Tuesday, April 21, 2020

Resume Writing For PhD Applications

Resume Writing For PhD ApplicationsA big part of resume writing for PhD applications is really to make sure that your own personal qualities are written out. It's a very time consuming, but also exciting, process to create a resume that will be quite different from anyone else's resume.There are four parts to any resume. These are the biographical information and your educational accomplishments and degrees. The four parts are very similar in each case, but some applications will have more than one part.When you submit your resume, most likely you will get some information regarding your educational achievements, as well as a list of people's college you are working towards. You can do all this on your own or with the help of a professional writer who specializes in PhD applications. This is done because it is generally very hard to find these things for yourself. For example, it would be extremely hard to find your name on someone's college application.Writing your academic aspects is the most important. You can write about a specific area of study, or about how you have an area of focus. You could also write about any experiences that lead you to take up a particular graduate degree. All of these will be listed under the category of 'academic strengths' and may come under academic skills or work experience.The next part is 'work experience' which includes the types of jobs you have held in recent years. It can be jobs such as teaching, tutoring, working as a researcher, a nurse or an engineer. The entry level positions that are often left blank on resume covers are usually considered as 'work experience' and may not be shown as 'academic strengths'.Abstracts are not just found in resumes. Most likely, they are included on your academic resume cover too. Abstracts are used as summaries of accomplishments.Once you have completed all these parts of the resume, you will also have to write a summary of your job responsibilities and achievements. It may also be nec essary to include a detailed description of your research interests.

Wednesday, April 15, 2020

Melinda Gates on Her Career Failures, Rebounding

Melinda Gates on Her Career Failures, Rebounding From email typos to missed deadlines, everyone makes mistakes at work sometimes â€" even Melinda Gates. The billionaire philanthropist writes in her new book, The Moment of Lift, that she screwed up often in her early days at Microsoft. But in keeping with how you’d think the sixth most powerful woman in the world would react, Gates figured out a way to bounce back. In fact, she used the failures to her advantage. When Gates joined Microsoft in 1987 as a product manager for Microsoft Word, she says she experienced a “sequence of missteps.” First, she expensed an item she wasn’t supposed to because she didn’t know the procedure, causing her boss’s boss to get involved. She then botched a meeting with that boss by not knowing a crucial statistic about pricing. Gates, who was not married to founder Bill Gates at the time, thought she’d blown it and that her career was over. “After that meeting, I thought, ‘Wow, I may not survive. This is the top manager in my area. I’m one of the few women, I messed up on my expense report, and I misstepped on this,'” she writes. “I remember asking a few people, ‘Can I ever regain this guy’s trust?'” But instead of giving up, Gates learned on the job. She realized that she needed to memorize numbers and deeply understand her customers, so she did. She also threw herself into fixing her relationship with her manager. And it worked. “I ended up better off than if I had expensed things properly and knew the number he’d asked for,” she writes. “Nothing sharpens my focus like a mistake.” Those weren’t Gates’ only errors. She also messed up big time with Microsoft Bob, a $99 product the company devised in 1995 to help people understand Windows. As the group product unit manager, Gates had to take the heat when Bob flopped. Specifically, she had to lead a Bob demonstration even though she knew tech critics hated the idea. “I understood that flops like this were part of the process â€" in fact, we used to joke that you had to have a major failure to get your first promotion â€" but that didn’t make them any more pleasant,” she wrote in a 2017 LinkedIn post. “Failing so hard â€" and so publicly â€" was a new experience entirely. Getting ready for that demo was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done.” Gates and her team decided she would wear a shirt with a target on the back to poke fun at herself. While on stage, she had an epiphany. “As I stood there in that absurd T-shirt, I understood why the old joke about failures leading to promotions existed in the first place,” she said. “They provided a chance to pause, learn something, and choose a new and better direction.” Of course, everything eventually worked out for her. Gates is now the co-chair of the Bill Melinda Gates Foundation, which has made more than $45 billion in grant payments to support people across the globe. Her husband, the second-richest man in the world, isn’t perfect, either: In 2013, he declared the famous control-alt-delete function to be a “mistake” because his computers should have had a single-button reset. So the next time you make a seemingly catastrophic mistake at work, remember that you’re in good company. Then, take Gates’ approach and bounce back better than before.

Saturday, April 11, 2020

3 Ways to Ease Writers Block When Completing Federal Applications - Work It Daily

3 Ways to Ease Writers Block When Completing Federal Applications - Work It Daily By CAREEREALISM-Approved Expert, Daphne Houston Yes I know, even for the best of us, sometimes answering those questionnaires and KSAs can seem like a daunting task when completing your federal application. Narrative statements are supplemental statements the federal government uses to evaluate an applicant’s candidacy. Examples include Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities (KSA); Mandatory Professional or Technical Qualifications (MTQ / MPQ); or Executive Core Qualifications (ECQ) for Senior Executive Service (SES) positions. If you are applying for similar types of positions, which you should be doing, here are some tips to make it easier for you to ease your writers block and answer the questions with impact and relevance. 1. Thoroughly review the vacancy and the preview questionnaire. Go through the entire application to make sure you review all of the questions associated with the announcement. Copy and past the questionnaire into word or a text editor. This way you are not trying to answer the questions on the fly in the online application manager. It may be an extra step, but it will save you lots of time and frustration in preparing your resume, KSAs and even helping you determine if the position is right for you. 2. Make a list of your greatest accomplishments (as they relate to the area of expertise for the position). For each accomplishment list, ask yourself the who, what, when, where and why questions. Enjoying this article? You could get the best career advice daily by subscribing to us via e-mail! Enter your email address: | What was the accomplishment? (Led a program, implemented a new process, created the budget.) What was the result of the accomplishment? What challenge was present and then resolved? What actions were taken? What steps were taken? Give concrete, steps here. For example, don’t just state you had meetings. State you “scheduled weekly team members for the task force where you addressed the project milestones” which included: example, example, example. State you tracked the performance weekly and escalated any problems within a 24 hour period. Who? (Who accomplished this - you solo, you as a team? you as leader?) When? What was the timeframe? Was this a year long process? Where? Was it a local, national, multi-site, regional, global? The more detail you give to determine the scope of the accomplishment the better. Why? Why was this problem important to solve? How were others affected? Impacted? For results - Quantify as much as possible. How much revenue was realized? Budget saved? Number of resources reduced? Fewer problems? Better ratings? Raise? Promotion? Recognition? Lessons learned. Even if you failed, frame the lessons learned in a way that shows the reader you understand the failure and used that to build future success. By using the building blocks of accomplishments, you can build a strong database of KSAs, TQs that can be repurposed easily to specifically target each application. For those already in federal roles, you can add current projects to update the KSAs as a strong candidate for the next level. 3. Speak ‘em out loud as you write them. Picture yourself answering the question in a face to face interview situation; even better yet, I’ve actually recorded clients’ responses to get the detail and passion needed to make their KSAs stand out. You can easily record yourself on a digital recorder or on your own voicemail for that matter. All three steps will not only help you stand out from the crowd but will also prepare you for interviews so you can Land That Federal Job. Did you enjoy this article? You can read more articles by this expert here. Also, check out all of our free webinars! CAREEREALISM Expert, Daphne Houston has been in the careers and employment business for over 15 years, helping hundreds of government and non-government clients land jobs and thrive in successful careers. Her certifications include: Certified Federal Resume Specialist, Certified Federal Job Search Trainer, Certified Federal Career Consultant, Certified Job Search Specialist, Certified Performance Based Hiring Expert, and Professional Human Resources. The photo for this article is provided by Shutterstock. Have you joined our career growth club?Join Us Today!