How to write a good cv (or resume) and how to look good on paper

Career adviser Liz Leavy gives some handy tips on making your CV stand out from the crowd:

It is important for any job seeker to remember that your CV is a sales document and needs to give the relevant information to the prospective employer in the best possible way. Career adviser Liz Leavy outlines the main things to remember.

Your CV needs to be visually clear – a maximum of two pages, using bullet points to outline the most important and necessary information.

Remember that if you are one of 100 CVs received for a job vacancy, you have to ensure that the employer can, at a glance, find the information that is relevant to the role.

Firstly, consider the role you are applying for. If you are answering a job advertisement looking for a Marketing Executive for example, there is no point sending a CV showing your current role as a Marketing Manager because you will be considered too senior for the role and your CV will be passed over. Ensure that you are applying for a position that suits your experience and make sure your CV clearly expresses this.

If you have had three jobs over ten years, spend the most time and CV space on your most recent job – this is what the employer will be most interested in. For example, do not take half a page to detail your experience working a summer job in McDonald’s ten years ago, and then only give three lines to your most recent role, which you have
held for five years.

Many people write a CV when they leave their first job and then over the years just keep adding bits to it – don’t do this! Create a new, fresh look for your CV, tailored to the job you are applying for.

Finally, always list your achievements. Employers are always interested in these.

Equally, think about what hobbies you are listing, making sure that they are relevant to the job you are applying for.

For more information or a one-to-one consultation, contact Liz Leavy at (01) 863 6901 and invest in yourself. www.thecareerclinic.ie

Vitae statistics: Make sure to put relevant information on your CV

Individual Painting Ideas Art

One artist who has come up with a very interesting individual painting idea is Elin Hayes, creator of Artdob which stands for art date of birth.

Artdob, or art date of birth, is the name of a new business set up by artist Elin Hayes. A graduate of the National College of Art and Design, she had earned her living from painting for the past 10 years, specialising in painting Irish pubs around the world, and also film sets.

After the birth of her first child she was spending more time at her home in Rathcoole, Co Dublin, Ireland, and she used her painting skills to make birthday, Christmas and anniversary presents for family and friends.

She painted scenes relevant to the subject's life and these gifts were so well received she has gone into business doing them to order.

Most of her work has been done for children, but other occasions are catered for, too.
Christenings and retirements, she says, are new fields. For children, a birth date is often chosen, or a family pet, or their house.

Hobbies and family trees are popular with older subjects. Indeed any theme, even a photograph, can be incorporated into the work of art. The paintings cost €200 and are acrylic on canvas, varnished to preserve colour and luminosity. www.artdob.ie.

Get Hired as a Yoga Teacher or Open Your Own Yoga Studio.

As a yoga teacher you will have a rewarding career where you have the opportunity to grow personally while being of service to others.

In 2006, after 10 years in the financial services industry, Gráinne Martin gave up her job to learn how to teach Bikram Yoga. While a lot of people are often reluctant to make that jump into self-employment, doing something they love, rather than something that pays the bills, Martins decision has meant that she has, quite literally, gone from strength to strength and has just opened her second studio in Fairview, Dublin, Ireland specializing in Bikram Yoga. Full article here.

Click Here to Discover How to Become a Yoga Teacher and find out more about how to become a Yoga teacher, Get Hired as a Yoga Teacher or Open Your Own Yoga Studio. The information in this yoga teacher guide can save you many hours of research and experimentation, help you avoid some common mistakes, and give you advice you need to get a job as a yoga teacher or open your own yoga studio.

Fiona McCann on Facebook and the Pressure of Getting Started With Twitter

‘What’s on Your Mind?” asks Facebook. And it’s nice to be asked, though I’m suddenly aware that I don’t really have anything on my mind. I curse the little blank space on Facebook waiting for me to insert some witty precis of my current state of mind. This is what used to be called a “status update”, back in the early Facebook days (ie about three weeks ago), a window into the teeming mind of Fiona McCann. Eh, Fiona is writing a column? Fiona is procrastinating writing a column by pretending to use Facebook as research for writing said column?

There are those like my friend Tom Ryan, for example, who really know how to work the status update: “Tom Ryan leads a life of quiet perspiration”; or “Tom Ryan: some days are best seized unconscious”. Unfortunately, not all of us have Tom’s gift for self-effacing one-liners. When I read that “Sabrina is recovering from four hours of Bikram yoga!!!!!” it makes me want to punch Sabrina in the Facebook. And as I learn that “Brian is hungry”, “Claire is in Paris”, “Shane is enjoying the sunshine”, valuable minutes of my life are being lost forever, frittered away on Facebook.

Oh, how the word friend has been devalued by Facebook, which reminds me daily of the cheery illusion that I have 317 “friends”, a thought daunting enough were it not for the fact that a large number of these are passing acquaintances, people I went to school with 750 years ago but haven’t seen since, and one person I don’t even remember but with whom I have so many friends in common that it seemed churlish to reject the hand of Facebook friendship when it was extended. And my mother, whose mastery of every technological tool that can be used to keep tabs on her daughters is truly terrifying.

But I digress. My very own Facebook presence on the whole is grindingly banal, and the pressure to maintain an interesting online persona while on permanent lookout for incriminating, double-chinned photographs of myself posted by my so-called “friends” is turning Facebook into a full-time job.

So why am I still at it? The official line is “professional reasons”, Facebook being an essential journalistic tool to keep an eye on the zeitgeist and in touch with my 317 peeps. The truth is a little closer to your common-or-garden nosiness, though. I like flipping through other people’s photos, and finding out what people I know (as well as one person I’m pretty sure I don’t know) are up to without having it filtered through conversation. As well as the opportunity to test my movie knowledge or to find out once and for all which Sex And The City character I am, what I like about Facebook is that it allows me to snoop around the lives of others.

Which, of course, means there’s always the chance that others are doing the same to me. While I am certain that the accumulative hours of my life spent flicking through the birthday photographs of friends of friends of friends is motivated by a benevolent curiosity about human nature, that’s not exactly how I see it when others do the same to me. And as careful as I am about who gets to access my Facebook profile (only 317 of my dearest, dearest friends), there are some things even I can’t legislate for . . . including, principally, my own stupidity.

Take for example the engagement. When the Beyoncé popped the question, I followed protocol and broke the news to my immediate family first. And then – so help me God – I changed my Facebook status. In my defence, I finally had something on my mind, so I may have been a bit carried away.

Furthermore, my status change was so obscure, I thought, that few would be able to read between the lines. Ha! Who was I kidding? Before you could say Control Z, the news had spread among my 317 friends and beyond. Then some of my non-Facebook friends – let’s call them, er, friends – found out from my Facebook friends, and the natural order was upended. People were writing congratulations on my Facebook “wall” while I furiously dialled close friends and relatives in an attempt to get to them before the internet did. It was a lesson hard-learned.

Of course, now I’m under pressure to start tweeting as well, given that Facebook is suddenly so five milliseconds ago. Harrumph. Unappealingly, Twitter appears to consist almost entirely of constant status updates, and we all know how I feel about them. On the plus side, my limited investigations indicate that you don’t so much get Twitter friends as followers, like Jesus or Gandhi had. And it would provide a new use for those valuable, never-to-return minutes that I would ordinarily be using to compose Facebook status updates or take movie quizzes. On the other hand, it would increase the risk of me exposing ever more embarrassing aspects of my personal life to thousands of readers at the tap of a keyboard. Now why would I ever sign up for that?


Article by Fiona McCann of the Irish Times

Kids Party Ideas Food For Thought

In these difficult economic times its great to get another inspirational story from work from home moms who have come up with a great idea and started a new business from home.

So congratulations to mompreneurs Sarah Walters and Jennie Power, both mothers of young families, who are brim full of vigour and enthusiasm for their new business with the brilliantly catchy name ‘Treats’, their catering company that provides kid-sized, and very cute, party food for birthdays and other celebrations.

With the First Communion season not so far away, their homely, tea-party-style spreads are very much in touch with the times and certainly more wallet-friendly than lavish lunches and marquees.

Their aim is to offer “homemade, tasty, visually attractive and affordable party food for children of all ages”. The goodies can be delivered to your door, and the range includes homemade pizzas, sausage rolls, fairy cakes, cookies and birthday cakes. A food-only party-package of individual pizzas plus five sweet treats costs €10 per child, and for a further €10 per child you can hand over responsibility for organising party games, face painting and party-bag provision to children’s entertainer Hokey Cokey.

“We’ve both done the whole commercial kids’ party scene, and we thought it would be nice to go back to the old-fashioned way of doing it,” Walters says.

So if you are a mom like me who panics in the wake of the preparation for a kiddies party and thinks along the line of – kids party ideas food? – surely www.Treats.ie is just what we need!

For more information about how to become a cake decorator and start a cake decorating business (also known as a cake design business, cupcake business, or cake business), download the FabJob Guide to Become a Cake Decorator at http://www.FabJob.com/cakedecorator.asp.

Happy Mother's Day!

Happy Mother’s Day to all our wonderful Mother’s out there. For sure, the woman who made sure you were fed and watered, warm and dry and loves you unconditionally deserves to be pampered for the day.

My personal three favorite treats on Mother’s Day - handmade cards from my wonderful children, breakfast in bed, a clutch of daffodils on the tray. That’s more than enough for me!

Hope you all have a great day!

Juliette