Business
Tips From Tundra – Optimize Your Resume For ‘The New Normal’
The landscape of employment for job-seekers has changed dramatically since the beginning of the pandemic in Alberta. As of May 2020, the Alberta Government reports an unemployment rate of 15.5%. Combine that with experienced employees furloughed from various sectors, new graduates and those seeking a new career direction may have a steeper hill to climb than before. We continue to discover what is the new normal for Alberta post-pandemic, we revisit the topic of how to put your best foot forward when optimizing your resume for your job hunt.
Tundra Technical Solutions is a global recruitment agency headquartered in Toronto, Ontario. Since 2004, Tundra has grown quickly, today operating offices across North America, Europe and Asia. They work with top global partners actively seeking the best talent in multiple sectors such as finance, insurance, healthcare, technology, retail, energy, utilities, construction, mining, telecommunications, transportation and government to name a few.
Ever considered utilizing the skills a recruitment agency may have to offer? It may be the right time considering the volume of applicants in the hundreds on certain job postings, as shown in the image below. We spoke with Christina Esposito, Marketing and Communications Lead and Internal Recruiter for Tundra Technical Solutions on ways to optimize your resume for recruiters in the new normal.
(Source: LinkedIn Job Search)
Should your resume be written chronologically or functionally?
The key difference here is whether or not your work experience should be written as a timeline of your previous positions or should it be laid out in the form of what experience you feel is best suited for the position you are applying for. From a recruiters perspective, Christina mentions:
“We like to see a reverse chronological order of previous work experience. We recommend placing all of your technical skills right at the top of your resume, and then go into your most recent experience.”
Should you tailor your resume for the specific job you are applying for?
Say you are actively applying to open positions, tailoring your resume can be a time consuming task if your objective is to apply to the first 10-20 open positions you find. To that point, applying to everything you see can be detrimental to your efforts when utilizing a recruiter. Keep in mind, there is a human processing your candidate profile, and their efforts are to find the best talent for their employers. Christina offers a recommendation that can mitigate time for both the job seeker and recruiter:
“ we absolutely want to see someone tailoring their resume that matches the job description. A good tip for someone who might not want to go through a whole overhaul, is to first make sure that the job you’re applying to is relevant to your experience, recruiters can see if you’re applying to the first jobs that pop up for example. It becomes clear they haven’t really looked into the position they’re applying for. So, a lot of care and detail should go into those applications if you want to have the greatest success. Ultimately you want to make sure that the job description lines up with your skills…”
What is the best resume format that can be read autonomously through recruitment software?
As mentioned above, some positions can receive hundreds of applications. If you haven’t been made aware by now, recruiters utilise software called an Applicant Tracking System (ATS) or what is referred to as resume parsing, which allows the hundreds of resumes to be read and processed, thus creating a candidate profile highlighting the most relevant information to send to an employer. Say you spent endless hours on the most aesthetically pleasing resume to give that ‘wow’ factor, that may have been a solid practice in the past, but ATS systems have difficulty processing these resume formats, thus your candidate profiles could be lacking important information.
“I would recommend against a PDF format. The reason being is that Microsoft Word documents are the most legible and easiest to parse with. The way the ATS works is, someone sends in the application, the ATS picks those keywords from their resume and matches them to the actual job description. Inserting images or a lot of text can make it difficult for recruiters to look up your profile in the future.”
What should NOT be included on your resume?
Some of these you may already know, but let’s be clear, having a resume with only relevant information is your best chance of success. Working as a retail store manager I had received countless resumes from individuals seeking employment. During that time, I had encountered some of the most outrageous and creative resumes from all walks of life. By no means am I a recruitment specialist, but sticking to the basics was a winner for my new hires during that time. Christina offers the perspective of a recruiter for what not to put on your resume:
“Jumping right into things like objectives or hobbies is fine, but we would recommend against it because the longer you make your resume, you can decrease the chances of someone reading the full document. Best practice is to always keep your resume one to two pages with only relevant information. For industry veterans that have lengthy work history, you should only list the most recent and relevant experience.”
Should you include links to your social media?
Social media plays a significant role in the recruitment process for both agencies and hiring managers. LinkedIn has become a major part of what we call this ‘new normal’, with more than 20 million companies listed on the site and 14 million open jobs, it’s no surprise that over 75% of people who recently changed jobs used LinkedIn to inform their career decision. When it comes to social media, Christina offers her recommendations:
“90% of the time, recruiters are looking at your LinkedIn or Twitter. We want to make sure we get a holistic view of the applicant. 40% of our hires last year were candidates we sourced directly from LinkedIn. We have situations where we have candidates that look great on paper, but after we do some investigating. He/she doesn’t actually prove to be the person he/she was saying on paper. It’s a point of validation and puts a face to a name. My recommendation would be to keep your social media profiles clean, descriptive and showcase your accomplishments, especially if you have a public profile.”
This information should offer you some insight into how the employment landscape is changing and what best practices to implement for your job hunt. Who wouldn’t want to save time and effort on what can be an arduous task?
If you would like to learn more about Tundra Technical Solutions, speak to one of their experienced recruiters or to view their available positions in Alberta, check out their website here or message them on their Facebook below.
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Energy Talking Points by Alex Epstein
Alex Epstein
This is the kind of integrity we need from industry—and from Congress.
Dear Chairman Smith and Chairman Crapo:
We, the undersigned American energy producers and investors, write to voice our principled support for full repeal of the Inflation Reduction Act’s (IRA) energy subsidies, including subsidies that would appear to be to our firms’ and industry’s benefit. This is the only moral and practical path forward if we are to truly unleash American energy.
In recent weeks, Congress has been embroiled in battles over which, if any, of the IRA energy subsidies to cut. Lobbyists representing every corner of the energy landscape, including trade groups that many of us are part of, are jockeying to preserve their own piece of the pie, claiming that it is uniquely valuable.
We have oil lobbyists fighting to keep carbon capture and hydrogen subsidies, solar and wind lobbyists fighting to keep solar and wind subsidies, biofuel lobbyists fighting to keep biofuel subsidies, and EV lobbyists fighting to keep EV subsidies.
If this continues, we will likely preserve most if not all of the subsidies, which, deep down, everyone knows are not good for America.
The fundamental truth about subsidies is very simple. For any product, including energy, a subsidy is just a way of taking money from more efficient producers—and from taxpayers—and giving it to less efficient producers. The result is always less efficient production and therefore higher costs or lower quality for Americans.
The most egregious example of subsidies’ destructiveness is the IRA’s solar and wind subsidies, which pay electric utilities to invest much more money in solar and wind than they otherwise would, and thus much less in coal and gas than they otherwise would. Ultimately this means higher electricity prices and certainly less electricity reliability for Americans.
The IRA subsidies’ devastating harm to American energy is more than enough to compel us, as energy producers, to oppose them.
But their harm goes far beyond energy, as they will dramatically increase our debt and ultimately undermine every aspect of our economy.
A central Congressional priority is to curb the national debt during the upcoming budget reconciliation exercise. But according to credible estimates, the IRA will cost over $1 trillion over the next decade and trillions more after that. Worse, the IRA subsidies are expected to misallocate, into uncompetitive business and jobs, $3 trillion of investment by 2032 and $11 trillion by 2050. That’s a disaster for our economy, and for real job opportunities.
Clearly, the right thing to do is to eliminate all these subsidies. When lobbyists say that these subsidies are essential for America, what they’re really saying is that their backers have made investments in projects that have no near term cost-effectiveness and that are totally dependent on indefinite subsidies to sustain themselves.
Most people know the truth, but are afraid to say it due to institutional pressures. Too many Congressmen are afraid of alienating trade groups. Too many trade groups are afraid of alienating their large and vocal members who have made investments hoping for indefinite subsidies. All the while, too few are talking about freedom.
That’s why we invite our colleagues to do the right thing: level with the American people, say that we made a mistake, and that those who built subsidy-dependent businesses took on the kind of risk that we do not want to reward.
Keeping the IRA subsidies—despite all the evidence that they benefit only special interests at the expense of America—risks making our nation ever more like Europe, where industries do not succeed by providing the best value to consumers, but by providing the best favors to politicians. That’s not the America we want to work in.
Sincerely,
Bud Brigham, Founder, Atlas Energy Services and Brigham Exploration
David Albin, Managing Partner, Spectra Holdings
Adam Anderson, CEO, Innovex International
Thurmon Andress, Chairman and CEO, Andress Oil
Don Bennett, Managing Partner, Bennett Ventures LP
Greg Bird, CEO and President, Jetta Operating Company
David de Roode, Partner, Lockton
Andy Eidson, CEO, Alpha Metallurgical Resources
Matt Gallagher, President and CEO, Greenlake Energy
Mike Howard, CEO, Howard Energy
Justin Thompson, CEO, Iron Senergy
Ed Kovalik, CEO, Prairie Operating Company
Thomas E. Knauff, Executive Chairman, EDP
Lance Langford, CEO, Langford Energy Partners
Mickey McKee, CEO, Kodiak Gas Services
Mike O’Shaughnessy, CEO, Lario Oil and Gas Company
D. Martin Phillips, Founder, EnCap Investments LP
Karl Pfluger, midstream executive
David Rees-Jones, President, Chief Energy
Rob Roosa, CEO, Brigham Royalties
Bobby Shackouls, Former CEO, Burlington Resources
Ross Stevens, Founder and CEO, Stone Ridge Holdings Group
Kyle Stallings, CEO, Desert Royalty Company
Justin Thompson, CEO, Iron Senergy
Mike Wallace, Partner, Wallace Family Partnership
Ladd Wilks, CEO, ProFrac
Denzil West, CEO, Admiral Permian Operating
Bill Zartler, Founder and CEO, Solaris Oilfield Infrastructure
Additional signatories (email [email protected] to add yours):
Jimmy Brock, Executive Chairman, Core Natural Resources
Ted Williams, President and CEO, Rockport Energy Solutions LLC
To make sure as many politicians as possible see this letter, help us by sharing on Twitter/X and tagging your Congressmen! Congress is currently undecided about what to do about the IRA subsidies, so now is the moment to make your voice heard.
“Energy Talking Points by Alex Epstein” is my free Substack newsletter designed to give as many people as possible
access to concise, powerful, well-referenced talking points on the latest energy, environmental,
and climate issues from a pro-human, pro-energy perspective.
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Business
Possible Criminal Charges for US Institute for Peace Officials who barricade office in effort to thwart DOGE
From the Daily Caller News Foundation
By
The Department of Justice is exploring potential criminal charges against former U.S. Institute of Peace (USIP) officials who attempted to block the Trump administration’s leadership changes at the federally funded think tank Monday, a senior DOJ official told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
The official, who requested anonymity, told the DCNF the DOJ is examining whether certain USIP actions — such as the removal and destruction of internal and external door locks — created illegal fire hazards. The official also flagged the widespread distribution of internal flyers instructing USIP staff not to cooperate with incoming Trump administration officials as potentially obstructive conduct. The DCNF was the first to report on USIP’s internal flyer campaign and destruction of door locks.
“Eleven board members were lawfully removed, and remaining board members appointed Kenneth Jackson acting president,” Anna Kelly, White House deputy press secretary, previously told the DCNF. “Rogue bureaucrats will not be allowed to hold agencies hostage. The Trump administration will enforce the President’s executive authority and ensure his agencies remain accountable to the American people.”
The inquiry — which remains in its early stages, the official emphasized — follows a contentious standoff Monday after former USIP leadership tried to block the installation of Kenneth Jackson, who President Donald Trump appointed as the institute’s new president on March 14. The Trump administration determined the institute had failed to comply with a Feb. 19 executive order requiring federally funded organizations like USIP to scale operations down to their bare statutory minimums, triggering a leadership shakeup the institute attempted to resist.
USIP leadership began preparing for a confrontation weeks before the executive order was issued. A Feb. 6 internal document exclusively obtained by the DCNF outlined plans to deny building access to outside officials and reasserted the institute’s discretion over security systems and facilities. Flyers with the names and photos of Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) officials were posted throughout the building, instructing staff to report their presence and avoid conversation.
After Jackson and other DOGE officials arrived on March 14 with law enforcement and a copy of Trump’s order, they were turned away by USIP’s legal counsel, sources previously told the DCNF. Over the following weekend, USIP leadership escalated its resistance — terminating its private security firm, disabling internet and phone systems and resorting to walkie-talkie communication inside the building.
DOGE officials returned Monday to find the building locked down and staff barricaded on the fifth floor. USIP officials called the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD), sources previously told the DCNF, who only later arrived at the request of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for D.C. after reports of obstruction by institute staff. MPD entered the fifth floor through emergency stairwells and removed former USIP President George Moose and other senior officials from the premises.
While a federal judge declined to issue a restraining order halting the leadership transition Wednesday, she sharply criticized DOGE’s cooperation with law enforcement, despite the circumstances surrounding USIP’s refusal to comply.
The DOJ official did not specify which individuals were under investigation or when a decision on charges might be made.
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