Week In Review:

Toronto -  Senior Graphic Designer (Marketing & Advertising) Details / Apply
Toronto - Associate Director, Digital Marketing (Education) Details / Apply
Toronto - Strategic Analyst Associate (Marketing & Advertising) Details / Apply
Toronto - Software Engineer (Internet) Details / Apply
Toronto - eCommerce Manager (Internet) Details / Apply
Montreal - Analyst, Loyalty Sciences (Marketing & Advertising) Details / Apply
Montreal - Technical Product Manager (Marketing & Advertising) Details / Apply
Vancouver - Customer Success - Professional Services (Internet) Details / Apply
Vancouver - Social Media Coach (Internet) Details / Apply
Ottawa - UI Designer (Internet) Details / Apply

For the full rundown, log-in to Vestiigo.com

Some weekend reading
Career Savvy: 3 Example Cover Letters That Got Noticed
Career Savvy: You Don’t Need More Information
TED Talk: Martin Villeneuve: How I made an impossible film

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We hear plenty of talk about what makes an awesome cover letter, but rarely do we actually see any of that good stuff in action.  Well, this week, we thought we’d give you a taste of not only what a great cover letter looks like, but exactly “why” it’s good, and what you should learn from looking at it.   

Great tone
The key word for this particular example is tone.  It’s one thing to be able to communicate your value to a company in a way that’s concise and convincing; it’s another to be able to do it in a way that shows that you deeply and truly understand the company and its values.  This isn’t a cover letter that you could send out to just any company.  For most it may not work, but for this particular employer it was exactly the right approach and it ended up getting them hired.

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Week In Review:

Toronto -  Account Director, Media (Internet) Details / Apply
Toronto - Senior Account Manager (Marketing & Advertising) Details / Apply
Toronto - Senior Strategist (Marketing & Advertising) Details / Apply
Toronto - Project Coordinator (Internet) Details / Apply
Toronto - Account Manager, Sales - Market Panels (Market Research) Details / Apply
Montreal - Graphic Artist (Marketing & Advertising) Details / Apply
Montreal - 360 Ad Team - Adidas (Marketing & Advertising) Details / Apply
Vancouver - Mobile Product Manager (Internet) Details / Apply
Vancouver - Senior Product Marketing Manager (Internet) Details / Apply
Ottawa - Inbound Lead Specialist (Internet) Details / Apply

For the full rundown, log-in to Vestiigo.com

Some weekend reading
Career Savvy: You Don’t Find Your Passions; Your Passions Find You
Career Savvy: Why Social Networks Won’t Get You Hired
TED Talk: Lisa Bu: How books can open your mind

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This is great advice - albeit a slightly contrarian view - from Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon.com. The expectation is that we should have a good idea of what our “passion” is very early - but it’s simply not realistic. The odds are much of your time has been spent in school and you haven’t really been exposed to a world outside of that environment. Even if you’ve found something you enjoy, chances are you’ll come across something even more fulfilling once you’ve left school.

In that sense, the onus should be less on you to “find” your passion, but rather to put yourself in a situation where your passion finds you. In order to do so, Jason Fried, author of Rework and founder of 37Signals, has some superb tips on how to do so.

Be Open
“I discover things as I go and don’t think you can predict your passions. You don’t necessarily know what you’re going to be super interested in in 5 to 10 years. You just have to be open to being introduced to those things and that’s what I’ve been working on—keeping an open mind about things and not limiting myself.”

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We’ve been asked a lot recently about the role social media plays in helping candidates get hired and whether you can still land your dream job without a significant online presence. This debate has certainly been stirred up further by an article in MSNBC suggesting that, in fact, social networking plays a very small role.

For us, this debate asks the wrong question. It’s not a matter of whether or not social media helps you in your career search; it’s how it fits in to your overall search strategy. In reality, social media is not a new phenomenon. The rise in popularity of social networking sites have simply afforded us new ways to publish the same information – having a Twitter account doesn’t mean you’re a better writer then you were before, just as having a LinkedIn account doesn’t mean you’re all of a sudden professionally connected to 500+ people you didn’t know a month ago. The ability to publish information doesn’t distinguish you from other candidates – you need a coherent approach.

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Week In Review:

Toronto -  Analyst, Financial Planning & Analysis (Marketing & Advertising) Details / Apply
Toronto - Writer (Consulting) Details / Apply
Toronto - Client Marketing Specialist Strategic Sponsors (Marketing & Advertising) Details / Apply
Toronto - Conversion Rate Optimization Manager (Internet) Details / Apply
Toronto - Data Analyst (Internet) Details / Apply
Montreal - Coordinator, Markt. Planning and Comms. (Marketing & Advertising) Details / Apply
Montreal - Buyer (Computer Games) Details / Apply
Vancouver - Localization Manager (Market Research) Details / Apply
Vancouver - Database Architect (Market Research) Details / Apply
Ottawa - Web Designer (Internet) Details / Apply

For the full rundown, log-in to Vestiigo.com

Some weekend reading
Career Savvy: 8 Words You Should Remove From Your Professional Vocabulary
Career Savvy: 3 Ways to Avoid Referring Yourself Out Of A Job
TED Talk: Ken Robinson: How to escape education’s death valley

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Words can be a powerful tool. Then again, they can say a lot without saying anything. The following is a list of some of the most overused (and abused) words in the workplace.

The chances are at least one of these has found their way onto your resume, a presentation you’ve recently given, or slipped out in a meeting. Set yourself apart by avoid the following at all cost:

1. Unique - there are very few things in the world that can be justifiably called unique. Unless you’re talking about Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa or your fingerprints, chances are it’s not unique.

2. Perspective - a meeting favourite, everyone likes to chime in with a “from this perspective” on just about every angle of the problem. Be clear, concise, and provide a recommendation and not another perspective.

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It’s no secret that good networking is a crucial part of landing all sorts of dream jobs.  What many don’t realize is that the relationships you build at work can be just as crucial as those you build at conferences, meet-ups or parties.  After all, if nobody at a potential employer knows you, then they need to talk to someone who does, and it’s in your best interests that the talk goes well. 

There’s the usual advice about letting your reference know ahead of time and all that jazz, but there are a few very critical mistakes that are less talked about, and WSJ’s, Ruth Mantell, has done the work of outlining them for us.

1) Sticking purely to the positive – Obviously, you want to avoid references that will reflect negatively on you, but only listing people who want to sing your praises can be damaging in a different way.  A good reference will not only espouse your strengths to a potential employer but also outline areas for growth, so that your employer knows where you need guidance and improvement.

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Week In Review:

Toronto - Digital Marketing Manager (Education) Details / Apply
Toronto - Manager, CRM/Digital Insights and Strategy (Marketing & Advertising) Details / Apply
Toronto - Head of Community (Internet) Details / Apply
Toronto - Merchandise Coordinator (Marketing & Advertising) Details / Apply
Toronto - Translation Project Manager (Internet) Details / Apply
Montreal - Project Manager (Computer Software) Details / Apply
Montreal - User Experience Designer (Internet) Details / Apply
Vancouver - Web Developer (Market Research) Details / Apply
Vancouver - Intermediate Business Analyst (Computer Software) Details / Apply
Ottawa - Internal Auditor - Security, Risk & Compliance (Computer Software) Details / Apply

For the full rundown, log-in to Vestiigo.com

Some weekend reading
Career Savvy: The Importance of Setting and Exceeding Expectations
Career Savvy: Start Small and the 9 Other Laws of Productivity
TED Talk: Dan Ariely: What makes us feel good about our work?

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We underestimate the importance of expectations. Whether you’re buying a car, a pair of sunglasses, or a cup of coffee you’re not so much buying a product, but investing in an expectation.

You don’t buy a Toyota because you believe it’s the fastest car in production, you buy it because you expect that it will still be running 15 years from now. You expect your morning coffee from Starbucks to be fresh, hot, and made to order. That’s why you go there. Think how you would feel if your Toyota broke down after 3 years or if your coffee was lukewarm?

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A lot of us wind up stumbling on a great idea at some point or another, but the process of actually making it work is usually a long and exhausting one.  The 99% blog has a list of tenets that should make it easier to stay on track with an idea and make it work for you rather than the other way around. 

1) Break the seal of hesitation – Take action sooner rather than later.  It’s not just about avoiding procrastination, it’s about getting feedback as early as possible, so that you can move forward more confidently.

2) Start small – Big ideas can be hard to make actionable.  Do what you can to scale the idea down into something you can reasonably expect to execute.

3) Prototype –  Very rarely do we execute ideas perfectly on the first try.  Creating multiple prototypes lets you get much more valuable feedback than you would simply conceptualizing.  It’s a classic example of learning by doing rather than thinking.  Things move along much more smoothly when you’re creating and evolving the actual product rather than just the idea. 

4) Create simple objectives for projects, and revisit them regularly – Hammer out what your end goals are for a project before you start work on it.  That way if you ever start to drift away from them, you’ll notice sooner. 

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DON’T BE SCARED: if you don’t ask, you don’t get.
DO IT PROPERLY: book an official meeting with your boss.
DO YOUR RESEARCH: check the going rate for similar roles and assess what you’re worth.
TIME IT RIGHT: don’t choose a time when your boss is very busy or stressed.
ARE YOU WORTH IT? check that your performance/input has increased.

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Week In Review:

Toronto - Product Manager (Internet) Details / Apply
Toronto - Marketing Specialist (Internet) Details / Apply
Toronto - Web & Graphics Designer (Internet) Details / Apply
Toronto - Account Manager (Marketing & Advertising) Details / Apply
Toronto - Manager, External Comms. (Marketing & Advertising) Details / Apply
Montreal - Analyst, Loyalty Sciences (Marketing & Advertising) Details / Apply
Montreal - Solution Developer / Integrator (Computer Software) Details / Apply
Vancouver - Manager, Employee Performance (Marketing & Advertising) Details / Apply
Vancouver - Social Media Product Specialist (Internet) Details / Apply
Ottawa - Product Manager - Checkout (Internet) Details / Apply

For the full rundown, log-in to Vestiigo.com

Some weekend reading
Career Savvy: 3 Things Successful Professionals Eventually Figure Out
Career Savvy: Why Success is a Catalyst for Failure
TED Talk: Wingham Rowan: A new kind of job market

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In school, we learn in a controlled environment where things are linear and answers can be found in a textbook. Yet, the world of work couldn’t be any more different. In fact, it’s the opposite. Reid Hoffman, co-founder of Linkedin and Paypal, discusses three important traits we miss out on in school and will all eventually figure out - either the easy way or the hard way. Here’s the easy way:

Build a competitive advantage
We’re told we can do or be anything we want to be. What we’re not told though is that everyone else also wants to be those things and they’ll be competing with you for those opportunities. In order to stand out you need to have a competitive advantage. A competitive advantage comprises of three things: assets, aspirations, and market realities.

Your assets would include your resources, network, and intelligence while your aspirations are where you might like to go in the future. Finally, market realities are what the world of work is willing to pay you.

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We’re often amazed when companies or careers stumble when they seemed destined for continued success. For instance, of the 500 companies that appeared on Fortune’s initial list in 1955 only 71 still remain.  Some of the most well-known names (at the time) on that list have long since disappeared from it, such as Scott Paper, Zenith, and Warner Lambert.

The study of how companies can go from the pinnacle of their industry to the bottom in such a short time has become a furious topic of study, particularly in management circles. Of all the theories discussed, the idea that success itself is at the root cause is one of the more interesting.

In his article, The Disciplined Pursuit of Less, Greg McKeown suggests that companies and careers can suffer what he calls the “clarity paradox” that consists of four phases:

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