Thursday, November 28, 2019

The Cover Letter is Dead Who Killed It (A Murder Mystery Case)

The Cover Letter is Dead Who Killed It (A Murder Mystery Case)The Cover Letter is Dead - Who Killed It (A Murder Mystery Case)In recent years, it has become fashionable to hail the death of the titelblatt letter. After all, compared to the allure of social media, the titelbild letter looks antiquated, almost quaint. Some go as far as to say that the only thing missing from the decline of the titelseite letter is the time of death.If the cover letter is dead indeed, theres another pressing question we need to ask Who killed it? Cover letters rarely die of natural causes and this murder mystery is long overdue for a solution.The cover letter had beenaroundfor centuries. Leonardo da Vincireportedly wrote the first cover letter in history in orderto pitch his services to the Duke of Milan. This makes it even older than the resume itself. The cover letter welches never loved but somehow itwas always around, allowing us to make strong cases for ur candidacies. What did bring about its un doing?Suspects are many and easy to find. Ultimately, however, it comes down to three social media, networking, and the cover email.The cover letter is dead. Itwas never loved and itsenemies were many.Let us examine the evidence first. Most witness accounts suggest that cover letters hardly ever get read. A study conducted by reCareered found out that 90 percentof hiring managers mostly ignored cover letters and 97 percentbased a decision whether to interview a candidate on the resume only. That was back in 2009, the same year iPhone 3GS came out. Imagine how much has changed since then.Today, youcould hardlyfind a company that still asks for cover letters. One of the reasons is that most candidates cant write them well. Because of this, recruiters usually end up with a heap of generic write-ups that dont help themfind the right candidate in any way. Another reason is that candidates generally hate writing them. If you insist on including a cover letter, youll probably repel some of the best people you could have found.Social media, networking, or the cover email all replaced it in one way or another.In the end, however, the cover letter was killed in a turf war against its indirect competitors. Social media, networking, or the cover email all replaced it in one way or another, effectively burying the body of the cover letter at the periphery of the HR world.Murder suspect 1 Social mediaIf social media were the main offender, then the death of the cover letterwould be most likely unintentional. Why is that?Frankly, there was neverenough direct competition between the two. The main purpose of a cover letter is to make a strong case for your candidacy for a position. Social media, on the other hand, simply allow you to share stuff with other people in your network.Still, unless youve been living under a rock for the past decade, you know theres such a thing as your social media footprint. You probably also know that anyone can access it without too much effort. And recruiters always scour social networks for skilled candidates.Facebook photos alone reveal far more about you than a carefully prepared cover letter.Whenever you apply for a job, your social media profiles come under a scrutiny. A quick look reveals much about your views, activities, and personality. Depending on your digital footprint, this can be either an advantage or a disadvantage.First, your Facebook photos alone reveal far more about you than a carefully prepared cover letter. Therefore, even if youre not applying for a job at the moment, you should always carefully curate all the content youve ever shared on social media.Second, a well-managed LinkedIn profile will make recruiters approach you. This is also one of the reasons why the cover letter is dead. After all, you only have to write one when its you whos approaching a company, not when its the other way around.Murder suspect 2 NetworkingThe cover letter has no place in a world of employee referral programmes. Afte r all, theres no surer way to employment than having someone at a company to personally recommend you. Employee referral has always been there, in one way or another, somewhat hidden under the guise of old-fashioned networking. Recently, however, many companies began to actively encourage it and today 75 percent of companies use employee referral systems.Employee referral hires are cheaper, have much higher retention rates, are easier to train, and generally produce 25 percent more profit for their companies than regular hires.Moreover, 70 to 80 percent of job openings are reportedly never posted online. All of these people get hired through old-fashioned networking or employee referral instead of regular job applications. Unfortunately, the cover letter only makes sense in a world wheremost jobs were filled through job advertisements.Murder suspect 3 The cover emailThis murder case, however, seems to be a bit more complicated than we could have thought. Just think about it. When yo u look up cover letter is dead in your favourite search engine, youll immediately find a heap of articles for every year between about 2009 and 2017. If the cover letter is dead indeed, why is it that someone somewhere still needs to proclaim it dead again and again? How come the cover letter hasnt faded into obscurity yet?Why is it that someone somewhere still needs to proclaim the cover letterdead again and again?Well, the obvious answer would be that the cover letter is still well alive and kicking. Sure, it has changed its fasson over the years. Some people say that cover letters were superseded by cover emails short introductory emails you attach to your resume. This is only too fitting for an age in which regular letters have been relegated to the status of papyrus manuscripts as something charming. From such point of view, the cover letter is dead indeed. Long live the cover email thenWhen should you attach a cover letter anyway?Short answer every time youre approaching som eone at a company you dont know. Sure, your online presence and networking took upon themselves many of the roles originallyfilled by the cover letter. However, this doesnt mean that the cover letter is dead. It still has its use.The original purpose of a cover letter was to make a strong, specific case for your candidacy for aposition. Whereas your resume will always be a list of your skills, a cover letter allows you to to create a brief argument. It would be foolish to underestimate the persuasive power of a strong argument. Learn how to write excellent cover letters.Perfect resume and cover letter are just a click away Share Your Feedback or Ideas in the Comments

Sunday, November 24, 2019

ASME to Publish ASME B16 Standards Revisions This Year

ASME to Publish ASME B16 Standards Revisions This Year ASME to Publish ASME B16 Standards Revisions This Year ASME to Publish ASME B16 Standards Revisions This YearJune 17, 2016 ASME Standards Certification is preparing to issue revised versions of three of its ASME B16 Standards, which have been defining and ensuring piping safety for nearly 100 years. The new versions of the standards - ASME B16.5, B16.34 and B16.47 - were finalized last month and will be published concurrently later this year.ASME developed these three standards to provide industry with technical guidelines and requirements regarding the use of flanges and valves ranging from nominal pipe sizes (NPS) NPS to NPS 60. The B16 Standards Committee and Subcommittees C and N provide important guidance on pressure-temperature ratings, marking, materials, dimensions, and testing for valves and flanges through these standards.ASME B16.5 Pipe Flanges and Flanged Fittings - one of ASMEs fruchtwein requested p roduct standards because it covers a large range of sizes and pressure temperature ratings - covers pipe flanges and flanged fittings for flanges with rating class designations 150, 300, 400, 600, 900 and 1500 in size categories NPS through NPS 24. The standard also applies to flanges with rating class designation 2500 in sizes NPS through NPS 12. Materials covered in the standard include forged, cast and plate carbon, low alloy, stainless steel and nickel alloys. The second of the three standards, ASME B16.34 Valves - Flanged, Threaded and Welding End, applies to new valve construction requirements. It covers pressure-temperature ratings, nondestructive examination requirements, testing and marking for cast, forged and fabricated valves - including flanged, threaded, welding end or flangeless valves - constructed of carbon steel, low alloy steel, stainless steel or nickel-base alloys. The ASME B16.47 Large Diameter Steel Flanges standard covers pressure-temperatur e ratings, materials, dimensions, tolerances, marking and testing for welding neck and blind pipe flanges NPS 26 through NPS 60. It encompasses flanges with rating class designations 75, 150, 300, 400, 600 and 900, and includes requirements and recommendations regarding flange bolting, flange gaskets and flange joints. Dimensions for raised face (RF) and ring joint gasket facings are addressed in the standard, as are materials including forged, cast and plate carbon, low alloy, stainless steel and nickel alloys. ASME publishes the three standards simultaneously because they are so interrelated. In fact, they started as a single standard, B16e, handled by one B16 Subcommittee. In 1920, the American Engineering Standards Committee organized Section Committee B16 to unify and further develop standards for pipe flanges and fittings. Section Committee B16 soon formed subcommittees and, in 1923, Subcommittee 3 began developing the first edition of B16e, which was eventually ap proved in 1927. The 1932 edition of B16e contained flanged fittings with integral bases, but did not include pressure-temperature ratings for alloy steel flanges and fittings, Class 2500 flanges, or Class 1500 flanges between NPS 14 and NPS 24. Revisions in the 1939 edition, resulting from suggestions from Committee members and users from industry, addressed these shortcomings, and included welding neck flanges and dimensions for loose ring type flange joints. Due to the quickly developing field of welding technology, the revised version also covered welding neck flanges for the first time.The outbreak of World War II had a significant impact on the development of B16 Standards because it affected the price and availability of materials, especially alloys. In August 1942, the War Production Board requested a review of measures to conserve vital materials in piping components, appointing a special War Committee of B16. The War Committee operated under War Standard Proce dure and developed increased pressure-temperature ratings for all materials and pressure classes except Class 150, and added a table of metal wall thickness for welding-end valves. Their revisions first appeared in the Supplement 1 to B16e-1939. In 1943, this supplement was issued as a full standard, B16e-5-1943, which was the first standard to include details for the construction of flanged and butt-welding end valves. The 1953 edition of B16e (re-designated B16.5), which incorporated the revisions introduced by the special War Committee of B16, also recognized the use of new materials, included a general rating method, and expanded coverage of welding end preparations. Two appendices, which were added in the 1957 edition, defined qualifications for gaskets other than ring joint and delineated the method for calculating bolt lengths.Other key years in the development of the B16.5 and B16.34 standards include 1968, the final year that the B16.5 standard incorporated cons truction for valves, flanges and flanged fittings 1973, the year that B16.5 and B16.34 editions introduced several major changes, including the addition of a ceiling pressure that materials could not exceed 1977, the year that B16.34 edition began covering all valve construction requirements including flanged valves and B16.5 became the stand-alone document for flanges and flanged fittings construction details 1981, when the B16.5-81 and B16.34-81 editions included nickel alloys for the first time and 1988, when the B16.34 standard began including details for threaded and socket-welding end valves and started covering limited pressure class valves. A subgroup of B16 Subcommittee C began work on the B16.47Large Diameter Steel Flangesstandard in November 1980 in an effort to standardize dimensions within the industry for materials covered by B16.5 for NPS 26 to NPS 60 flanges. The first draft was developed in December 1982, and went through subsequent drafts before the fir st edition was published in 1990. The B16.47 Standard was approved as an American National Standard in June 1990 following approval by ASME and the ASME B16 Standards Committee (formerly the American National Standards Committee B16).The new editions of ASME B16.5, B16.34, and B16.47, which are expected to be published this fall, will incorporate several important revisions, such as the inclusion of NPS 22 in B16.5 the alignment of the pressure-temperature tables in B16.5 and B16.34 the inclusion of low temperature valves and expansion of coverage up to NPS 60 in B16.34 and the addition of pressure-temperature table modifications to B16.47.For more information on the forthcoming 2016 editions of ASME B16.5, B16.34, and B16.47, contact Richard Lucas, Standards Certification, by elektronischer brief at lucasrasme.org. For more information on ASME Standards Certification, visit /codes-standards.(This article was written with advice and review by Guy Jolly, member of B16 Subcommittee C and B16 Subcommittee N.)Richard Lucas, Standards Certification

Thursday, November 21, 2019

The most popular ways candidates clean up their social media

The most popular ways candidates clean up their social mediaThe most popular ways candidates clean up their social mediaWhile prior research has found that 34% of employers say they have reprimanded or fired someone over zugreifbar content, new datafrom Paychex shows thatjob candidates are taking steps to walk back whats already online.Changing their profile settings to private was found to be the most popular way that they clean up social media accounts.Furthermore, while 60% of job candidates admit to checking out their interviewers social media accounts online before heading in for an interview, 40% say they dont. But in most cases, this hasnt led to anything drastic during the hiring process 79% say that seeing something unfavorable on their interviewers social media hasnt made them reject an interview or job. However, 21% said this has.Paychex surveyed 820 job candidates (ages 18 to 78) and 603 hiring managers (ages 19 to 78) using Amazons Mechanical Turk. The company also repor ted that the information is based on self-reporting.Heres how people clean uptheir social media presencePeople have done all kinds of things - but most frequently, the obviousI made my profile private 57%I deleted evidence of excessive partying 20%I deleted or fixed posts and comments that had poor spelling or grammar 19%I removed evidence of my political views 16%I deleted posts containing vulgar language 14%I changed or removed an unprofessional username or screen name 13%I deleted information that was inconsistent with my resume 11%I deleted posts that negatively referenced an employer 11%I deleted provocative photos 9%I temporarily suspended my account 8%In separate, but related, news, data from PR agency Edelmanshowed that 40% of people have deleted a social media account over the last year due to privacy concerns.What job candidates dont mind hiring managers seeingCandidates weighed in for Paychexs research, showing that LinkedIn is clearly in the leadLinkedIn 90%Google+ 64%P interest 61%Facebook 59%Instagram 56%Twitter 55%Personal blog 44%Snapchat 39%Tumblr 28%Reddit 0%Interestingly enough, no one wants a hiring managers eyes on their Reddit account.