Since lots of people are job-searching right now, here’s a round-up of some of the most key job-searching advice on this site.
Resumes and Cover Letters
The first thing to know is, if you’re not getting interviews, you probably need to fix your resume and cover letter.
If you’re thinking your materials are fine, know this: Very frequently, people who are struggling to get interviews tell me they’re confident that their resume and cover letter aren’t the problem since they’ve had good feedback about them. But when I ask to see them, nearly always they are the problem. The people who told them that they were good were wrong — they didn’t have the experience or the insight to know what would make a really great resume or letter. So these job-seekers have been continuing to apply with mediocre materials and are frustrated because they can’t figure out why they’re not getting interviews!
This is highly likely to be true for you as well if (1) your resume mainly lists your job duties rather than talking about the outcomes you achieved at each job, and/or (2) your cover letter basically summarizes the information in your resume (in which case it’s not adding anything at all to your application).
That will get you started on the basics! If you want more detailed guidance, there’s much more in my e-book, How To Get a Job: Secrets of a Hiring Manager, where I give you step-by-step help through every stage of your job search, explaining at each step what a hiring manager is thinking and what they want to see from you. Learn more here.
Here's a question to ponder this morning: should people use the word "cannabis" or "marijuana" when referring to the psychoactive plant? That sounds like a pretty left-field question for a Wednesday morning, we know. But it was sparked by a lengthy discussion in the Ars office this morning, and we figured it might be interesting to get your take on the issue, particularly since the way we use language is under the spotlight right now.
Confession time: the debate was initiated by yours truly. I find it hard not to be pedantic, and since the actual names of the plants that people smoke (or vape, or eat) are cannabis sativa and cannabis indica, I think that's what we should use when we write about the topic at Ars. The word "marijuana" is also specific to North America, and while our audience is predominantly North American, it's not exclusively so.
But there's another reason to drop "marijuana" from the style guide: in the 1930s there was a conscious, racist effort by US government authorities to demonize the drug by associating it with Mexico.
1. “Prisoners have long used contraband cellphones to pull off all manner of scams from the inside. But in attempting to build and sell a house from behind bars, Murray allegedly took things to a new level of sophistication.” Link here, recommended.
1. “Prisoners have long used contraband cellphones to pull off all manner of scams from the inside. But in attempting to build and sell a house from behind bars, Murray allegedly took things to a new level of sophistication.” Link here, recommended.
Jiaying Wu, Jinho Lee, Yi-Chun Chin, Huifeng Yao, Hyojung Cha, Joel Luke, Jianhui Hou, Ji-Seon Kim, James Durrant In this study, we investigate the underlying origin of the high performance of PM6:Y6 organic solar cells. Employing transient optoelectronic and photoemission spectroscopies, we find that this blend exhibits greatly... The content of this RSS Feed (c) The Royal Society of Chemistry
Gary Larson has released new comics for the The Far Side, the first strips since January 1995. Larson does however caution that this is "not a resurrection of The Far Side daily cartoons." He adds: "I'm just exploring, experimenting, and trying stuff." The Verge reports: The first of the new comics features bears, aliens, and taxidermy (all staples of The Far Side). The style is comfortably familiar, with two large exceptions: instead of watercolor, the new comics are done in digital brushstrokes that make the images feel more volumetric and vibrant than the original full-color cartoons. Also, the penned outlines, which exist in both the watercolor and black-and-white original comics, are almost entirely gone. The end result is images that evoke the feel of the old comics but are somehow a little less cartoony. The characters and elements all feel unified in the scene together.
Both the style changes and the comic's return are due to the fact that Larson is now using a digital tablet. After years of frustration dealing with clogged pens and dried-up markers, Larson decided to give going digital a chance. "I was stunned at all the tools the thing offered, all the creative potential it contained. I simply had no idea how far these things had evolved," Larson writes in an opening letter for New Stuff, the title for his new works. "Perhaps fittingly, the first thing I drew was a caveman."
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