Senior Pastor

PORTMORE LANE COVENANT COMMUNITY CHURCH

16 PORTMORE AVENUE, PORTMORE GARDENS

PORTMORE, ST. CATHERINE

INVITES APPLICATIONS FROM SUITABLY QUALIFIED PERSONS FOR THE POST OF

PASTOR

____________________________________________________________________________________

Job Purpose

The Pastor will be responsible for providing day to day pastoral care to the church and to help in guiding the church in executing its mission statement. The role will also involve preaching, teaching, providing leadership to Ministry Heads, Cell Group Leaders, liaising with the surrounding communities and maintaining relationships with associated churches and ministries.  The post is Full Time.

Minimum Requirements

Evangelical/Charismatic- Believes in Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour, the authority of the word of God and the ministry of the Holy Spirit.  A born-again Christian for at least ten (10) years, water baptized and with a clear verifiable testimony. Blameless, if married, must be to someone of the opposite sex. Self-controlled, sober-minded, of good behaviour, hospitable, able to teach; not given to wine, not violent, not greedy for money, but gentle, not quarrelsome, not covetous; one who rules his own house well, having his children in submission with all reverence. Must not be a novice, and have a good testimony among those who are outside. Should be able to exhort and convict those who contradict, using sound doctrine.

·         Formal training from a reputable theological training institution.

·         At least five [5] years experience in Christian leadership in a church or Christian organization.

·         Proven ability in effective Outreach and Evangelism activities

·         Proven ability in handling conflict resolution issues

Key Responsibilities

·         Provides leadership, support and guidance to all staff to ensure that they function effectively.

·         Lead the implementation of the church’s strategic plan

·         Liaise with and coordinate the functioning and activities of the various ministries and resources.

·         Conduct the weekly Bible Study, Preaching, Teaching, and Counselling [i.e. General, Grief, Premarital, Marriage and Family]

·         Facilitating Corporate Prayer and Fasting

·         Conducting Water Baptisms, Funerals, Weddings and Baby Blessings

·         Visitation and follow-up of: Registered Members, Absent/Sick Members, First Time Visitors, New Converts and Back Sliders.

·         Providing monthly reports to the Board of Elders regarding all pastoral duties.

·         Providing leadership, accountability and training for other Ministry Leaders

Required Knowledge, Skills, Abilities

·         Excellent leadership skills

·         Excellent preaching and teaching abilities

·         Excellent time management, planning and organizational skills

·         Excellent human relations skills with the ability to lead and motivate

·         Excellent oral and written communication skills

·         Excellent decision making skills

·         A servant attitude and willing to be accountable

·         Confidential

·         Ability to work in a team

Application can be submitted to plccc16@gmail.com

Musical Director Webster Memorial United Church

Description: 

• To facilitate the enrichment and development of the musical life of the congregation
• Required to offer leadership in, and has responsibility for all aspects (vocal and instrumental) of the
  
  music ministry of the church
• Direct training and development of the chancel choir, with oversight of a very active and talented Praise Team, a vibrant and growing children’s choir and drum core. 
• Required to be devoted to the development of other musical groups in the church viz a junior choir, vocal expressions in the uniformed groups as well as smaller musical groups (trios, quartets, quintets etc.) to enhance and expand the richness of musical offerings of the church.

Qualifications:

A committed relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ

At least grade 8 piano certificate (ABRSM or the equivalent)

Proficiency on at least one other musical instrument: organ, drum trumpet etc.

Experience in choral conducting and training

Familiarity with both traditional and contemporary Church music

NB: Post to be designed as a permanent/part-time assignment with terms of and remuneration for service being open.

Application must be submitted with the aim for contract initiation on January 1, 2015.

E-mail: Attn: The Administrator

Contact Information
Name:	N/A
Address:	Attn: The Administrator Webster Memorial United Church 53 Half Way Tree Rd. Kgn. 10.
Email:	webstermemorial@cwjamaica.com

Dean of Discipline

Bellefield High, Manchester:

• Have a first degree with emphasis in any of the following: Psychology; Social Work; Supervision; Counselling Psychology; Education
• Experience in teaching and management at the Secondary level will be an asset

NB: Previous applicants need not reapply

DEADLINE: OCTOBER 24, 2014

The Chairman 
c/o Principal 
Bellefield High School 
P.O Box 49 
Williamsfield 
Manchester

bellefieldhigh@yahoo.com

CUSTOMER SERVICE - URGENT REQUEST

Job Industry: Customer Service

Employment Type: contractor

Salary:

 Job Description
OUR CLIENT IS SEEKING A PROFESSIONAL CUSTOMER SERVICE INDIVIDUAL TO WORK FOR TWO DAYS MANNING A TABLE AT A TWO DAY CONFERENCE.
Person needs to remain at the table at ALL times during the shift.  Table must not be left unattended at any given moment.

Job Requirements

 Person is to interact with the public while standing up.

• Person is responsible to collect picture IDs, hand out headsets and explain how to use.
• Be ready and give ID back, when persons return the headset. People might and will be coming in and coming out during the shift so the person needs to be ready to distribute headsets and receive headset back at all times.
• Person must be professional looking, business presence and attire, no visible tattoos or piercings, business-type haircut and hair colour.
• Person must be at the assignment table for the specified time.

Please send resume to admin@employmentjamaica.com – deadline to apply 11:00AM Wednesday, October 15, 2014.

Teaching English in Japan

The 2015 Japan Exchange and Teaching (JET): Japan

• The programme aims to achieve its objectives by offering persons the opportunity to serve as Assistant Language Teachers in public & private elementary, junior & senior high schools and/or at local boards of education.
• To teach English as a foreign language
• 
  
• 
  
• • Hold a Bachelor’s degree or teaching diploma (those who can obtain proof of graduation by November, 2014 may apply);
  • Able to live and work in Japan for at least one year (successful candidates will depart for Japan by July 26, 2015);
  • Not have lived in Japan for six or more years in total since 2005;
  • Ability to adapt to living and office conditions in Japan;
  • Qualified as a language teacher or be strongly motivated
  • Have excellent pronunciation, rhythm, intonation and voice projection skills, good oral and written skills
  • Willing to display a positive attitude and professionalism both inside and outside the classroom and must have an interest in the promotion of mutual understanding between both nations.
  • 
    
  NB: For further information and application forms, please visit our website
  Interested persons must submit application forms along with all the required documents, no later than 2:00 p.m. on deadline date
• DEADLINE: November 7, 2014
• The JET Programme 
  Cultural Section 
  Embassy of Japan 
  NCB Towers 
  North Tower 
  6th Floor 
  2 Oxford Road 
  Kingston 5
• TELEPHONE: 1 (876) 929-3338-9

how to write a winning resume

Here is another great bit of expert advice from Laszlo Block, SVP People Operations at  Google.  Dive in and make your notes because we all need to know how to a write a winning resume.

Reinhold Niebhur wrote a prayer that many of you will recognize. It goes roughly: “Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”

What does this have to do with looking for a job?  Everything!!!

There's a ton of unfairness in the job search process. As a candidate, you can’t control whether a company requires a work visa, whether some executive’s kid has an inside track on your dream job, or whether your interviewer has some private or unconscious bias that will hurt your chances. I’ll write about some of these -- especially unconscious bias -- in the future.

For now, I want to focus on the most controllable element of a job search: your resume. The sole purpose of a resume is to get you past that first screen and into an interview. In my last post, “The Biggest Mistakes I See on Resumes, and How to Correct Them”, I covered the all-too-common mistakes that knock applicants out of consideration at many companies. Let’s assume you’ve read that post and scrubbed your resume so it’s concise, error-free, legible, and honest. You’re already better off than at least half the applicants out there.

But how do you make your accomplishments stand out? There’s a simple formula. Every one of your accomplishments should be presented as:

Accomplished [X] as measured by [Y] by doing [Z]

In other words, start with an active verb, numerically measure what you accomplished, provide a baseline for comparison, and detail what you did to achieve your goal. Consider the following two descriptions of the same work, and ask yourself which would look better on a resume:

1. Studied financial performance of companies and made investment recommendations
2. Improved portfolio performance by 12% ($1.2M) over one year by refining cost of capital calculations for information-poor markets and re-weighting portfolio based on resulting valuations

The addition of the “12% improvement” makes the statement more powerful. Adding “($1.2M)” anticipates the reviewer’s question about whether 12% is a big deal or not. If you improved investment results by 12%, but that meant going from $100 to $112, that’s not too impressive. But adding $1.2M to the starting portfolio value of $10 million is huge. Explaining how you did it adds credibility and gives insight into your strengths.

Several examples inspired by actual resumes will show you what I mean. The first bullet is typical: not bad, but certain not to stand out. The second is a much better version of a similar accomplishment from a different resume. My own suggestions are in italics.

College student who is a leader in her sorority

• Managed sorority budget
• Managed $31,000 Spring 2014 budget and invested idle funds in appropriate high-yielding capital notes
• Managed $31,000 Spring 2014 budget and invested $10,000 in idle funds in appropriate high-yielding capital notes returning 5% over the year

College student participating in a leadership program

• Member of Management Leadership for Tomorrow (MLT)
• Selected as one of 230 for this 18-month professional development program for high-achieving diverse talent
• Selected as one of 230 participants nationwide for this 18-month professional development program for high-achieving diverse talent based on leadership potential, ability to contribute to this MLT cohort, and academic success

Finance or consulting professional

• Responsible for negotiating service contracts with XYZ
• Negotiated 30% ($500k) reduction in costs with XYZ to perform post-delivery support
• Negotiated 30% ($500k) reduction in costs with XYZ to perform post-delivery support by designing and using results from an online auction of multiple vendors

Sales support associate

• Achieved annual business plan commitments for volumes, model mix, wholesale revenue, selling expenses and brand

• As a team member, contributed to 21% increase in advertiser spend by achieving 158% of target number of customer contacts (80 contacts per week)and 192% of target interaction depth (20 minutes per customer)

Candidate with skill-based resume

• Skills: Excellent customer service skills. Friendly and positive attitude
• Skills: Excellent customer service skills and positive attitude as demonstrated by receiving employee of the month in four consecutive months in 2014

Logistics expert

• Reduce cost of goods sold strategy: Five years of line and supply chain management experience at XYZ distribution centers and managing outsourced third-party logistics providers
• Achieved 30% logistics cost savings by reducing returns, use of overtime, excess and obsolete inventory and targeted outsourcing
• Achieved 30% logistics cost savings ($900k) over five years by reducing returns(-8%), use of overtime (-7%), and excess and obsolete inventory (-5%), and through targeted outsourcing (-10%)

Marketing manager

• Studied the branding and marketing strategies of XYZ. Analyzed the pricing strategies of XYZ in comparison to competitors
• Led cross-functional 10-member team to develop and implement global advertising strategy for $X million XYZ brand
• Led cross-functional 10-member team to develop and implement global advertising strategy for $X million XYZ brand resulting in 25-point increase in brand recall, 12% improvement in net promoter score, and contributing to 18% year-over-year sales improvement ($XM)

Veteran transitioning to the civilian sector

• Worked as a trainer with deploying units to ready their medical personnel for combat action and trauma medicine
• One of three officers selected to lead comprehensive redesign of the XYZ training program for X,000 Marines and sailors, increasing measured unit proficiency by 20% [This one is great -- I wouldn’t change a thing!]

You might feel like it’s hard to measure your work, but there is almost always something you can point to that differentiates you from others. Back when I was a waiting tables at the Olive Garden, I would have written, “Exhibited the spirit of Hospitaliano by achieving 120% of dessert sales targets (compared to an average of 98%) and averaging 26% in tips per night.”

Well, maybe I wouldn’t have mentioned the Hospitaliano....

And even if your accomplishments don’t seem that impressive to you, recruiters will nevertheless love the specificity. “Served 85 customers per day with 100% accuracy” sounds good, even if the customers are people you rang up at a grocery store. It’s even more impressive if you can add, “…compared to an average of 70 customers at 90% accuracy for my peers.” Providing data helps. Making it meaningful with a comparison helps even more.

Niebhur said to change the things you can control. I agree. You can’t control the biases and attention span of whomever reviews your resume. You do control what’s on the page in front of him or her. Use the formula “accomplished [X] as measured by [Y] by doing [Z]” and recruiters will take notice.

The content was originally posted on LinkenIn

Resume advice from a top Google HR personnel

I was so pleased with the quality of his advice that I thought it best to just copy the entire article here for your benefit.  The original article was posted on Linkedin, and can be seen here

I've sent out hundreds of resumes over my career, applying for just about every kind of job. I've personally reviewed more than 20,000 resumes. And at Google we sometimes get more than 50,000 resumes in a single week.

I have seen A LOT of resumes.

Some are brilliant, most are just ok, many are disasters. The toughest part is that for 15 years, I've continued to see the same mistakes made again and again by candidates, any one of which can eliminate them from consideration for a job. What's most depressing is that I can tell from the resumes that many of these are good, even great, people. But in a fiercely competitive labor market, hiring managers don't need to compromise on quality. All it takes is one small mistake and a manager will reject an otherwise interesting candidate.

I know this is well-worn ground on LinkedIn, but I'm starting here because -- I promise you -- more than half of you have at least one of these mistakes on your resume. And I'd much rather see folks win jobs than get passed over.

In the interest of helping more candidates make it past that first resume screen, here are the five biggest mistakes I see on resumes.

Mistake 1: Typos. This one seems obvious, but it happens again and again. A 2013 CareerBuilder survey found that 58% of resumes have typos.

In fact, people who tweak their resumes the most carefully can be especially vulnerable to this kind of error, because they often result from going back again and again to fine tune your resume just one last time. And in doing so, a subject and verb suddenly don't match up, or a period is left in the wrong place, or a set of dates gets knocked out of alignment. I see this in MBA resumes all the time. Typos are deadly because employers interpret them as a lack of detail-orientation, as a failure to care about quality. The fix?

Read your resume from bottom to top: reversing the normal order helps you focus on each line in isolation. Or have someone else proofread closely for you.

Mistake 2: Length. A good rule of thumb is one page of resume for every ten years of work experience. Hard to fit it all in, right? But a three or four or ten page resume simply won't get read closely. As Blaise Pascal wrote, "I would have written you a shorter letter, but I did not have the time." A crisp, focused resume demonstrates an ability to synthesize, prioritize, and convey the most important information about you. Think about it this way: the *sole* purpose of a resume is to get you an interview. That's it. It's not to convince a hiring manager to say "yes" to you (that's what the interview is for) or to tell your life's story (that's what a patient spouse is for). Your resume is a tool that gets you to that first interview. Once you're in the room, the resume doesn't matter much. So cut back your resume. It's too long.

Mistake 3: Formatting. Unless you're applying for a job such as a designer or artist, your focus should be on making your resume clean and legible. At least ten point font. At least half-inch margins. White paper, black ink. Consistent spacing between lines, columns aligned, your name and contact information on every page. If you can, look at it in both Google Docs and Word, and then attach it to an email and open it as a preview. Formatting can get garbled when moving across platforms. Saving it as a PDF is a good way to go.

Mistake 4: Confidential information. I once received a resume from an applicant working at a top-three consulting firm. This firm had a strict confidentiality policy: client names were never to be shared. On the resume, the candidate wrote: "Consulted to a major software company in Redmond, Washington." Rejected! There's an inherent conflict between your employer's needs (keep business secrets confidential) and your needs (show how awesome I am so I can get a better job). So candidates often find ways to honor the letter of their confidentiality agreements but not the spirit. It's a mistake. While this candidate didn't mention Microsoft specifically, any reviewer knew that's what he meant. In a very rough audit, we found that at least 5-10% of resumes reveal confidential information. Which tells me, as an employer, that I should never hire those candidates ... unless I want my own trade secrets emailed to my competitors.

The New York Times test is helpful here: if you wouldn't want to see it on the home page of the NYT with your name attached (or if your boss wouldn't!), don't put it on your resume.

Mistake 5: Lies. This breaks my heart. Putting a lie on your resume is never, ever, ever, worth it. Everyone, up to and including CEOs, get fired for this. (Google "CEO fired for lying on resume" and see.) People lie about their degrees (three credits shy of a college degree is not a degree), GPAs (I've seen hundreds of people "accidentally" round their GPAs up, but never have I seen one accidentally rounded down -- never), and where they went to school (sorry, but employers don't view a degree granted online for "life experience" as the same as UCLA or Seton Hall). People lie about how long they were at companies, how big their teams were, and their sales results, always goofing in their favor.

There are three big problems with lying: (1) You can easily get busted. The Internet, reference checks, and people who worked at your company in the past can all reveal your fraud. (2) Lies follow you forever. Fib on your resume and 15 years later get a big promotion and are discovered? Fired. And try explaining that in your next interview. (3) Our Moms taught us better. Seriously.

So this is how to mess up your resume. Don't do it! Hiring managers are looking for the best people they can find, but the majority of us all but guarantee that we'll get rejected.

The good news is that -- precisely because most resumes have these kinds of mistakes -- avoiding them makes you stand out.

In a future post, I'll expand beyond what not to do, and cover the things you *should* be doing to make your resume stand out from the stack.

Photo: Smit/Shutterstock

Laszlo BockInfluencer

SVP, People Operations at Google