Research Guides Home: Education and Industry Core Competencies (Soft Skills)- Ozark Campus: Career Awareness and Development

Ready for Life

Ready for Life
Ready for Life is an innovative career guidance platform to ensure every Arkansan can reach their full economic potential. Ready for Life is for any individual across the state who is looking to elevate their career, and the platform is entirely free to use. You can build a career passport, expore in-demand careers, gain new skills, connect to resources, and match with open jobs. Make sure to use your Tech email when you sign up.

PrepStep

PrepSTEP/Learning Express

You can find Workplace Skills guides under, Career Preparation > Build Workplace Skills > Networking, Job Search, and Interviewing. This will give you resources for Social Networking, Job Interviewing, Job Searching, Salary Negotiation, and Resumes and Cover Letters.

PrepSTEP This link opens in a new window
Tutorials, practice tests, e-books, and flashcards for self-guided skill building for academic success. *First time users must create a profile in order to use this resource.

Video Resources

Crash Course: How to Make a Resume Stand Out: Crash Course Business - Soft Skills #5
The job search is tough and can feel like you're never quite prepared. Resumes and Cover Letters can seem like too much. But, in this episode of Crash Course Business, Evelyn sits down to walk us through making a resume and cover letter stand out!
Crash Course: How to Ace the Interview: Crash Course Business - Soft Skills #6
If you’ve got a job interview coming up and you’re feeling a little nervous, don’t worry. If you’re anything like me, you’ve probably seen enough celebrity interviews to know what works and what doesn’t. Sure, it's not as flashy, but you know what we mean! In this episode, Evelyn sits down to chat about how you can ace your next interview.
TED: Looking for a job? Highlight your ability, not your experience - Jason Shen
Very few of us hold jobs that line up directly with our past experiences or what we studied in college. Take TED Resident Jason Shen; he studied biology but later became a product manager at a tech company. In this quick, insightful talk about human potential, Shen shares some new thinking on how job seekers can make themselves more attractive -- and why employers should look for ability over credentials.
TED: 2 questions to uncover your passion -- and turn it into a career - Noeline Kirabo
What's your passion? Social entrepreneur Noeline Kirabo reflects on her work helping out-of-school young people in Uganda turn their passions into profitable businesses -- and shares the two questions you can ask yourself to begin doing the same.
TED: How your unique story can get you hired - Aimée Eubanks Davis
When searching for a job, you may feel like you're not good enough or qualified enough to get it. But you are. Here's how to take your doubts and struggles and turn them into strengths, according to Aimée Eubanks Davis, founder and CEO of Braven.

eBooks

Knock 'em Dead Cover Letters by Martin Yate
Call Number: eBook (online resource)
Knock em Dead Cover Letters 11th edition--cover letters and strategies to get the job you want. Step-by-step guide for how write cover letters and every type of letter you will use in a job hunt. How to build, edit and polish professional letters for maximum impact and how to use them to get four times the interviews.
Resumes for Dummies by Laura DeCarlo
Call Number: eBook (online resource
Polish up that old resume--and land your dream job We've all been there: it's time to apply for a job or internship and you have to create or revise your resume. Many questions pop in your head. What do employers want? What skills should I highlight? How do I format this? How do I get noticed? But resume writing doesn't have to be a daunting task. The latest edition of Resumes For Dummies answers all of these questions and more--whether you're a resume rookie, looking for new tips, or want to create that eye-catching winning resume. In this trusted guide, Laura DeCarlo decodes the modern culture of resume writing and offers you insider tips on all the best practices that'll make your skills shine and your resume pop. Let's start writing! Write effective resumes that will stand out in a crowd Understand Applicant Tracking Systems and how to adapt your resume Keep your resume up with the current culture Position a layoff or other career change and challenge with a positive spin Leverage tips and tricks that give your resume visual power In order to put your best foot forward and stand out in a pile of papers, it's important to have an excellent and effective resume--and now you can.
When Can You Start? by Bud Whitehouse
Call Number: eBook (online resource
Publication Date: 2020-02-04
When Can You Start? is a step-by-step guide that teaches job seekers how to execute an effective job search. The vast majority of job seekers don't know what they don't know about the job search, and when they get a job they don't know how to create and manage success. When Can You Start? shows job seekers: What they are really selling How to identify success using a skill set The best ways to conduct a proactive job search Effective evaluation and negotiation tactics to earn optimum compensation and benefits By combining Whitehouse's week-to-week work strategies and proven career management secrets, job seekers of all types can work toward obtaining promotions and better job opportunities.

Print Books

Why You, Why Me, Why Now by Rachel Toor
Call Number: 650.142 T66w, 2024
A clear, accessible, and fun guide on everything it takes to land a job. Searching for a job can be hard and demoralizing work. In Why You, Why Me, Why Now, Rachel Toor delivers some good news. The most important thing is within your control--a mindset that shows you know the goals of the organization you want to work for and that you're ready and eager to contribute. Toor provides, with compassion and enthusiasm, strategies to make it easy for hiring managers to say "yes." Through useful and funny anecdotes, she offers advice from professionals across industries and focuses on the attitude applicants can adopt to find success. Revealing traits employers seek, Toor shows how to craft winning cover letters, ways to tailor resumes for each job, and practical tips to get past AI screening. She also explains how to use LinkedIn and gives tips on preparing for interviews. Throughout, the book features Toor's notes on writing well to help in landing a first job and beyond. Encouraging, entertaining, and blunt, this is a job-search guide like no other.
From Classroom to Career by Shirley Morrison
Call Number: 650.14 M67f, 2022
An authentic, engaging, and practical guide to help college grads thrive personally and professionally. The rules have changed; the traditional workplace is dead. To BOOM in employment today, the secret is to alter the approach, and From Classroom to Career will tell you how. Gen Z and Millennials are asking for this value-led guide as they embark on careers. Entertaining, personal, and relatable, the voice of the book is purposely casual, as if speaking in a café. It's a voice everyone trusts. Reasonable, logical, and concrete advice for today's how-to: how to write a business email; how to successfully land and then stand out in an interview, including in a virtual world; how to ask questions that can be adapted to any job/role; how to write a CV with examples. Inspiring, surprising, real-life stories show empathy for what the readers are likely going through, so they'll forget it's a business book. From Classroom to Career integrates the personal and career. This is in fact the real reality of every human being: we're so much more than careerists. It's impossible to thrive career-wise if you are not happy outside of work. People are happier when they have a balance, enabling them to achieve personally and professionally. By helping readers to discover their own values, this guide gets them to think about their own career and who they want to be. This is entirely unlike any other business book out there.
Careers by the People by Mike Wysocki
Call Number: 331.702 W97c, 2022
Looking for advice on how to choose a career path? This dynamic approach goes straight to the source: asking real-world workers how they feel about their occupations. After three decades in corporate America, Mike Wysocki wondered if the grass really was greener on the other side. So he put his background in sociology to work and spent years surveying industry veterans in a variety of occupations. The responses were eye-opening: an honest, insider's look at what workers say about their careers outside of the office. Wysocki chose the 101 most powerful responses for Careers By the People to demystify the world of work with practical experience rather than theory. These industry profiles pair the practicality of guidance counselors with the storytelling of a networking event (without the small talk). Told in a Q&A format, insightful answers to thought-provoking questions include: descriptions of a day-in-the-life of the profession they chose.truths about conflicts, co-workers, and management.common misconceptions, issues and what pitfalls to avoid.what's fulfilling, what's draining, and what's worth it. With humor and authenticity that doesn't hold punches, this career guidebook will help you narrow down career choices so you can determine what is best for you. All paths lead to retirement--which one are you on?
What Color Is Your Parachute? 2022 by Richard N. Bolles; Katharine Brooks (As told to)
Call Number: 331.128 B65w, 2021
With timeless advice, up-to-the-minute insights, and more than ten million copies sold over fifty years, the world's most popular and best-selling career guideisfully revised and expanded for 2022. "One of the first job-hunting books on the market. Itisstill arguably the best. And itisindisputably the most popular."-Fast Company In today's challenging job market, as recent grads face a shifting economic landscape and seek work that pays and inspires, as workers are laid off mid-career, and as people search for an inspiring work-life change, the time-tested advice of WhatColorIsYour Parachute? isneeded more than ever. Thisnew edition has been fully revised for 2022 by Vanderbilt University Career Center director Katharine Brooks, EdD, with modern advice on the job-hunt strategies that are working today, such as building an online resume, making the most of social media tools, and acing virtual interviews. Building on the wisdom of original author Richard N. Bolles, thisedition updates the famed Flower Exercise (which walks job seekers through the seven ways of thinking about themselves) and demystifies the entire job-search process, from writing resumes to interviewing and networking. With the unique and authoritative guidance of What ColorIsYourParachute?, job-hunters and career changers will have all the tools to discover-and land-their dream job.
Resumes for Dummies
Call Number: 650.142 D43r, 2015
Master the art of resume writing and boost your chances of getting hired With unemployment rates still running high, getting an edge up on the competition in your field--whatever it may be--can be an intimidating and exhausting undertaking. Luckily, Resumes For Dummies is here to serve as your life raft as you navigate the murky waters of a modern-day job search. Inside, you'll find expert guidance on writing a winning resume that will set you head and shoulders above the crowd to land that elusive interview and get the job of your dreams. There's nothing easy and breezy about looking for a new job--whether you currently have one or not. But rather than succumbing to the panic that might convince you to hide under the covers, Resumes For Dummies arms you with the confidence you need to write a resume that will have prospective employers knocking your at your door. Includes tips on avoiding common resume-writing mistakes Provides updates on the latest changes in the job market that you'll need to take into account when writing a resume Outlines how to approach a lay-off in a professional light Covers how to confront privacy and reputation issues in online social job search Whether you're a recent graduate, second-timer looking for your next job, prime-timer who hasn't job-searched in decades, or the unfortunate victim of a lay-off, Resumes For Dummies takes the fear out of putting your skills on paper and sets you on the path to getting your foot in the door--and landing the job of your dreams.

Audio Books

More audiobooks available at the Naxos Link below:

Naxos Spoken Word Library This link opens in a new window
Streaming audiobooks concentrating largely on literary classics and educational themes, many of which can also be followed with the texts on screen.

Grad to grown-up : 68 tips to excel in your personal and professional life
Call Number: eAudiobook
Everything you didn't learn in school but all you need to know to launch your personal and professional life. Grad to Grown-Up: 68 Tips to Excel in Your Personal and Professional Life is a unique self-help book that offers a roadmap to kickstart your future. Rags-to-riches author and CEO Gene Rice and his high school English teacher daughter Courtney Bejgrowicz demystify adulthood by sharing critical information alongside professional and personal successes and failures. The five sections-life, job search, career, personal finance, and health and relationships-provide real-world insights that are often overlooked in formal education. You will learn everything from how to conquer the interview process to how to get promoted; from myths about credit scores to the impact of taxes; from the power of meditation to positively impacting society; and much more. Armed with this knowledge, you will be ready to move out on your own and move up in life.
MADE FOR SUCCESS: Get Your Dream Job! (Job Hunting and Career Success Skills) (Unabridged)
Call Number: Streaming Audio
SuperCompetent: The Six Keys to Perform at Your Productive Best; Job Hunting Essentials: Overcome the 3 Mindsets That Will Block Your Success!(Unabridged); Rip-Roaring Job Wealth: Succeeding in Any Economy (Unabridged); How to Get the Job You Always Wanted: 30 Minute Success Series (Unabridged); Running Toward Your Next Job (Unabridged); Job Interview Success System: Relax and Communicate Your Value to Prospective Employers (Unabridged); Success Without a College Degree: Shattering the Myth (Unabridged); How to Be a Person Companies Fight to Keep (Unabridged); A Sense of Urgency Creates Great Work (Unabridged); Ridiculous Bliss at Work (Unabridged); Crafting Competitive Resumes Without a College Degree (Unabridged)
LANE, C.: Made for Success: Timeless Career Tips for the Modern Millennial: (You Can't Google Anything This Good) (Recorded Seminar)
Call Number: Streaming Audio
Get a grip on why older generations treat you differently (stop the stereotype); Find a resolve with difficult humans (disagree correctly); Enhance your self-worth (dust off your trophies); Communication works if you work it (customization is the optimal style); Improve your emotional well-being (successful stress strategies); Show off your people skills (networking at its best); Take credit when credit is due (shameless recognition as an art form); Show the world you work smarter (gain motivational voodoo)
GOBEL, R. / WEISS, J. / TRACY, B.: 7 Skills to Catapult Your Career (Unabridged)
Call Number: Streaming Audio
Top leaders in the business community—a financial journalist, a bestselling author, and cofounder of the Global Negotiation Initiative at Harvard University—teach you the character traits every employer wants to see in today’s worker.

In the race to become multitasking superhumans, we’ve lost touch with the actual root of where all these valuable skills are found. This audio gives you the training you need to set yourself apart from others and to advance to the next stage in your employment, whether you are just starting out or need to reinvigorate your career. Some of the best business minds at work today identify the principles of productivity and elevating your career. Why not be known for great leadership skills instead of training one employee for a single task? Why not be known for a winning personality instead of for being able to deal with a difficult person? Why not be known for impressive calm and cool confidence in your negotiation skills instead of just getting the deal done? Don’t be known for any singular skill—be known for inspiring character traits that make you highly promotable in any workplace. This audio also includes helpful résumé and cover letter templates, as well as an interview checklist.

With contributions from Reyna Gobel, a financial journalist who has written extensively on adapting to today’s career marketplace; Joshua Weiss, an international negotiation expert who speaks and writes on the topic of negotiating not only in the boardroom but also on the factory floor; and bestselling author Brian Tracy, who shares wisdom from his business book classic, Eat That Frog!, this audio is a must-listen for those looking to catapult their careers.
PELLETT, E.: Cracking the Code to a Successful Interview: 15 Insider Secrets from a Top-Level Recruiter (Unabridged)
Call Number: Streaming Audio
MACKAY, H.: Made for Success: Getting a Job Is a Job (Nailing a Job in a Hard Knocks World) (Unabridged)
Call Number: Streaming Audio