What if your interview is tomorrow?

Greetings from Advance! 

We are busy working on about 40 open positions and now actively recruiting for IT Sales, Network Engineers, Medical Reps, Regulatory Affairs Specialists and many others.  Feel free to contact us if interested.  

Here's an interesting article I read recently which has some good tips for candidates. 

Have a great day! 

Al

What if your interview is tomorrow?

By Doug Hardy, Monster Staff Writer

Adapted from Monster Careers: Interviewing

Even if you have less than a day before your job interview, you can outshine the competition with a little preparation. The following four tasks will take you about four hours (plus five minutes) to complete, and you'll walk into the interview confident you'll be successful.

Conduct Basic Interview Research

Find out as much as you can about the interview. Call the person who scheduled your appointment and ask:

• Who will you be talking to? Will you meet the manager you'd work for, or will you just talk to HR? What are the interviewer's expectations?
• What's the dress code? Dress better than suggested. Most times, it's best for men to wear a suit and women to wear a professional business outfit. You'd be amazed how many candidates show up looking like they're going to class, not presenting a professional demeanor.
• Get directions to the office. Plan to leave early. Keep a phone number to call if you get stuck on the bus or in traffic. If you arrive late and stressed, the interview will not go well.
• If you don't have a detailed job description, ask for one.

That's a five-minute phone call.

Learn About the Company Online

Do some fast Web research, which will give you something to talk about in addition to the job description. Go to the employer's Web site, or search the Web for information such as:

• How big is the company in terms of annual sales or employees?
• What does the company say about its products or services?
• What recent news (such as a new product, a press release, an interview with the CEO) can you discuss?
• If the company is public, the boilerplate at the bottom of its press releases will tell you a lot.

Basic research should take you about an hour.

Think of Some Stories

Write down and memorize three achievement stories. Tell about times you've really felt proud of an achievement at work or school. These stories demonstrate all those hard-to-measure qualities like judgment, initiative, teamwork or leadership. Wherever possible, quantify what you've done, e.g., "increased sales by 20 percent," "cut customer call waiting time in half," "streamlined delivery so that most customers had their job done in two days."

By the way, nonwork achievement stories are good too; if you volunteer for the local food pantry, write down a time you overcame a big challenge or a crisis there.

Achievement stories make you memorable, which is what you want. There's an exercise inMonster Careers: Interviewing called "Mastering the Freestyle Interview," which helps you develop these stories into compelling sales points.

Take the time you need -- at least three hours on this task.

Pick Your Outfit, and Go to Bed Early

Lay out your interview outfit the night before, get a good night's rest, and always get an early start. The last thing you want is to arrive at the interview flustered and panicked because you couldn't find a parking spot.

Our updated job posting on CareerCross!

We just updated our job postings on CareerCross! Feel free to contact us with your inquiries and you may send us your resumes to:  query@advance-tokyo.com 

Thank you and have a great week! 

AL

Meet JAL’s cafeteria-eating CEO

I thought I should share this article from CNN with you of a great CEO. He is truly an inspiration. AL

Meet JAL’s cafeteria-eating CEO

Posted: 905 GMT

You don’t really notice Haruka Nishimatsu when he passes you in the hall. A middle-aged man in a suit, he blends into the working crowd at Japan Airline’s headquarters in Tokyo.

JAL President Haruka Nishimatsu, center, shares a light moment in front of a jet engine.

“Why should I stick out?” Nishimatsu says out loud to me.

“Well, you are the CEO and Chairman of this multi-billion dollar international airline,” I replied.

“So?” says Nishimatsu. “That doesn’t make me special.”

That philosophy, that he’s just like everyone else trying to make it through Japan’s recession, is why he takes the city bus to work, eats in the cafeteria with his employees and strolls through the operations room at the airport. When the company looked to cut costs, he eliminated every single expensive perk of his job. He took away the corner office and chauffeur. Then he slashed his pay dramatically, so that in 2007 he made less than his pilots.

JAL can use every penny it saves. This fiscal year, the airline expects to lose $34 million dollars after passenger traffic fell 20 percent and cargo loads fell 40 percent. It’s a global company that lives and dies by the direction of the global consumer and economy.

“I understand there are different conditions in terms of the economy for each country, but I think these economic issues need to be solved globally, rather than solved country by country,” says Nishimatsu. “I hope the G20 will give a clear direction to the global economy.”

Nishimatsu also believes the solution must begin with the financial institutions and continue to tighter regulations.

But he points to corporate culture as the long-term solution. Like the AIG bonuses, Nishimatsu says, “shocked” him. “It’s like they’re from another planet,” he says.

A lesson of this recession, he hopes, will be that corporations don’t solely pursue profit and instead focus on the long-term financial health of the company and employ people and help society. Together with shared sacrifice, he believes, the global economy will recover — but only if everyone from the CEO to the entry-level employee works together.

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Our new job postings on CareerCross

Greetings! 

Please visit our page on CareerCross and check out our new positions! 

https://www.careercross.com/en/03127819_careercross.html

Thanks,

Al Isago Parvez

CEO & Representative Director 

Advance Inc. 

Japan's Unemployment rate 4.4 percent in February

TOKYO, Japan (CNN) -- Japan's unemployment rate jumped to 4.4 percent in February, reversing a decline seen the previous month, the government announced Tuesday.

Japanese unemployment, had declined to 4.1 percent in January from 4.3 percent in December. Several analysts considered that a fluke, however, since other economic indicators were in sharp retreat.

The ratio of jobs to applicants fell in February to 0.59, meaning an average of 100 people were seeking 59 available jobs, according to new data.

By comparison, January's figure was 0.67, making February's decline the worst month-to-month drop since 1974.

In addition, household spending fell 3.5 percent from the previous February but was a slight improvement from January's 5.9 percent decline. Consumer spending on furniture, clothing, medical care and food were the sharpest declines.


Tuesday is the end of the Japanese fiscal year. Analysts say that is likely to mean more job cuts and more unemployment.

Japan's economy officially entered a recession in November. 

Greetings! 

I found this interesting article and wanted to share it with you. I think there are some good tips and advice here for all job seekers.  

Al

Advance Inc. 

Spring Cleaning for Your Resume

Spring is in the air. It's the time of year when you wipe off the winter dust and let the sun shine in. Before you get all excited (yeah, right) about tackling the filth in your home, grab your resume and a pen. The first cleanup project this year should be your resume. 

The Look 

Whoever says looks don't matter hasn't been out on the job search battlefield lately. You have to use every possible advantage to compete in today's job market. 

Make sure your resume looks polished. Be daring. Make your achievements stand out with bold type. Looks do count if you want to be picked for an interview. 

Facelift 

Does your resume look old and withered? Has it grown to three or four pages over time? Do you still list your first job after college graduation? Give your resume a facelift by condensing your background. Take some years off your resume by limiting your job history to the past 10 years. Summarize the rest of your experience with one general paragraph. A lighter, more updated look should open more doors. 

Today's Terminology 

Does your resume still refer to the affirmative action plan you wrote back in the 1980s? Do outdated terms and acronyms appear throughout your resume? 

Terminology changes from year to year, so be sure your resume reflects current trends. For example, today's employers are searching for HR people with diversity experience. Your experience with a company's affirmative action plan may fall in that category, but if an employer searches its database using the word "diversity," you won't make the cut. Update the terminology on your resume so you don't miss opportunities. 

Scanning Is Here to Stay 

In the old days of manual resume screening, it was important to fill your resume with action words such as "created" or "managed." Today, resumes are typically scanned into resume databases. Action words are out and nouns are in. 

If you dust off your resume every year or two, you can avoid the unpleasant task of doing a time-consuming major resume blowout. Get it right this year, and next year you might be able to spend the time shopping for a new spring wardrobe.

        By Kim Isaacs, Monster Resume Expert