Are you about to record your first voice CV?

Congratulations, you are one of the progressive jobbers who have realized that a voice Curriculum vitae is huge positive statement on your job application. Why? Because your resume is probably your best shot - and in many cases the only shot at you getting an interview. Typical busy bee recruiter has less than 2 minutes for a resume - if at all that. Your voice CV buys you some additional time, if you get some of the smarts:

Decide the approach for your voice CV: (A) I am going to present highlights from my resume (B) I am going to add information to my resume (C) I am going to build intrigue with a story or an achievement (D) What are attention grabbers - in a 1 minute voice recording you should have 3 or 4 attention grabbers.

Here is your check list:

1. I have a script before I can record

2. I have rehearsed and heard myself, I slept over the script and it looks good

3. Someone listened to my voice CV and gave me feedback (not a patronizing friend)

4. My voice CV adds value to my job resume - in 4 or 5 specific points

5. There is quantification of my achievements that a recruiter can relate to

You have a great voice, then

(not because you can sing in the shower or your friends thought so)

Do not get carried by the voice and try to sound good

Do not over stylize

Remember not everyone with a great voice made a great orator or a singer

Nothing unusual about your voice resume then

Good, focus on the content

Speak slowly, clearly

Choose words that make you sound better

Short sentences help you sound better

Choose to present in lists

Remember some of the greatest singers or orators did not have the best of voices

End note: Your voice CV is about your career and not your voice - So try one.

I have a voice CV, but do not know of a place to post it?

Oh that’s easy

GoRecroot is one of the better places for a multi media career portfolio.

All can go well in business with a criminal record check

The people’s need to obtain more information about their future employees is driven by the lack of certainty and safety in a society with an increasing number of criminal offences. The criminal records search, however unethical it may sound, is a necessity for today’s employers. The big risk of hiring the wrong person for one’s business has turned this issue into an important one for any company. Employers have to make a criminal record check of future employees otherwise they can get sued in case the person they hire breaks the law affecting their business. On the other hand a very important issue is whether persons with criminal records can be turned down on job applications because of their criminal background. The criminal record check may seem quite difficult to conduct and might even rise up problems of immorality, but one has to balance well the decisions regarding the future of his company.

Criminal offence has grown a lot over the years. This has led to a very big uncertainty when it comes to meeting new people and choosing who you’ll be working with. Employers (all over the world) have confronted with this problem when hiring someone. They have to verify this person’s background, but the criminal record check can be quite limited. When pursuing a criminal record check, employers don’t have access to governmental information. The first step of the process is to view that person’s job application. The criminal records offer information regarding the applicant’s past problems with the law. Then, they can consult the credit bureau’s registers from which they can find out addresses and social security numbers and check the past jobs as well. This way the employer finds out what the future employees have done before and whether there are any intentionally left out details in the applications. Many companies resort to hiring special services to conduct the criminal records search, but only if the applicant has given his written consent. If there are criminal records to be found, the employees should be given the chance to elucidate their case. The job applicants must be informed upon their legal rights before any decision to reject the job applications is made.

In the Internet era, the most accurate help you can find consists of the online services. Most companies offer their help in criminal record check, but their efforts are made using the Internet as well. These companies can give detailed information on how a criminal record check can be conducted. They know how a person can pursue a criminal record check by obtaining the information they need from the local courthouse and which criminal records can be granted by the specialized web sites in the criminal record check. Even so, this doesn’t mean it is the easiest or cheapest way to obtain the information you want. The problem is that criminal record check can’t be 100% accurate, because criminal records may suffer corrections along the years. There are also some limitations on how much information an employer can obtain about an applicant’s criminal background. Nationwide, the criminal database has a lot of lacks. But this doesn’t mean the employer’s strive to obtain a criminal background is useless, because most of the companies specialized in criminal records search have been book keeping all the changes conducted in one’s criminal records.

Another important issue may be whether the applicant with criminal records has a chance in being hired or not. An employer can not reject a job application due to criminal records search because it would be considered a discrimination against this category of persons. Nevertheless, the employer can check whether that person’s criminal background could interfere with the future job, whether they are related and how the applicant’s behavior has been ever since. This remains a very controversial matter because it is very difficult to prove that a person has been rejected for employment due to his criminal record check, which is in fact illegal.

In spite of all these issues, criminal record check is a very important step in hiring someone because of the problems that may occur in the future. Hiring someone can influence how your business will develop, so risks are involved. The employer should be able to conduct a criminal records search to minimize the risks, but he should not make a decision basing it only on the criminal records. There are web sites or companies specialized in criminal records search, which can offer you the most accurate information you need in the shortest period of time. Qualified personnel can simplify finding an applicant’s criminal background and the information obtained will help you make a balanced decision regarding your future employees.

Will DRM Save the Record Industry?

Without a doubt the single most influential agent of change in business trends in the last ten to twenty years has been the internet. There is virtually no business segment or market that has gone unchanged by this powerful force. But of all of the various businesses impacted by cyberspace, the music industry has to the one that has seen the most dramatic change and the greatest challenge to keep up, adapt and survive an onslaught of change unprecedented in its history.

The first major challenge that cyberspace brought to the music business was a complete shift to how music would be sold to music fans worldwide. In what can only be described as an avalanche, the music buying public virtually abandoned conventional record stores and retail outlets and took the majority of their music purchasing business online. But this mass influx of business could not be tracked to any one web site that was executing the revolution. Because of a revolution in how bands and Indie record labels do business online, the music audience followed and began buying their CDs and even concert tickets directly from artists or record labels online and getting those products instantly via downloads.

But as drastic as the market changes this paradigm shift in consumer behavior represented, it was nothing compared to what the internet had in store for the music world. The next wave of change represented a threat to the music business so serious that it had the potential of putting the music industry out of business forever. When music consumers began to share digital music electronically over the internet using file sharing software such as Kazaa, Limeware and BitTorrent, suddenly it was possible for a music customer to access all the music they wanted for free by simply downloading this music from another internet user’s computer.

The plummet in music sales as result of these two forces was drastic and traumatic to the music world in general. At first, the music business executives were at a loss of exactly how to go about stopping the widespread file-sharing phenomenon. They tried to shut down the software services that provided the networks to users with lawsuits and other punitive actions. These litigations took a long time and cost a huge amount of money and all the while the flood of free music going out over the internet continued to increase. Worse of all, when they did slow down one file sharing network, it seemed many more cropped up to replace it which began to look like a nightmare scenario of constant lawsuits against a never-ending and constantly growing enemy.

Public pleas to the music loving public were another attempt to appeal to the conscience of the music world that if artists could not get paid, there would be no more new music. But the opposite seemed to be the case. As more and more Indie musicians began to capitalize on file sharing and using it as a method of marketing, the quantity and quality of good music only seemed to increase in this new music marketplace.

The final attempt seemed to be this technology called DRM. DRM is a digital “lock” that would be required to go on every piece of music released on the internet. Music with DRM would not be playable except to customers who had a legal right to use it. At first, this seemed like a viable solution. But even DRM didn’t stop the flood of lost revenue through file sharing. And hackers seemed more than happy to learn to undo any technical locks the music industry could come up with.

So as we move into the last half of the first decade of this century, the music industry is learning to work with this new music marketplace rather than fight it. And by learning lessons from the Indie labels and how to serve customers in a digital world, there seems to be a new solution on the way but one that is dictated on the customer’s terms rather on the terms of the big music labels. Somehow, that seems like it is the way it should have been all along.