Melva Gifford

Some of this information is from the notes I took there is a training at an employment center mixed in with some my own observations and recommendations.

One way to let companies know that you exist is to conduct interview phone conversations with employees of that company. A good way to establish a dialogue with your target is to have someone that you both know. The next goal of the phone conversation is to get past the gatekeepers. Gatekeepers are those individuals or technologies that have the job to filter out any calls that can interrupt a managers, work. Samples of gatekeepers are usually of the following:

1. HR department who filters most of the applicants for the hiring manager.

2. The HR computer. If a resume does not have matching words Identical to the desired skills in the job description than the computer may boot those applications out. So it would be important for us to include specific skill sets that you have that match the description in the job description.

3. Receptions and secretaries.

4. Phone trees are looking up. someone by the spelling of the name.

5.  Voicemail. People may not be motivated to answer the voicemail if not given adequate reason to do so. The tickly for someone they don’t know.

The larger the company, the more gatekeepers will exist between you and the person you want to talk to. One way to get around gatekeepers is by directing your job search to smaller and midsize companies or to be able to ask for specific individuals by name. Specific names are usually obtained to the networking with your friends and other contacts.

For those times when you don’t have a name, you may want to find out a person’s name by looking up the possible job titles that he or she may possess. With the appropriate title, you can ask the receptionist for the manager of such and such. Some examples of titles may be the marketing manager or QA assurance manager, etc.

Usually smaller to midsize companies don’t have to advertise for job openings because they are small enough to not be required follow the government controls of having to advertise for positions. Many positions are usually filled by people the employees know or recommend.

When the time comes that you talk to someone in your target company who your friend referred you to, drop the name of the person you know, in the early part of the conversation. That way, the person can associate you with the person they know. Remember, if you have to leave a voice mail, your message needs to motivate them to call back. Don’t be vague when leaving a message. They may have a stronger inclination to call you back when they know that you associated with a friend of theirs. Another thing that may motivate them is by something that you say in your 30 second power introduction.

In phone conversations, remember the following:

1. Even your tone of voice and how you express yourself will be judged by the listener.
2. Interestingly the purpose of your call.
3. Having a predefined script of what you’ll say helps you express yourself clearly.
4. At the end of the call, make sure you leave contact information.
5. Make sure that you speak precisely, especially when it comes to numbers. It’s amazing the amount of times I have heard someone’s name and phone number left on my voicemail and I could not understand part of it
6. Be warned, if you sound like a salesman, the secretary or the admin assistant has been assigned to filter out sales calls. I know that was my responsibility when I was admin assistant for the VP of IT. I had a responsibility to ask for the purpose of the call before I would afford any call to my boss.

If you have any additional suggestions on phone interviews, please feel free to share them in the comment section of this blog.

The following object lesson is compliments of my professor friend Cindy.

It always gives me great pleasure to milk off the talents and imagination of other people. And this week I was able to do so from a very talented friend named Cindy. She teaches medical courses at a college in northern Utah. Even though the topic of this object lesson is medical in nature, the principles of teaching with normal objects from around the house can be implemented in any teaching environment. I hope the following can be of use to family counselors, family devotionals, and family home evenings.

Professor Cindy was telling me how she use objects around the house to teach about the components of a cell. From her statements I shall endeavor to duplicate some of her technique. Any medical misspellings or misuse is my fault since I was listening to her verbally. I could say any bobos are on her but she might read this and then I’ll really be in trouble.

–        One raw egg cracked open and put into a clear bowl represents the average cell.

–        The outer, hard-shell of the egg represents the membrane.

–        Kidney beans represent the < mitochondria>, which is the powerhouse of the cell.

–        A bag of dried bean soup with a wide selection of beans represents other components

–        Such as split peas as the <vesicles>

–        Use bright green string for Golgi body.

–        Zigzag card/trim represent the (silver rickrack) for <endoplasmic reticulum>

–        Chunks of dry spaghetti represent <microtubules>

–        She included an extra bean to represent a free radical or damage cell that would later become cancer.

She says the original concept was described by a cookie model and that she simply transferred all the elements into the egg with additional accessories

And just as little extra here is another quick object lesson: She uses golf balls for the class to learn the components of the eye. In advance to the class, Cindy will saw golf balls in half, and then connect them with one ace bandage to act as a hinge to open and close the split eye. She then assigns to students to illustrate the outside and interior components of the eye.

Both of these examples are a wonderful way of teaching complex principles of medicine through objects from around the house. I’m going to have to milk this woman’s brain more frequently.

She gave me a third point of wonderful advice. There is a website where people are posting their Quiz cards for various topics in college. It’s called: quizlit.com. So before you write up your own quiz cards for a college topic or high school or other lookup on the site and see which already up there. Or if there isn’t a set and you create your own and you type them up, then why not share them on the site. The site also provides extra blank cards so that you can create your quiz cards on-site more conveniently.

My goodness, three ideas on the same day, I think I’ll retire.

If you have some object lessons that have been useful in teaching scientific or medical or other topics, please feel free to submit them in the comment section this blog. Or if you find a useful site that’s been good for students in some way, please feel free to share that. Thanks.

Today at job-search training, I was very glad to learn an alternative technique for contacting friends and family during a job-search. In previous training, it was recommended to give a 30 second pitch about ourselves, what you’re looking for and what your abilities are. This is always makes me feel uncomfortable. As a result, I haven’t been doing a very effective job in promoting myself.

This new technique is simply geared to gather information from your friends about their jobs. Throughout the conversation you may tell them a little about yourself, but the emphasis of the dialogue is about them. This procedure doesn’t feel as self-serving. To me as the other 30 second introduction. People may want to try either technique to determine which process works for them.

Here are some questions that you can ask family and friends. And of course, this would be discussed in a casual conversation.

–        Where you work?  This would give you a chance to learn more about your friend, and what they do. That is always good. It also gives you a chance to see how their company might have needs that may interest you.

–        As a <__putting your job title here__>, I’m very interested in XX. For the XX, you would discuss some topic about their company that would relate to your skill set.

–        How does your company handle XX. The XX would be the department of the company that would be normally using your abilities and skills. This has an advantage in that you get to learn how the company is structured by departments and how those departments interact with each other. You may even discover some of the job responsibilities within the company.

–        How many people work in XX department? This type of question can help you find out if they outsource certain responsibilities, or if multiple tasks are handled within the same department.

–        What do you see in that department that they do well?

–        What do you wish they get better? This could be valuable information. This is where you can find out where there is a need for the company that your skills might satisfy.

–        As you begin to wrap up the conversation, you might ask the following:

Who would you recommend that I talked to in the XX department?

I am much more comfortable using this technique. You get the added benefit of learn more about your friend, but you also learn about the industry, that particular company, and how your skills may contribute if not for this company, and maybe to other companies of a similar type. This also gives you a chance to learn about the business practices of multiple organizations.

This can be a very good information gathering tool with your friends and family.

After you meet with them for the first time, you will want to consider meeting with your contacts again for a follow-up.

After this initial conversation, is recommended that you meet with your friend and family member later to touch upon the previous topic of their company. When you reconnect with someone on a job related topic, there is usually one of the following three objectives you want to accomplish.

1. Get information so that you become well-informed of the company and the industry.

2. Give your contact of reason for them to want to hire you over someone else.

3. Thanking someone for how they may have helped you and for their referral. If you show appreciation for their help, they may be more inclined to continue giving you additional information.

If you have some additional ideas on how people can network their friends and acquaintances in the job-search, please feel free to share your ideas in the comment section this blog.

Got this on face book and thought it would be a good contribution to speller’s bizzy.

When you’re stressed you eat ice cream, cake, chocolate, and sweets. Why?

Because stressed spelled backwards is desserts.

Maybe I’ll spell desserts a lot better now.

Source: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=724772350885554&set=a.223098324386295.105971.205344452828349&type=1&theater

If you have a trick on remembering this word correctly, please feel free to share it in the comment section of this blog. Thanks.

Don’t get eaten by the bear, means you need to beat other runners from the bear rather than escape from the bear itself. The bear is the potential future employer. You simply need to impress the employer more than your fellow applicants.

The following is some notes from advice I received about interviews.

1. Job seekers come unprepared for the job interview. They need to research the one paragraph qualification and come prepared to expound on them.
2. Job applicants make the interview all about them. Set the conversation about the company and how you can help that person’s company.
3. Make you mistakes where they don’t count, practice sessions with fellow job seekers or by applying for jobs you don’t intend to accept. Then you’re refined in your presentation skills for the jobs you really want.
4. When the reviews say that they are going to make a decision by such and such a date, you call them on that date, don’t remind them of the deadline. In your next phone conversation, reference a point of topic from the interview.
5. During the interview tell people you want to take notes so that write down their names.

After the interview, when you the car, document the following:

1. What went well?
2. What did I say that I wish I hadn’t?
3. What I wish I would have said?
4. What job requirement did I not meet?

The reason you reconnect with a past interviewer is to give them reason to hire you.

This is just a few of the ideas I received from advice of job seeker counselors. If you have additional suggestions, please feel free to share them in the comment section of this blog.

I hope the following ideas can be of use to youth ministries, family devotionals, family counselors, and family home evenings.

This weekend I attended a stock investment course which had several presenters. Also, during the summer, I attended several speech presentations by a company called 3 elements. One key attribute, I noticed in that the presenter prompt for audience participation. For example, a lawyer giving a presentation asked a question and then said “yes or no?” The audience would respond with the appropriate answer.

I can see how causing audiences to respond can accomplish several goals in a classroom setting. Here are some of my ideas:

1. It keeps the audience more engaged in the presentation when they participate.
2. Getting a verbal response buys audience agreement. It creates little emotional investments and agreements of the audience to the statements made by the presenter. A salesman will get his potential client to agree with him in small issues during a conversation so that he or she will be more likely to give a positive response when making the actual sale.
3. In Sunday school. I’ve seen instructors start to quote a famous Scripture or famous quote. They will begin the Scripture and let the class finish it. This is useful because it makes the audience members feel good when they know an answer.
4. Audience response also helps the presenter monitor the engagement level of those listening.
5. A lot of times, verbally repeating a statement can make it more memorable and add emphasis to a statement.
6. Teachers use questions to the students to see if they understand the concepts are being taught.
7. Another advantage is it can help someone better understand a principle through repetition. If one person in the group is not catching a certain concept, and they hear others repeat the answer, that may help the concept click in their mind. Some people learn better through sensory stimulation and the audio response may strengthen that form of learning.

These are just a few ideas as to why instructors may prompt the audience for participation. If you some ideas on this topic please feel free to share it. Thank you.

I had a very informative conversation today with a software programmer who’s had a lot of experience in the field of computers. He gave me a very good list of the different types of software testers of existing industry. I thought this to be nice information to share for those that may be interested. Here are some of the types of software testers. I combined some of his comments are some observations of my own.

Smoke Testing is when you test the very foundation of a product working. Such is will the product. Turn on when you turn on the power will it load the operating system, etc. an example of this might be. When a server RPC goes down, you need to first start with the power source operating system to see if that’s contributing to the problem.

Feature Testing: is when you make sure that the new features that have been coded into the product or working as described.

Device Testing is when you test new features in a product. This may be specifically useful for ensuring that hardware is working properly with software.

Edge Cases working with is when you put intentionally try to mess up the product, such as if it’s asking for phone number you might put EN 12 digits to see how response to all the digits versus 10 or you might put EN 99999 to see how response to just all the same number. Here would be what you’d put in information that the product would not be expecting

Regression Testing: this is where people look for legacy bugs that may be deeply within the product is also a place where you can test new features of the product

Automated Testing: this area, testing, use involves programmers as well as software testers were they create algorithms to try to cause a product to not work to specs. A lot of times, programmers will write applications geared to break other products.

Edge or Scale Testing: may have to do with how many users will use the product simultaneously, and if the product slows down by the number of users.

Compatibility Testing: has to do with if the product works well with other software or hardware’s

in my own research.

I found the other three categories of testers:

Manual Testers: to see if the manual matches with the product. It supports

Black Box Testing: this seems to be a version of all the elements presented above, except for the automated testing where you test and stretch the capabilities of the current software to see the meet specs and requirements.

White Box Testing: this is similar to automated testing where it often requires programming in addition to software testing, and you create code to test the stability of the product.

If you have other observations on this topic, please feel free to write your observations in the comment section of this blog.

Bad: Deploma

Good: diploma

I pronounce it with a southern Utah accent and so the word often get an e. How to remember the I? To get a Diploma it DIPs into your finances long term, like years if not a decade or two, thus DIPloma.

If you have a trick on remembering this word correctly, please feel free to share it in the comment section of this blog. Thanks.