Building A Resume

Recruiting in organisations brings with it two certainities-- resumes that people submit and the need to track what's been sent in. Software on the market today can help in both of these areas--helping someone design an effective resume, and helping the organisation track applicant information.

Resume Expert:- Resume Expert is a computer software program that is widerly used on college campuses. You may want to check with yur college's career center to see if they subscribe to Resume Expert. The typical Resume Expert fee is $25, and sometimes is paid by your student fees, or charged to you individually for registering for its use. Resume Expert is designed to help you build several resumes that can be tailored to specific audiences. Moreover, with Resume Expert, your information is placed into a database which can be accessed by client organisatios who can search through that database looking for matches. You also can obtain a paper cop as wll as an electronic file copy.

Resume Maker:- Resume Maker (Individual Software, Inc, $49.95; www.resumemaker.com) provides sample resume designs, recommended resume phrases (keywords), and sample cover letters. Resume Maker also provides an opportunity for you to develop and submit an electronic resume to several career websites, such as Monster.com. you can also develop a web page of your resume with Resume Maker.

Applicant Tracking/HR Tools:- (For the exployer, Applicant Tracker) HR Press, $495, provieds a paperless environment in which to track applicant information. The software permits user-defined fields that can be tailored to the specific needs of the organisation. Applicant Tracking/HR Tools tracks such information as skills, education, EEO classification, job applied for, and salary requested. The software also builds a database of relevant applicant information that enables the HR practitioner to send customised letters to the applicant, or merge data ( like name and address) into other word processing software.

JOB ENRICHMENT

The most popularly advocated structural technique for increasing an employee's reward potential is job enrichment. To enrich a job, management allows the worker to assume some of the tasks executed by his or her supervisor. Enrichment requires that workers do increased planning and controlling of their work, usually with less supervision and more self-evaluation. From the standpoint of increasing the internal motivation from doing a job, it has been proposed that job enrichment offers great potential. This comes from the increased responsibility, increased employee's freedom and independence, organised tasks so as to allow individuals to do a complete activity, and providing feedback to allow individuals to correct their own performance. In addition, we can say that these factors lead, in part, to a better quality of work life. Furthermore, job-enrichment efforts will be successful only if the individuals in the enriched jobs find the "enrichment" rewarding. If these individuals do not want increased responsibility, for example, then increasing responsibility will not have the desired effect. Successful job enrichment, then, is contingent on worker input.

A sucessful job enrichment program should ideally increase employee satisfaction and commitment. But since organisations do not exist to create employee satisfation as an end, there must also be direct benefits to the organisation. There is evidence that job enrichment and quality of life programs produce lower absenteeism, reduce turnover costs, and increase employee, commitment, but on the critical issue of productivity, the evidence is inconclusive, or poorly measured. In some situtions, job enrichment has increased productivity; in others, productivity has been decreasd. However, when it decreases, there does appear to be a consistently conscientious use of resources and a higher quality of product or service. In other words, in terms of efficiency, for the same input a higher quality of output is obtained; so fewer repairs could increase productivity if the measure included the number of repairs.

WHAT ARE CONTINGENT WORKERS?

Contingent workers include individuals who are typically hired for shorter periods of time. They perform specific tasks that oftern require special job skills, and are employed when an organisation is experiencing significant deviations in its work flow. Then, when the special need for them is fulfilled, these workers are let go-- but not let go in the traditional layoff sense. Contingent workers have no "full time" rights in the organisation. Consequently when their project is completed, so, too, may be their affiliation with the organisation. Similarly, because of their status, these workers often do not receive any of the employee benefits that are provided to core workers. About 5 percent of the work force in 2000 was comprised of contingent workers, and the numbers is expected to climb in the years ahead.

WHAT IS KNOWLEDGE WORKER?

Knowledge workers are at the cutting edge of this third wave. Theri jobs are designed around the acquisition and application of information. Organisationsa need people who can fill these jobs-- the demand for them is great. And because the supply of information technologists is low, those in the field are paid a premium for their services. Meanwhile, the number of blue-collar workers has shrunk dramatically. Unfortunately, some of the blue-collar workers don't have the education and flexibility necessary to exploit the new job opportunities in the information revolution. They don't have the specific skills to move easily into high paying technologists' jobs. This situation contrasts with the shift from the first wave to the second. The transition from the farm to factory floor required little addtional skill-- often just a strong back and a willingness to learn, follow directions and work hard.