Site Craw Stats, Aug. 09 to Sept. 09

During this transition period, FreeClassNotesOnline.com while bringing over the content from the older site is showing a good grouping of startup stats in the search engines. Currently, Google is showing 175 indexed URLs based on the sitemap submittal, with in increasing page craw rate. With an average of 27 pages crawled per day and a high of 80 per day, the site is getting recognized properly. I suspect this will see a major jump in the months to come as I complete the transition and upload a lot more new content.

Telephone Interview Screening and First Contact

Up to this point I’ve posted a few resume tips of do’s and don’ts. Often times the next step would be the first contact telephone call which is often a prescreening. If your first contact is via email, don’t worry this section will still be valid; emails can often be the process by which a telephone interview is scheduled.

The telephone prescreen is an interview, no matter who you’re talking to (i.e. HR, a hiring manager, or another person at that company). Therefore, it is critical you provide a good first impression. Personally I prefer to use a landline telephone and not a cellular telephone, just so there is no delay or dropped calls. But if you are using a mobile phone, when they call you, ask them for their number just incase anything happens during the call. Be proactive and professional. Have something to write with and paper at the ready. This is not a sit on your couch and chat. If you approach it that way, your casual tone will come through and you won’t get hired.

As for telephone interview tips; again conduct yourself professionally, have it in a quiet place (no dogs barking or kids yelling). I personally like to have a copy of the job description in front of me, my resume, a calendar, and any notes I had written down when applying for the job. If the position has specific requirements, have some sort of reference material about that in front of you too. When asked about a particular topic, don’t open a text book and read a paragraph, rather use these materials as reference points to help you gather your thoughts. Another important aspect to the phone interview is, do not just let them ask you questions, provide good feedback but don’t tell them your life story. Again, keep it professional and expand on topics as they relate to the job.

After your discussion you will often be asked if you have any questions. Yes, should be the only answer you give; you must ask questions. Have at least two, but no more then four or five. Your questions should be simple but relevant to the job. The important note here is to have these questions written down before you start your conversation. If they come up during the discussion before you ask it directly, then just rephrase it, note you already talked about it, and move on to your next question.

Some questions you could ask are: 1) is there a potential of travel with the position, if so what is typically for people in this position? 2) Who typically provides the uniforms, tools, etc for the position (assuming the job requires these items)… In short, what you’re trying to establish here is a dialog between you and the interviewer.

The big ending, I personally love this part. On the telephone and in person I use two closing questions that often stump the interviewer, oddly enough they are the most important and often overlooked. If I’m very interested in the position I often state “ok (name of person), I feel that I have a good understanding of the position requirements and what you are looking for; based on our discussion do you have any concerns with my experience that I would not be able to perform in this position?” I love this type of question because it now places the interviewer in a position to tell you yes you are qualified or no you are not. More importantly, if they have a concern or feel you lack experience in a particular area, this gives you the opportunity to expand on and area of experience you may have not already discussed. In essence, you addressed their concerns and that often goes a long way to moving your name to the top of their list.

The final question I ask is “ok (name here) I am interested, what is the next step?” You want to conclude the interview with a clear understand of the timeline, not we’ll call you. Get a date, a name, a telephone number, etc. If you get the response, “we have a lot of people we are interviewing we’ll call you”.

Great, but ask what their timeline is. If they anticipate calling people back in a week, etc; then ask if you haven’t heard back from them if it would be ok for you to touch base with them in a week just to check. In these times, people are busy so don’t bug them too much. You want to create a relationship, so be professional but also casual and friendly.

The end goal is before you hang up, you want to know what the next step is, and a date / time you can potentially obtain more information. Don’t wait for the employer to get around to you. If they’re unsure about what to tell you the next step is, offer one to them. Say “(name here), I understand you’re probably swamped by all the interviews you are conducting; so if you can get back to me with how we proceed from here, that would be helpful. How about I touch base with you in a few days and we can talk about this then”. This goes a very long way with employers because it shows your resolution skills and a willingness to actively work with them. Until next time, good luck on your searches.

Provided by Brian for www.freeclassnotesonline.com

Your Skills vs. Company Image

Question, is it more important to highlight your individual skills and what you can offer or is it more important to focus on who your employer is? This is often a very common problem I come across when interviewing individuals especially in the labor industries.

Employees tend to identify with their company rather then their individual position or skill sets. For example, when asked “what do you do”; I’ve been surprised that many people say they “work for Company X” as their first response. In the employment search, this can be a negative issue when trying to sell yourself.

Remember it this way; you are a commodity, a product, a skill the company is considering acquiring. It is all about how you market yourself, your packaging, your appeal to the customer (in this case, the customer is your next employer).

When writing your resume and during your interviews remember to talk about what “you” did for your previous employer(s), not what past or current your employer does. An easy way to start this transition during an interview is mention your past employer and what they did as it relates to your skill set. If you were an autoworker assembler, briefly tell your interviewer your past company produced XYZ products; then quickly transition into how you contributed on the production of those products.

From a resume approach, keep it direct and to the point. Mention the products you worked on, but make sure you expand on what you did. For example, if you installed auto wiring assemblies; mention “installed wire assemblies on Ford F150 Truck Series”. The next few lines should be exactly what you did and how you contributed. So, “Responsibilities include installing and verifying wire bundles installations, maintaining assembly line wire bundle stock, and supporting quality assurance with product inspections”, as an example.

Here is a little look into how people tend to “read” information. Basically, you’re telling a story on your resume. If you provide the reader with something they can relate to, in this case the company Ford and their line of F150 Trucks which is the end product, you have established a reference point for the items you will be discussing next. Keep this in mind when writing your resume. If you’re putting your experience in bullet form, the first bullet should mention the end product or service you performed in your work. Good Luck.

Provided by: FreeClassNotesOnline.com

Resume Writing, Too Long at One Job

There continues to be a lot of news stories of so-called professionals telling everyone how to find and compete for jobs in this economic downturn. Unfortunately, there’s a lot of bad advice out there (some good) but many of these so-called experts seem to all spin the same advice. One could speculate that these experts never actually build a career of their own. So from someone who has actually been in the trenches and has managed through several economic downturns here a little bit of Resume Advice.

First off. If you’re one of those (unlucky) individuals who has actually worked for only one or maybe two companies throughout the last 7 to 10 years or more; this part is for you! Being a professional and someone who has reviews candidates for-hire and conducted many interviews as various companies, I’m never impressed by anyone who has 10 or 20 years of experience in one company and one job. Why. Simply put, in most cases the individual never pushed themselves into new territory, taken on the unknown, and frankly they never leaned more then one way of doing something. This is the cold hard facts! Say you’re an accountant. Each company and/or division will always have some slight differences of doing their own accounting and even dealing with the different customers can also introduce new methods not always gained by sticking with one company.

So how does this fit with your Resume. If you have a lot of time in at one company (say 5 or more years in the same job) you need to segment it out into reasonable blocks of experience. Let’s say you worked for a company for 9 years and all that time your title was Sales Associate. Ok, rather then writing up one description on your resume with this one job, break it into two or three segments. The key here is break-it-up where it makes sense. Let’s say you worked with various clients over the years, use the timeframe you worked with these clients as “individual jobs”, and describe what your role was with each block of time. Granted there will be some overlap, but for example, say from 2001 through 2004 you worked with three clients, tracked sales, etc. On your resume put this down a one job. Then keep the same company name, title, etc on the second entry, let’s say that’s from 2004 through 2006. During this time you took on two more clients. In this section, summarize your previous responsibilities (i.e. they haven’t gone away), and add in with more detail the two new clients and your role with them. The point here is don’t lye or stretch the truth, but do point out your roles as you took on more responsibility.

In the end, you’ll now have a resume with substance, more key words, and more for your potential new employer to evaluate you on. I can’t stress this enough, show how you have grown in your work. Yes sticking with a company for years and years does show loyalty, but it also shows lack of growth. Which can be seen as an unwillingness to change, and in today’s market is not the message you want to be giving off.

Provided by Brian at www.freeclassnotesonline.com

Oops Major HTML Coding Blunder

Ok I’m officially embarrassed. At some point in the distant past the page templates I created for the former site which I’m finalizing the transition over to the new site, all html header information shared the same format. Turns out, I somehow wound up with a hybrid page type definition. In short, I coded the site in HTML 4.01 Transitional/EN, but somehow I had the 1.0 version definition that you would find in an XHTML doctype.

Mistake: !doctype html public "-//W3C//DTD HTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"

Should Be: !doctype html public "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"

I have noticed my traffic and page ranking has been rather lower then expected. But as I move over the content to the new site it should fix any of these issues. During this process I’m recoding each page to have all the header information in a .php script so if needed I can modify just a few master files for the entire site. Cheers all.

Internet Explorer 8.0, Annoying Features

A few weeks ago, one of my systems conducted an Explorer version update as part of its Automatic Microsoft Updates. Usually, I don’t spend too much time concerning myself with these updates, but after several reboots it did “upgrade” the Internet Explorer version to 8.0.

So why am I making a blog entry about this; well IE 8.0 is another further attempt by Microsoft trying to catch up to other innovations by adding in their own crap. Don’t get me wrong, I’ll go on record by saying I actually like Microsoft products. The HUGE difference between IE 7.0 and IE 8.0 is the really annoying placement of some new features. I’m accustom to using the drop down arrow in the address bar to pull up past pages, but here where some coder really stuck their nose into a place it doesn’t belong. In IE version 8.0, when you use the drop down arrow in the address bar, all the addresses have now a delete option right justified on each line; which is EXACTLY where your cursor is when you use the drop down arrow! WTF. I have mistakenly deleted address after address with this “new feature”. Uggg… I guess some intern had to make another crappy button to add another bullet to their resume. :o|

Brian
www.freeclassnotesonline.com

Microcontrollers Labs and Course Material

The first two of the three lab series for the Introduction to Microcontrollers Lab course has been converted over and uploaded to the site. The material discussed in these experiments looks at electronically programmable logic devices and electronically programmable read only memory, and the Motorola 68HC11 microcontroller. Lab data, notes, and logic analyzer measured data is provided in supporting documentation linked to each experiment. The direct web addresses for each lab are: EPLD and EPROM Programming, Programming the Motorola 68HC11

Semiconductor Course Materials

Course items for the Analog and Semiconductor Electronics course has been converted over to the new site as part of the continuing transition. FET devices and Miller Effects are part of this material located at the following page addresses:

Miller Capacitance Effects
Source Follower Amplifier
Drain Loaded Amplifier
FET Capacitance Effects
FET Low Frequency Response

RF Modulation, VCO’s and PLL’s

The last two homework assignments and solutions have been added this evening for the Communications Systems electronics course on FreeClassNotesOnline.com The two final assignments cover frequency and phase modulation for transmitted signals (homework 9), and voltage controlled oscillators and phase lock loop fundamentals (homework 10). Each homework problem has solutions provided on adjoining pages depicting the actual hand calculations and steps for each question. This concludes the homework section for this course.

Digital Logic System Laboratories Converted

Today I converted over two digital labs under the Digital Systems Lab Course which examines an introduction to logic analyzers and a pattern detector logic circuit. The intro lab examines the properties of a logic analyzers operations by using coded EPROMs to take measurements from. The pattern detector lab covers engineering design principals for a sequential circuit, optimizations using computer simulations, PLDs and bench testing.

www.FreeClassNotesOnline.com

इलेक्ट्रॉनिक संचार होमवर्क समाधान

और फिर एक मेरा आवागमन इस अंतिम तिमाही के तीसरे भारत से आया है, तो यह सिर्फ मेरे लिए उचित है कि इस अंतरराष्ट्रीय दर्शकों तक पहुंचने और प्रदान की पहली हिंदी पृष्ठों का अनुवाद. मैं होमवर्क काम चुना है, इलेक्ट्रॉनिक संचार जो आरएफ संचार प्रणाली और एम्पलीफायरों, हार्मोनिक विरूपण, थर्मल शोर शक्ति पर केंद्रित है, और तापमान.

साइट ClassNotes123.com से FreeClassNotesOnline.com के प्रयासों को अगले कुछ हफ्तों में जारी रखे हुए हैं ताकि किसी भी पन्ने अनुवाद इस गतिविधि का पालन करेंगे. कि है, जब तक मैं एक विनती है जो मैं तो कोशिश करते हैं और विकास के कार्यक्रम में किसी भी अनुरोध गतिविधियों फिट होगा प्राप्त करते हैं. मेरी अगली पोस्ट तक, एक prospers दिन है.

RF Receiver and Spurious Product Solutions

Homework problems sections seven and eight have been uploaded this evening providing solutions for radio frequency microwave receiver systems and nonlinearity mixer products covering spurs. This is a continuation of assignments for the communication systems electrical engineering course for www.freeclassnotesonline.com The two assignment solutions added are at the following page addresses: Microwave Receiver and RF Spurs. There are two remaining homework problem for this course still to be added which I should have up in the coming days. Until then, stay tune for more announcements posted here on this Blog for added content. On a side note, I just ran a .xml site map and updated the sitemap file on Google webmaster tools.

Alternating Current Experiments Converted

Continuing with the web site transition to the new site, FreeClassNotesOnline.com the laboratory experiments for AC Circuit Analysis have been transitioned over. The three labs in this section are Circuit Response to Time Varying Signals, RLC Series and Parallel Circuits, and Equivalent Circuits. Each section has the lab description, the completed write-up, and supporting lab notes and data to include computer simulations and graphics where applicable. For a direct link to each labs data pages I have included them in this feed, they are:

Time Varying Signals Graphic
Time Varying Signals Notes
RLC Series and Parallel Graphic
RLC Series and Parallel Notes
Equivalent Circuits Graphic
Equivalent Circuits Notes