Job Search Mistakes: Putting all your eggs in the Job Board Basket

Why do so many candidates focus their energy around responding to job board advertising. Here’s a great quote from an article I recently read:

“It’s a crap shoot at best, with success rates of landing jobs running at about 2-4%. Compare that to a success rate of over 60% for ‘word-of-mouth’ referrals.”

The article comes from a guest posting discussing 3 job search mistakes by former recruiter David Alan Carter. Everyone makes mistakes. That’s just part of being human. But if you’re in between jobs, you can ill afford too many of them.

80-90 percent of the jobs available – especially at the executive level are HIDDEN! They are never advertised on job boards. The only way to uncover them is through referrals of your network. If you’re building a powerful job search network capable of generating an abundance of job leads and referrals, you’re doomed to a CRAPSHOOT in your job search.

What’s your next step?

 Barry Deutsch

To see the full article, please go to www.greatresumesfast.com

How Do I Start a Job Search?

Q. I have only worked for one company in my career. Recently our company was sold and I’m not sure how to start a job search or even how to put together a resume. Where do I go to get help?

Like most things today the best place to start is the Internet. The good news is that there is a wealth of good information available on the Web and most of it is free. Google, “job search help” “resume writing” “job search networking” “where to start a job search” “how to start a job search” and you will be surprised at the amount of information available. On our website we offer an extensive amount of articles, audio files, examples to download, tools and resources to help you and the vast majority are free.

In addition, LinkedIn offers a tremendous amount of resources via the groups. Once you establish a profile on LinkedIn join some of the job search groups. These groups have great discussions, links to resources and many excellent professionals offering advice. All are free. Twitter is another wonderful resource. Set up an account and download the Twitter application Hootsuite. It is free. Once you do this simply set up columns for resumes, unemployed, interviewing, and jobsearch. You will then be able to view all the information professionals discuss using these subjects. Both LinkedIn Groups and Twitter are excellent resources to start learning about conducting a job search.

Finally, don’t forget the State’s unemployment department. They also offer many courses and support to help with these issues. Again, these are all free.

To download the free chapter on Conducting an Effective Phone Interview from our book “This Is NOT The Position I Accepted” CLICK HERE and then click on the Free Search Resources link.

How effective is your job search?  If you are not sure, download our free 8 Matrix Job Search Self-Assessment Scorecard. CLICK HERE and then click on the Free Search Resources link.

I welcome your thoughts and comments.

Brad Remillard

Starting a Job Search? Start By Knowing The Three Required “P’s”

Q. I’m just starting my job search after working for the same company for the last 20 years. What tips can you give me to help me get started and do it right?

I would start by knowing the three P’s required for an effective job search.

1) Presentation. I speak on this all the time. Candidates so often down play this or take it for granted. For some reason candidates just don’t focus enough energy here.  This is the most basic of basics. Remember, the most qualified person doesn’t always get the job. The person with the best presentation and some minimum level of qualification will often get the job.

2) Preparation. If the presentation is working, now it is time to start preparing. This is a big job and again so often taken for granted by candidates.

Prepare your marketing plan. Are you in the right networking groups? Maybe it is time to change the groups you are attending. Are you meeting the right people? Look back over the people you met within the last 3 months and evaluate who and what types of people have been helpful and those that didn’t provide any assistance. Identify companies and people you want to meet. Set up a plan to meet them. If you contacted a company 6–8 months ago things may have changed, so consider reconnecting or finding another way into the company.

3) Practice. This is probably the most important of the three “P’s.” Everyone has heard, “Practice makes perfect.” Well this applies in a job search. Practice your body language, how you use your voice to stress points, answering succinctly, and the important questions you want ask.

Practice exactly how you are going to answer the standard questions asked in just about every interview. I always have the candidates I coach write out complete answers to these. Then we practice them until the candidate has succinct answers. These should be so well rehearsed that they come off as if it is the first time you answered the question.

To download the free chapter on Conducting an Effective Phone Interview from our book “This Is NOT The Position I Accepted” CLICK HERE and then click on the Free Search Resources link.

How effective is your job search?  If you are not sure download our free 8 Matrix Job Search Self-Assessment Scorecard. CLICK HERE and then click on the Free Search Resources link.

I welcome your thoughts and comments.

Brad Remillard

Is Your Job Search Updated For This Decade?

Robyn Greenspan published a recent article on Huffington Post about what has changed over the last 6 plus years for executive job search.

A lot has changed. Brad and I find that most executives are STILL conducting their job search like it was the mid-90s. That doesn’t work any longer for conducting an effective job search. How are you using new techniques, best practices, social media, and other tools to work your job search that you didn’t use 6 or more years ago?

Here’s an excerpt from her article:

What has changed in the 6-and-a-half years since their last job search? Here are the problems job seekers recently told ExecuNet they were encountering, and our solutions to mitigate them:

Not enough opportunities found at their level – This complaint is not surprising since the large majority of $200K positions are not openly posted, for fear that the recruiter will be inundated with unqualified résumés. Use job boards to research companies, but use your network to find and create roles.

Taking longer to land – You can easily shorten your transition time if you are in a perpetual state of career management. C-level executives always have an eye out for the next business partnership opportunity and so should the professional who is effectively managing his or her career.

Available positions are put on hold – “On hold” does not necessarily mean “eliminated” so stay connected to the recruiter/hiring manager and ensure they continue to see you as the solution to their problems. That doesn’t mean regularly checking in to see if the position has been re-opened; instead keep them apprised with market trends and relevant information.

Recruiters are not returning calls – Friends and acquaintances generally return calls; people you call out of the blue for jobs, might not. Establish relationships with recruiters well before you need something.

No multiple offers to consider – Just over half of the ExecuNet-surveyed executive recruiters reported that candidates had more than one offer to consider, up from 35 percent in 2010. Adjust your job search activities to reflect contemporary conditions and you might have more options, too.

What are you doing different in this job search vs. the last one you did over 6 years ago?

Barry Deutsch

If you would like to read the full article, please click the link below:

Robyn Greenspan: How to Update Your Job Search Strategy to Land Faster.

Resume Tweaking May Be Better Than An Overhaul

I was meeting with a candidate today, we will call him Andy, who recently landed. He had been on the market for about 5 months. He did all the right things, went to the networking meetings, drank more coffee than he should have, reworked his resume over and over, all for nothing. He would get interviews but never make the cut. He had sent out lots of resumes with moderate success.

About 2 months ago I met with Andy and a group of financial professionals, mainly CFOs,  to do a resume review exercise. You might try this exercise.  Everyone brings their current resume and passes them face down to the person next to them. Then at the same time everyone turns the resume over and for 10 seconds reviews them. After 10 seconds all resumes go  face down again. The next step gets to the real purpose for the exercise. The person that read the resume for 10 seconds gives feedback on exactly what they learned about the person’s background, companies, position, location and any other information they took away in that short period of time. Why you ask? That is about how long most people first look at a resume, so the purpose is to find out if the person reading the resume for 10 seconds captures from the resume what the owner of the resume wanted them to. If not, then they need to change the resume.

After the meeting I started working with Andy as part of our Job Search Coaching program. The first thing I noticed was Andy’s resume had him as a CFO. The reality was that compared to other CFOs in the group Andy could not compete. He was really a controller. Andy was trying to play at a level that he wasn’t competitive.  He lost out every time, either when the resume was submitted, or during the interview.

We made a small tweak to his resume by taking off  all references to CFO and changed them to controller. Everything else remained the same. Within two weeks Andy started getting interviews and within 6 weeks he was working. He credits all of the activity and the job to this one tweak of his resume.

Sometimes one small change can make all the difference. Make sure you are playing in the right league. Andy wasn’t, and his resume clearly communicated that. Like most candidates I coach, candidates think only about themselves and not the competition. Andy had clearly done this. He would have been working months earlier had he thought about this.

To download the free chapter on Conducting an Effective Phone Interview from our book “This Is NOT The Position I Accepted” CLICK HERE and then click on the Free Search Resources link.

If you would like to know if your job search is fully utilized and you are doing the right things, download our free 8 Matrix Job Search Self-Assessment Scorecard. CLICK HERE and then click on the Free Search Resource link.

I welcome your thoughts and comments.

Brad Remillard

Changing Industry Can Be Done

Question: Most of my career is in financial services. I want to get out of that industry and into healthcare. What is the best way to make this transition?

Making an industry change in this economy is difficult, unless you have one of those jobs in which the skills required are not industry specific. That means that your skills and training are easily transferable to another industry. The issue you have to overcome is that your competition for an opening will probably include people already in the healthcare industry. Most companies will look at those with industry experience first.

The best way to make an industry change is through networking. You need to build relationships with people in the industry. To do this consider attending professional associations, joining networking groups in healthcare, attending trade shows or conferences, and connecting with healthcare people in your local area via LinkedIn.  As they get to know you they will be able to determine how your strengths, outside the healthcare industry, can apply to the problems they need solved in their company. In this case going through recruiters or submitting resumes via ads are long shots.

There are some barriers you should think about overcoming when changing industries, assuming your skills are not easily transferable. The first one is compensation. Chances are you are more valuable in the financial services industry than in healthcare. Therefore, the position will probably be at a lower level and so will the compensation. Secondly, some additional training and education may be required.

Join our Linkedin Job Search Networking Group. 6,000 other people are benefiting from the discussions and articles. CLICK HERE to join, it is free.

Turbo-charge your search  by evaluating its strengths and weaknesses with our FREE Job Search Plan Self-Assessment Scorecard. This will help you and your accountability partner get your search started out right. CLICK HERE to download your scorecard.

Need a great cover letter? A free sample cover letter that has proven to get you noticed is on our Web site for you to use with your resume. CLICK HERE to download yours.

If this was helpful, then please help others by forwarding it on to your network, posting it on your Facebook page, Tweeting with the link, or posting to your Linkedin groups or status update.  Let’s all do everything we can to help those looking for employment.

I welcome your comments.

Brad Remillard

Distinguishing Yourself From All The Others

Question: What is the best way for an executive to distinguish themselves from all the other executives chasing the same positions?

This is one of the most important issues all candidates must tackle during a job search. In today’s job market companies are very specific when hiring. You cannot be a jack of all trades. You must be the king or queen of your trade so it is imperative that you determine what distinguishes you from others.

Most candidates have a hard time doing this for fear of being excluded from a possible position. I disagree. Candidates should find their sweet spot and build a search around that, instead of around some long shot opportunity that might come their way.

I have coached many executives and they all have something that makes them unique. It may be international experience, M&A, turnarounds, startups, changing a company’s culture from dysfunctional to one that thrives on success, a specific technology, and so on. I recommend you survey your peers, bosses, customers, vendors, subordinates and trusted advisors for what they believe distinguishes you from other executives. With that information you can build your brand and job search around those distinguishing characteristics.

Join our LinkedIn Job Search Networking Group. 6,000 other people are benefiting from the discussions and articles. CLICK HERE to join, it is free.

Turbo-charge your search  by evaluating its strengths and weaknesses with our FREE Job Search Plan Self-Assessment Scorecard. This will help you and your accountability partner get your search started out right. CLICK HERE to download your scorecard.

Need a great cover letter? A free sample cover letter that has proven to get you noticed is on our Web site for you to use with your resume. CLICK HERE to download yours.

If this was helpful, then please help others by forwarding it on to your network, posting it on your Facebook page, Tweeting with the link, posting to your LinkedIn groups or status update.  Let’s all do everything we can to help those looking for employment.

I welcome your comments.

Brad Remillard

How to show 40 years experience on a two page resume

These questions are from readers of my weekly column in the Orange County Register. It appears every Tuesday in the business section and on-line at www.ocregister.com

Q. What is the best way to show 40 years of experience on a résumé and still keep the length to two pages?

A. I recommend showing in chronological order your last 10 to 15 years of experience. For experience before that, simply list your companies, job titles and dates. For most candidates, their most recent experience is what recruiters and hiring managers are interested in.

Let’s face it: Your experience 40 years ago should not be all that relevant. I hope in that 40-year time frame you have grown. You should question whether this is the right position for you if the company’s decision is based on what you did 40 years ago, when compared with the last 15 years.

There are exceptions to this. If you believe some experience 40 years ago is important to the new role, I recommend expanding that relevant experience in your résumé.

Q.  Most of my career is in financial services. I want to get out of that industry and into health care. What is the best way to make this transition?

A. Making an industry change in this economy is difficult, unless you have one of those jobs in which the skills required are not industry-specific, meaning your skills and training are easily transferable to another industry. The issue you have to overcome is your competition for an opening will probably include people in the health care industry. Most companies will look at those with industry experience first.

The best way to make an industry change is through networking. You need to build relationships with people in the industry. To do this, consider attending professional associations, joining networking groups in health care, attending trade shows or conferences and connecting with health care people in your local area via LinkedIn. As they get to know you, they will be able to determine how your strengths outside the health care industry can apply to the problems they need solved in their company. Recruiters and submitting résumés via ads are long shots.

There are some barriers you should think about overcoming when changing industries, assuming your skills are not easily transferable. The first one is compensation. Chances are you are more valuable in the financial services industry than health care. Therefore, the position will probably be at a lower level and so will the compensation. Secondly, some additional training and education may be required.

I welcome your thoughts and comments. If this was helpful please forward to your network and connections on LinkedIn or facebook.

Brad Remillard

Why You Must Use a Job Search Coach

I received a note from one of our LinkedIn Job Search Discussion Group members today. By the way, if you’re not currently a member of our popular LinkedIn Discussion Group, you can join by clicking this link. He posed a great question after reading my latest blog postings on why it’s important to have an executive job search coach.

You can read the previous blog post on job search coaching by clicking the link here.

Here’s the question that was posed in the LinkedIn Discussion Group:

Just curious, what specifically could a job search coach instruct a talented executive to do that they don’t already know how to do themselves? Maybe the talent level of the executive plays a big part!

I’m going to assume that I did a terrible job making the point in my blog posting that in most cases, executives need a job search coach to help them conduct an effective job search.

Here’s my first recommendation (which by the way I suggested in the previous blog article):

Take our FREE 8-point self-assessment of your job search. If you can’t score in the upper levels consistently on every single item – you’re a candidate for job search coaching. You can download the FREE job search self-assessment by clicking here.

Let’s now assume you’ve taken the assessment and like most executives, your job search is only about 40-60% effective. This translates into the fact that if you had conducted an effective job search in the first place, you could have found a role most likely in 6 months – instead it’s now a year later and you find yourself back at square one with no real prospects.

What Can a Job Search Coach Do For YOU?

The next step is to determine if a job search coach can do something for you that you can’t do for yourself. A job search coach (such as the work Brad and I do with executives) can help in two fundamental ways:

1. The job search coach can provide specific recommendations, techniques, and strategies that you are either not aware of OR are not effectively executing.
2. The job search coach can hold you accountable to the multitude of job search tasks that must be completed daily and weekly to find a great opportunity quickly.

Let’s take a specific example to bring the dialogue down from 40,000 feet at a generic level to a precise illustration. This example is one tiny element of an overall effective job search:

One of the many tasks I do with my clients in job search coaching is to review the capability of their existing network to generate an abundance of job leads and referrals. One tiny element of this assessment/evaluation and improvement involves breaking down all your network contacts that you track (in ACT, Outlook, Goldmine, LinkedIn) and putting them in specific buckets.

Trusted Advisors as Networking Contacts

Let’s zoom down and get more specific in terms of one of the buckets or categories:

Trusted Advisors selling services to your future boss.

These Trusted Advisors are high level professionals who have a deep trust level with their clients – and their clients share lots of information, make requests, give and receive referrals in areas that have nothing to do with the Trusted Advisors’ functional expertise.

Why are Trusted Advisors an important networking contact “bucket” or category for executive job seekers?

Keep in mind that the hidden job market is roughly somewhere between 70-85% of all executive jobs (depending on where you get your information). At a minimum, 70% of all jobs you might be interested in are NOT published on job boards or advertised in the newspaper. Imagine what happens the next time a Trusted Advisor calls on a CFO and the CFO says “We’re looking at hiring a controller, who do you know?”

You want to be that referral.

Before that referral to you gets made, there are many steps to go through – including being able to identify the Trusted Advisor in the first place.

Unfortunately, less than 10% of all professional service providers could be tagged as a Trusted Advisor.

One of my tasks as a job search coach is to help guide you to identify the majority of trusted advisors in your geographic area that are selling services to your future boss. We’re just talking identification at this stage – we haven’t even moved to discussing the process of introduction, engagement, nurturing, and generating job leads and referrals from this specific networking “bucket” or category.

If I am a Trusted Advisor working for a payroll processing company and I suggest to the CFO that he/she should speak with you about their current controller opening – you’ve got an instant interview based on the strength of that Trusted Advisor Relationship. That’s the value of networking with not just anyone who sells services to CFOs – but rather networking with those who have the added credibility of being a Trusted Advisor.

I see from looking at your profile that you are a Controller. Let’s assume one of the titles for your future boss will be CFO. Who in your city or community sells payroll processing services to CFOs at the size of company you might be interested in joining? Now let’s expand our list to who are the top trusted advisors selling benefit programs, 401K processing services, temporary accounting services, CPA (tax and accounting/auditing) services, banking professionals? The list probably has 20-25 categories. You should have in your network the top 3 people for EACH of those categories.

The Value of a Job Search Coach

So, now let’s return to “what’s the value of a job search coach?”  Here come some tough and introspective questions:

• Have you done this assessment of your network for trusted advisors?
• Have you made dramatic gains over the last 30 days in adding to your network these trusted advisors?
• Do you have the 60-75 trusted advisors in your network that are selling high level services directly to CFOs?
• Could you build this component of your network on your own within the next 30-60 days?
• Have you gone through an exercise to identify who the very best, well connected, influencers are in your local community selling services/products to CFOs?
• Who is missing from this bucket of network contacts?
• What’s your precise strategy to connect, engage, nurture them – and ultimately get them to open up their rolodex to you for job leads and referrals?
• Could you come up with a detailed plan to connect, engage, and generate numerous hot referrals on your own from Trusted Advisors?
• Have you even thought about how this is one of numerous high value activities and tactics in your job search?
• Do you have a specific written plan that you follow daily/weekly to build the “trusted advisor” bucket of your network?
• Have you established metrics to measure the effectiveness of this networking strategy and do you have corrective options and back-up plans?
• Have you established daily and weekly “stretch” goals for yourself around building your network with trusted advisors?
• Who is holding you accountable to hitting those goals and objectives every week? What’s the pressure, consequence, reprimand if don’t hit the goals. Do you have someone giving you “tough love?”

That’s a lot of detail and work to build your Trusted Advisor Network – and it’s only one small component of an overall effective job search.

Imagine a job search coach walking you step-by-step through hundreds of similar activities, tactics, and strategies.

The number one problem in whether to use a job search coach, such as myself or Brad, is that most executive job search candidates are “unconsciously incompetent” (see my previous blog posting on this subject by clicking the link here) – you don’t know what you should be doing to conduct an effective job search.

I would be willing to wager a bet that most executive job search candidates have not even considered this as a strategy, or if they have – there is confusion over how to get started (unconsciously incompetent).

How many other powerful and impactful job search strategies are you MISSING because you’re too proud to admit that maybe someone with the right expertise could offer a lot of value to you?

I couldn’t pretend for a moment that I could do your job as a Controller – why would you believe that you could do the job of an expert in the area of job search coaching?

I don’t mean for this to turn into a personal selling message. Whether it’s me, Brad, or some other job search coach – the key point I would like to end this message on is that for most executives it is critical to hire a job search coach to help you navigate the changing job search landscape in one of the worst job markets since the great depression.

Barry Deutsch

2 Major Job Search Problems You Can Fix This Week

A lot of my ideas come from personal experience.  Some directly as a part of my 2007 job search experience, some from my 18 years as a hiring manager and some that originate in life and remind me of either of those two.

Here is an example of the last one from this morning.

I woke to the sound of a beeping smoke alarm.  Now if this has happened at your home, you know that it likely is a battery issue.   And you know how frustrating it can be to stand under each detector waiting for it to beep.

That way you know which battery to change.  Before you pull your hair out.

Not only is it annoying to wait.  It is also incredibly inefficient.

And job seekers are making these same mistakes.  Every day.

Job seekers have two major problems.   They wait for others.  And they act with a surprising lack of efficiency.

Having been there, I know.  And meeting with 10-12 job seekers a week, I see it.  So today my goal is to alert you to the problems.  And then point you to some resources to help you solve them.

Problem #1 – Job Seekers Are Waiting

Just like my waiting under each smoke detector for the beep, job seekers spend too much time waiting.  Waiting for others to impact their search.

Waiting for:

–   recruiters to find them a job
–    a job search engine to return a relevant result
–    the blind resume blitz to turn up a hidden job

In my experience, successful job search isn’t about waiting.  It’s about taking action.  And while there are times in job search when patience pays off, generally you are rewarded for constant and smart activity.

Problem #2 – Job Seekers Are Inefficient

Most job seekers I meet with don’t have specific goals.  They act with impulse.  And do what feels right each day.  They apply for jobs even if not qualified, they socialize at networking events and, while they have a profile on LinkedIn, they don’t actually use the tool for what it is intended.

So set goals for your job search process.  Monthly, weekly daily goals to keep you focused.  And measure your ability to stay on track.

If you are on LinkedIn, use it to find key people in your extended network who work for your target companies.  Don’t have target companies?

Someone asked me once: “what can I do to get my resume noticed?”  My answer was to apply for jobs for which you are really well qualified.

As a hiring manager, I paid attention to resumes that included jobs, companies and experience and accomplishments that fit my needs (i.e. the job description).  So while there are great things you can do to improve your resume and cover letter, nothing is better than being a good fit.

Career networking is essential in today’s job market.  It is the single biggest reason I see some people landing new jobs and others struggling.  But it’s not just career networking.  It’s career networking with a purpose .  It is specifically identifying who you need to meet and acting with purpose to find them online and at events you attend locally.

So if you are looking for a boost in your job search success, stop waiting for others and begin working with goals and a sense of purpose.

It will increase your confidence.  And will stop that annoying beep

About the author:

Tim Tyrell-Smith is the founder of Tim’s Strategy: Ideas for Job Search Career and Life, a fast growing blog and website. Tim is also the author of: 30 Ideas. The Ideas of Successful Job Search. Download the book and other free tools at http://www.timsstrategy.com. Follow him on Twitter @TimsStrategy