Connect with us
[the_ad id="89560"]

Business

Tips From Tundra – Optimize Your Resume For ‘The New Normal’

Published

9 minute read

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.

 

LinkedIn

Facebook

Twitter

 

For more stories, visit Todayville Calgary

Banks

RFK Jr. warns Americans ‘will be slaves’ if central bank digital currency is established

Published on

From LifeSiteNews

By Doug Mainwaring

The U.S. presidential candidate cited the Freedom Convoy trucker protests in Canada when the government ‘was able to destroy their lives’ by freezing bank accounts.

Democrat presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. declared in no uncertain terms recently that establishing a Central Bank Digital Currency in the country will be “the end of freedom; we will be slaves if we allow that to happen.”

In a wide-ranging discussion at the University of Austin about freedom of speech and civil discourse, Kennedy said he didn’t “get” the connection between CBDCs and the loss of freedom of expression and other freedoms until he witnessed the Canadian trucker protest.

“The truckers in Canada were protesting the COVID mandates, the lockdowns, masking mandates, vaccination mandates, and others,” Kennedy began. “They started in Alberta. They picked up thousands of trucks as they drove across Canada to Ottawa.”

When they got to Ottawa — they were trying to petition Prime Minister Trudeau — and they were exercising a right that we all take for granted in this country: the right to assemble, the right to protest, the right to petition their government, and the government instead condemned them as right-wing fascists and racists, which if you look at the videos, they’re the opposite. Looks like Woodstock. They were delivering bottled water, they were cooking food for the poor, they were picking up garbage. There were musicians on every block.

It was really a beautiful thing.

However, the Trudeau government perceived the protesters to be an existential threat.

“The government used facial recognition systems and other intrusive technologies to identify the participants,” he recounted, and weaponized that information against them to freeze their bank accounts so they couldn’t purchase diesel for their trucks, buy food for their kids, or pay their mortgages or rents.

A pivotal moment for Kennedy occurred when one of the truckers told him that because of the government’s action, he was going to go to jail because he couldn’t pay his alimony.

He said that transactional freedom is as important as freedom of the press, or freedom of speech, “because if you have freedom of speech in the First Amendment and yet when you exercise that speech — if the government doesn’t like it — they can starve you to death. They can throw you out of your home.”

They keep a social credit score on you so that if (for instance) you’ve got your mask off below your nose, or if you’re not social distancing properly, or if you violate some other social norm, you get penalties taken off your social (credit) score and at some point they punish you.

Penalized persons are then limited to buying groceries from “stores that are within a certain radius of your house. You can’t buy gas. You can’t buy an airplane ticket. You can’t buy anything else, so you’re basically under home confinement.”

The truckers in Canada were never charged with a crime. They were certainly never convicted. It was just (that) they were doing something the government didn’t like.

So the government was able to destroy their lives, and that is a very dangerous power to give government. And that’s why I’m against Central Bank Digital Currencies because that is part of the path to getting us where China is today.

That’s where they started. That’s where all these other countries … with a Central Bank Digital Currency (started). And it’s the end of freedom. We will be slaves if we allow that to happen.

Kennedy is far from alone in his alarm over the prospect of a CBDC being introduced in the U.S. or Canada.

Although digital currency offers some attractive features, it also would grant the federal government unlimited opportunity to weaponize the technology against citizens, allowing it to both spy on the spending habits of everyday Americans and block access to the money in their personal bank accounts.

U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz introduced the CBDC Anti-Surveillance State Act last month to prohibit the Federal Reserve from issuing a central bank digital currency that Republican sponsors of the bill believe could turn the nation into a “surveillance state” by handing over control of personal finances to federal government agencies.

“The Biden administration salivates at the thought of infringing on our freedom and intruding on the privacy of citizens to surveil their personal spending habits, which is why Congress must clarify that the Federal Reserve has no authority to implement a CBDC,” Cruz said.

“While Americans across the country are being punished for thinking, speaking, and voting the ‘wrong’ way, the last thing we need is the government surveilling personal finances,” Heritage Action for America explained in a statement concerning the new legislation. “Anti-CBDC legislation is necessary to safeguard Americans’ financial privacy in the face of potential surveillance, control, and political intimidation.”

“CBDCs present major privacy concerns for everyday Americans, including granting the government the ability to collect intimate personal details on U.S. citizens, and potentially track and freeze funds for any reason,” the Blockchain Association noted.

“Big government has no business spying on Americans to control their personal finances and track their transactions,” said Republican U.S. Sen. Rick Scott of Florida, a co-sponsor of the bill.

“It is a massive overreach,” he warned.

Continue Reading

Business

Balanced budget within reach—if Ottawa restrains spending

Published on

From the Fraser Institute

By Jake Fuss and Grady Munro

This level of debt-financed spending has contributed to an estimated $941.9 billion increase in gross federal debt from 2014/15 to 2023/24. In other words, partly due to its spending habits, nearly one in every two dollars of debt currently held by the federal government has been accumulated under Prime Minister Trudeau.

The Trudeau government will table its next budget on April 16. Federal finances have deteriorated in recent years due to the Trudeau government’s string of budget deficits, and high spending has led to a significant amount of debt accumulation, which imposes costs on current and future generations. Yet if the government presents a plan in Budget 2024 to rein in spending growth, it could balance the budget in two years.

Far from its promise to balance the budget by 2019, the Trudeau government has instead run nine consecutive deficits during its time in office. And it doesn’t intend to stop, with annual deficits exceeding $18 billion planned for the next five years.

The root cause of these deficits is the government’s inability to restrain spending. Since 2014/15, annual program spending (total spending minus debt interest) has increased $193.6 billion—or 75.5 per cent. If we control for population growth and inflation, this represents an extra $2,330 per person.

This level of debt-financed spending has contributed to an estimated $941.9 billion increase in gross federal debt from 2014/15 to 2023/24. In other words, partly due to its spending habits, nearly one in every two dollars of debt currently held by the federal government has been accumulated under Prime Minister Trudeau. Debt accumulation will only continue barring a change in course, as the federal government is expected to add another $476.9 billion in gross debt over the next five years.

Simply put, the Trudeau government’s approach towards federal finances has been characterized by high spending, large deficits and significant debt accumulation.

This approach to fiscal policy is concerning. Growing government debt leads to higher debt interest costs, all else equal, which eat up taxpayer dollars that could otherwise have provided services or tax relief for Canadians. And these costs are not trivial. For example, in 2023/24 the federal government is expected to spend more to service its debt ($46.5 billion) than on child-care benefits ($31.2 billion).

Accumulating debt today also increases the tax burden on future generations of Canadians—who are ultimately responsible for paying off this debt. Research suggests this effect could be disproportionate, with future generations needing to pay back a dollar borrowed today with more than one dollar in future taxes.

Although the Trudeau government promises more of the same for the coming years, this need not be the case. Instead, a recent study shows the federal government could balance the budget in two years if it slows spending growth starting in 2024/25. The following figures highlight this approach. The first chart below displays currently planned federal program spending from 2023/24 to 2026/27, compared with the spending path that will balance the budget, while the second chart shows the resulting budgetary balances.

Figure 1

Figure 2

As shown by the first chart, to balance the budget by 2026/27 the federal government must limit annual spending growth to 0.3 per cent for two years. As a result, annual nominal program spending would rise from $469.4 billion in 2024/25 to $472.3 billion in 2026/27. For comparison, the Trudeau government currently plans to increase annual spending up to $499.4 billion during that same period.

Should the government implement this level of spending restraint, the federal deficit would shrink to $21.8 billion in 2025/26 (as opposed to $38.3 billion), and the budget would be balanced by 2026/27 (as opposed to a $27.1 billion deficit). All told, by slowing spending growth to balance the budget, the federal government would avoid accumulating significant debt. Moreover, this also sets the government up to return to budget surpluses in the following years, which could be used to start chipping away at the mountain of federal debt already on the books.

Rather than continue its current approach to fiscal policy, and risk needing to employ more drastic cuts in the future, the Trudeau government should implement modest spending restraint now and balance the budget.

Continue Reading

Trending

X