At a recent networking meeting of fifty to sixty senior executives, all VP and C level, which included a mix of all corporate functions the following question was asked:
“How many of you are in sales?”
Only about 10% raised their hands, until someone flippantly yelled out, “We are all in sales.” The rest of the group then caught on and hands starting going up. Still, only about 50% raised their hands.
The moderator then followed-up with, “OK, what are you doing to demonstrate you are really in sales? For example, what books on sales have you read, how do you consciously incorporate sales into your search, how many have taken sales courses, courses on closing, written your resume with sales or marketing in the forefront of your mind, etcetera?”
Then he asked, “Anyone in finance and accounting, such as controllers or CFOs?” A few raised their hands.
His next comments brought the point home when he said, “So if I’m a sales professional, say a VP Sales and I’ve done a budget, I suppose I’m qualified for your job. I shouldn’t need any training, don’t need to read any books on accounting. I just say, ‘I’m a CFO’ and that makes me a CFO.”
Of course the group was snickering and laughing at such a silly statement. Yet they could all be sales people without any training. Isn’t that equally as ridiculous?
What they were really saying is, “When in-transition, everyone is in a sales role.” However, being in a sales role doesn’t make you a salesperson.
Most candidates don’t really know what it means to be a salesperson. They intellectually understand the concept, but don’t know how to take the concept and put it into practice.
Transition requires a candidate to change their perspective. Candidates have to understand that whether they call it sales or not, whether they are comfortable with it or not, they are not just in a sales role – they are a salesperson. They have moved out of their comfort zone and into a sales and marketing environment. Even salespeople don’t seem to grasp this concept while in-transition. It is for this reason that we recommend getting a sales and marketing consultant to assist you.
Just saying you are something doesn’t make you that. You need to learn how to become a salesperson. This includes, prospecting, overcoming objections, what a sales presentation is, knowing your competition and why you are better, identify why you are different from all the rest, having a sales pitch, and so much more. You need to read a few books on sales, attend a sales training webinar or course, practice your sales presentation, and get prepared just like a true professional salesperson does.
So please stop saying you are in sales and go out and become a salesperson.
Get our FREE Personal Job Search Self-Assessment Scorecard to find out if you are acting like a salesperson. CLICK HERE to download your FREE copy.
Download our FREE example of a cover letter to make sure you are selling to the what the customer (hiring manager) is really looking for. CLICK HERE.
Liz Lynch, over at The Smart Networking Blog, just posted a blog article by this very same title. This is one of my favorite phrases I use all the time in our Job Search Webinars, Workshops, Seminars, and Private Coaching.
Why do most job seekers base their job search on hope and luck?
This is NOT a strategy. Trying to “will” the phone to ring is NOT effective. Liz talked about a candidate profiled on CNN who submitted their resume over 600 times to job ads on job boards and had a response rate of around 2.5%. It’s a waste of time and a useless technique.
Yet, many job seekers continue to base their entire job search strategy on hope and luck centered around answering ads on job boards.
My experience in 25 years as an Executive Recruiter is that most candidates fall into the trap of answering ads and praying the phone will ring because of 3 reasons:
This is what they know and what they did 5 years ago. They are trapped in a tribal paradigm of conducting an out-dated job search.
They are unwilling to learn how to conduct an effective job search. They refuse to read the blogs of Barry Deutsch and Brad Remillard, Liz Lynch, Jacob Share, Dan Schwabel, Miriam Salpeter and the hundreds of other outstanding experts in resume writing, personal branding, networking, and interviewing. They don’t take advantage of the FREE audio recordings, videos on YouTube, and products and services offered by these award winning experts. I just wrote a blog post on this topic basically raising the question of “Don’t Be the One! Why is Job Search Like Playing a High School Sport?” focusing on why candidates mistakenly feel they have to go it alone in their job search?”
Although the techniques of conducting an effective job search are simple, the effort is intense. It requires long hours, hard work, and a disciplined approach. Most importantly, you’ve got to have a great plan and then work your plan. You can’t treat your job search like a hobby. Many candidates are NOT willing to work hard at finding a great job.
Brad and I recently released a new Scorecard to assess the effectiveness of your job search. It’s our FREE Job Search Plan Self-Assessment Scorecard. We were stunned when candidates started filling it out and sharing their “Score” with us. Very few candidates we discovered meet a minimum threshold for having a plan that will lead to an effective job search.
I challenge you to take the Self-Assessment – Score Yourself – See where the holes and gaps are in your job search plan. If you can fix these holes and gaps, you’ll be able to reduce the time it takes to find a great job.
The current popular buzzword of job search personal branding has taken on an almost mythical status. Almost every article and blog in the job search arena talks about personal branding. Yet, almost all the recommendations and suggestions are so generic that the advice on job search personal branding is NOTuseful.
Good intentions – not enough concrete step-by-step tactics for your job search!
Where do you start – what process do you use?
Are there forms or templates which organize your creation of a personal brand?
What are the best practices in job search personal branding?
What works and what doesn’t work?
How do you leverage your time to create the most powerful personal brand possible?
Most of the so-called “experts” miss the most important STEP in Job Search Personal Branding:
What do you have to do before creating a personal brand? How do you specifically STEP-BY-STEP build a defining document that leads to the creation of your job search personal brand. Telling you to create a personal brand is what I term a BHAG (pronounced Bee-HAG), which stands for Big-Harry-Audacious-Goal. BHAG objectives and recommendations sound like:
Get more sales
Achieve market share
Improve Quality
Achieve the gross margin goals
Raise the number of inventory turns
Establish a personal brand for yourself
The secret behind creating a powerful job search personal brand:
Start at the execution level INSTEAD of the BHAG level. Don’t worry about having a personal brand until you’ve gone through the rigorous process of defining who you are and what you want.
Thousands of job seekers who have read our new job search workbook, This is NOT the Position I Accepted (a step-by-step workbook to use the Career Success Methodology in your job search), have embraced the process of first creating a Personal Success Profile as the starting point in their job search. Every day, Brad and I receive email messages on how candidates conducting a job search have dramatically reduced the time it takes to find a new great job – and it all started with the creation of a Personal Success Profile.
Before you can develop a job search personal brand, you’ve got to go through the creation of a Personal Success Profile (PSP). This exercise in creating a PSP will help you to develop a strong personal brand, a networking plan, a targeted job search plan, and prepare for interviews. It becomes your guiding light that dictates every move you make in your job search, including how you create your personal brand.
Your Job Search Personal Success Profile defines your capability, competency, skills, knowledge, values – all the key elements a prospective employer might want to know about you. It captures the core elements of what differentiates you from your peers – part of which is your personal brand.
The PSP goes a step further in creating a definition of what’s important to you in a new job – from the type of boss for whom you might work to the type of culture in which you might flourish. This Profile identifies what you’re willing to sacrifice in accepting a new job and what items are non-negotiable. The PSP provides the foundation for your entire job search.
Brad and I have also discussed the need to start your job search by creating a Personal Success Profile in our weekly Radio Talk Show. You can listen and download our previous episodes to learn why creating a Personal Success Profile is the number one element of success in your job search.
If you’ve downloaded our FREE Job Search Plan Self-Assessment Scorecard as a tool to improve the effectiveness of your job search, you’ll notice that the first item on the matrix is whether you’ve developed a Personal Success Profile.
Barry
P.S. Don’t forget to join our LinkedIn Job Search Discussion Group to participate in learning how to reduce the time it takes to complete your job search, especially the discussions around developing a Personal Success Profile that leads to a powerful Job Search Personal Brand.
The debate rages on about using cover letters. Do I need one? What is the best format? What should be in it? Who do I address it to? How long should it be? And on, and on, and on.
I have asked many of my clients and other recruiters about their feelings on cover letters. For the most part with hiring managers and HR it is mixed. Some want them and others don’t care one way or the other. However, with recruiters there seems to be a more uniform consensus that recruiters don’t pay much attention to them. Given this I recommend when sending a resume directly to a company, hiring manager or HR to include a cover letter. When responding to a recruiter it isn’t that important, but if you have one ready go ahead and include it. Only don’t send it as a separate document, include in the same file as the resume.
The biggest problem with cover letters is the attempt to make them an addendum to one’s resume. Meaning that candidates often use the cover letter to add points that aren’t included in their resume, rather than re-writing the resume. This is completely WRONG. If the points are important enough to be in the letter, then they must be included on the resume.
The primary reason for a cover letter should be to present such a compelling case that the person reading it will get excited enough to take the time to actually read your resume. There is nothing more frustrating than to get all excited about a candidate from the cover letter, only to have the rug pulled out from this excitement when the resume doesn’t include any of these points. The reader is left wondering, where did these take place, how long ago, if they really did happen and they are that significant why aren’t they on the resume, guess the candidate didn’t think they were all that significant so as to re-write the resume, etc? As you can see it creates more questions than it answers.
It is critical you take the time and make the effort to re-write your resume with this information included. Don’t just send out the generic resume. If the cover letter gets separated from the resume you want to make sure the resume stands by itself.
You can download an example of a cover the we recommend using. This format has proven very successful. To get your FREE example CLICK HERE.
For more information on cover letters and resumes take a look at our “Complete Job Search Home Study Course.” We will send it to you so you can review it completely for just $14.95. Plus we will even pay the shipping to you and include a copy of our best selling book on your job search. To learn more CLICK HERE.
In almost 30 years as an executive recruiter, I have looked at at over 100,000 resumes and through our candidate university coached/instructed hundreds of candidates with their job search. One consistent theme in all of this is that candidates receive a lot of mixed messages on resumes. Too often candidates lose sight of the real purpose for this document or overemphasis its importance.
In a previous article,”Resumes Have Only One Purpose,” I wrote the only reason for a resume is to get an interview. That is all it is good for. It isn’t to get a job. Candidates forget this. As a result, they want to include a lot of unimportant and sometimes irrelevant information on the resume. You only need enough information on the resume to get an interview. Everything else is over kill.
This is why, “Traditional resumes are worthless.”
With all this extra information the important and relevant information is lost in the clutter. Most people only spend between 10 and 20 seconds on the first screen. If your resume doesn’t catch their eye in that time it is discarded.
We believe for this reason the important and relevant points have to stand out so they don’t get overlooked. There can’t be a lot of useless information cluttering up the resume.
The fact is every resume is simply a marketing document. Its purpose is to catch the reader’s attention, get to the reader’s underlying motivation, have them read it and invite you in for an interview. Sounds similar to any advertisement or marketing brochure.
Marketing whether in print or electronically doesn’t try and attract everyone with one advertisement. Companies well know as “marketing” companies, Nike, Coke, McDonalds, Apple have multiple ads each with a specific purpose to reach a specific customer. They are very targeted with the listener’s or reader’s motivations in mind. They rarely if ever assume one-size-fits-all.
Candidates resumes on the other hand often assume a one-size-fits-all. Most candidates put together a generic resume, all about them, with what they think is important and relevant, then cross their fingers and hope it gets to the reader’s underlying motivations. It rarely if ever does.
Change your paradigm about your resume. Begin thinking of it as a marketing document. Ask yourself, “Is this relevant to the specific needs of this hiring manager or company?” Have you targeted the reader’s motivation rather than yours? Do the bullet points hit the target like a bullet or more like a shotgun? Do the important and relevant points stand out? (Without highlighting or gimmicks). Are you helping them with their pain? Do the bullet points help them solve their problems? Is your resume about you or them?
For all those wondering, yes this means you may have more than one marketing document (resume). Just like companies do. There is no law that says you can’t. There is only one rule regarding resumes, everything on it must be completely honest and verifiable. That is it.
In summary, target your resume. Make it a marketing document instead of a resume. Get away from the generic traditional one-size-fits-all. Build a marketing document with the reader’s motivation in mind.
For help with your resume we offer a complete resume development system. The CDs, templates and examples will ensure you have a marketing document. To review our “Complete Resume System” CLICK HERE. Many charge as much as $500 for the generic one. Our complete system is less than 10% of that.
You can also download for FREE on our website our, “Job Search Self Assessment Scorecard.” Take the assessment and see how effective your search is and what you can do to improve in the areas you aren’t excelling.
Are Your Job Search Mistakes preventing you from conducting an effective job search? Is your job search taking too long? Learn how to overcome the Top Ten Job Search Mistakes to reduce the time it takes to find a great job. In a previous radio show, we discussed the first 5 of the Top Ten Job Search Mistakes. In this radio program, we discuss the back half of the Top Ten Job Search Mistakes. Stop falling victim to an ineffective job search, a job hunt that takes too long, and a lack of job leads and referrals. Discover the Top Ten Job Search Mistakes and the steps to overcome each one.
Join us every week Monday 11 AM PDT on http://www.latalkradio.com
For more free resources to help with your job search go to http://www.impacthiringsolutions.com
You’re probably wondering what your job search effectiveness has to do with high school basketball. It’s the start of the basketball season in California – be ready for lots of my corny basketball metaphors.
We have a saying on our Girls HS Basketball Team that goes like this “DON’T BE THE ONE!” This mantra we use in coaching basketball can be extended into an effective job search.
In our basketball program it means: don’t be the one that makes everyone else run more lines, do more push-ups, stay for an hour longer, or any other consequence for not living up to the expectations of the coaches.
Each of our 30 girls hold each other accountable to a higher level of standards (they hate to run). No one slacks off, cheats on drills, or pretends they are working hard. The peer pressure is intense – no one wants to prolong practice or do unnecessary work.
Many readers of our blog have probably played a high school sport. You know how the peer pressure and accountability works. However, you’re not in high school anymore. You can’t rely on your teammates. Who is holding you accountable right now to a higher set of expectations in your job search and forcing you to accept some form of a consequence for not meeting them?
I’ve been at this game (job search) for a quarter of century – I know it’s tough to conduct a job search. It’s painful, humiliating, and it requires you to do things most people just plain don’t enjoy – like networking, attending events, and asking for help.
If you are at a senior manager to executive level and not using a job search coach to hold you accountable, you could be taking 2X-3X longer to complete your job search. A good job search coaching program will keep you focused, hold you accountable, and open your eyes to job search opportunities that you may never have considered.
Are you the one who is procrastinating, not sending out regular emails/letters to your contacts, building your network with the right people, and preparing properly for interviews? You don’t belong to a team – it’s just you – so there is no peer pressure to hold you accountable. Should you be using a job search coach to help you reduce your job search by 20% – 30% – 50% compared to the length of time it’s taking your peer group?
Who’s coaching you and holding you accountable? One of the services we provide is a job search coaching program intended to leverage every available resource to help you reduce the time it takes to find a new job. Whether you use our service, or you pick another – the key is to improve the effectiveness of your job search through a job search expert.
Although I am a little biased toward our own job search coaching program, there are a number of outstanding coaches out there – many of whom I’ve referenced in our blog. Don’t procrastinate another day – find a job search coach and start reducing the time it takes to find a great job.
I wouldn’t begin to install new plumbing, code my own website, fix my own car – you get the idea.
Why would you consider “going it alone” in your job search?
This “I can do it myself approach” is what leads most candidates into a depressing cycle of not being able to conduct an effective quick job search that lands a great opportunity. Instead, for most their job search is a prolonged, cathartic, painful, protracted battle of walking a thin line between procrastination and seeing their savings rapidly evaporate.
Imagine for a moment if you could reduce the time it takes to find a new job by 1 month, 2 months, or 6 months. How much of your savings could you avoid spending if you could reduce the time it takes to complete a successful job search?
Start down the path of taking time out of your job search by downloading our FREE Job Search Plan Self-Assessment to determine if you are conducting an effective job search.
Liz wrote about why some job seekers might be falling short in their job search — and by extension – their career. Many candidates fall into what we call the “Circle of Transition” which is a difficult cycle to break where one jumps from one job to the next without an active management of their career. Frequently, they find themselves at the mercy of arbitrary management, poor job choices, and the economy.
Her recommendations, especially around building your contacts throughout your career is advice all job seekers should take to heart. It’s the focus of one of my favorite authors, Harvey MacKay, who wrote a book called “Dig Your Well Before You’re Thirsty” – a profound recommendation for job seekers – most of whom violate this basic idea.
The Job Search you are conducting right now is predetermined NOT by what you are doing right now, but what you’ve done over the last 2, 5, 10 years to prepare for this moment.
Imagine looking into the crystal ball and easily predicting how your job search and career will fare in the coming years. Liz suggests what you do now in your job, skill development, network creation, building industry relationships, is the primary element of success in your future job search. The economy will once again sour in 5, 10, or 15 years. Will you be ready or will you be a victim of the Circle of Transition.
Why do so few job seekers consider that job search and career management are efforts, tasks, and processes successful people engage in continuously (even when they have a good job) compared to those caught up in the circle of transition who only consider tasks related to job search and career management when they need a job.
Will you be the one out of work for 18 months again, or will you quickly land on your feet within months of being laid off with a great new opportunity?
Chad Levitt, a guest blogger at Dan Schwabel’s Personal Branding Blog posted a blog a few days ago titled “What is Your Digital First Impression?” Chad claimed that making a digital first impression was very similar to making a personal first impression. He inferred in the blog posting that when people are searching for you on google, those first few links that come back are your first impression.
By the way, Chad is an extraordinary authority figure on personal branding, particularly in networking and sales. His own blog at The New Sales Economy Blog is one of my favorite.
No disrespect intended, but I think Chad may have defined digital first impressions a little too narrow.
In a personal meeting, you typically have one chance to make a good first impression. Blow it – and it’s over. Rarely will you have another opportunity.
On-line, first impressions are radically different. Not only are your first impressions scattered across a wide array of sites, such as LinkedIn, Google, Facebook, forums, discussion groups, Twitter, and many other indexed sites/comments.
Not only is your first impression scattered across a wide variety of sites as compared to a one-time event in person, you also have the ability to constantly improve, manage, build, develop, and evolve your first impression on-line. What appears today in a Google Search is NOT what has to appear next week.
The major question is: are you continuously working on your digital first impression so that you can be “found” by buyers, hiring managers, senior executives, recruiters, and human resources?
Let’s tackle one small area of starting to more effectively manage your digital first impressions: A few months ago, we posted on our website an 8-point Success Matrix to evaluate the effectiveness of your LinkedIn Profile. The scorecard was intended to determine if your LinkedIn profile was strong enough to let you be found by hiring managers, recruiters, and human resources.
Our research around the use of LinkedIn as a Personal Branding Tool and for Job Search 1st Impressions was depressing. Less than 10% of those who took the challenge to assess their LinkedIn Profile using our Scorecard met the minimum standard for effectiveness.
If you would like to gain a deeper understanding if your LinkedIn Profile can be more effective in helping you to be “found”, download the LinkedIn Profile Self-Assessment.
Building a job search network is usually worthless since that is the end goal for most people. Contrary to popular opinion, size does not matter (at least initially). The most important goal of networking is engagement.
Regardless of whether you build your network on-line or off-line, you still need to provide value to your network. Keith Ferrazzi, Author and Blogger at “Who’s Got Your Back” writes in a recent blog posting about the need to be organized to “ping” your network.
Who do you want to communicate with? How often? What will you provide to your network?
The heart of any effective job search networking is to show your network you are a valuable member of their network. How do you do this? You do it through constant engagement.
Do you conduct drip-nurturing with your most important contacts to stay in front on them and have a “top of mind presence”? How often do you call, send interesting articles, provide links to good information, and focus on their specific needs?
Are you a connector in your network, constantly looking for ways to put people together that is mutually beneficial. Do you get constant requests to be connected with others in your network?
Can you publish information (such as through a blog) that your network might find valuable?
Once you take care of engaging with your job search network, you’ll be stunned at the abundance of job leads, referrals and opportunities that drop through the network into your lap. One of the most frequent complaints I hear from job seekers is “I have a large network, but I don’t get any leads – it doesn’t seem like it’s worth it to build a network”. Remember – the operative word is not building – it’s engaging!
Discover if your effective in your job search networking – both in traditional off-line networking activities and in on-line social media networking – to generate an abundance of job search leads, referrals and offers by downloading our Job Search Planning Scorecard. This FREE tool will help you focus on the most important steps to take in your job search, not just in job search networking, but across every dimension of your job hunt.
