Unemployment is right around 10%, which means that not only are unskilled workers unemployed, but skilled and educated individuals are facing hard times, too. It means that around 4 million residents of California are without work. The average number of resumes received for any one job averages 300 and is often much higher. Some of these resumes are submitted by friends and with referrals. Chances that your resume is even looked at at all diminish quickly. Taken it all together, it means that if you get a 10% return (that means an interview, not an offer) on your resume submissions, you are doing good.

It is not just difficult to find a job these days, it is scary! New grads essentially have little to no experience and most entry level jobs ask for 2-3 years of related experience. New grads do need enough money to cover their costs, but entry level professional jobs pay an average of say $14-15 an hour, which is below a living wage for a single adult when considering cost of living in California. So ads that promise up to $1000 a week are quite tempting. New grads send out tens and hundreds of resumes and hear nothing back. So when you actually get a reply right away with an invitation to an interview, that's exciting!

Especially for new graduates with all the challenges they're facing and who have little experience with finding a professional job, it is easy to fall for scams. Job seekers will go on craigslist, indeed.com, monster.com, simplyhired.com, and all the other job posting boards, and think they're safe there. Well, maybe not so much on craigslist, but at least on the others. So the first thing to realize is that EVERYONE can post ANYTHING on these job sites. The first thing to keep in mind is that all of them are full of scams. Obviously, there are also many legitimate job postings. Here are a few hints on how you spot the scams, and some resources to read up on to learn more about what a scam looks like.

                                               TOP 12 SIGNS THE JOB POSTING IS A SCAM

 1. If it sounds too good to be true, it really is!
Period.  "Well, maybe there IS a company that actually cares to pay me enough..." Bullshit! They don't have to give their money to entry-level employees... they're the least important. The sooner you accept that, the sooner you find a REAL job.

2. A legitimate job has a precise job description.
If is is vague, it's most likely a scam. If they tell you what they DON'T do, but don't tell you what they DO do, it's most likely a scam. Why wouldn't they just tell you? Well... because you'll really be doing something else than what you think you're applying for.

                                                            "NO EXPERIENCE NECESSARY" =
                                  "EVERYONE DUMB AND DESPERATE COME TO US"

3. "No Experience Necessary"
EVERY legitimate professional entry-level job wants you to have some sort of experience. That's why internships and campus involvement are so important! They don't tell you that for nothing! If the add says "No experience necessary," that's code for "Everyone dumb and desperate come to us."

4. You have to have a degree! It's not optional!
If you are looking for a professional job, a degree is a core requirement. If you want to get into marketing, finance, accounting, education, counseling... you name it, you need a degree. Even legitimate sales positions want you to have a degree these days. There is no such things as a professional job without a degree anymore! That's what happened 30 years ago. Not anymore! You got a degree for a reason. You take a job that pays you for it!

5. Promise of High Pay
Entry level jobs are hard to get and usually not well paid. Companies simply don't have to pay you well... enough other candidates will gladly take the job for less. Also, legitimate entry-level jobs have a salary or at least an hourly wage. Legitimate companies usually don't advertise what they will pay you (because you don't discuss that until after you're offered the job, and you are supposed to know that it is somewhere around $15). If a job listing focuses on the money you'll earn, discard it. The more closely it spells out how and what you are paid, the more likely it is to be a scam. You don't have an entry level job to make money. You have it to get experience.

  IF YOU ARE GOING TO DO SALES, STICK WITH WELL KNOWN BRAND NAMES

6. Commission-Based Jobs
With or without promise of base pay - Red flag! Any commission-based job is more than likely a scam! Any commissions-only job is most definitely a scam AND a pyramid scheme. That being said, some sales jobs are commissions only, such as real estate. That's because you will essentially run your own business. Now THAT is legitimate. If you're working for someone else though, report to someone else and take someone else's work instructions, but you will only be paid on commission: Run! If you are going to do a sales job, you stick with large, well known name brands that are very clear on what your base pay is and what expectations are.

7. Growing or Expanding Company
It's code for "There is no one to train you and we need you to do everything for probably free." On top of it, you will have a name on your resume no one knows.

8. Immediate Openings for "a large number of people" or "only 2 spots left"
There is no such thing as an immediate opening. Even companies that need someone right now take a good two months for the hiring process until you're offered the job. It's something I personally don't understand, but it's just the way it is. Immediate opening probably don't even exist at McDonalds... the only place they do exist is in commission-based sales. Why is that? You're not really employed. No paper work, no extra hassles for their HR people to go through... you just start selling.

9. Apples are Apples, NOT Oranges - even if you paint them orange and spray them with orange scent.
Direct marketing is a fancy word for sales. Direct marketing is NOT marketing. It's sales. The term should really be outlawed. Those are the commissions-only jobs. Those are cold call and door-to-door sales jobs. Those are the jobs where you sell stuff no one needs while not making any money. Those jobs force you to use pressure-sales tactics that will make you go home every day hating your job. Those are the jobs that will look horrible on your resume because the industry you REALLY want to be in knows which those companies are.
Now, if that's what you actually WANT to do, I suggest you look for sales jobs or call center jobs. Look for those that plainly state that this is what it is. THAT's legitimate.

                                        IF THEY HAVE TO SELL YOU THE JOB, YOU RUN!

10. Offering You Personal Growth
That's really code for: "We can't pay you." Now I know we all care about growing personally and your employer does want you to be happy with your job... but they could really care less about that when finding a candidate. You do not work there to grow personally, you work there to grow the company because you know what you're doing. If you're a good professional match, you'll like your job and you will automatically experience personal growth. It is not the employer's main concern for you to grow personally, nor should it be. There are laws about that. There are laws about personal interview questions they're not allowed to ask. If they're trying to sell you the job because it'll fulfill you personally, you start running! If they have to sell you any job at all, you run! How many unemployed people are there again (4 million in case you forgot)? YOU need to sell THEM that you're the right candidate (remember, it's hard to find a job these days) - If it's the other way around, there is something very very wrong!

                                                            GOOGLE "NAME OF COMPANY, SCAM"

11. Nowhere to be Found Online
Now before I start: I did do my internship at a legitimate PR agency with no presence online. They were not to be found online. BUT their clients could be found and linked to them. They were integrated into a large production company that COULD be found.
My point is: Every business wants as much exposure as possible. It's the point of having a business. If they can't be found online, it's fishy. It they're supposed to have a portfolio or a client-base, it better be there for the world to see. That's something companies are proud of. It endorses them, it gives them a reputation. If you can't find nothing but a website with vague or general statements about what they do (or even worse: Inspirational quotes and fun pictures of employees), it's most likely a scam.
Instead of just googling the name of the company, google "name of the company, scam." See what that brings up. You'll probably be surprised. Cancel your "interview" immediately.
                                                 
12. BBB Rating
Now you would THINK that a Better Business Bureau rating would tell you if the company is legitimate. Sadly not true. That's because customers rate the business. If the customers are happy, the rating is good. If employees aren't happy, different story. Also, the BBB gives better ratings to paying members, which is why the head of the LA area BBB resigned in 2010 over a scandal about this sort of thing.

http://articles.latimes.com/2010/dec/27/business/la-fi-bbb-ceo-resigns-20101228

So do check out the BBB to see if they have a bad rating from the get go. And  then your decision should be easy. But even if they have an A rating, still do your research.

                                                PRIME EXAMPLE: THE "SO CAL GROUP"
                                                                                http://www.socalgroupinc.com/
A company that's recruiting relentlessly is the So Cal Group. I found their ad on craigslist. A friend of mine found them on monster.com. It sounded good. I googled them and found their website. Full of happy employees, inspirational statements and vague statements of what they actually do. Pay structure and training schedule is spelled out precisely to the dot on the i and the cross of the t. Personal growth is emphasized. No portfolio or client base listed. They say they do marketing, but don't specify what exactly it is that they do within marketing. You can't find anything expressly wrong with it, but you also can't find any precise information about what they actually do and what YOU would actually do. BBB rating is an A-, but it doesn't specify where the minus comes from. It really doesn't specify anything there either.

So I applied and figured it can't hurt to check it out. The very next day, they sent me an email telling me to call them. When I didn't call immediately, THEY called ME just a couple of hours later. NOW I was suspicious...I mean, I think I'm pretty darn good at what I do, but I don't think I am THAT essential for a company to not be able to wait a few hours to hear from me... my unestablished reputation in the business world must just be stellar... Fortunately, I was in a spot with no reception when they called and I told the girl I'd call right back. I didn't do that before doing some more research. I now googled "So Cal Group, scam" and guess what...

http://www.yelp.com/topic/orange-the-so-cal-group-inc

Check it out. I spent an hour reading all the devastating comments before I had seen enough (I could have read another hour) and came out enlightened. I also found names of other companies, as well as the mother company, that operate in the same way. I called them back and told them I was no longer interested. This goes back to my first point: If it sounds too good to be true, it really is!  DO NOT BE FOOLED!
*Disclaimer: I am in no way explicitly or implicitly stating that the So Cal Group is a scam. I am merely stating my findings and I am giving proper resources to back them up. The readers may draw personal conclusions from my factual statements.
                                                                                       

                                                                                    ABOVE ALL: BE WISE!
It's easy to ignore warning signs when you're desperate for a job. Do not make the mistake of falling for scams. Not only will you have a horrible experience if you actually were to take the job, but you would start out your career on the wrong foot... this is supposed to be your professional start into a wonderful and reputable career, where you learn the basics and the industry. Don't soil your reputation before it could even be established! Do not get into a line of work you do not want to be in with no expectations of transferring into the department you actually do want to be in,  just because it promises to pay well. IT IS NOT WORTH IT! This first job is your most important one! CHOOSE WISELY!

I found this article on yahoo finance, written by Vivian Giang, and I couldn't have said it better. So here it is, I'd follow it to a T!

A new batch of December graduates is getting ready to fly the coop in search of a job and we hope they've already heard the bad news: There are a lot of unemployed people out there.
If the market far exceeds demand, how do you make sure you get past the resume screening process into the interviewing round? By making sure your resume is flawless.

"Somewhere between 95 to 99% of resumes have stuff that shouldn't be on there," Eli Amdur, senior coach and adviser from the Amdur Coaching and Advisory Group, told us. "The general rule is if you put anything on there that distracts the reader from your real accomplishments, then don't do it. Resumes need to be concise and clear."

We've compiled some tips from career experts to make sure your resume steers clear of the trash pile.

1. Get rid of the objective.
If you applied, it's already obvious you want the job.

2. Cut out all the irrelevant work experiences.
If you're still listing that prized shift leader position from your high school days, it's time to move on.
Yes, you might've been the "king of making milkshakes," but unless you're planning on redeeming that title, it's time to get rid of all that clutter.

3. Take a pass on the personal stuff: marital status, religious preference and Social Security numbers.
This might've been the standard in the past, but all of this information is now illegal for your employer to ask you so there's no need to include it. It will likely only hurt your chances of getting the position more than it would help you, says Catherine Jewell, author of the book "New Résumé, New Career."

Another piece of personal information you should never include on your resume is your Social Security number, Sara Player, client support specialist for CareerBuilder.com, told us. Player isn't actually sure why people decide to include their social security numbers, but she knows she sees it all too often and it's unnecessary, not to mention, a little risky.

4. Don't let your resume exceed one page.
Yes, this might be difficult if you've had a lot of experience and you're proud of all of it. But just because you're proud doesn't mean it's necessarily relevant. Cut it down; employers don't have the time to read two whole pages.

CareerBuilder.com's Sara Player says: "Keep your work history short and to the point. When you describe what you have achieved while in the position, try putting it in bullet form and put what is most important first."

5. Don't list your hobbies.
"Nobody cares — it's not your facebook profile," Player says.
In other words, don't put anything on your resume that's irrelevant to your job. If it's not relevant, then it's a waste of space and a waste of the company's time. ( I really wanted to highlight this one!)

6. Don't give them the chance to guess your age.
Yes, your age is included in personal data, but if you don't want to be discriminated from a position because of your age, it's time to remove your graduation date, says Catherine Jewell.

Doug Hadley of Mansfield, Texas, told MSN that he's begun to leave out the fact that he's a published author: "I don't want to have to omit such things, but I feel as though I don't even get considered if they are on my resume."

Sara Player advises to take out higher education if it's irrelevant to the position you're applying for or if you keep receiving rejection letters stating that you're overqualified.

7. Don't write your resume in the third person.
Charlotte Beckett, head of Digital at The Good Agency, told Linkedin.com that it's fine to write in first person in your opening statement, but the rest of your resume should be in bullet points, such as:

• Developed and delivered marketing strategies for a range of products

You should not write in the third person since the recruiter knows you're the one writing the resume.

8. Don't include references.
If your employers want to speak to your references, they'll ask you. Also, it's better if you have a chance to tell your references ahead of time that a future employer might be calling.
If you say "references upon request" at the bottom of your resume, you're merely wasting a valuable line, says career coach Eli Amdur.

9. Don't include a less-than-professional email account.
Make a new one. It takes minutes and it's free.

10. There's no need to identify your phone number.
Amdur says there's no reason to put the word "phone" in front of the actual number.
"It's pretty silly. They know it's your phone number." The same rule applies to email.

11. Don't include your current business contact info.
Amdur writes at Northjersey.com:
"This is not only dangerous, it's stupid. Do you really want employers calling you at work? How are you going to handle that? Oh, and by the way, your current employer can monitor your e-mails and phone calls. So if you're not in the mood to get fired, or potentially charged with theft of services (really), then leave the business info off."

This article is part of a series related to being Financially Fit

Retrieve this article here: http://financiallyfit.yahoo.com/finance/article-113810-11701-4-11-things-you-should-never-put-on-your-resume?ywaad=ad0035&nc

In my PR classes and all the books we read for them, they all tell us one thing: THINK like the PUBLISHER. That's because in PR, your goal is usually to get media coverage. If you get media coverage, you've done your job and earned your money. If you didn't get media coverage, you didn't do it right. And then what's the point of having done it at all? It's PUBLIC relations! So they tell us: Think like the publisher. If I know what the publisher wants in his paper, then I know what to give him. Is that different with RESUMES? NO!

I had the not-so-pleasant experience last month to go through a stack of resumes to pick another intern to work at my internship site. "Oh fun!" I thought to myself as I started, "Let's see how those people wrote their resumes, this will be interesting." Wrong I was. It was interesting, alright, but in a painful way.

Just as it goes in PR, when you write your resume, think like the one who WILL or WON'T use your information: The hiring manager. All of us have more or less a stereotypical idea in our head of what our resume should look like: Contact info, education, related work, related coursework, applicable skills. Thank you very much. Most of us, however, then forget the KEY words: RELATED and APPLICABLE. So we throw anything on our resume that we can scratch together and hope that it sticks.

RELATED, people, the keyword is RELATED
What I saw was rather pitiful. How can you apply for a public relations position and somehow think that being a server at a fast food joint is related experience? It's not even unrelated experience. It's barely any experience at all. It's a way to make some extra money. It's NOT a professional experience, leave alone related. If being a server is all you got when applying for a position outside the hospitality industry, you should join a campus organization that does relate to your desired work PRONTO and get involved. Put THAT on your resume. No one cares about McDonalds - not even McDonalds cares about McDonalds. They don't want to hire their servers for their PR department, they're looking for people who know PR. Yes, even the interns.

When a hiring manager looks at your work experience, they want it to say two things: I know what I want to do and I have some sort of experience with it. When you write your resume, take the word "related" quite literally.

                                    THE THREE SECOND RULE APPLIES HERE, TOO
            Even though it goes: I look at you for 3 seconds and then you end on the floor.

Make it easy on the eyes!
I was essentially looking over about 30 resumes, one worse than the other, and I started feeling really bad for those students. Because this was just ME looking at them, and I don't make hiring decisions. The biggest mistake almost all of them made were the simple things, such as not having your resume organized in an easy-to-read way. I ended up spending literally 3 seconds looking at each resume (it's not a lie, they really do spend 3 seconds tops!). If nothing special popped out right away, and if it wasn't perfectly easy to glance over it and get the gist, I discarded it immediately. And mind you- that was only 30 resumes! Imagine the big companies you really want to work for that get 500 resumes for a job!

C comes after B comes after A. You do know that, right?
Those resumes were all over the place, most of them starting with an objective, which is the most unnecessary thing ever. Your objective is to get the job. Duh.  If you don't have clear headings and only important words highlighted, it's too much work to figure it out and no one will do it. When you opened THIS BLOG POST, did you scroll down to see how long it was? Did you read the bold headings first? Did they tickle your interest? Have you read the whole thing or did you fly over it? It's exactly the same with your resume. Your selling points better be bold (and that's your RELATED positions). Your headlines better stand out and be clear and your content under the headlines better reflect them. If it says related work, it better be so. And if it doesn't say related work, it may just be any work. But then you won't be hired anyway. All the resumes that had "student jobs" on there, I gave a smirk and put aside. Thank you. Next.

It's cut-throat, people, recognize it now. You are competing against hundreds and thousands of other people. If you can't even write your own resume right, how are you going to succeed out there in the jungle? "Good enough" does not exist! Scratch the phrase from your vocabulary entirely. Your resume is either excellent or it's trash. Learn it now, do it right, and be successful! Your resume is all they see of you - put it in a million dollar suit!