Further Employment Considerations
Compensation:
Compensation takes several forms, from wages, to salary, to benefits packages…
Background Check: this is an assessment that a prospective employer may need to conduct when considering employing you. A background is used to verify the accuracy of the information you have provided in your application, as well as your legal and personal history. This will also include a sweep of your public presence, such as social media activity and political action. It is important to be aware of how you are conducting yourself and how this will reflect on your employability.
Background checks are specifically important when you are applying to work with children or other vulnerable members of the population, as it is essential that employers hire people who are well suited for these roles.
Cold calling: This is when a job-seeker reaches out to an employer that does not currently have any openings. A job-seeker would send the employer, typically through email, a cover letter describing their interest in the employer and what they could bring to the table. This is a good way to find out about job openings which are not publicly listed, or to begin developing a relationship with an employer you would like to work with in the future.
Professional Development: this is the process of building your skills, knowledge, and experience over the course of your career. Your employer will often offer opportunities for professional development, or may subsidize this for employees to pursue outside of the organization, and you can also pursue professional development on your own. It is especially important to be actively involved in professional development if you want to change careers or directions, or if you sense changes coming in your field of work.
Competencies:
your professional competencies include both your hard and soft skills meaning that it includes both your training and your experience. Something qualifies as a competency if you can demonstrate your ability to apply or use it in a way that is meaningful in a work environment. This means you may list different competencies based on what job you are applying to. If you want to be a cook, then making brownies may be a relevant competency, but if you want to be a carpenter, this same competency will probably not be relevant.
Skills: Your skills are two-fold, meaning that they include both hard and soft skills, as described in the beginning of the document. Your hard skills consist of your official training and qualifications, meaning the certificates, degrees and vocational and technical training you have received, which you have official documents to verify. Your soft skills consist of those abilities you have developed or demonstrated in the workplace which do not have an official certificate, such as problem solving, critical thinking, adaptability and much much more. Your soft skills indicate who you are as an employee and what your individual strengths are.
Qualifications: This is the combination of skills, training and experience which is required in order for you to be a viable candidate in a certain professional role.
Transferable Skills: these are those skills which you develop through your work experience at one job which can be useful for another one. You can add the skills you learn or develop at a job to your skills inventory. Transferable skills also include those skills from one field of work which carry over into another field, in cases when you are changing career paths.
Job Boards: these are places, typically in the digital rather than the physical realm now, in which jobs are publicly posted. There are a variety of job boards from general job boards, to industry specific ones. If you are interested in jobs within a specific field it will be useful to look into relevant job boards.
Job boards are a good way to see the kinds of jobs available currently and in a specific field, what they are looking for and what their requirements are, what the salary is, where they are located and other details.
It is also important to keep in mind that because jobs listed on job boards and public and listed in prominent websites or portals, there are many eyes on these jobs, and so they may be more competitive than those on the hidden job market, meaning those not publicly listed, or those jobs which are only listed on the employers’ website.
Portfolio: this is a collection of materials or examples of past work, perhaps in the form of previous projects or other documentation, which expresses your professional skills, talents and experience.