decision that is right for you and go forward with a clear mind. Influence New work assignments, a child’s college selection, what town to relocate to, whether your loved one should treat an illness aggressively or not…many changes are in this group. First, figure out how you can influence the decision. Focus your energy where it can have some effect. Then be as factual as possible. Acknowledge your emotions, then set them aside. Crying is not the best way to convince your boss that you deserve that plum assignment. Nor is guilt a positive strategy for convincing your best friend not to move to Alaska. Don’t threaten, unless you are prepared to follow through. Instead, use verifiable facts: remind your manager of your business successes over the past 2 years. Compare your friend’s love of summer with the number of days below freezing in Juneau. Influence where you can. Then recognize that someone else owns the decision. If they don’t decide as you would have, make the best of it. Outside I call these the changes that you can’t do anything about anyway. Why waste energy stressing over them? Imagine that your company is going to be sold. You don’t know when, or to whom, but management announced that they are looking for a buyer. You cannot influence what happens; it’s all up to outside buyers and the Board of Directors. Most of us endlessly debate the possibilities with family, friends, and colleagues. It’s human nature. It’s also pointless. Yes, they will sell the company, and yes, your situation will change. Nothing you say or do will change that fact. So don’t waste energy on it! Instead, focus on doing your work well, and on developing your plan B: what to do if you lose your job as a result of the sale. Chin Up and Move On Once the decision is made, whether by you or by someone else, make the best of it. If you choose to move to a new city, explore everything it has to offer. If your best friend moves to Alaska, make plans to visit. And if you lose your job, take steps to find another. The good thing about our world of constant change is that if you don’t like this outcome, you’ll have another opportunity to change it soon!

PowerPoint on Writing a Resume and Cover Letter

PowerPoint on Writing a Resume and Cover LetterPowerPoint on Writing a Resume and Cover Letter is the result of a shared interest among many of us who work with people who are outside of our company. While many of us may not be involved in this type of work, we know how tedious it can be when you have to put together a proposal that you wrote by hand as well as a cover letter and resume to go along with it.No matter what the format of your proposal or cover letter is, the fact is that most people are very familiar with the 'traditional paper format' for letters. To them, PowerPoint on Writing a Resume and Cover Letter is the way of the future. This allows you to keep your ideas organized so that they will be easier to read once you send them out.Of course, you do not need to be a professional letter writer to use PowerPoint on Writing a Resume and Cover Letter. Many of us are not technically minded, so we may want to learn how to use it. In order to do this, you need to know where to look.Many colleges and universities offer a speech communication course that you can take that will teach you the basics of PowerPoint and help you understand how to use it. If you can, try to find a class at your local community college that includes a section on writing letters and resumes. It is important to get a good education before you start trying to figure out how to use it yourself.If you cannot find a speech communication course, consider getting a book about using PowerPoint to write a resume and cover letter. You may be able to find one that was written by a professional such as a human resources or business owner. The lessons in these books should provide you with enough information to get started on a project of your own.If you do not have the time or money to devote to a self-education, however, you may be able to learn to use it as a personal project. One good thing about PowerPoint on Writing a Resume and Cover Letter is that there are many software programs avail able that will allow you to quickly learn how to use it.Many of them are free, so you are not wasting money on something that you will not be able to do. In order to make the most of it, however, you will need to know how to learn and use it properly.Even if you are just a beginner, it is important to ensure that you understand the basics of PowerPoint and the applications that are available for it. Once you learn how to use it, you will realize that it has become a valuable tool that you can use in more than one way. A resume or cover letter does not have to be an art form anymore.

A Guide to Choosing a Teaching Medium for Your Employees

A Guide to Choosing a Teaching Medium for Your Employees Employee training is ac crucial aspect in human resource development. When you have a properly trained pool of staff, business operations flow smoothly, production costs are kept at manageable levels, people perform up to par, and the organization has better chances of achieving its target. Indeed, business prospects are very ideal as you reach this juncture.However, staff training and development can be very challenging because it’s a multifarious process. For one, you probably have different sets of goals for every department or employee, and picking the most appropriate business training method requires a lot of assessment.Some of the things you need to consider here include:Target skills or behavior to developLevel of training for new employees vs. more experienced employeesevalThe planning stage, which involves designing of training activities and putting resources together, among others, is all the more tedious and time consuming. These are just bits and pieces of all the det ails that go into organizing trainings and seminars for employees.This article gives you a rundown of training essentials that you can incorporate in your human resource development programs. It lists various techniques to choose from for your upcoming business workshops, along with relevant examples and corresponding benefits and setbacks.You may also find this guide particularly helpful, as it offers pointers on how you could combine several methods to develop a unified approach or solution for your training goals.Last but not least, this post features insights from fellow HR practitioners and experts for some bit of inspiration to best help your employees learn and grow with your organization.Training FormatsevalAssuming you have already determined the content or focus of your training, the next decision to make is which delivery mode should you choose. You have several options, and these are:1. Classroom-Based or Instructor-Led TrainingThis is the traditional approach to teachin g. Although it’s only half as popular now as it used to be, it remains to be a suitable option for a host of scenarios including business seminars, for example.In-classroom instruction is advantageous for business training for several reasons:It makes the presentation of course materials equally effective for small and large audiences so that everybody gets the same information simultaneously.There is instant feedback from employees attending the event. They are free to ask questions, seek clarifications, or provide additional input about what’s being discussed or studied.It’s very cost-effective, especially when conducted in-house by company managers and officers who won’t charge you extra for training or honorarium fees.evalApplying the classroom-setting type of seminars and trainings for business is relatively easy too, as you only need to provide the bare essentials such as blackboard/whiteboard, overhead projector, video or PowerPoint presentations, test questions, spre adsheets, and slideshows.On the downside, this method of instruction presents some challenges especially when you’re looking to get higher levels of engagement from attendees. This is particularly difficult when there is no rapport between the lecturer and the trainees.Ideally, trainers should know how to break communication barriers and use interactive methods to help employees on training feel enthusiastic, interested, and attentive.evalAs leadership consultant and book author, Jim Krunick, said, “Learning is about engagement. Talent + Engagement = Strength.”2. Hands-On TrainingA practical, hands-on approach is highly applicable when you are training new hires, helping employees make a transition, or introducing new systems, tools, or processes. There are several ways to conduct this type of training, including:Mentoring or Coaching â€" The main goal here is to impart knowledge that employees can use to fulfill their roles and responsibilities in the workplace. You may tap a team leader, supervisor, or seasoned employee to act as a mentor to a younger staff.The mentor can take advantage of coaching sessions to observe how the trainee performs a task, correct errors, give pointers and encouragement, and provide feedback constructively.Demos â€" This method is used to teach employees new procedures or how to use new technologies equipment or software crucial to everyday operations.Product demonstrations also provide the perfect opportunity for customer service representatives to have a closer look at the company’s new offerings and have them try out those items so that they can explain to customers how to use them, as well as be better prepared to answer possible queries from clients.Peer-to-Peer Training â€" Similar to the buddy system, this involves an employee training a co-employee such as when a junior employee shadows a senior employee to learn the various aspects of a job.Alternatively, a team leader designates one of the members to conduct trai ning sessions for underperforming employeesâ€"suggesting more effective strategies in areas where they need improvement.The only limitation in this kind of training is its incompatibility with large groups of trainees especially if you want to focus your attention on employees who are really struggling or need the most help, as well as decreased productivity from the trainers, who may have to spend considerable amount of time away from their own work assignments.3. Computer-Based Training At best, CBT, TBL, or e-learning methods may be met with resistance, as employees feel a certain amount of fear, intimidation, or uneasiness in using technology as tools. Just as technology should be user-friendly, it’s also a must for you to ensure that your training methods are designed with clear-cut instructions and easy-to-follow procedures so that trainees feel motivated to participate in the learning process.4. Social Media TrainingThe boom in the use of social sites is paving way for comp anies to integrate social media training in their employee training curriculum. Because social has, by large, a creative and collaborative nature to it, companies find it to be an attractive training component for sales, marketing, human resources management, and just about every aspect of the business. Generally speaking, your company’s branding, reputation, and popularity may become highly dependent on how your employees use social media responsibly to promote your organization, or at the very least, how they represent themselves online, as this says a lot about your corporate culture as well.Having a social media team in your organization is also a good PR tool slash spin doctor in case things go awry. That said, your social media training should cover two aspects:Literacy and Policy Training â€" Since it’s becoming harder and harder for employees to separate their personal life from their social media profile, you might as well equip them with training on how to uphold your organization’s social media policies.Educate your employees about what they can and cannot share on social such as trade secrets, upcoming products, and privacy and security settings.evalAs Gloria Burke, Unisys’ director of Knowledge and Collaboration, said in a Forbes interview, “When you give them that training, you’re empowering them to be more confident and effective in what they’re sharing.”Social Media Response Team â€" Whether it’s a corporate event needing media mileage or a potentially damaging issue that you’re anticipating, you could use your social media response team to handle such affairs in the best way possible.The Value of a Unified Training ApproachThere is no single formula for success just as many business leaders claim. Therefore, combining different methodologies to form a blended or unified approach for employee training holds great promise, especially since your organization has a diverse set of needs, goals, and resources.A study made at the University of Tennessee revealed that blended learning cuts in half the time and cost of training people. In the same study, it was found that blending learning improved performance by 10 percent as compared with traditional training.Here are a couple of practical tips you can explore as you try to implement a blended learning approach in your employee training curriculum:Break down a complex subject matter in a classroom-based instruction where the first part would be in the form of a lecture. Afterward, you could divide the participants into mentoring or peer-to-peer groups for the remainder of the class or training.Conduct a webinar or a video-conferencing session to teach employees how to use social media features as a business tool. Highlight key ideas and collate them in a PowerPoint presentation to be distributed to employees via email or through company intranet.Suffice to say, the possibilities are endless when it comes to training opportunities that can be afforded to empl oyees. Careful planning, proper implementation, and an honest assessment of results are key to a successful training and development program for your organization’s most valuable assets, which are your employees, no less.

Show ACTION in your resume! - Pathfinder Careers

Show ACTION in your resume! - Pathfinder Careers Show ACTION in your resume! When I teach classes on writing resumes, sometimes, to get a laugh out of the audience, I adopt a Ben Stein tone (ala Ferris Buellers Day Off) to provide a dramatic example of how boring peoples resumes can be: I did this, and I did that, and thats that. Yuck! No one wants to read a dry boring resume and try to figure out the person behind the piece of paper. Which is all the more reason why you need to integrate a proactive, dynamic voice to this document! The real key behind adding energy behind the words is to look for active voice words to start your accomplishment statements (under your employment experience). Starting off sentences with words like, Engineered, Conducted, Transformed, Spearheaded or Boosted add that extra oomph in your accomplishments. You can successfully frame your accomplishments around job duties, but tell the prospective employer what you did, how you did it and what the end result was to your previous employer. Being grounded in how the work you did and results you obtained fit into the overall organizational impact. This shows your leadership and vision, and speaks directly to how you are able to grasp the big picture and deliver valuable outcomes to employers in terms that they understand. Most for-profit companies want to know how you can make money, save money or save time. Non-profit organizations want to know how you can expand services, reach more people, expand fundraising streams and impact the constituency they serve. Conversely, government agencies focus on regulation, compliance and driving projects. Your goal is to get at the root of what your target company is looking for, frame what you did in active voice terms, and build the VALUE of what youve accomplished. This alone is of great value to employers, and demonstrates how much of an active asset you are to the prospective employer!

Job Hunting on the Sly - Finding a Way Out of That Dead-end Job

Job Hunting on the Sly - Finding a Way Out of That Dead-end Job Despite what you tell your colleagues, you’ve looked online for work while at work. It doesn’t matter if you say it’s only happened during your lunch break, sure thing, or you admit to taking an entire morning to peruse the job market. Everyone has killed some time looking for that dream job, while your current one takes a back seat. No one is here to judge you. Instead, why not find some ways to make your job hunt easier? After all it’s your life and if you find a way to make it better, why not leap at that chance? If you’ve ever looked for a job while at work, it’s probably not the smartest move you can make. You don’t have to be an Einsteinian genius to know that looking for work while on the job is a bad move. But, people do it a lot and employers are not oblivious to it. The key is being able to look for a job and keep it on the down low. You don’t want some work place colleague to go back and spill the beans to HR or your boss. What are some things you can do to continue your job hunting without getting the hook from your boss? Maintaining productivity One of the earliest signs of a distracted employee is loss of productivity. Excessive job hunting on the clock can kill productivity and make managers look for replacements before you’ve even found your new job. Managers can monitor computer habits so make sure that your job search stays within an appropriate amount of time. You don’t want to get fired and your work computer is one hundred percent the property of your employer, so be careful when looking for another gig. Examining repercussions Even if you do your search at home, make sure you’re using your personal computer. If you use a work related computer, there could be active monitoring software installed, which is completely up to the company. Make sure that nothing you do can be traced back to you. And always remember that US companies have the right to fire an employee for any reason. If they are not just, then why should you be? There are plenty of opportunities out there and all it takes is you applying yourself to get them. When is it appropriate? Even if you’re browsing out of casual curiosity, it can send the message that you’re ready to leave your current job. About the only time it is acceptable to look for work while at work is in the event that you have all ready been terminated and you need the time to look for another job. Employees can spend some time job hunting if they’ve already received a notice saying they will be laid off, just don’t abuse the situation. Know the laws in your state and always have a way to fight your employer.