Consulting While Looking for a Job

For most, consulting while looking for a job is a double-edged sword. On the one hand you are working and generating revenue. On the other hand most people stop conducting their job search during this period. What they have actually done is accept a short-term full time job. So when the job is over in three to six months they start their search again. This causes the candidate to keep starting and stopping their job search. What happens if the ideal position becomes available while you are working this short-term position? Generally, you will miss it.

If you are going to take a short-term position, I recommend making it clear to the company your goal is to find a full-time position. In order to that let them know up front you may have to leave for interviews, networking events, or other issues surrounding your primary goal of finding a job. Consider requesting a work week of four ten hour days instead of five days. This will leave you one day a week to work on your job search.

I believe there are enough ups and downs in a job search without trying to ramp up a new job search every three to six months.

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

How Do I Avoid The Ups & Downs in my Job Search?

Q. I find looking for a job has many ups and downs. Is there a way to avoid the peaks and valleys?

One way might be to find an accountability partner. A good accountability partner can help keep you on track and focused on your job search. Their role is to hold you accountable to a schedule and plan. With the people I coach, I find that it is very easy for candidates to get distracted causing them to lose focus on the goal.  An accountability partner’s job is to make sure you create an effective job search plan with daily and weekly goals. Then hold you accountable to those. They are not there to let you make excuses about why you couldn’t get them done. Good partners will bring a tough love to the process. They should be someone you trust, have experience helping people with job search issues, someone willing to be completely honest with you, a person that will listen when you are down, but knows the best way to get you feeling good again is by having you make progress in your search.

You should meet at least weekly with your partner to review the progress you have made and layout what you will do in the following week.

Here is a link to a discussion on what an accountability partner should do and how to select one. http://www.impacthiringsolutions.com/careerblog/2011/01/04/1-step-to-turbo-charge-your-search-in-2011-part-1/

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

Should I Have a LinkedIn Profile?

Question: Is having a profile on LinkedIn critical for professionals? I have asked many of my colleagues with profiles and only one has ever been contacted via LinkedIn.

I get this question a lot. LinkedIn is simply one tool in your job search tool box. I think too many candidates think they can just put up a profile and the phone starts ringing. Nothing could be more incorrect. I do believe you should have a compelling profile on LinkedIn. I speak with many recruiters, human resource professionals and hiring managers and almost all are using LinkedIn in some way. During a job search you must cover all the bases as there is no way to know where the job lead will come from. LinkedIn increases your visibility. It is not much different that posting your resume on a job board. Doing that doesn’t guarantee you will get a call, but most still should do it. An effective job search has a lot of moving parts. LinkedIn is just one of those parts.

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

Are You Blundering Through Your Job Search?

This blog post by Eliott Lasson in the Baltimore Business Journal triggered an observation I’ve been thinking about during this depressing job market.

Most of the executive job search candidates I come across appear to be “blundering” OR “stumbling their way through a job search. I’m not surprised it’s taking the average executive over a year to find a new opportunity. When are you going to stop the blundering and start using job search best practices.

Wait – do you even know what are the top ten job search best practices? If not, how do you plan to learn them?

Or, do you prefer to muddle through your job search in a state that Steve Covey called being “unconsciously incompetent?”

Although Elliot’s article focused on young graduates, the same concepts apply for more experienced executives. Here’s a comment Elliot made about resumes that I find are a major source of blunders:

Always have a resume that is good-to-go to include in your email or promptly forward after a phone call. A turn-off is a resume with spelling errors and spacing issues. It is always a good idea to have some sort of objective at the top as to what you are looking for. The resume should not be over-the-top for where you are at in life, whether educationally or professionally. Make sure to list your technical skills with software, systems, and professionally relevant social media. Just saying non-descriptive terms like “proficient in Microsoft Office” might be construed as “I have a 5th grade literacy level.”

Your move – what are you going to do right now to put your job search back in effective mode and land a great opportunity in 90 days?

Barry Deutsch

Have you test-driven our Job Search Workbook – This is NOT the Position I Accepted

To read the full article by Eliott Lasson, please click below:

Top 5 job search and networking mistakes of the young — and not so young – Baltimore Business Journal.

Looking For A Better Job While Working

Q. I’m currently one of those who is underemployed. I’m considering looking for a better job and would like to know what is the best way to go about it while working?

I would start with your current employer. Situations like yours often happen when a candidate is in need of a job. That is generally why they accepted a lower position in the first place. So I believe some level of loyalty should be given to a company that helped you when you needed it. You might check to see if a position will open up as the economy continues to improve, are they open to expanding your role in the company, or if you are working part-time will they convert you to full-time? If you haven’t already, you might consider giving them this opportunity before throwing in the towel.

If you still decide it is best to move, then you will have to conduct a search. Many candidates search while working. Start by building or updating your LinkedIn profile, post your resume on the job boards, let people you trust know you are open to something different, attend networking meetings before or after work hours, check the Web sites of potential employers in your industry to see if they post open positions, and when appropriate engage a recruiter and respond to ads. Most companies are willing to conduct interviews during off hours for those people working.  You basically have to get out and let people know you are open to referrals or find a position via job postings.

Join our LinkedIn Job Search Networking Group. It is one of the biggest and most active groups dealing with job search issues on LinkedIn. CLICK HERE to join.

Download our FREE Job Search Self-Assessment Scorecard. Take the evaluation and discover if your search is all it can be. CLICK HERE to download.

Visit our audio library. No library card required – all audio files can be downloaded for free. There is an extensive amount of files on all of the different topics surrounding a job search. CLICK HERE to review the library.

If this was helpful, then please help others by forwarding it on to your network, posting 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

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

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

Are You Unconsciously Incompetent In Your Job Search?

Recently, I was the keynote speaker for a large job search conference where there were roughly 1000 participants who had been trying to find a job for 6 months to a year or longer.

Very few job seekers in the entire conference were conducting an effective job search, and many had lost hope in terms of finding a new job.

The theme of the job search conference was JOB SEARCH HOPE. My opening remarks were along the path that HOPE comes from conducting an effective job search. A lack of HOPE stems from not knowing what to do next in your job search.

I proposed to the attendees that there are hundreds of job search activities that everyone should be working on daily and weekly in their job search. Unfortunately, many of the participants were stuck with one or two activities, such as calling on a couple of network contacts or answering job board ads. Many had put their proverbial “job search in one basket”. Have you made this mistake?

Why didn’t they know about all the other job search activities that could be doing – activities that would overflow their daily capacity and generate an abundance of job leads and referrals.

I call this the job search unconsciously incompetent syndrome.

If you’re a fan of Steven Covey, you’ll recall he puts forth a 2×2 matrix in “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People”. In this 2×2 matrix, Covey puts Consciousness-Unconsciousness on one axis and Competency-Incompetency on the other.

One of the intersections is the Unconsciously Incompetent – translated to a job search – it means the job seeker is not aware that they are incompetent – they don’t know what else is available, possible, or useful. How can this be?

The job seeker has not taken the time to:

• Research best practices in job search
• Read job search blogs from well-known experts
• Purchase job search books from outstanding authors
• Download FREE materials from job search publishers

I’m confused.

Maybe you could help me.

Why wouldn’t you devote every opportunity possible to exploring how to conduct a better job search?

Most job seekers are still conducting their job search as if it’s the last recession 5-10-20 years ago.

Why do most job seekers believe they can “go it alone”, they don’t no stinking help from someone else, or “no one can teach them new tricks”?

I am shocked to my core, that most job seekers are unconsciously incompetent in their job search – in spite of extraordinary material available that is either dirt cheap or FREE. Much of this material could help the vast majority of job seekers to cut their job search time by 10%, 25%, or perhaps even, 50%.

I’m looking for your comments to help me understand this dysfunctional syndrome of ineffective job search.

I’ll close with this thought – until you make the committed effort to “master” a job search through learning what it takes to conduct an effective job search – you’ll be stuck between luck and wishful thinking.

Barry Deutsch

PS – Start to improve your job search right NOW by downloading our FREE self-assessment to determine the effectiveness of your job search. Within 4-5 minutes, you’ll have a deep understanding of where the holes, problems, and opportunities lie in your job search.

Can You Be Fired From Your Job Over On-Line Comments?

I was reading an interesting blog post, titled “You Can Lose Your Job Over Blog Comments, Too” by a well-known author, Daniel Scocco, who writes about blogging on his DailyBloggingTips.com site. Below is partial reprint of the article:

In the past we have seen people losing their jobs for bad mouthing their companies on Twitter and on blog posts. It turns out that the same can happen with blog comments, even if you are not the one writing the comments!

Confusing? Well, here is what happened. Around one month ago Skype hired Madhu Yarlagadda, a former Yahoo! employee, to be the new Chief Development Officer. Once the news got out, TechCrunch wrote a post reporting the news.

Once the post was a live a bunch of people started leaving comments criticizing and openly insulting Madhu Yarlagadda. These were presumably people who had worked with or for him in the past, and they were claiming he was “dishonest,” “political” and things like that. You’ll still find some of the comments on the post, but the heaviest ones were deleted by TechCrunch, since Madhu threatened to take legal action.

Long story short, the thing blew out of proportions, and as the NY Times reported today, “the comments caught the attention of Skype executives who became concerned about their new hire, according to a person with knowledge of the situation.”

The result? Madhu left the company just one month after joining.

The takeaway message? I am guessing there are many. For one, people are reading blogs, including the comments! Another one would be: be careful with what you put on the Internet.

Here are my comments on this blog post:

As an executive recruiter, I don’t see a lot of this public bashing going on (yet). I do perceive that the increasing ability for individuals to communicate through social media will increase “haters” comments. However, most people will only post “hater” comments when they’ve been mistreated, abused, and wronged.

Imagine all those employees out there who’ve been mistreated, abused, wronged, stomped on, screwed over, back-stabbed, lied to, and humiliated by former bosses. Imagine the ability of these folks to go on-line and vent – just like in this case.

I’m a firm believer of “what goes around – comes around”. You mistreat people – it will come back to bite you.

Here’s a good example: I’m a high school basketball coach. Our former varsity coach left to go to another school. Before he left, he gave an “unfavorable” comment in a published interview about our parents, administration, and players. Some of our parents and players also felt he had wronged them over time.

When the local paper published their announcement of his new position, parents commented on the on-line version of the article – it was a nasty, drag through the mud, public dogfight. The varsity coach almost lost his new job. At a minimum, he goes into this new job with a huge cloud over his head and is now under the microscope from parents, school administration, and players. His reputation is damaged and those “comments” are indexed forever on-line. Probably not the way anyone would like to start a new job.

Moral of the story – be careful how you treat others. “What goes around – truly does come around.” And with the rising trend of people engaging in social media, including blog reading, you run the danger of having your “mistakes” come back and bite you – or at the very least – haunt you!

Are you at risk in your job search of negative comments and information following you around?

Is your reputation being damaged without your knowledge?

Have you done something to encourage people to post angry and negative comments about yourself?

Did you know that more and more employers are checking out your on-line reputation before hiring you?

When was the last time you conducted a check-up on your on-line reputation for your job search?

Barry

P.S. Conducting an assessment of your job search preparation might help to highlight potentially damaging or negative information that could impact your job search. Click here to take our Job Search Self-Assessment yet?