With eight training rooms and three desks dedicated for outbound calls, the call center facility will be equipped with adaptive hardware and software customized to the needs and abilities of the blind.

Six totally blind, low vision and sighted graduates are currently being trained as trainors in Taipei, Taiwan, the headquarters of the the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Digital Opportunity Center (ADOC).

ADOC provided funds for the facility, a project of the Adaptive Technology for Rehabilitation, Integration, and Empowerment of the Visually Impaired (ATRIEV) Inc.

The six trainors all came from ATRIEV, an organization that pioneered computer training for the blind in the country, the Resources for the Blind, National Council on Disability Affairs, Philippine National School for the Blind, and the Department of Education.

The facility’s customized outbound call center software and refreshable Braille display as hardware will allow totally blind individuals to provide customer assistance while listening to the client on the phone and reading the responses in Braille.

With the technology, the blind will hopefully gain the same speed and efficiency as the sighted call center agent, ATRIEV said.

ATRIEV has provided IT-related training for the blind for the last 15 years, with the use of a screen reader – a software application that translates text to speech – and a screen magnification software.

ATRIEV also provides on-the-job training in voicemail transcription to its qualified IT-related training graduates, in partnership with Gallop IT Solutions, a local transcription company.

The launching ceremony for the project will be held on October 20 ATRIEV’s Training Center for the Blind in Quezon City.

The project is expected to be presented at the APEC Conference to be held in Singapore in November 2009. - GMANews.TV

I just got your resume, font size 14 and triple-spaced. If it were a landscape, a desert comes to mind. Sparse, drym and with lots of open spaces, with a photo that convinces me of your lack of knowledge about Abode Photoshop.

So here’s the thing. As the chief headhunter, I really don’t care if you enjoy badminton. Of course, I am happy that you have endurance for it, but my chief concern is if our organization can endure and be enhance by you, and vice-versa.

I also know that you love attending seminars. let me guess, you probably kept each and every certificate of attendance laminated and framed hanging on your wall. I don’t think you should have included that seminar on drunk driving though. It sends wrong signals.

Despite the lack of relivant information about you, I will still see you on Monday. I hope you prepare well for your interview because you are number 46 on a list of seventy applicants. It will still be a tough day for your interviewer, having to meet and listen to the pitches of so many people, competing for this single, blessed job vacancy.

What will make you stand out? You would have to sell yourself, keeping in mind the perspective of the buyer. In short, this is not really all about you. It’s about us, and the fact that we do have the money to keep you and your dreams alive. If you come late, then out you go. If you show up with greasy hair, a tattoo in your arm, and hot Shawarma breath, then your resume goes straight to the garbage bin.

Your are not going on stage to audition for American Idol where you can be spectacular or stupidly outlandish, and still make it on the show. In my room, when you come in to take you seat, there really are no second chances. As Heidi Klum on Project Runaway loves to say, it’s either you’re in or out. Bear that in mind when you decide to stroll in my office ten minutes late.

If you slouch in your seat, then that means you are too lazy to even think or care about your personal image. How can we expect you to think about our own institutional image and integrity?

If you come for an interview and you have absolutely no idea about the programs and services we offer, it shows a lack of initiative on your part. It also gives me the impression that you don’t really care about us. You are simply going through the motions of applying for a job.

If you sit across me and start acting bored in the first five minutes of our talk, then maybe you are not cut out for the job. You are probably already daydreaming about your next interview. Extending our conversation would simply be a waste of time.

Here are more tips on how not to land a job:

1. Show up in frayed demins, a halter-top, and sneakers. Ah, audicity of youth!
2. Getting the name of your interviewer and the head of the company wrong.
3. Applying for an account executive and underscoring your units in accounting. Not the same folks, not the same.
4. Telling your interviewer on how much they like your products and then mentioning a different brand? Not cool.
5. Asking about the starting salary, even before the interviewer mentions and describes the work involved. Atribida!
6. And when the interviewer asks you about any future plans, you reallyshouldn’t tell him about your plan to watch moview right after the job interview.

The thing is, if you want to sell yourself then be yourself, but just a tad better. Your competitors are not just the fresh graduates fron any other colleges, but the ex-OFWs who have since returned who have actual experience and not just seminars attended on their resumes. You are also competing with the outsourcing of work to project-based contractuals here and around the world.

The world has changed immensely from when you first entered college. It takes more than connections now to land a decent job. In short, what we have is buyer’s market, where a company headhunter has access to online applications, alumni networks, and walk-in applicants, for every single job opening.

To land a job, you’d have to prepare yourself long before your first interview. Because what you really are looking for, is not just any job – but a career to call your own. Your resume is just part of your arsenal of marketing tools. If your lifetime achievement can fit on one page, triple-space and all, then make up for it with personality, initiative, and infectious enthusiasm that makes it hard for even the most tired interviewer to ignore you.

Good luck!

Sincerely,

YBP (Your Potential Boss)

Source: Philippine Panorama - October 11, 2009 – Susan V. Ople