Month: February 2012

  • Early morning workouts

    For the first time in a long time, I decided to wake up and work out. Thirty minutes in, I remembered why I hadn’t done it in so long; I get nauseous when I work out on an empty stomach.

    Running on the otherhand is no problem as long as I keep myself hydrated. It’s been an hour since I stopped and the nausea has subsided, but I still feel like crap. I already had my post-workout shake, but I still can’t shake off the weakness I feel, as if there’s an overdose of lactic acid build up in my muscles. This is going to be a long morning.

    Do you ever work out in the morning? Am I the only one who feels like crap afterwards?

  • Preparing your resume – Tips and Advice

    I’ve received about about 10 resumes this weekend from a bunch of people—whether it’s their own, or someone they know who might be interested in the job that was posted by another friend. While I didn’t really expect people right out of college to have great looking resumes, I was surprised by the look of these resumes from people who have at least 1-3 years worth of work experience. So I decided to post this as a reference for anyone who is looking to improve their resume.

    I wouldn’t call myself a pro at this, but after reviewing so many resumes in the past couple of years, there are many mistakes that are repeated.

    In no particular order of importance-

    A. Spelling/grammatical mistakes. As obvious as this may sound, you’d be surprised how many people submit their resume without proofreading.  As soon as you are drafting your resume, you should proofread your resume and then have at least two other people proofread it before you submit it for anything. If you assume that someone is hooking you up with a job, they are then assuming that whatever you provide them is the end product of your resume. If there are spelling and/or grammatical mistakes in there, they would automatically think that you are either careless or didn’t put in the effort. If your friend thinks that, what do you think HR or Hiring Manager would think?

    B. 
    Aesthetically pleasing. It’s important that before reading anything, your resume is formatted properly and that there’s not a disproportionate amount of white space (lots of white space on the left, but none on the right or lots of white space at the bottom, but not balanced from the top). I have seen many resumes where there are words on it, but it looks empty. I’ve seen resumes where the formats are not consistent and the spacing is weird. It cannot look like you spent 2 hours working on it. It’s a reflection of who you are as a candidate.

    1. Use a unique template. About 90% of the resumes I normally receive, come from one of the Microsoft Word resume templates. This is NOT acceptable. Whoever designed the MS Word resume template probably never had a nice looking resume because not only are the fonts and spacing really generic, it’s straight up ugly. There’s also a crazy amount of white space that causes the resume to look empty. Plus if 90% of the resumes are like that, chances are, a large % of resumes HR receive are like that as well. You’re not standing out by doing what everyone else is doing. Browse the internet and find other people’s resumes.  Ask your friends to look at theirs and see if you can use their format.

    C. Education does not come first. If you have been out of school already and have at least 1 year worth of work experience, do not put Education above Work Experience. A resume should be looked at top to bottom. Your education plays second to your work experience. Emphasize that first.

    D. 
    Do not put your GPA unless it’s an A- (or above). If you think anything between a 3.0 and a 3.5 is considered a “high GPA,” just think about it in terms of letters. If you changed it to a letter grade, it would be something along the lines of a B+. Do you really want to say that you’re only a B+ student?

    E. 
    Bullet points should be responsibilities and impact. Virtually every resume I received has a long list of responsibilities. That’s not what a resume is, a list of things you do. First of all, there should be no more than 5-6 different things. If it’s more than six, then choose the 5-6 most important things you do and put those on. You want to tell the person reading it, what exactly you do and what kind of impact do you have with that responsibility. Provide examples of those “achievements” you have.  The format should always be something along the lines of [a responsibility] + [impact or affect of your work].

    F. 
    Keep it one page. Rule of thumb is that if you don’t have about 10 years of work experience, you shouldn’t have two pages. Most people are interested in only your current jobs and what you do. I rarely get asked about my time right out of college. It’s just not that important. 

    G. Tailor resume to fit job description. Read the job description carefully and see how you can incorporate your experiences to fit the need of the person hiring. For example, many of the resumes submitted did not demonstrate finance or accounting experience. If you do in fact have some, at least highlight/illustrate that in your resume. If someone has to search your resume to see how it applies to what they’re looking for, it’s going to raise some red flags.

    H.  Use a decent email address.  As mentioned in one of my earlier posts, there is definitely email address bias.  There are people who look down on “hotmail” or “yahoo” email addresses.  But more importantly, try to use a professional email address like yourname@email.com.  ”AznCutie@gmail.com” for example should NOT be used.

    Anything else I missed?

  • Running

    I decided to try and qualify for the 2013 NYC Marathon. In order to do so, you have to run 9 races and volunteer for one, the previous calendar year.

    Personally, I hate running. Unlike a lot of runners, I don’t get the “runner’s high” like they do. It’s a chore and it’s boring, which makes it so much more difficult. What I do like are challenges and playing other sports. These races will push me to train and get me into better shape.

    I’ve already begun running and lifting again. Last year’s Spartan Race really kicked my ass. I’m not the giving up type, but I almost have up. I’m really looking forward to do better this year.

    Will Smith once said that he loved to run. It was because it’s one of those things where at a certain point, there’s a voice in your head that tells you to stop. You just have to push yourself and keep going. I’ve been at the point where I can’t lift my arms anymore from working out, but so far, have never been at the point where I couldn’t run anymore due to fatigue.

    Running the marathon has always been on my list of things to do before I die. While I don’t believe in having New Year’s resolutions, this is one goal I have to cross off my list. I just hope that I don’t end up like Barney, stuck on the 6 train after the race.

    Do you run? Why?

  • Buying versus renting

    Last month, Mrs. jigg and I saw a condo in Brooklyn that we really liked. It has four bedrooms, two full bathrooms and a finished basement, totalling about 2,800 square feet. It’s brand new, near a very good elementary school and would cut our current commute to and from work by about an hour. Best of all, at $599k, it was affordable.

    The problem was that both my wife and I don’t really think its ever worth it to own. Because this is a new property, it will cost about $30k to close. Interest on a 30 year loan will be another hundred thousand. Including monthly maintenance and properly tax, we’re talking about A LOT more than $599k.

    I think a lot of people think property is a good investment. I think the ROI is actually very low considering how much you actually pay. The last ten years have really impacted these thoughts, but that’s because of the bubble that heavily inflated the value of homes. Any reports indicate that values will continue to go down for the next year or two.

    But then again, maybe these financial justifications are really what I’m telling myself. Maybe I just don’t like being tied down to a mortgage, or a home that I may not want to live-in, in 5 years.

    Some people may argue that renting is a waste of money because you’re not preserving your wealth. But if I rented in an ideal location that won’t cost too much, I can always take the leftover money I saved and put into some steady investments. If I hedge and balance correctly, I might be able to double my money in 7-9 years. These investments wouldn’t be for now, but for when I retire.

    Anyway, we were pretty close in buying that place, but the guy wouldn’t budge on the price and we’re not willing to pay so much, knowing that the value would go down. Buyer’s market right?

    What are you thoughts on this?

  • Betting on the team you don’t support

    Two weeks ago, a discussion came up regarding betting on the Super Bowl. Apparently, when the Giants lost three straight during the season, the futures bet for them to win the Super Bowl at like 80 to 1. A ton of Giants fans took that bet. Those people are rich now of course. One friend who I always assumed was a die-hard Yankees fan, said the Red Sox are underrated this coming season and will be putting in his futures bet on them to win the World Series.

    Wait. What? A Yankees fan, putting down money to bet on not only another team to win the World Series, but the Boston Red Sox? For those of you who don’t follow baseball, the Yankees – Red Sox rivalry is arguably the greatest rivalry in sports, ever. To call yourself a Yankees supporter and then putting your money on the Red Sox to win it all, makes no sense.

    He argues that money is money and it is completely separate to his support for the Yankees. It’s like “hedging” his bet that “just in case the Yankees don’t win, [he] won’t be as sad because he might win some money back to make up for it.

    No true Yankees fan would do that, just like we wouldn’t wear a Red Sox cap no matter what. Being a sports fan has no rhyme or reason. Each team is like individual cults, where we invest our money, time and emotions into them. Mrs. jigg, who doesn’t really follow sports, loves the Pats–like a true fan of them. He can never like the Giants and the Jets and would never be able to put money on them. It’s like believing in God and betting on the devil. Just doesn’t work like that.

    While I have many friends who sees things like this, there are just as many who thinks its okay. I feel like if you are not a true fan, not a follower of any team, then of course you think it’s okay. But for my friend who claims to be a Yankees fan, I wonder if he’s an anamoly.

    Thoughts?

  • Xanga Mobile App – Finally!

    For years, I’ve been waiting for Xanga to create an app. I used to use iBlogger on my iPhone to post entries, but for some reason, the app went dead a few months back. I used the Xanga mobile site (m.xanga.com), but the formats and spacing was all messed up. It became really hard for me to blog since I could never blog at home or at work (anymore). And of course, I ran out of new things to say.

    Now that Xanga has an app (and it works pretty well except for a few bugs), I have no excuse to led me blog die. It took me so long to make it what it was and now, no one even checks for updates anymore.

    Xanga couldn’t have rolled this out at a better time. It’s impossible to compete with other sites when you lack the accessibility they have with the smart phones. I think the only company I use now that doesn’t have an app (yet) is HSBC. I love HSBC for their convenience with travel and doesn’t have crazy charges and fees like many of the other banks. But I think they know the lack of an app will not hold onto customers for long. You have to stay competitive in all aspects.

    What do you use now that you wished, had an app?