Are you a learner or a dunce when it comes to discovering how to improve your job search and reduce the time it takes to find a new opportunity. Do you explore every blog, tweet, and discussion group capable of offering new ideas and injecting renewed energy into your job search?
Learner or a Dunce in Your Job Search
Or do you feel you know everything there is about doing an effective job search. Is your attitude “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks”. The funny thing is that in my 25 years of executive search, I’ve discovered more 55 year olds than have a passion for learning than 25 year olds. Learning, growing, expanding beyond your immediate knowledge or bubble is not age dependent. It’s a life long attitude about personal growth and learning (this could be a entire blog post just by itself).
Job Search Discussion Group
Brad and I facilitate a vibrant community on LinkedIn that is rapidly growing toward being one of the most active job search discussion groups on LinkedIn and the Internet.
Some of the topics of discussion include:
Job Search Networking
Marketing yourself
Job Search Personal Branding
Salary Negotiation
Thank You Letters and Follow-up with Hiring Managers
How to Prepare for an Interview
Acing the Phone Interview
Classic frustrations, errors, and mistakes most candidates make in their job search
How to get a recruiter to call you back
Join the Discussion Group
We also make special offers to this LinkedIn Group, including participation in job search teleconferences, special white papers, examples, and first look at new templates we develop, such as the 8-Point Success Matrix for Assessing the Effectiveness of Your LinkedIn Profile.
Join us today and jump right in by throwing out a question to the group, posting a comment on another discussion point, or adding a news link about a site, article, or blog posting you reviewed and thought would add value to the group.
Here’s the link to join our discussion Group on LinkedIn: IMPACT Hiring Solutions Job Search Discussion Group
There are number of really good discussion groups on LinkedIn regarding job search. You should be on all of them, including ours. If just one idea you can glean from the groups helps you take an entire month off your job search, the investment of time would have more than paid for itself.
Participating in on-line job search discussion groups gives you an opportunity to benchmark your own job search activities and success, bounce ideas off of other peers, learn about ideas that others have tried and you’ve never considered, and obtain leads and ideas of how to uncover those hidden jobs within companies for whom you would love to join.
Are you learner or a dunce when it comes to improving your job search?
Barry
A friend CEO recently reminisced about a conversation he had with his executive team. I thought this directly related to so many candidates that I felt compelled to share it with you.
The CEO said to his team, “In order to survive this market without cutting back we must “OUT” our competition. We must, out deliver, out perform, out service, out sell, out market, out price, out satisfy, out prepare and out them with every thing we do. We can’t leave anything to chance. If we don’t, many of our team will be out and ultimately we may be out.”
WOW, pretty powerful stuff. So how does this relate to you – the candidate.
You have to “out” your competition too, or as the CEO said, “You will be out.” In this case, out of the running for the job you not only want, but need.
So how do you “out” your competition? Two words, “Proper Preparation.” This in my opinion is the all time biggest reason candidates fail. The optimum word is “PROPER.” I didn’t say candidates don’t attempt preparation. I believe they do. The problem is that the preparation is so superficial and vague it is worthless. (See blog entry on “Where’s Wes – Not Waldo).
Here are a few tips on how to properly prepare:
- Proper preparation is NOT about researching every “trivial pursuit” fact about the company since it started in 1950. Good stuff to know, but when was the last time in an interview you were asked, “Tell me everything you know about the company?” I suggest never. Instead prepare for the questions you will be asked.
- Proper preparation is writing out complete and detailed answers to commonly asked questions. In case you missed it, writing out. Just to stress the point, writing out.
- Practice, practice, and then more practice. Just like all professional speakers, entertainers, professional sports players, and performers you must practice. They practice so much that it looks easy, unrehearsed, unscripted, succinct, points clearly articulated and engaging. Few candidates are good enough to wing it.
- Did I mention writing out the answers to the most commonly asked questions?
- List multiple accomplishments for every position. Multiple because an accomplishment for one company may not be an accomplishment in another. Accomplishments MUST include quantifiable results. Forgetting this part would be like forgetting the punch line in a joke.
- Video yourself in a mock interview. This will be a real eye opener for many.
If you want to “out” your competition you must be so well prepared and practiced that you stand out. You can’t leave anything to chance.
Final note for all of those now thinking, “I already know all this stuff.” Great, but are you doing it? We all know a lot of things, the problem is doing them. The bigger problem is doing them at such a high level of skill that they look easy.
To help you “out” your competition we provide a wealth of free resources and tools. Our free audio library is full of helpful subjects, the articles are free to download, our Linkedin discussion group expands the wealth of resources to other qualified people, and we constantly post new stuff to help you “out” the competition. Consider bookmarking our candidate FREE Resource page and check back at least weekly.
Our comprehensive job search workbook is FREE to read and implement the preparation tools and templates included. This will ensure you have the right preparation process. With a reader rating 4.25 out of 5 it is certainly worth considering.
If this was helpful please share it with your friends so they also benefit.
We encourage comments and look forward to your thoughts.
Hiring often starts with a phone interview. For candidates who don’t understand the unique subtleties of a phone interview it is often the end of the interviewing process. Using our DRESS UP model for conducting a phone interview will ensure you move on to the next step. We discuss the biggest reasons why many candidates fail the phone interview and give you solutions on how to “Win the Phone Interview.” Learn to win the phone interview and you will the job.
Adam Singer, writing today in his blog, The Future Buzz, used a lighthouse with it’s powerful lens as an excellent metaphor for networking on-line, particularly in using on social media, groups, discussion boards, and other communities to draw attention to yourself in your job search.
Adam uses this powerful metaphor and visualization to call attention to the importance of establishing your own personal brand in social networking, for both your success, career, and job search. He states:
A beacon is an intentionally conspicuous device designed to focus attention on a specific location.
Visualize what image the word beacon conjures in your mind: perhaps a lighthouse casting light onto an otherwise dark horizon, or a signal fire atop a hill illuminating the night sky. In the physical world, a beacon is used to draw attention, act as a guide, or call to action. Civilizations have long used them to rally citizens together, protect ships from coastlines, and act as signal points.
But the concept of a beacon is not limited to purely physical signaling points. There are beacons on the web – they are people, companies, networks, blogs, anything that can direct attention.
You must become a beacon or you are essentially at the whim of others who point attention at their own discretion, perhaps shining the light on you for fleeting moments…if you’re lucky.
You can read Adam’s full blog post at The Future Buzz.
Are you a beacon to others in your job search. Is the attention of hiring managers drawn to the light you cast?
If you missed our last post about using your LinkedIn Profile to become visible in your job search, you can still download the 8-Point Success Matrix for Your Job Search LinkedIn Profile. Within minutes, this matrix will help you to improve your existing LinkedIn Profile to become a bright beacon and attract the attention of recruiters, HR managers, and Hiring Managers in your job search.
Barry
Photo courtesy of Adam Singer at the Future Buzz
Your profile is like an on-line resume. If you’ve not taken the time to develop an in-depth profile on LinkedIn, you might be invisible to the searches that recruiters, human resource professionals, and hiring managers are conducting searching for people JUST LIKE YOU.
I recently dedicated one of our weekly Internet Radio Shows to this subject. Studies show that over 95% of all recruiters, human resources professionals, and hiring managers are using LinkedIn as a PRIMARY tool for finding and sourcing top talent.
All our past Radio Show Broadcasts are available in our FREE Audio Library.
- Is your profile powerful enough to stand out on LinkedIn and grab someone’s attention in a search, let alone even fall into the search parameters? Are you beige – do you fade into the background? Are you making your job search much more difficult by being invisible?
- Let’s do a check-up on your LinkedIn Profile:
- Do you include all your significant projects from prior jobs?
- Do you include all your major quantifiable results and outcomes?
- Is every leadership role, committee chair, group membership listed?
- Have you identified all your skills and competencies and then backed them up with concrete examples in your LinkedIn Profile?
- Have you loaded short PowerPoint Presentations through the Slideshare Application to convey your successes and accomplishments?
If you’re interested in the complete checklist for determining if your LinkedIn Profile is complete and capable of being found in a search to fill an open position, you can download our 8-Point Success Matrix for your Job Search LinkedIn Profile. This is a self-assessment scorecard for job search networking that will immediately indicate whether your LinkedIn Porfile is effective for job search and being visible to recruiters, HR managers, and Hiring Managers.
MOST IMPORTANT for your job search on LinkedIn: You’ve got to make it very easy for people to contact you by including your email address and phone number. As an executive recruiter, if you make me hunt on-line for how to contact you – I’ll just give up and move on to the next candidate.
Check out my profile or Brad’s profile. Join our LinkedIn Group for Job Search and check out the profiles of other great candidates that have already gone through this exercise.
Review our book titled “This is NOT the position I Accepted” – there’s a wealth of great information about leveraging yourself on-line and becoming visible. Our Home-Study Job Search Kit has audio programs, templates, the workbook, and a variety of tools to help you begin to improve your visibility in searches by hiring managers searching for people JUST LIKE YOU.
All these tools that LinkedIn makes available as part of your profile help you to become visible in the searches that recruiters, human resource professionals, and hiring managers conduct to source and find candidates. STOP being invisible – STAND OUT on LinkedIn for your job search.
Barry
Studies in recruiting and hiring indicate that over 95% of all recruiters, human resource professionals and hiring managers are using LinkedIn to search for top talent. Are you visible in their searches for candidates? Or are you beige – fading into the woodwork and invisible to recruiters and hiring managers? This episode of our weekly Internet Radio Show on Job Search and Hiring Top Talent dug deep into how you can easily become visible on LinkedIn to improve your job search to generate an abundance of job leads and referrals.
I just conducted one of our regular weekly Internet Radio Talk Shows. You can download the new audio broadcast from our website in our FREE Audio Library.
In this program we discussed the following topics and took questions from our audience regarding their job search issues about “Putting On Their Sales Hat”:
Plan Their Work
- Networking Plan
- Target Plan
- Group Participation Plan
- Research – hot industry’s/goggling hiring managers
Numbers Count!
- Well-Prepared to being their sales efforts
- Documents lined up
- Details/Research/Comparative Information – armed with right info
- Rehearsed and polished
The Interview/Presentation
- Quick Rapport/First Impressions
- Solution Selling – what’s your pain (should know this in advance – top 4 typical problems/issues for that role
- Enthusiasm/Energy – show your passion
Follow-up after the interview
- Thank You Notes
- Sending relevant information
- Networking
- Finding backdoors
We’ve got a wealth of tools on our website to help you Put on Your Sales Hat. Check out our Candidate Product Library – where we’ve taken this concept and built a structured workbook, templates, and audio programs.
Take a look at our Job Search Service Catalog where we’ve developed a series of coaching and assessment tools to determine if you’re effectively applying the concepts and methodology behind “Putting On Your Sales Hat”.
Finally, join our LinkedIn Discussion Group which provides a vibrant forum for posing questions and getting answers from other candidates conducting a job search and how their applying each of the key steps of our Career Success Methodology.
Barry
photo credit JL McVay
Understanding the 4 key best practices all top notch sales professionals use to attain success. Apply these sales best practices to your job search to cut your transition time in half. Ever wonder why some candidates can complete their job search in half the normal time, have an abundance of great job leads and referrals, and quickly find an outstanding opportunity? The reason why some candidates “succeed” in their job search and some “fail” miserably is that the most successful job search candidates apply the 4 key best practice of sales to their job search. These top caliber candidates “Put On Their Sales Hat” in their job searches.
I was recently speaking with a CEO client who shared this interviewing faux pa. I think candidates often believe we either make this stuff up or “I would never do that.” That maybe true, but are you making some other mistake and like this candidate never finding out about it.
My client was meeting a candidate in New York. The candidate arrives a few minutes late. “No big deal,” says the client. The candidate was a little frustrated for being late. He apologizes and explains there was a major accident and traffic was shut down. He shakes my clients hand and immediately says, “You might want to wash your hands, I could have Swine flu.”
End of interview.
By the way, this was a professional sales person at the manager level with at least 10 years of experience.
This is just one of many examples we have encountered in our collective 50 years as recruiters.
So here is my question for you, “What should this candidate have done?” It seems obvious to me, but apparently it isn’t to all candidates.
Would like your thoughts and comments.
For more information on interviewing tips and mistakes check out our free resources. We offer audio files from our talk radio show, articles and our most downloaded item “Winning the Phone Interview.”
I recently wrote a blog post for our Hiring and Retaining Top Talent Blog titled “A Baker’s Dozen of Techniques for quickly finding top talent on LinkedIn” When you review this list of the best practices of how employers and recruiters use LinkedIn to find top talent, are you guilty of not using all the tools LinkedIn provides for personal branding, networking, differentiating yourself from the competition?
Next Steps: Listen to our Home Study Job Search Course and work through the exercises to learn how to network on line and leverage LinkedIn, explore the FREE audio recordings of our Internet Radio Talk Show on using LinkedIn in your job search, or join our LinkedIn Discussion Group and focus on the topics related to using LinkedIn to “stand out”.
Tell us about a few of the stories of how you’ve landed a job or received a great job lead based on one of the Baker’s Dozen of Best Practices?
Barry
photo credit by Jill Murray
