Friday, August 22, 2008

CTP Enterprises

CTP Enterprises was established in Atlanta in 1986 by C. Trent Perry to assist mid and senior level individuals who are in management, professional, and technical careers effect career changes and promote job growth.Over the last 20+ years, CTP Enterprises has stood out in Atlanta as the leader in career management services. We have one office in Atlanta and are specialized in the Atlanta and Georgia job market. Each person we work with is important to us and we work as a highly specialized team to promote your success. You are not just a number to us like large nationwide or regional organizations may view you. Our staff is very experienced with the Atlanta job market. We have a team of five consultants that are involved in designing career transition strategies and coaching you for your success. Together they have 185 years of business experience and of that nearly 70 years of their experience has been involved in coaching individuals involved in career changes right here in Atlanta.C. Trent Perry (the owner) has over 27 years of experience developing and managing career transition programs. He is recognized as an authority on the job market and on designing and implementing successful career change strategies for individuals and with employers who are downsizing. He has been interviewed by CNN, CNBC, CBS, and ABC national and local affiliates and a variety of newspapers and other print media on a wide range of career management topics.Trent takes a personal interest in and is involved directly with each client’s career transition strategy. He is a hands on owner and takes your success as his mandate.

Archived press releases – March 4,2002 Atlanta Job Hunters Find Small Businesses Yield Big Dividends

Archived news – Finance Canada

June 24, 2002
June 6, 2002
New York,/PRNewswire
Atlanta, Ga. (March4,2002)- Atlanta job hunters should not discriminate based on company size, according to Trent Perry, CTP Enterprises, a career management firm.

“Atlanta’s biggest employers are actually its smallest businesses,” said Trent Perry, whose company helps professionals and executives with job searches. “Exclusively targeting major corporations will severely limit your options.”

Seventy-seven percent of the businesses in Atlanta’s metropolitan area employ 10 people or less. Only two percent employ more than 100 people.

“Learning to sell your skills to small companies will open up more job opportunities and possibly enhance your earning potential,” said Mr. Perry.

Here are his tips for succeeding in the small business arena.

Go straight to the top – It’s likely the owner/operator also makes all of the hiring decisions.

Demonstrate that you can multi-task – In small businesses, everyone wears several hats. Emphasize the variety of work you can do.

Keep your ego in check – Everyone has to pitch in to do whatever needs to be done. The president needs to be as willing to answer the phone as the next person.

Understand the culture – Small businesses are often family operations with a close-knit environment.

Indicate that you are flexible – With a small infrastructure, any employee may be called upon for crisis management. Show that you are willing to drop what you are doing to focus on urgent needs or projects.
Use creative salary negotiating techniques – If the compensations is smaller that at a major corporation, determine what you might like instead. Consider flexible hours, increased training or delayed compensation in the form of bonuses in exchange for increasing revenue or cutting costs.

Archived News – Closing Bell Transcript of Trent Perry on CNBC’s Closing Bell

Tyler Mathisen, Co-anchor:
Coming up next, college grads facing the most daunting job market in years.

Maria Bartiromo, co-anchor:
Yeah, we’ll get some tips on how college grads can stay out of the unemployment line and find out how to get a job and a career. Back in a moment.

Commercial break

Mathisen:
College grads facing the toughest job market in years. Launching a career, let alone finding a job, can be a very difficult thing these days. But one career management expert says it doesn’t have to be that way. Trent Perry joins us now…

Mr. Trent Perry: That’s correct.

Mathisen: Trent…thanks for coming by.

Mr Perry: Thank you.

Mathisen: Let’s cut to the bottom line, what’s best way to find a job today?

Mr. Perry: Well I think it’s important to, first of all, make sure that you have a real effective resume presentation for your skills. Young people need to assess their background, their experience, everything they can into a marketing design that will be effective in identifying their skills and allowing managers to see the value of their background. And then they have to, basically, use all the options they can, including the Internet. But also, in terms of looking at other non-traditional employers like larger corporations. I think they need to look also at smaller businesses for today’s opportunities. Smaller businesses are hiring a lot of recent grads.

Bartiromo: Mr. Perry, Wall Street has been certainly a landing place for many college grads over the last 10-year period or so. Do you see that trend reversing? Do you think that given the fact that Wall Street has been now, over the last two years, among the biggest job layoff, you know, that’s where the layoffs have been coming from? Do you think people will be changing their majors, changing their focus, maybe going into law or other professions?

Mr. Perry: I think there could be a lot of that. I think there are a lot of young people going into graduate degree programs now because the economy is so soft.

Graphic on screen





Mr. Perry: I think that Wall Street and other industries have shown that they’re cutting back some- somewhere in the neighborhood of 30 percent to 40 percent in some cases in terms of hiring recent college graduates. So I suspect Wall Street would be in there with the rest of the industries.

Graphic on screen

Mathisen: Let’s talk a little bit about small business. What kinds of small businesses are hiring? And are we talking about going to someone, a local machine tool shop if you’re an accountant and seeing what kind of work you might be able to do for them or what ever?

Graphic on screen

Mr. Perry: I think across all industries there’s a lot of small businesses that have significant needs for people. There are approximately four times the number of businesses under 100 employees than there are businesses over 100 employees, so there’s a lot more businesses out there.

Graphic on Screen

Mathisen: Don’t small businesses employ something like 80 percent of the nation’s work force or 85 percent? I mean, it’s a huge number.

Mr. Perry: It’s a large percentage. It’s a large percentage. And admittedly a lot of those companies are small businesses, very small, and may not be taking on college graduates in professional opportunity areas.

Graphic on screen

Mr. Perry: But there are a lot of opportunities in the service industry, the retail, the manufacturing settings and so forth. There’s a lot of opportunity that we just aren’t looking for.

Graphic on screen

Bartiromo: What, in your opinion, are the must have qualifications that can get you into a broad range of industries? When a candidate comes for a job – I mean, what are the qualifications that really impress you regardless if it’s small business, Wall Street, law?

Mr. Perry: I think the willingness to make a contribution to their employer. I think so many young people are so anxious to get their career started and so forth, they have to realize that the important part of developing a career relationship with their employer is to define what the employer wants out of them and then make sure that they deliver that type of service or that type of work effort. Too many times they just sit back and wait for their job requirements to be outlined. I think it’s important to take some initiative and communicate with your employer. Communication is very important.

Mathisen: I want to get your thoughts on two thinks

Mr. Perry: Mm-hmm.

Mathisen: One is should a perspective employee ever take a job that they think is beneath them, number one? And, number two, should they consider taking jobs that may not be permanent, may not have benefits or part-time, temporary or what for?

Mr. Perry: I’ve seen a lot of young people do very well by going into temporary contract positions and working their way up into permanent employment. Sometimes it’s necessary with young college graduates leaving with college debt and the lack of opportunity and sometimes in major corporations and traditional career paths it is important to get to work and begin planning your career. But don’t stop and not continue to look for better opportunities to grow your career professionally.

Bartiromo: Mr. Perry, good to have you with us. Thanks so much for your insight.
Mr. Perry: Thank you.

Archived News – Fox, Boston WBIX-AM (FOX) 1060 BOSTON

Mark Mills, anchor: And if you’ve been out looking for work there are a lot of ways you can go. A lot of folks are using the internet these days. But the question is how effective is the internet in finding a job? There seems to be a lot of stuff out there, but can you actually get a job that way? And we’re gonna talk about that now with Trent Perry……Trent welcome to the program.

Trent Perry: How are you Mike?

Mills: Thanks for joining us. Tell us what some of the findings were about the use of the internet among job-seekers.

Mr. Perry: The findings basically reinforce some of the things that we’ve been working with as a organization for decades. It was surprising to some extent that so few people are being effective in their job search using the internet resources. We found that only about four percent of all the people that made job changes in the last five years actually found their jobs from a internet job site like Monster.com., which is a very low percentage when you compare it to all the numbers of people that are using it right now.

Mills: With so many jobs listed on-line and so many people looking, why do you think there are so few marriages consummated?

Mr. Perry: Well, I think it’s the fact that many of the best jobs are simply not advertised through traditional mediums. Whether it is newspapers or internet job sites and so forth. And it has always been the case that most of the best jobs are opportunities that are uncovered through networking and various typ0es of pro-active approaches of getting out there and putting together a good resume, and introducing that resume through a networking process that’s gonna effectively uncover a lot of those jobs that were not advertised.

Mills: Any sense of whether there were more people making the internet connection during the internet boom when we had so many companies competing for workers that I might have been easier using the internet now when employers can be a little more selective that they might not be as reliant on the web?

Mr. Perry: I think there’s something to that. I understand that the net increases in people being on the internet for job hunting purposes has increased exponentially in the last five years. And so probably five years ago there were far fewer people engaged in looking for opportunities using the technology than today. The numbers are just growing by the millions. And I think that probably has had an effect on it.

Mills: We’re talking about finding jobs on the internet and Trent Perry is our guest….,they are in Atlanta and this is a career management firm. So are you folds Trent, helping people find work or what role do you play in the employment process?
Mr. Perry: Yes we do. …..Our organization is involved in working with individuals, mid-level and senior-level professionals and managerials to identify their skills, develop a career direction, package them in a strong resume presentation, and develop pro-active networking strategies to help them be successful in making career changes.

Mills: What are you seeing right now in terms of inflow of business to your company? There must be lot of people out of work and looking who would want to get a good strong team helping them find a new job. Is that showing up in more traffic at your place?

Mr. Perry: We’ve been busy, we’re a growing organization …. And we’re working with a lot of people and especially out of the technology sectors. And we’re also finding a lot of opportunities for mid- and senior- level professional managerials, people in the smaller business sector, which has created far more jobs than the larger companies have in the last decade.

Mills: We hear this recovery being described as a jobless recovery and we’ve seen the net number of jobs drop in the lst few reporting periods. Are there some jobs out there? Are people finding work?

Mr. Perry: Yes indeed Mark they are. What we seeing a lot of is a restructuring of a lot of large corporations across various industries and a lot of consolidations and globalizations of our economy, and a lot of job loss due to technology and innovation in companies today. And so there has been a net loss in some of the larger corporations. But there is still job growth in smaller growth companies, people just have to be resourceful to look at some of the smaller companies as opposed to going at some of the large companies that we know are down-sizing.

Mills: And just in the last minute or so Trent, what about people in their 50s, is that a particularly hard group to place in jobs these days because of being laid off?

Mr. Perry: Well, it has been challenging. But if you take a look at their background across the different skill sets that they’ve had, and some of the industry experience that they’ve had, and you get a good grasp at what skills they have,. You can re-direct some of those skills, perhaps away from those larger corporations into some of the smaller growth business or the growth industries, and you help them with communicating those skill outside of the industry that they’ve been a part of, we’ve been very successful with this group.

Mills: Alright Trent Perry thank you for being with us….

Mr. Perry: Thank you Mark.
Mills: Trent Perry….in the area of job placement.

5 Ways to Get Your Résumé Noticed By Mark Lowery

© DiversityInc 2007 ® All rights reserved.
Ten to 15 seconds. That's how much time a hiring manager or the first person reading your résumé is likely to devote to it. In that short period of time, that person will likely decide whether your résumé is worth passing along or if it should be deleted from the inbox. What's on your résumé, what's not on it, and its overall presentation may seal your fate. Should you mention diversity-related experiences? Would you, for example, want to mention that you are a member of the National Council of La Raza or the National Urban League? Would this benefit or hurt you? Here are some tips to help get your résumé noticed: 1. Highlight diversity connections Millette Granville, a diversity-recruiting strategist at Wachovia, No. 11 on The 2007 DiversityInc's Top 50 Companies for Diversity® list, says the interview is really the best forum for job seekers to highlight diversity-related experiences, skills and other factors that a prospective employer would consider a value-add to their organization. Including information about your diversity or your commitment to diversity in your résumé can't hurt, as it will only increase your chances of identifying the type of employer that truly supports and embraces diversity. "Job seekers should pride themselves in sharing information about their diverse affiliations and community involvement with potential employers. Sharing this information helps to demonstrate leadership and a commitment to the communities in which they live," Granville says. 2. Make it 21st-century-employer-friendly Jaclyn Kokores, manager of client services at Valerie Frederickson & Company, an HR consulting firm in Menlo Park, Calif., suggests writing your résumé in both MS Word format and HTML format. She says you should use the MS Word version for print and e-mail, and HTML when posting online. "Forget PDF versions-these files are bulky and difficult to read," she says. 3. Use action verbs C. Trent Perry, president and founder of CTP Enterprises in Atlanta, a career-management-services company, says your résumé should include action words such as "saved," "reorganized," and "improved." Kokores agrees. "Both employers and search engines scan documents for key words and phrases that describe a candidate's skills and abilities. Don't worry about repetition as long as it is not gratuitous," Kokores says. She suggests starting sentences or bullets with words such as founded, designed, organized, completed, implemented, created or built. 4. Gear it toward future career goals To move your career to the next level, your résumé should read like an argument with supportive evidence. "I am good at X because I have experience in Y and Z," Kokores says. She suggests breaking your résumé into two parts-skills and experience-with the skills part at the top. "The experiences section (Y and Z) should back this up. By writing the skills section first, and then tailoring the experiences to this, a candidate can build a résumé that is focused on what they want to do," Kokores says. Perry suggests "spinning" or highlighting the part of your experience that fits with the qualifications of the job you're seeking. "It's a sales process," he says. "You have to have a marketing strategy to continue growing in your career." 5. Eliminate needless items Employers don't want to have to take the time to pick through the fluff to find the true value of a résumé. What can go? Start with bullets that don't identify the direct impact you made for the company. Also get rid of months. Instead, just provide the years you were at each job. And eliminate the "References available upon request." "Everyone has them and all employers know to ask when the time is right," Kokores says. Instead, choose a spot or two to include items that demonstrate your ability