‘Administrative secretary’ Not Administrative Assistants.

It's a bit mouthful, but that's the way they wanted it. Administrative assistants involved in secretarial duties in government departments do not want to be called office secretaries.

They instead want their job title changed to “administrative secretary,” said Cuepacs president Omar Osman in a media report.

The Star newspaper quoted Omar as saying taht he had been getting feedback from government servants objecting to a circular dated Dec 21 renaming the job title from administrative assistant (secretarial) to office.

“They are unhappy about the new job title,” Omar said after a briefing on the new office secretary and assistant office secretary scheme at Universiti Putra Malaysia here yesterday.

Omar also hoped that long-serving secretaries with SPM qualification would not be overlooked in the upgrading exercise, adding that the group made up about 55% of those involved in secretarial duties.

40,000 retrenched in 2009

A figure not as harrowing as in some o f the developed countries, but about 40,000 workers were retrenched last year as a result of the global economic crisis between 2008 and last year, said Deputy Human Resources Minister Senator Datuk Maznah Mazlan.

She was quoted in the media as saying that the Government had launched the E-Kasih programme to offer training courses to those who were unemployed so that they could look for other jobs in the market.

“We are monitoring the situation and Malaysia has fairly well compared with other countries that were hit by the economic crisis,” she told reporters after handing out seamstress certificates to 199 people at Yayasan Murni, Pengkalan Chepa yesterday.

Yayasan Murni has trained more than 21,000 people since it was set up five years ago and almost all of them had secured jobs.

7 Things about Resume Writing (that won’t get you the job).

1. The resume gets you the job.

Nope. It does not. It gets you the interview. That is if you are shortlisted. No use moaning that you have a fantastic resume yet you didn’t get the job, as you were not even invited for an interview. Take a look at the resume again. Is there any goof up? Have you added your contact details properly? There might be an “S” missing in your email address. Or that you have changed your phone number due to stalkers. Have you updated the dates? Have you accidentally cut and pasted a passage from romantic teen vampire fan-fiction? Clean it up and try again.

2. It’s cool to include your blog/website address

It’s great that you have a blogsite or website of your own. It may be about your pet subjects, like stamp collecting or your obsession with poodles. At the same time, think again. Is it going to help with your interview? There are high odds against the HR managers with affection for poodles, and even so they are trained to be unbiased, poodles or not. Or worse, you might be an amateur political analyst with vocabularies of a football hooligan. Forget about it, there is no better turn off than a very off-putting web/blogsites. You better remove them.

3. List all your hobbies/interest.

In addition to the above, think very carefully, how is it your love for collecting teddy bears going to get you that dream accounting job? Or would your penchant to party all night long over the weekend excite the HR managers to the point they hire you immediately as SAP consultant? If the interest corroborate with the job, like reading books if you applying the position of a journalist, or collecting technical manuals if you are a technician, it will be a great boost for your resume. Just make sure they are relevant manuals, not the one about making homemade bomb or something.

4. Fantastic design and great writing skills wins the interviewer.

Sure, if you are applying for the post of designer and writer respectfully. Even then, it’s the content that matters. Putting a cute picture of little pony on every corner at all pages is nice, but not if the HR has allergy to little ponies, even the pictures. He or she is only concerned with what you want to tell them, and tell them in simple manner as possible. Writing lines and lines of skilfully crafted prose would only drive them to either tear their respective hairs or your resume apart.

5. Completing Online resume form once is good enough.

You registered in online career portal like JobsDB, fill up the forms and click “done”. And you don’t go back for years and you end up thinking, “hey, I did upload my resume, filled up the online form, why the heck am I not getting any calls, or any mails”. Only the latest gets to the prospective employers eyes. If you last updated it back in 1999, chances are it is at the bottom pile rotting away to no one’s attention. Online resumes are sorted by computers first, so you have to be careful in what you are putting in there. You better take another look at that online resume of yours, especially if you are looking for IT technician position and you get mail saying that you have been called for an interview for nursing position.

6. Pix of you in cool pose is, err…cool.

No it is not. Just a usual passport sized picture would do. Ask the studio folks to give you a soft copy and insert it on the resume. We have seen some pictures which seemed to be more suited for matrimonial page than a job page. Go easy, willya? It’s okay if you don’t attach your pix if you think you have a face of a handsome horse. Who cares? It’s your experience, your skills, your education and your enthusiasm as an employee that matters…the HR manager can deal with your face later. You know what they say about don’t judge the book by the horse face.

7. There is a magic formula on resume writing.

Yes, it can be found in a spot marked with X in some strange island somewhere. Give yourself a break, there is no magic formula. Ultimately the magic is you, yourself and well, you. Resume guides online, workshops like the one conducted by JobsDB are merely helping hands. These help you to Find Your Voice. We don’t have a lab that makes magical formula that you sprinkle on your resume and voila! A Guaranteed For Job resume that works like love potion with HR managers. If you have what they want, and you have it there in the resume, you have greater chances of getting that job. If your resume is filled with words like “Abracadabra” or “The Force Says You Will Get Me The Job”, prepare for long, silent wait.

For more tips, guides, articles & announcements on career related stuff, check out www.jobsdb.com.my. Happy job hunting, and if you are not looking for one, wait for the head-hunters to look for you. The job head-hunters. What were you thinking?

EPU: Malaysia can hit growth of 5% this year

Let the good times roll. The Economic Planning Unit (EPU) is confident that the country will achieve an economic growth of more than 5% this year based on several positive indicators.

The Star newspaper quoted minister in the Prime Minister’s Department Tan Sri Nor Mohamed Yakcop as saying that one of the indicators was the shift from retrenchment to recruitment in the manufacturing sector since July last year.

He said business confidence and consumer spending was also on the uptrend as loan applications rose by 37.4% while approvals were up by 25% until October last year compared with the same period in 2008.

The report noted that the sales of passenger cars had also showed an increase at 40,569 units up to November last year compared with 36,254 during the same period in 2008.

“The trends are changing and we are confident that 2010 is going to be a good year,” he told a press conference after witnessing the signing of a memorandum of understanding between the Government and the Oxford Business Group on The Report: Malaysia 2010.

Better commuting in Shah Alam and Subang

Yes, the public transportation system in Malaysia is improving. Hopefully. Commuters in Shah Alam and Subang Jaya will be the next to benefit from the newly-launched RapidBET or Rapid Bus Express Transit system.

According to The Star newspapper, they will join commuters from Kota Damansara and Bandar Sungai Long in Kajang who became the first patrons of the RapidBET system yesterday.

Transport Minister Datuk Seri Ong Tee Keat launched the new system at Kota Damansara yesterday.

The two routes are RapidBET1 bus from Kota Damansara to Pasar Seni via the Penchala and Kerinchi Links, and RapidBET2 from Bandar Sungai Long to Pasar Seni via the Grand Saga Highway.

RapidBET is the first of many initiatives from the urban public transport laboratory under the National Key Result Areas (NKRAs) to be implemented.