Forecast Fun

Standing out at a Career Faire can make a difference in your job hunting. Career Faires are starting to pick up, and Dice is running some nice ones, called Targeted Job Fairs. At a Silicon Valley Job Fair in early 2010, 10 companies as showing up, and a major job search company has 82 career faires scheduled for 2010 across the United States.

How do you compete at a Job Faire? The contention can be substantial, but you can help yourself jump out from the gang with advance planning. At AA-Careers, we have a simple six-step process to prepare. Planning to go? Here’s how to prepare:

First, research the companies that are going and pick your objectives. Use the internet to check out the companies that are there before you even decide to go. Go to their websites and see if they have their jobs listed. Pick a limited number to go after, and get ready to spend up to an hour researching each one. It’s hard to do more than 8 in a day, and three to five is a much more reasonable target. For each hiring company, you want to know: executive names, recent news, and key product lines. Try to see if you know anyone at the target companies. You should end up with a page or two of research for each company/job.

Second, if there are job openings on the web, read them to see what the hiring department is looking for. Create a mapping of your accomplishments and skills to the prerequisites of the job. Make the terminology match. If the hiring company calls customers "clients", your resume should do the same thing. The achievements should be written in the style of the hiring company.

Third, create a ‘brief sales pitch’ for each potential company/job combination. Write down a ninety second ‘thumbnail’ that you can repeat verbally depicting why you are a fantastic candidate for that job. You’ll use this in your resume and when you meet people at the job stall.

Fourth, modify your resume for each job type. The objective on your resume should exactly match the position you’re targeting. The executive summary should be a written form of your “mini sales pitch” for the job. Then choose the achievements and skills that most clearly match the job prerequisites. Especially at a Career Faire, the purpose of your resume is a sales tool for you – to get you on-site job interviews. It should be very easy to see that you’re a fit based on your resume.

Fifth, rehearse your ‘mini-sales-pitch’. Collect your research and the resume for each opportunity - bring a couple of copies for each – and put each in a clearly tagged folder. Keep them in a light briefcase or folio.

Finally, dress and prepare as if you’re doing on-site interviews. Dress well and be fittingly groomed. Avoid strong cologne or perfume…use any cologne or fragrance sparingly, if at all.

Remember to smile, and good hunting!

The first thing that you notice about the book is how beautifully designed it is. It’s quite substantial; a good size without being unwieldy. It is printed on high-quality cream colored paper with dark green ink, and nearly every page features hand-drawn illustrations. There are no photos, but each recipe is prefaced with a descriptive introduction.

The premise of this unique book is that “Italian meals are structured in a way that keeps family and friends at the table.” Italian families sit down together to eat; a custom that is rapidly becoming obsolete in our busy American lifestyle. From that point of view, cuisine becomes one of the most important ways to spend quality family time.

Italians know that food tastes best when prepared with fresh, seasonal ingredients and to that end the book is structured around the four seasons, featuring recipes and menus for spring, summer, fall and winter. It also features recipes and menus for the major holidays of each season. There are many other menus built around themes such as “A Quiet Summer Dinner,” “A Simple Spring Dinner for Company,” or “A Sexy Fall Dinner.”

The recipes are fabulous and fascinating to read through, let alone cook. The one difficulty I had with the book was that a good many of the recipes called for ingredients that aren’t available at most supermarkets, such as tripe, fresh morels, onion blossoms, cardoons, puntarelle or cranberry beans. However, sophisticated palates with access to gourmet food stores and farmers’ markets will delight in the many recipes that will allow them to make use of the variety that is available to them. That said, there were enough recipes that didn’t call for exotic ingredients that I didn’t have any trouble putting this book to good use.

Some of the unique and delicious recipes in the book are: Zucchini Flower Frittata, Butternut Squash and Rice Soup, Farfalle with Green Tomatoes, Eggplant Rolls, Chicken with Lobster, Duck Baked in Salt, Linguine with Blue Crab Sauce, Spaghettini with Maine Shrimp, Risotto with Crabmeat, Parchment-Wrapped Sausage with Fennel and Onions, Orange-Clove Souffle, Pannettone Bread Pudding, Lemon Sorbet with Spumante, Jaques Pepin’s Rhubarb Galette, Lemon-Glazed Ricotta Balls.

Adventurous chefs who enjoy trying new recipes will enjoy exploring this book filled with healthy, homey and uniquely Italian recipes.

Mimi Cummins is webmaster of SeasonalRecipes.com, a website devoted to seasonal cooking.

Italian Family Dining can be obtained at http://www.rodalestore.com.