You’re not a bot—and your smarts aren’t artificial

Jenny Sales

AT APPRENTICELY, WE have lots of nuts-and-bolts tips and good practical advice to share with job candidates. But one tip that I’m particularly partial to is the need to keep a positive attitude.

We’re all human, and there’s nothing more human than to beat ourselves up by focusing on our negatives—especially when we’re in a stressful situation with a lot on the line. But that’s the very time we need to push out those negative feelings and remember all the things we’re good at. I tell the candidates I work with, “Before you build a resumé, before you answer the recruiter’s phone call, before you go to a job interview, carry a notepad around for a week and write down every positive skill you have, as they come to you. You’ll be surprised at how smart and talented you really are.”

I’ve seen it work time and time again. Today, you may think you can only do MS Excel. But as you mull it over during that week, you start to realize that that spreadsheet’s formulas and pivot tables and graphs feed into Access, which notifies inventory to reorder supplies, while also alerting accounting to send out the invoice and the shipping labels. It’s not just a spreadsheet; it’s a valuable business process, and you built and implemented all of those essential steps.

If you’re in manufacturing and work in Logistics, but also handle purchasing, shipping, and receiving, don’t forget to include those essential details in your list of experience skills. Or if you’re thinking about an Industrial Maintenance role and you have experience with Programmable Logic Controllers (PLCs) like, let’s say, Allen Bradley or Pilz, adding that in-depth knowledge will trigger a match when a recruiter is looking for someone who knows those PLCs. So including such know-how makes your resumé stand out from the hundreds of others that may not identify those specific matches. Building a master list of skills and experiences also helps us understand—and appreciate—our own strengths and weaknesses.

In my book, maintaining a positive attitude is the best tip to keep you moving forward, but it’s the hardest to do. We’re all different, and what helps me stay positive may not help you. So I tell people to find whatever it is that makes them happy and proud, and then apply it to everything they do. None of us has all the answers, but every one of us can choose to put on a smile—or not—each and every day. Personally, I choose to smile and look to the positive, because the return on investment is worth it.
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Jenny Sales is Apprenticely’s Client Development Manager, Manufacturing.