By:
Do you know that what you have, or don’t have, in your pocket can affect the outcome of your job search?
Experience. Education. Skills. We all know that these factors matter when you’re on the hunt for a new job, but how can the contents of your pocket make a difference? These 5 Personal Branding will tell you just that, and more.
1. It’s All In Your Head
“The Secret” by Rhonda Byrne is based upon the law of attraction; thoughts become things. While I won’t say that you can sit at home all day thinking about a new job and it will simply manifest itself, I will say that thinking positive works. Taking it a step further to look positive on the outside is important as well.
According to Harvard and Wesleyan economists, attractive people get hired and promoted more readily and earn more money because they’re seen as more self-confident.
2. Practice Makes Perfect
Ask any pro sports athlete and they’ll tell you that practice is essential to winning the game. If you want to win the job search game, practice your personal branding pitch. Step 1: Create the pitch. Step 2: Practice the pitch. Step 3: Deliver an authentic, natural pitch.
Delivering a practiced pitch without your personality and authentic, individual stories is like showing up on the beach in August with a spray tan. You can do it but why would you?
3. Pocket Power
“Let’s connect next week. Do you have a card?” Job seeker home run! Fireworks are going off in your head until you realize you don’t have business cards. What do you do now? Play it cool? Ask for their card? Sure, you can do that. Or, you can be a powerfully branded professional and hand them a personal branded business card, land an appointment for next week and enjoy the firework display going on in your head. Check out www.vistaprint.com for easy-to-make cards.
Tips 4 - 5 and Complete Personal Brand Blog Article
Hiring Managers Share Their Secrets
By Amy Dziobek
For many, technology plays a pivotal role in how we search for a job. Thanks to online resources, applying for a dream position is as easy as a click of a mouse. But in a competitive market, how do you make sure your resume gets in the right hands?
Robert Crowder, head of talent acquisitions at Aetna in Hartford says he sees more than 430 applications come in each day. He warns job seekers, however, about becoming a ‘resume spammer.’
“Technology has probably made it easier for more people to apply to a job, so, that’s where we get that phenomenon of resume spammers. It is so much easier to apply to a larger volume of things,” said Crowder.
So how do you choose where to send your application? Crowder says although career sites are great, it is best to go right to the source.
“We use CareerBuilder at times, but primarily it ends up being our own site,” Crowder said.
If you want your resume to stand out, Crowder says make sure it matches the position for which you are applying.
“Use those keywords that are in the job description that are relevant to your background and that will help you rise up in somebody taking a look at your background,” said Crowder.
If it is skilled work you are looking for, however, Rina Fochi, human resources manager for Stew Leonards said, your background is not everything.
“Be open to learning new things and doing different things that you might not have done before, because to be more flexible allows the employer to be more flexible,” said Fochi.
According to Fochi, with 36 percent of the store’s team members having been referred by employees who already worked there, networking is key.
LinkedIn: #1 Place for Job Searchers Online
By Marilyn Maslin @ Resume Footprint
According to the 2010 Global Brainstorming Day LinkedIn is now the #1 online networking platform for active and passive job searchers. Career coaches, resume writers, and outplacement specialists all agree that if you are looking to impress, be found, and get results online, you need a well-branded LinkedIn profile.
Today’s hiring managers use LinkedIn to source and research candidates. Devote time to establishing a quality, branded LinkedIn profile that will attract recruiters and job opportunities. Job searchers, who don’t take time to write a strategic, keyword rich LinkedIn profile, may be overlooked by recruiters.
About LinkedIn
LinkedIn is the largest professional network online, hitting a milestonein May 2011, with over 100 million members in over 200 countries and territories. About one million new members join LinkedIn every week. Originally created as a place to build an online resume, today it is primarily used for professional networking.
Users create profiles promoting their work history or online resumes. LinkedIn profiles include career history, education, connections and professional recommendations. Additionally you can join groups for networking purposes.
How to Find a Job Using LinkedIn
Build Your Personal Brand: Use your LinkedIn profile to manage your professional brand or career footprint. This self-packaging is all about differentiation you in the job marketplace. You want to leave an indelible impression on your contacts and the community that is uniquely distinguishable.
Profile Perfect: Your LinkedIn profile must match your resume and needs to be complete and flawless. No spelling or typographical errors. This is your resume online and it will be critiqued by recruiters, hiring managers and HR staff.
Professional Photo: Get an updated, professional headshot made and communicate to your prospective employer who you are through your energy, warmth and approachability. If you don’t have a professional portrait, post a flattering, professional picture of yourself.
Headline: Your headline will automatically display as the last job you held unless you change it. Consider making your headline your professional brand, or the job you are targeting. Brand yourself for the job you want – for your future.
Today’s hiring managers use LinkedIn to source and research candidates. Devote time to establishing a quality, branded LinkedIn profile that will attract recruiters and job opportunities. Job searchers, who don’t take time to write a strategic, keyword rich LinkedIn profile, may be overlooked by recruiters.
About LinkedIn
LinkedIn is the largest professional network online, hitting a milestonein May 2011, with over 100 million members in over 200 countries and territories. About one million new members join LinkedIn every week. Originally created as a place to build an online resume, today it is primarily used for professional networking.
Users create profiles promoting their work history or online resumes. LinkedIn profiles include career history, education, connections and professional recommendations. Additionally you can join groups for networking purposes.
How to Find a Job Using LinkedIn
Build Your Personal Brand: Use your LinkedIn profile to manage your professional brand or career footprint. This self-packaging is all about differentiation you in the job marketplace. You want to leave an indelible impression on your contacts and the community that is uniquely distinguishable.
Profile Perfect: Your LinkedIn profile must match your resume and needs to be complete and flawless. No spelling or typographical errors. This is your resume online and it will be critiqued by recruiters, hiring managers and HR staff.
Professional Photo: Get an updated, professional headshot made and communicate to your prospective employer who you are through your energy, warmth and approachability. If you don’t have a professional portrait, post a flattering, professional picture of yourself.
Headline: Your headline will automatically display as the last job you held unless you change it. Consider making your headline your professional brand, or the job you are targeting. Brand yourself for the job you want – for your future.
Five Steps to Building Your Network
by Douglas R. Conant
One morning in the 1980s, I went to the office as usual and was told that my job was being eliminated. I packed up my personal effects and left the building by lunchtime.
I was, of course, in shock. For 10 years, my whole world had consisted of my work with this company and my young, growing family. Now half of that world had disappeared. I was angry and bitter and I felt remarkably alone.
Fortunately, the company set me up with an outplacement counselor who gave me very good advice about building a network — advice that I follow to this day. I not only found a new great job that helped me get my career on track, but I built relationships with hundreds of friends and advisors who have stood me in good stead for decades.
Here's my step-by-step guide to building your own successful network.
Step #1: Identify your network cluster. First, figure out where you want to focus your efforts. Do you want to work for a large corporation, a medium-sized company, or a startup? Are you interested in marketing, sales, manufacturing, IT or any other specific function? What are your geography limitations? Then, create a list of contacts within those parameters — not just executives within a chosen company, but also executive search specialists, consultants, and anyone else who can help within your areas of interest and expertise.
Step #2: Ask for ideas and advice. Contact each person on your list and say, "I was recommended to you by [so-and-so]. I'm hoping to get your ideas and advice for my job search, and would appreciate 15 minutes of your time." During your interview, give them your brief elevator pitch outlining your background and skills, and then ask for their ideas and advice. Remember, this meeting is not about asking for a job. It's about being very sensitive to your interviewee's time, and listening carefully to what they have to say. As the meeting wraps up, ask for names of a couple of people they recommend you talk to. With each interview, you will gain two more leads. Within a few months, you will develop a large number of leads in your areas of interest.
Step #3: Follow up immediately with personal, handwritten thank-you notes to everyone you encountered during the meeting — not just your interviewee, but also to the executive assistant and even the person at the front desk — and mail it the day after your interview. Doing so signals that you are a quality person, that you care, and that you are on top of your game. This is an opportunity for you to establish a distinctive job search — make the most of it.
Steps 4 - 5 and Complete Harvard Business Review Article
Douglas R. Conant is President and CEO of the Campbell Soup Company headquartered in Camden, New Jersey. He is the co-author, with Mette Norgaard, of Touchpoints: Creating Powerful Leadership Connections in the Smallest of Moments (Jossey-Bass, May 2011).
One morning in the 1980s, I went to the office as usual and was told that my job was being eliminated. I packed up my personal effects and left the building by lunchtime.
I was, of course, in shock. For 10 years, my whole world had consisted of my work with this company and my young, growing family. Now half of that world had disappeared. I was angry and bitter and I felt remarkably alone.
Fortunately, the company set me up with an outplacement counselor who gave me very good advice about building a network — advice that I follow to this day. I not only found a new great job that helped me get my career on track, but I built relationships with hundreds of friends and advisors who have stood me in good stead for decades.
Here's my step-by-step guide to building your own successful network.
Step #1: Identify your network cluster. First, figure out where you want to focus your efforts. Do you want to work for a large corporation, a medium-sized company, or a startup? Are you interested in marketing, sales, manufacturing, IT or any other specific function? What are your geography limitations? Then, create a list of contacts within those parameters — not just executives within a chosen company, but also executive search specialists, consultants, and anyone else who can help within your areas of interest and expertise.
Step #2: Ask for ideas and advice. Contact each person on your list and say, "I was recommended to you by [so-and-so]. I'm hoping to get your ideas and advice for my job search, and would appreciate 15 minutes of your time." During your interview, give them your brief elevator pitch outlining your background and skills, and then ask for their ideas and advice. Remember, this meeting is not about asking for a job. It's about being very sensitive to your interviewee's time, and listening carefully to what they have to say. As the meeting wraps up, ask for names of a couple of people they recommend you talk to. With each interview, you will gain two more leads. Within a few months, you will develop a large number of leads in your areas of interest.
Step #3: Follow up immediately with personal, handwritten thank-you notes to everyone you encountered during the meeting — not just your interviewee, but also to the executive assistant and even the person at the front desk — and mail it the day after your interview. Doing so signals that you are a quality person, that you care, and that you are on top of your game. This is an opportunity for you to establish a distinctive job search — make the most of it.
Steps 4 - 5 and Complete Harvard Business Review Article
Douglas R. Conant is President and CEO of the Campbell Soup Company headquartered in Camden, New Jersey. He is the co-author, with Mette Norgaard, of Touchpoints: Creating Powerful Leadership Connections in the Smallest of Moments (Jossey-Bass, May 2011).
When Using Job Boards, It Pays to Go Niche
By Alexis Grant
Why industry-specific sites are more useful than larger job boards
Why industry-specific sites are more useful than larger job boards
While job seekers should never rely entirely on job boards, here's a tip for when you do browse listings: Use niche sites.
Too often, job seekers turn to large, well-known job boards like Monster, Indeed, CareerBuilder.com, or SimplyHired. But tapping into niche sites, which offer listings for a specific industry or location, increases your chances not only of finding the job you're looking for, but also of landing that job, experts say.
Why? Because contrary to popular belief, large job boards don't aggregate all listings. Smaller, more targeted sites usually include openings that don't show up elsewhere. They also sometimes offer contact information for the hiring manager rather than routing you to a generic application, which means your resume is less likely to disappear into a black hole. And while applicants from niche sites tend to be more qualified—because their skill set more often matches what the employer is looking for—you'll compete with fewer candidates there than you would on well-known sites.
"You're a bigger fish in a smaller pond," says Chris Russell, a job board consultant and CEO of AllCountyJobs.com. "You have more chance of standing out on a niche job board than you do on a Monster."
Smaller companies in particular often prefer using niche boards to find applicants because they tend to get responses from higher quality candidates, Russell says, which means they have to sift through fewer applications to find the right hire. If a manager is looking for a sales employee, for example, she knows she's reaching out to the right audience when she posts on Sales Gravy, a networking community for sales professionals that includes a job board. Universities that want to hire faculty often post on HigherEdJobs. And companies that need to fill programming or other tech-heavy positions are smart to turn to CrunchBoard, a job board on TechCrunch, a website that focuses on technology
and Internet news.
Indeed, for every industry, there's a niche job board—or two or three or more. But how to find them? Niche boards aren't as in your face as the massive job websites, so you have to know to go fishing for one that's relevant for your skills. To start, talk to your co-workers or other people who work in your industry about where they look for jobs, or ask hiring managers where they post open positions.
Consulting Google also works; type your industry plus "jobs" into the search engine, and "chances are, if [niche job boards are] on the first page [of results], they're worth using," Russell says. You can also browse lists of niche sites like this one from Internet Inc.com, but recognize that they're not all-inclusive.
Keep your guard up for spammy sites, says Jeff Dickey-Chasins, a consultant who blogs about job boards. "There are plenty of sites out there that just sort of exist for traffic reasons." Owners of those sites make money off Google advertisements, so if the site you're using is over-populated with Google ads or others that are unrelated to employment, it's a good sign you should look elsewhere, he says.
More Tips and Complete USNews Article
Too often, job seekers turn to large, well-known job boards like Monster, Indeed, CareerBuilder.com, or SimplyHired. But tapping into niche sites, which offer listings for a specific industry or location, increases your chances not only of finding the job you're looking for, but also of landing that job, experts say.
"You're a bigger fish in a smaller pond," says Chris Russell, a job board consultant and CEO of AllCountyJobs.com. "You have more chance of standing out on a niche job board than you do on a Monster."
Smaller companies in particular often prefer using niche boards to find applicants because they tend to get responses from higher quality candidates, Russell says, which means they have to sift through fewer applications to find the right hire. If a manager is looking for a sales employee, for example, she knows she's reaching out to the right audience when she posts on Sales Gravy, a networking community for sales professionals that includes a job board. Universities that want to hire faculty often post on HigherEdJobs. And companies that need to fill programming or other tech-heavy positions are smart to turn to CrunchBoard, a job board on TechCrunch, a website that focuses on technology
and Internet news.
Indeed, for every industry, there's a niche job board—or two or three or more. But how to find them? Niche boards aren't as in your face as the massive job websites, so you have to know to go fishing for one that's relevant for your skills. To start, talk to your co-workers or other people who work in your industry about where they look for jobs, or ask hiring managers where they post open positions.
Consulting Google also works; type your industry plus "jobs" into the search engine, and "chances are, if [niche job boards are] on the first page [of results], they're worth using," Russell says. You can also browse lists of niche sites like this one from Internet Inc.com, but recognize that they're not all-inclusive.
Keep your guard up for spammy sites, says Jeff Dickey-Chasins, a consultant who blogs about job boards. "There are plenty of sites out there that just sort of exist for traffic reasons." Owners of those sites make money off Google advertisements, so if the site you're using is over-populated with Google ads or others that are unrelated to employment, it's a good sign you should look elsewhere, he says.
More Tips and Complete USNews Article
So you want to work at Google
By Anne Fisher, contributor
Contrary to myth, new college grads don't need a 3.7-or-higher GPA to get hired at Google, says a new book. What they do need: Passion for technology and a track record of stellar achievement.
Dear Annie: I will be graduating from an Ivy League college in a couple of months and I'd really like to go to work for Google. The only problem is, I've heard that the company won't even interview anyone whose grade point average is below 3.7, and mine is barely 3.0.
That's mostly because I've spent a lot of time working at a tech startup in Boston instead of studying, just because it interests me more. For the past year or so, I've also put several hours a week into pro bono work for a local nonprofit, setting up a fundraising database, streamlining their bookkeeping, and developing their social media presence. I think these things are fine additions to my resume, but will my so-so GPA disqualify me? — Busy Off-Campus
Dear BOC: Your timing is terrific, since Google (GOOG) announced in January that it is embarking on a hiring spree this year. Alan Eustace, vice president for engineering and research, revealed in a blog post that Google expects to surpass its 2007 record for new hires. That year, the company added more than 6,000 people to its payroll.
The reason: Enormous growth in Google's Android mobile operating system, Google Apps platform, and Chrome browser, as well as other early-stage projects like Google Voice, robot cars, and an all-Web PC operating system. "We'll hire as many smart, creative people as we can to tackle some of the toughest challenges in computer science," Eustace wrote.
To boost your chances of being one of the people Google brings aboard, you might want to take a look at a new book, The Google Resume: How to Prepare for a Career and Land a Job at Apple, Microsoft, Google, or Any Top Tech Company. Author Gayle Laakmaan McDowell, a Wharton MBA, is founder and CEO of CareerCup.com, a job site for tech professionals.
Before launching that business, McDowell interned at Microsoft (MSFT) and Apple (AAPL). Then she worked in Google's engineering division for three years, where she served on the hiring committee, interviewed more than 120 job candidates, and pored over piles of resumes.
The experience gave her a clear understanding of which resumes get noticed and which ones land in the circular file. As the title suggests, the book includes samples of each, along with detailed notes on what kinds of experiences to include in your resume and how to present it.
You'll be heartened to hear that a 3.0 GPA doesn't necessarily wreck your prospects at Google. McDowell acknowledges that the 3.7-or-higher-GPA myth is widespread, but she discounts it. "When I joined Google, my team of eight people included three who didn't have college degrees at all," recalls McDowell. "And our next college hire had a GPA that wasn't so hot."
She adds: "Academia is merely one way to distinguish yourself, and there are plenty of others. So if your GPA, or your school, doesn't stand out, look for additional avenues. Besides, you'll need to excel in multiple areas to get your resume selected."
Your question suggests you've already got "multiple areas" going for you, so consider a few of the other things McDowell says Google looks for:
Find Out What They Are Looking For By Reading The Rest Of The Fortune Article
Contrary to myth, new college grads don't need a 3.7-or-higher GPA to get hired at Google, says a new book. What they do need: Passion for technology and a track record of stellar achievement.
Dear Annie: I will be graduating from an Ivy League college in a couple of months and I'd really like to go to work for Google. The only problem is, I've heard that the company won't even interview anyone whose grade point average is below 3.7, and mine is barely 3.0.
That's mostly because I've spent a lot of time working at a tech startup in Boston instead of studying, just because it interests me more. For the past year or so, I've also put several hours a week into pro bono work for a local nonprofit, setting up a fundraising database, streamlining their bookkeeping, and developing their social media presence. I think these things are fine additions to my resume, but will my so-so GPA disqualify me? — Busy Off-Campus
Dear BOC: Your timing is terrific, since Google (GOOG) announced in January that it is embarking on a hiring spree this year. Alan Eustace, vice president for engineering and research, revealed in a blog post that Google expects to surpass its 2007 record for new hires. That year, the company added more than 6,000 people to its payroll.
The reason: Enormous growth in Google's Android mobile operating system, Google Apps platform, and Chrome browser, as well as other early-stage projects like Google Voice, robot cars, and an all-Web PC operating system. "We'll hire as many smart, creative people as we can to tackle some of the toughest challenges in computer science," Eustace wrote.
To boost your chances of being one of the people Google brings aboard, you might want to take a look at a new book, The Google Resume: How to Prepare for a Career and Land a Job at Apple, Microsoft, Google, or Any Top Tech Company. Author Gayle Laakmaan McDowell, a Wharton MBA, is founder and CEO of CareerCup.com, a job site for tech professionals.
Before launching that business, McDowell interned at Microsoft (MSFT) and Apple (AAPL). Then she worked in Google's engineering division for three years, where she served on the hiring committee, interviewed more than 120 job candidates, and pored over piles of resumes.
The experience gave her a clear understanding of which resumes get noticed and which ones land in the circular file. As the title suggests, the book includes samples of each, along with detailed notes on what kinds of experiences to include in your resume and how to present it.
You'll be heartened to hear that a 3.0 GPA doesn't necessarily wreck your prospects at Google. McDowell acknowledges that the 3.7-or-higher-GPA myth is widespread, but she discounts it. "When I joined Google, my team of eight people included three who didn't have college degrees at all," recalls McDowell. "And our next college hire had a GPA that wasn't so hot."
She adds: "Academia is merely one way to distinguish yourself, and there are plenty of others. So if your GPA, or your school, doesn't stand out, look for additional avenues. Besides, you'll need to excel in multiple areas to get your resume selected."
Your question suggests you've already got "multiple areas" going for you, so consider a few of the other things McDowell says Google looks for:
Find Out What They Are Looking For By Reading The Rest Of The Fortune Article
5 Twitter Job Services For Some Real-Time Job Search
by Saikat Basu
Twitter may not merit a serious look as a job hunting and recruitment tool. But that’s something a fresher or even an experienced professional will be ill advised to overlook. You can bet that when Twitter increasingly has the power to spread revolutions, it can be a vital ally of your job hunting campaign.
In its overreaching popularity lies its job hunting prowess. Companies are increasingly using it spread their updates. Vacancies and recruitment’s are just one of them.
Even if you do a simple search for a job lead on Twitter, you will be surprised at the number of links that total up. I am not even telling you to do an advanced Twitter search or develop industry specific social strategy. We are talking here of Twitter services that do the job of distilling relevant job tweets for you so that you can find jobs on Twitter.
Here are five of them.
Somehow the image on this Twitter job app says it all. It is probably the largest Twitter job board on the web. The About page says that they have 10,052 vertical job channels segmented by geography, job type, and industry. The service is used by people on both sides of the table, the recruiters as well as the job seekers. It is free for job seekers. As a job seeker, you can sign-up and subscribe to a channel of your interest. Any news jobs available are sent as instant notifications as a Twitter feed or on your mobile. Beyond this, you can use the service like a regular job site: post your resume to companies or forward jobs to friends. Using TweetMap, a Google Maps mashup, you can geographically target jobs of your interest.
This Twitter job search engine is another well designed and maintained service which could be the answer to your job search prayers. You can instantly sign-in with your Twitter account and start a hunt. The site allows you to save jobs to your account, have an online resume, and network. Creating a profile on this web service involves some fine-detailing as recruiters see what has been posted. You can also link the public LinkedIn URL or any other online CV you might have. The Advanced Search is just one way to trawl through Twitter job updates. For an industry specific browse, you can go to the directory which lists ‘Job Accounts’ for selected countries. Using the Job Map, you can visually see the jobs that have been tweeted about in the last 72 hours. The site also has a free iPhone app.
The easiest way to get the dope on the latest job postings collected by this site is via Twitter. JobShouts.com is a social search tool for jobs across many job boards that include LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. All jobs are screened by the site, so the potential to hit the genuine ones is much higher for the job seeker.
Sites 4 - 5 and Complete Article
In its overreaching popularity lies its job hunting prowess. Companies are increasingly using it spread their updates. Vacancies and recruitment’s are just one of them.
Even if you do a simple search for a job lead on Twitter, you will be surprised at the number of links that total up. I am not even telling you to do an advanced Twitter search or develop industry specific social strategy. We are talking here of Twitter services that do the job of distilling relevant job tweets for you so that you can find jobs on Twitter.
Here are five of them.
Tweet My Jobs
Somehow the image on this Twitter job app says it all. It is probably the largest Twitter job board on the web. The About page says that they have 10,052 vertical job channels segmented by geography, job type, and industry. The service is used by people on both sides of the table, the recruiters as well as the job seekers. It is free for job seekers. As a job seeker, you can sign-up and subscribe to a channel of your interest. Any news jobs available are sent as instant notifications as a Twitter feed or on your mobile. Beyond this, you can use the service like a regular job site: post your resume to companies or forward jobs to friends. Using TweetMap, a Google Maps mashup, you can geographically target jobs of your interest.
TwitJobSearch
This Twitter job search engine is another well designed and maintained service which could be the answer to your job search prayers. You can instantly sign-in with your Twitter account and start a hunt. The site allows you to save jobs to your account, have an online resume, and network. Creating a profile on this web service involves some fine-detailing as recruiters see what has been posted. You can also link the public LinkedIn URL or any other online CV you might have. The Advanced Search is just one way to trawl through Twitter job updates. For an industry specific browse, you can go to the directory which lists ‘Job Accounts’ for selected countries. Using the Job Map, you can visually see the jobs that have been tweeted about in the last 72 hours. The site also has a free iPhone app.
Job Shouts
The easiest way to get the dope on the latest job postings collected by this site is via Twitter. JobShouts.com is a social search tool for jobs across many job boards that include LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. All jobs are screened by the site, so the potential to hit the genuine ones is much higher for the job seeker.
Sites 4 - 5 and Complete Article
SEO Your Resume
By Leslie Barrett
Make your resume more ''findable'' on sites like TheLadders — optimizing your Web site is very different from doing that to your resume.
I often get questions about how to “optimize” resumes for search engines so that they will be “easier to find.” Most of the people who ask the question are already somewhat aware of a process called “Search Engine Optimization” and understand that it is related to things called “keywords.” While this is not exactly wrong, I would like to dispel a few misconceptions:
Search engines are not all alike: Google would not find a resume the same way TheLadders would, so “optimizing” your Web site is very different from doing that to your resume.
Keywords are just, well, words. There is nothing “special” about any particular word — it becomes special only by how often it occurs and the company it keeps.
This article will explain how to make your resume more “findable” on sites like TheLadders and why that process is very different from the “SEO” we hear so much about in marketing publications.
It is true that TheLadders is a search engine just as Google is, but the two products look at documents very differently. No search engine is able to break a document down into segments without a “map” — just the way you wouldn’t know that you were driving from New York to New Jersey unless you had some sort of clue — road signs, landmarks and the like. Similarly, Google knows that news articles and such have titles because documents intended for display on the World Wide Web can carry special “tags” that instruct a Web browser on what the primary topic of that page is and how it is to be displayed in a browser. Your resume does not have the tags, and hence lacks the “map” that a search engine needs. So Google would probably see your resume as just one big blob of words. That’s good enough for many kinds of documents, but not for resumes … for reasons that I will get to. So, what does TheLadders do to read your resume? TheLadders has what we call a “parser” that knows how to find things without a map and when it finds them it provides these “tags” and creates a new, search engine-friendly version of your resume.
What does all this mean? It means that a resume is more than a blob of words — it is different from a news article or blog or e-commerce site. It has several “parts” — not just a title and text body. For example, a resume lists jobs and each job has two parts — a title and a description. Most resumes also have an executive summary section providing an overview of skills. The point is that each of those sections carries a different message. Therefore not all words are created equal for the search engine — the words in the titles say something different than the words in other parts of the document. Accordingly, this means something to search engines like TheLadders, but not to Google. Words in different parts will be considered differently. In particular, your “keywords” receive greater or lesser weight depending on where they are.
More Advice and Complete Ladders Article
Search engines are not all alike: Google would not find a resume the same way TheLadders would, so “optimizing” your Web site is very different from doing that to your resume.
Keywords are just, well, words. There is nothing “special” about any particular word — it becomes special only by how often it occurs and the company it keeps.
This article will explain how to make your resume more “findable” on sites like TheLadders and why that process is very different from the “SEO” we hear so much about in marketing publications.
It is true that TheLadders is a search engine just as Google is, but the two products look at documents very differently. No search engine is able to break a document down into segments without a “map” — just the way you wouldn’t know that you were driving from New York to New Jersey unless you had some sort of clue — road signs, landmarks and the like. Similarly, Google knows that news articles and such have titles because documents intended for display on the World Wide Web can carry special “tags” that instruct a Web browser on what the primary topic of that page is and how it is to be displayed in a browser. Your resume does not have the tags, and hence lacks the “map” that a search engine needs. So Google would probably see your resume as just one big blob of words. That’s good enough for many kinds of documents, but not for resumes … for reasons that I will get to. So, what does TheLadders do to read your resume? TheLadders has what we call a “parser” that knows how to find things without a map and when it finds them it provides these “tags” and creates a new, search engine-friendly version of your resume.
What does all this mean? It means that a resume is more than a blob of words — it is different from a news article or blog or e-commerce site. It has several “parts” — not just a title and text body. For example, a resume lists jobs and each job has two parts — a title and a description. Most resumes also have an executive summary section providing an overview of skills. The point is that each of those sections carries a different message. Therefore not all words are created equal for the search engine — the words in the titles say something different than the words in other parts of the document. Accordingly, this means something to search engines like TheLadders, but not to Google. Words in different parts will be considered differently. In particular, your “keywords” receive greater or lesser weight depending on where they are.
More Advice and Complete Ladders Article
Older Job Seeker:Does Social Media Confuse You?
7 Secrets to Get a Job Using Social Media - do you know them?
The approach — developing a resume and cover letter, locating jobs on and submitting your resume to corporate sites and job banks, and crossing your fingers in hopes of receiving a call from a hiring manager — is, for the most part, a thing of the past. The new approach is far different. It boils down to the fact that there are fewer jobs available, more competition for those jobs and more touch points for recruiters and seekers to interact.
The current environment
There will be 1.5 million college graduates this year, yet the job growth rate is at a six year low, at 1.3%! The amount of jobs posted online is decreasing at over 13%, which has all led to the ratio of 3.3 job seekers per each job.
Social networks are starting to become part of the criteria that both hiring managers and college admissions officers are using to weed out applicants. One in five hiring managers conduct background checks using social networks (primarily Facebook), while one in ten college admissions officers do the same.
It’s time for you to be open-minded and think differently about how you’re going to get your next job and keep it. I’m not saying you shouldn’t submit your resume to job banks, corporate websites, vertical job agents (Simply Hired/Indeed) or attend job fairs, but these should only consume 10% of your time. The other 90% should be concentrated on the following seven social media secrets, which will not only get you a job, but help you create your own dream job!
1. Conduct a people search instead of a job search
The majority of jobs aren’t posted online. Hiring managers get a list of employee referral candidates before they even bother to view resumes from those who submit them online. Sometimes the listed jobs aren’t available or never existed in the first place. Many studies have noted that 80% of jobs are taken through networking, but few have sought to use the web to search and locate people they would actually enjoy working for at companies that they get excited about.
The 3-step people search:
1. Identify the top five companies that you would like to work for.
Use a focused approach instead of flooding thousands of inboxes with spam. You want to brand yourself, not just as the person of best fit for a job, but as someone who is eager and ecstatic to work for the company.
2. Use search engines to track employees that currently work there.
There are over 130 million blogs in Technorati and you can search through them to possibly find someone who works at one of your top five companies. You can search through corporate groups, pages and people on Facebook. You can even do the same on Twitter. Then there are people search engines such as pipl, peek you, and wink. Once you find a contact name, try googling it to see if there is any additional information about that person.
3. Connect with the person directly.
Social media has broken down barriers, to a point where you can message someone you aren’t friends with and don’t have contact information for, without any hassles. Before you message a target employee, realize that they receive messages from people asking for jobs all the time and that they might not want to be bothered on Facebook, where their true friends are. As long as you’ve done your homework on the company and them, tailor a message that states who you are and your interest, without asking for a job at first. Get to know them and then by the 3rd or 4th messages, ask if there is an available opportunity.
2. Use attraction-based marketing to get job offers
The traditional way of searching for a job was proactive, forcing you to start a job that you might not have enjoyed. The new approach is about building a powerful personal brand and attracting job opportunities directly into your doorstep. How do you do this? You become a content producer instead of just a consumer and the number one way to do that on the web is to launch a blog that centers around both your expertise and passions.
You need to be passionate to be committed to this project because it requires a lot of writing, creativity and consistency in order for it to actually help you. A blog is a non-intrusive, harmless and generous way of getting recruiters interested in your brand, without you even asking for a job! Make the recruiters fall in love with you and only send you opportunities that are related to your blog content, so you end up happy in the end.
This works a lot and is expected for new-age marketing jobs that require experience in social media and can even help you jump-start a new business off of your blog platform. By pulling recruiters into your world, you are able to impress them with what you want them to see and they can make a quick decision whether to hire you or not, without you hearing about rejection. Start a blog today using Wordpress.com (for beginners) or install Wordpress.org onto your own host (such as GoDaddy or Bluehost).
Click here to read part 2 of this article
Editors Note: Tooth Fairy, Santa Clause, The Baby Stalk and mailing resumes to HR. As an older worker do you ever feel that all the good fantasies are dead? What do you think?
Between current economic conditions and the technological evolution of the Internet, the traditional approach most job seekers have taken in the past is no longer viable.
Between current economic conditions and the technological evolution of the Internet, the traditional approach most job seekers have taken in the past is no longer viable.
The approach — developing a resume and cover letter, locating jobs on and submitting your resume to corporate sites and job banks, and crossing your fingers in hopes of receiving a call from a hiring manager — is, for the most part, a thing of the past. The new approach is far different. It boils down to the fact that there are fewer jobs available, more competition for those jobs and more touch points for recruiters and seekers to interact.
The current environment
There will be 1.5 million college graduates this year, yet the job growth rate is at a six year low, at 1.3%! The amount of jobs posted online is decreasing at over 13%, which has all led to the ratio of 3.3 job seekers per each job.
Social networks are starting to become part of the criteria that both hiring managers and college admissions officers are using to weed out applicants. One in five hiring managers conduct background checks using social networks (primarily Facebook), while one in ten college admissions officers do the same.
It’s time for you to be open-minded and think differently about how you’re going to get your next job and keep it. I’m not saying you shouldn’t submit your resume to job banks, corporate websites, vertical job agents (Simply Hired/Indeed) or attend job fairs, but these should only consume 10% of your time. The other 90% should be concentrated on the following seven social media secrets, which will not only get you a job, but help you create your own dream job!
1. Conduct a people search instead of a job search
The majority of jobs aren’t posted online. Hiring managers get a list of employee referral candidates before they even bother to view resumes from those who submit them online. Sometimes the listed jobs aren’t available or never existed in the first place. Many studies have noted that 80% of jobs are taken through networking, but few have sought to use the web to search and locate people they would actually enjoy working for at companies that they get excited about.
The 3-step people search:
1. Identify the top five companies that you would like to work for.
Use a focused approach instead of flooding thousands of inboxes with spam. You want to brand yourself, not just as the person of best fit for a job, but as someone who is eager and ecstatic to work for the company.
2. Use search engines to track employees that currently work there.
There are over 130 million blogs in Technorati and you can search through them to possibly find someone who works at one of your top five companies. You can search through corporate groups, pages and people on Facebook. You can even do the same on Twitter. Then there are people search engines such as pipl, peek you, and wink. Once you find a contact name, try googling it to see if there is any additional information about that person.
3. Connect with the person directly.
Social media has broken down barriers, to a point where you can message someone you aren’t friends with and don’t have contact information for, without any hassles. Before you message a target employee, realize that they receive messages from people asking for jobs all the time and that they might not want to be bothered on Facebook, where their true friends are. As long as you’ve done your homework on the company and them, tailor a message that states who you are and your interest, without asking for a job at first. Get to know them and then by the 3rd or 4th messages, ask if there is an available opportunity.
2. Use attraction-based marketing to get job offers
The traditional way of searching for a job was proactive, forcing you to start a job that you might not have enjoyed. The new approach is about building a powerful personal brand and attracting job opportunities directly into your doorstep. How do you do this? You become a content producer instead of just a consumer and the number one way to do that on the web is to launch a blog that centers around both your expertise and passions.
You need to be passionate to be committed to this project because it requires a lot of writing, creativity and consistency in order for it to actually help you. A blog is a non-intrusive, harmless and generous way of getting recruiters interested in your brand, without you even asking for a job! Make the recruiters fall in love with you and only send you opportunities that are related to your blog content, so you end up happy in the end.
This works a lot and is expected for new-age marketing jobs that require experience in social media and can even help you jump-start a new business off of your blog platform. By pulling recruiters into your world, you are able to impress them with what you want them to see and they can make a quick decision whether to hire you or not, without you hearing about rejection. Start a blog today using Wordpress.com (for beginners) or install Wordpress.org onto your own host (such as GoDaddy or Bluehost).
Click here to read part 2 of this article
The Jobs Are There IF You Know How To Find Them
Recruiters tell how to find the jobs that are there.
How to Search Job Boards You Never Heard Of
Do you know how many job boards there are online? What are you thinking? 20… 40…? 100…? There is an organization called “International Association of Employment Web Sites” and according to them there are more than 40,000 employment sites that serve job seekers, employers and recruiters worldwide. (See for yourself at: www.employmentwebsites.org )
That being said, how likely is it for you to search everyone? Pretty unlikely? Well, don’t be so sure. Eventhough there are 40,000+ job boards out there, Yahoo has done a pretty good job of indexing their content. As such, if you search Yahoo a certain way, you will be able to search most (if not all) of those employment sites. In doing so, you not only find jobs that your jobseeker competitors might know about, but you will also discover niche job boards that focus on your particular skillset. For example, let’s say that you are an accountant looking for an Accounts Receivables position. This is how I would look for that job with Yahoo.
This is how I would find an accounting job in Atlanta:
Hmm… Check out what I found when I used this search string:
See the search string and the rest of Jim Stroud's article
That being said, how likely is it for you to search everyone? Pretty unlikely? Well, don’t be so sure. Eventhough there are 40,000+ job boards out there, Yahoo has done a pretty good job of indexing their content. As such, if you search Yahoo a certain way, you will be able to search most (if not all) of those employment sites. In doing so, you not only find jobs that your jobseeker competitors might know about, but you will also discover niche job boards that focus on your particular skillset. For example, let’s say that you are an accountant looking for an Accounts Receivables position. This is how I would look for that job with Yahoo.
- intitle:accounting (intitle:job OR intitle:jobs OR intitle:careers) (apply OR submit OR eoe)
- intitle:accounting – Yahoo look for web documents that have accounting in their title
- (intitle:job OR intitle:jobs OR intitle:careers) – Hey Yahoo, while you’re at it, look for the words job or jobs or careers in the title of web documents as well.
- (apply OR submit OR eoe) – Just before you show me anything, check those webpages for the words apply or submit or eoe. Why? Job descriptions typically say “apply for this job” or “submit your resume” or have eoe on it somewhere. (Equal Opportunity Employer)
This is how I would find an accounting job in Atlanta:
- (404 OR 678 OR 770 OR 912) intitle:accounting (intitle:job OR intitle:jobs OR intitle:careers) (apply OR submit OR eoe)
- “excellent benefits” intitle:accounting (intitle:job OR intitle:jobs OR intitle:careers) (apply OR submit OR eoe)
- (intitle:”work from home” OR intitle:virtual) intitle:accounting (intitle:job OR intitle:jobs OR intitle:careers) (apply OR submit OR eoe)
Hmm… Check out what I found when I used this search string:
See the search string and the rest of Jim Stroud's article
Eight Tactics to Reboot Your Resume
You are what your write. I recently did a search on resume tips on a popular search engine that starts with a “G” and to no surprise found more than 37 million pages dedicated to some form of tips for resumes. Everyone has an opinion and I am no different. As I coach though, I have seen literally hundreds of resumes and have come to consensus about their content. Resumes that paint a picture of a personality and tell a story about accomplishments have a higher probability of attracting interest and actionable attention. Moreover, if you are in the market for an advertising, communications or public relations role, a stellar resume demands that you take the time to succinctly but creatively portray your abilities in quick but compelling fashion.
So grab your keyboard or your favorite resume writer and get to work.
So grab your keyboard or your favorite resume writer and get to work.
- The resume is about your character, personality and ability. Give it life by using action words that paint a picture of who you are and what is your value.
- Excite your audience. Do not make the resume a boring recitation of the tasks that comprise the jobs you have held. No one cares. And no one will hire you based on the job functions. They will only hire you if you fit the bill, can move the needle and suit the organization’s culture.
- Be creative and convincing in telling your story. Do not just list your jobs like some accounting table. Use story telling techniques to weave the facts about you and the most interesting and important accomplishments of your career.
- Take the high road and make the glass half full not half empty. Sure you may have had challenges in your career. You have had bosses that bossed but surely you have had leaders that have led. In every phrase and every sentence keep the tone upbeat and reflective of your positive attitude about your success and the great job you have done for your bosses and employers.
Seven Common Job Search Objections - and How to Overcome Them
By Don Asher, America's Job Search Guru and author of 'Cracking the Hidden Job Market'
If you've been in the job market for more than five minutes, you've heard some networking contact or employer give you the brush off with these objections:
1. We're not hiring.
2. Just apply online.
3. I'm too busy to talk to you.
4. Just send me your resume.
5. I don't have any leads for you.
6. I don't handle this type of thing. Call HR.
7. Don't call us. We'll call you.
These are the seven deadly objections you'll run into in a job search. Objections are an interesting linguistic device. Objections are neither literal nor logical. The meaning behind an objection may be quite different from the words that come out of your contact's mouth.
For example, "I don't have any leads for you" may mean "I'd love to help you, but I'm sitting here hoping that you don't ask me for a job, because I like you and I don't want to be put in the uncomfortable position of saying 'no' to you. Besides, the whole idea of unemployment scares me, and if you sound desperate it might just totally creep me out."
"We're not hiring" is almost never true, either. They're hiring somebody, maybe in some other department or in some other state, but they're definitely hiring somebody.
"Just send me your resume" usually doesn't mean that at all. It usually means "Get off my phone." Same goes for "I'm too busy." "Just apply online" means, yep, you got it: "Get off my phone."
You can overcome some objections by making it clear in advance that you're not asking them for a job, and by being enthusiastic about your search and the world of possibility out there.
Remember that you don't have to overcome the objection literally or logically. In fact, an advanced technique is simply to agree with the objection. "I'm too busy to meet with you" is completely disarmed when you say, "Yeah. I heard you guys were really successful right now. That's great."
Suddenly, it's the other person's turn to speak, and the conversation continues. There may be a pause, and you may want to fill that pause, but don't. It's the other person's turn, and I assure you, she'll start speaking soon enough.
She'll jump in with something like, "Well, how can I assist you? I'm underwater with work, so a face-to-face is out, but what else could I do that might help you out?" That's exactly what you want to have happen.
In fact, objections appear right before someone decides to help you. In sales theory, the sale only begins with the objections. Sales professionals are trained to listen for objections, because they are a buy signal.
Objections can come over the phone or in e-mails, and you'll see the same ones over and over. Learn to juggle objections and you can massively increase your success in networking and accessing hiring managers.
Here are some lines to help you get started:
Learn to overcome the 7 objections and read the complete AOL Jobs Article
If you've been in the job market for more than five minutes, you've heard some networking contact or employer give you the brush off with these objections:
1. We're not hiring.
2. Just apply online.
3. I'm too busy to talk to you.
4. Just send me your resume.
5. I don't have any leads for you.
6. I don't handle this type of thing. Call HR.
7. Don't call us. We'll call you.
These are the seven deadly objections you'll run into in a job search. Objections are an interesting linguistic device. Objections are neither literal nor logical. The meaning behind an objection may be quite different from the words that come out of your contact's mouth.
For example, "I don't have any leads for you" may mean "I'd love to help you, but I'm sitting here hoping that you don't ask me for a job, because I like you and I don't want to be put in the uncomfortable position of saying 'no' to you. Besides, the whole idea of unemployment scares me, and if you sound desperate it might just totally creep me out."
"We're not hiring" is almost never true, either. They're hiring somebody, maybe in some other department or in some other state, but they're definitely hiring somebody.
"Just send me your resume" usually doesn't mean that at all. It usually means "Get off my phone." Same goes for "I'm too busy." "Just apply online" means, yep, you got it: "Get off my phone."
You can overcome some objections by making it clear in advance that you're not asking them for a job, and by being enthusiastic about your search and the world of possibility out there.
Remember that you don't have to overcome the objection literally or logically. In fact, an advanced technique is simply to agree with the objection. "I'm too busy to meet with you" is completely disarmed when you say, "Yeah. I heard you guys were really successful right now. That's great."
Suddenly, it's the other person's turn to speak, and the conversation continues. There may be a pause, and you may want to fill that pause, but don't. It's the other person's turn, and I assure you, she'll start speaking soon enough.
She'll jump in with something like, "Well, how can I assist you? I'm underwater with work, so a face-to-face is out, but what else could I do that might help you out?" That's exactly what you want to have happen.
In fact, objections appear right before someone decides to help you. In sales theory, the sale only begins with the objections. Sales professionals are trained to listen for objections, because they are a buy signal.
Objections can come over the phone or in e-mails, and you'll see the same ones over and over. Learn to juggle objections and you can massively increase your success in networking and accessing hiring managers.
Here are some lines to help you get started:
Learn to overcome the 7 objections and read the complete AOL Jobs Article
What the Jedi Can Teach Us About Job Searching
By
It’s not a trick question I assure you. At the risk of being called a total geek I’m going to tell you that I am a huge Star Wars fan – in fact since high school. Yes you can start laughing now.
Anyway there’s a lot you can learn from the fantasy Jedi knights in the galaxy far, far away…
The Jedi follow a special code — the Jedi code. Here’s the wording of the code that you’ll be learning about:
So what does Jedi thinking have to do with your job search?
One emotion you want to avoid is desperation. If you show desperation you’ll lose all respect and it will show you have little respect for yourself. Would a Jedi ever show desperation? The heroic ones wouldn’t.
The same goes for your goals for the job search. Say you’re submitting resumes without knowing what you want or what you’re applying to (shot gun approach). You’re failing to make the connection between what you can do and what problems you can solve for an employer and that’s ignorance.
You want to learn about your employers and find the ways you know you can solve a problem for. Being wilfully ignorant is a tried and true way to the Dark Side of someone’s Trash box. You’ve only got 9 seconds to get someone’s attention – are you wasting their time and yours?
If you’re feeling stressed or depressed during the job search you’re less likely to be at the top of your game, keeping up with phone calls, making the appointments, etc. Learn serenity where you feel no stress or anxiety.
You may slip or fall and you may feel like you’re unable to climb back out. Are you a roiling pool of lava or a still pond in a green glade? Which would you prefer to deal with as yourself or an employer?
A cool mind finds answers and solves problems. An angry or desperate mind creates them.
One emotion you must have for job search however is passion, which can help with like-ability. That can give you an edge in the informational and job interviews.
What can you learn from George Lucas‘ mystical Jedi knights that will help you with your job search?
It’s not a trick question I assure you. At the risk of being called a total geek I’m going to tell you that I am a huge Star Wars fan – in fact since high school. Yes you can start laughing now.
Anyway there’s a lot you can learn from the fantasy Jedi knights in the galaxy far, far away…
What’s a Jedi for non-Star Wars Fans?
You non-Star Wars fans are probably wondering what a Jedi is.
The Jedi are characters in the Star Wars galaxy who used magical powers that comes from the Force and weapons known as lightsabers, which created powerful energy blades able to cut through nearly anything. They were guardians of the peace and protectors of the Republic.
A Jedi Code for Job Seekers or Shinobi
The Jedi follow a special code — the Jedi code. Here’s the wording of the code that you’ll be learning about:
There is no emotion, there is peace.
There is no ignorance there is knowledge.
There is no passion, there is serenity.
There is no chaos, there is harmony.
There is no death, there is the Force.
So what does Jedi thinking have to do with your job search?
Be Cool Under Fire
“There is no emotion, there is peace.”Jedi must know peace and serenity in the face of danger and while saving the galaxy. As a job searcher you have to keep your cool and calm regardless of how stressful the situation is. The key thing here is to feel no fear – be willing to take risks, get out of your comfort zone and do what it takes to reach the right people who you want to work for.
One emotion you want to avoid is desperation. If you show desperation you’ll lose all respect and it will show you have little respect for yourself. Would a Jedi ever show desperation? The heroic ones wouldn’t.
Being Ignorant Is Deadly
“There is no ignorance, there is knowledge.”Jedi value knowledge over ignorance. In your job search walking into the interview without a clue is a surefire way of losing it – whether you’re going entry-level or executive C suite.
The same goes for your goals for the job search. Say you’re submitting resumes without knowing what you want or what you’re applying to (shot gun approach). You’re failing to make the connection between what you can do and what problems you can solve for an employer and that’s ignorance.
You want to learn about your employers and find the ways you know you can solve a problem for. Being wilfully ignorant is a tried and true way to the Dark Side of someone’s Trash box. You’ve only got 9 seconds to get someone’s attention – are you wasting their time and yours?
The Job Search is Just Business – Leave Out (Most) Emotions
“There is no passion, there is serenity.”
If you’re feeling stressed or depressed during the job search you’re less likely to be at the top of your game, keeping up with phone calls, making the appointments, etc. Learn serenity where you feel no stress or anxiety.
You may slip or fall and you may feel like you’re unable to climb back out. Are you a roiling pool of lava or a still pond in a green glade? Which would you prefer to deal with as yourself or an employer?
A cool mind finds answers and solves problems. An angry or desperate mind creates them.
One emotion you must have for job search however is passion, which can help with like-ability. That can give you an edge in the informational and job interviews.
You Need Discipline - Read the complete article to find out more about the Jedi Code and job searches
When Your Dream Company Is Hiring on Twitter
More companies are launching Twitter handles specifically to lure job applicants
By Alexis Grant
"It's a fun way to interact that acts as a reminder for both parties that there's a real person in that recruiter role or at the other end of that resume," says Christopher Hoyt, who works on social recruiting strategies for PepsiCo and is one of the voices behind @PepsiCoJOBS. "[Candidates] are looking for confirmation that their resume doesn't just go into a black hole." PepsiCo launched the jobs handle about six months ago, Hoyt says, and it drives more traffic to the company's careers portal than LinkedIn or Facebook.
Many jobs-specific handles are new and have only a few hundred followers. But some organizations have made growing their jobs handle nearly as important as the company's main Twitter handle. Take Twitter itself: @JoinTheFlock, which launched in early 2010, has more than 94,000 followers, an impressive number by Twitter standards. (It helps, of course, that Twitter is a sought-after place to work among the tech community.)
More than half of human resources professionals now use social networking tools to source potential job candidates, according to a new poll from the Society for Human Resource Management. That's up from a third in 2008. But the majority of organizations focus recruiting efforts on LinkedIn. Of those who use social media for recruiting, 95 percent use LinkedIn, 58 percent use Facebook, and 42 percent use Twitter, the organization reports.
More Information and Complete USNews Article
What to Consider When Writing Thank You Notes
Saying thank you is an important part of the interview process. You are thanking your interviewer for being gracious with their time and considering you for an important role in their organization. Thank you note mistakes can ruin your chances to get that next job. Let’s take a look at some thank you note essentials.
Thank You Notes Must be Mistake-Free
Once you commit to writing a thank you note, it needs to be perfect. Grammar, spelling and punctuation are incredibly important. Have somebody else read it over if necessary. There are no excuses for mistakes on a thank you note and an error will hurt your chances of getting the job.
Thank you Notes Must be Unique to the Recipient
Writing a generic thank you note or the same note to multiple interviewers is tacky. At best, these notes fail to connect with the reader. At worst, your interviewers will share them and realize you didn’t take the time and effort to make them unique. Don’t fall into this avoidable trap. Instead, use the thank you note to forge a bond and give one last plug for how you think your skills fit the position.
Thank You Notes Must be Concise
While thank you notes are vital, avoid notes that are too long; it shouldn’t be a book. A few short paragraphs will suffice! Consider this easy template.
1) Thanks for spending the time with me…
2) I am really interested for these reasons…
3) I think I am qualified for these reasons…
Also, it’s important to mention something unique about your interview, a mutual friend, mutual interests, or something humorous that may have happened during the meeting. Finally, let them know you are looking forward to next steps and possibly try to overcome any known objections in a sincere and honest fashion.
Thank You Note Form, Handwritten or E-Mail, Must Fit the Situation - Find out the answer and read the complete CareerRocketeer article
Thank You Notes Must be Mistake-Free
Once you commit to writing a thank you note, it needs to be perfect. Grammar, spelling and punctuation are incredibly important. Have somebody else read it over if necessary. There are no excuses for mistakes on a thank you note and an error will hurt your chances of getting the job.
Thank you Notes Must be Unique to the Recipient
Writing a generic thank you note or the same note to multiple interviewers is tacky. At best, these notes fail to connect with the reader. At worst, your interviewers will share them and realize you didn’t take the time and effort to make them unique. Don’t fall into this avoidable trap. Instead, use the thank you note to forge a bond and give one last plug for how you think your skills fit the position.
Thank You Notes Must be Concise
While thank you notes are vital, avoid notes that are too long; it shouldn’t be a book. A few short paragraphs will suffice! Consider this easy template.
1) Thanks for spending the time with me…
2) I am really interested for these reasons…
3) I think I am qualified for these reasons…
Also, it’s important to mention something unique about your interview, a mutual friend, mutual interests, or something humorous that may have happened during the meeting. Finally, let them know you are looking forward to next steps and possibly try to overcome any known objections in a sincere and honest fashion.
Thank You Note Form, Handwritten or E-Mail, Must Fit the Situation - Find out the answer and read the complete CareerRocketeer article
9 Best Mobile Apps for Finding a Job
By Amy Levin-Epstein
Job application apps and other online tools have officially gone viral. Never before has it been easier to keep track of jobs and contacts on the go. A great example is the old standby, Monster.com, which now has apps for the iPhone, Droid, and iPad that allow you to keep your job search — including resume, cover letter, and listings — with you at all times. Because if you’re hunting for a job, the last thing you want to do is to be a day late — and possibly a job short — just because you missed a posting.
Here are eight others I hope you’ll find helpful. Got more? Please share them in the comments section.
Jobs by Careerbuilder App
What it does: Lets you find and apply for jobs right from your iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch. So if you’re out networking (or taking a coffee break from your job search), you won’t miss a single opportunity.
Indeed.com
What it does: Indeed gives you free access to millions of postings from both job boards and company websites — plus, you can have your personalized searches delivered right to your iPhone or Droid.
Jibber Jobber
What it does: This online organization tool helps you keep track of everything related to your job search, including where you applied and who the contact person is for each position. If your email inbox is a “work-in-progress”, this can help you avoid missing opportunities.
SnapDat
What it does: This free download quickly creates and sends digital business cards from your iPhone to your new contact’s email.
LinkedIn Mobile
What it does: Whereas some of these other apps are limited to the iPhone or Droid, LinkedIn Mobile is also accessible on the Blackberry, Palm, and others. So next time you’re in an interview and get surprised with a second introduction, you can quickly view the new interviewer’s page, scout any connections, and put together some talking points on the fly.
Apps 5 - 9 and Complete MoneyWatch Article
Job application apps and other online tools have officially gone viral. Never before has it been easier to keep track of jobs and contacts on the go. A great example is the old standby, Monster.com, which now has apps for the iPhone, Droid, and iPad that allow you to keep your job search — including resume, cover letter, and listings — with you at all times. Because if you’re hunting for a job, the last thing you want to do is to be a day late — and possibly a job short — just because you missed a posting.
Here are eight others I hope you’ll find helpful. Got more? Please share them in the comments section.
Jobs by Careerbuilder App
What it does: Lets you find and apply for jobs right from your iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch. So if you’re out networking (or taking a coffee break from your job search), you won’t miss a single opportunity.
Indeed.com
What it does: Indeed gives you free access to millions of postings from both job boards and company websites — plus, you can have your personalized searches delivered right to your iPhone or Droid.
Jibber Jobber
What it does: This online organization tool helps you keep track of everything related to your job search, including where you applied and who the contact person is for each position. If your email inbox is a “work-in-progress”, this can help you avoid missing opportunities.
SnapDat
What it does: This free download quickly creates and sends digital business cards from your iPhone to your new contact’s email.
LinkedIn Mobile
What it does: Whereas some of these other apps are limited to the iPhone or Droid, LinkedIn Mobile is also accessible on the Blackberry, Palm, and others. So next time you’re in an interview and get surprised with a second introduction, you can quickly view the new interviewer’s page, scout any connections, and put together some talking points on the fly.
Apps 5 - 9 and Complete MoneyWatch Article
25 Habits to Break if You Want a Job
by
This post is one of many Career Collective posts by career and resume experts on Job-hunting “Rules” to Break/ Outdated Job-Search Beliefs . I am honored to be part of this group and want to thank Miriam Salpeter, of Keppie Careers, and Jacqui Barrett-Poindexter, of Career Trend, for coordinating this initiative now on its second year. You will find links to the other expert posts at the bottom. I highly encourage you to read them all and bookmark them for future reference or sharing with friends and family. If you are on Twitter, you can see our community by following #careercollective.
This advice goes out to new job seekers as well as seasoned job seekers. It comes from those who have been in job search and have learned through the school of hard knocks. These are the top 25 habits to break, or not fall into, if you want to land a job quickly:
This post is one of many Career Collective posts by career and resume experts on Job-hunting “Rules” to Break/ Outdated Job-Search Beliefs . I am honored to be part of this group and want to thank Miriam Salpeter, of Keppie Careers, and Jacqui Barrett-Poindexter, of Career Trend, for coordinating this initiative now on its second year. You will find links to the other expert posts at the bottom. I highly encourage you to read them all and bookmark them for future reference or sharing with friends and family. If you are on Twitter, you can see our community by following #careercollective.
This advice goes out to new job seekers as well as seasoned job seekers. It comes from those who have been in job search and have learned through the school of hard knocks. These are the top 25 habits to break, or not fall into, if you want to land a job quickly:
- Only apply for jobs online
- Use the same resume for every job you apply to
- Don’t network or meet new people
- Don’t ask your friends and family for information
- Complain about being unemployed
- Bad mouth your previous employer
- Don’t target companies, apply to anything anywhere
- Ask everyone you know for a job
- Don’t take time to assess your strengths and passion
- Don’t research salaries
- Don’t follow up on anything
- Don’t do anything differently
- Stay away from LinkedIn and social media
Stop Fitting In, Start Standing Out in your Job Search
Friday, April 15, 2011 12:00 PM - 1:30 PM CDT
Webinar Registration
When looking for a job or a new career, most people go through the same cycle. Find a job listing, spruce up our resume, send it and hope for an interview. IF you do get an interview you try to impress the interviewer and hope we get the job, and if we're "lucky", start working.Admittedly most of us do this until we somehow succeed in our efforts and get a job. So what's wrong with that you might ask? Well, if you are doing the same thing as everyone else and you are expecting a great result, at best that is a waste of time, and at worst it's borderline insanity.
Are YOU ready for something different?
Register For The Webinar
( I don't know anything about the seminar but I liked the title and it looks like it is free )
Words of Doom: ‘We Wish You The Best for Your Future’
By Shalini Sharan
Last week proved to be a major disappointment for my job search for my dream job. I thought I had found the perfect fit for my skills and ambitions and had made it to the top three spots for the final round interview. Therefore, when I saw an e-mail in my inbox from the recruiters, my heart sank a little.
I knew an e-mail only meant that I would be receiving another rejection. What ran through my mind when I read “we wish you the best for your future” were thoughts of imminent doom, the end of my job search, permanent unemployment and the end of my dreams of a perfect job. I could have taken this rejection better, but I had invested myself too much into the position already.
The next few days were full of disappointment, and I had lost motivation to start all over again. Being so close to being hired had given me unwarranted relief from continuing my job search. More than being disappointed with myself, I felt the burning guilt of letting others down. Throughout the nomination and the interview process, my professors and career counselors had been extremely supportive, positive and confident about my candidacy. All the expectations definitely compounded my sense of failure. I dreaded informing them and confronting my defeat but they turned out to be my pillars of support during this period of disappointment.
One of my professors—my mentor in college—immediately dismissed my worry about letting them down as “silly talk.” She made me realize that I had made it very far into a highly competitive academic field, which showed that I am a capable and a skilled candidate. This rejection only meant that I wasn’t 100% suited for the needs of the institute, not that I wasn’t a perfectly qualified candidate. A Bates College alumna told me next day that throughout her long career in public policy, she has learned that what really made her successful was how she dealt with the failures in her career. Another professor confidently told me that I didn’t get this job because something better was waiting for me and that I would look back at this point in my life and see how the pieces of successes and failures fell together.
Read The Rest Of The WSJ Article
I knew an e-mail only meant that I would be receiving another rejection. What ran through my mind when I read “we wish you the best for your future” were thoughts of imminent doom, the end of my job search, permanent unemployment and the end of my dreams of a perfect job. I could have taken this rejection better, but I had invested myself too much into the position already.
The next few days were full of disappointment, and I had lost motivation to start all over again. Being so close to being hired had given me unwarranted relief from continuing my job search. More than being disappointed with myself, I felt the burning guilt of letting others down. Throughout the nomination and the interview process, my professors and career counselors had been extremely supportive, positive and confident about my candidacy. All the expectations definitely compounded my sense of failure. I dreaded informing them and confronting my defeat but they turned out to be my pillars of support during this period of disappointment.
One of my professors—my mentor in college—immediately dismissed my worry about letting them down as “silly talk.” She made me realize that I had made it very far into a highly competitive academic field, which showed that I am a capable and a skilled candidate. This rejection only meant that I wasn’t 100% suited for the needs of the institute, not that I wasn’t a perfectly qualified candidate. A Bates College alumna told me next day that throughout her long career in public policy, she has learned that what really made her successful was how she dealt with the failures in her career. Another professor confidently told me that I didn’t get this job because something better was waiting for me and that I would look back at this point in my life and see how the pieces of successes and failures fell together.
Read The Rest Of The WSJ Article
Career advice from iconic leaders
By Alina Dizik, CareerBuilder
Just because icons like Albert Einstein and Thomas Edison aren't alive today, doesn't mean their leadership lessons should be forgotten. And since history always repeats itself, there is some career advice that never seems to change.
Here, we take a look at the leadership philosophies of iconic leaders and how they can help you get ahead in your own career.
"There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work and learning from failure."
-- Colin Powell
Career lesson: When it comes to your career, it's impossible to take the easy way out. Most of those who've found success don't have some secret connections that have helped them get ahead. Moving up in a company or building a business is always done the old-fashioned way -- by striving to do your best.
"I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work."
-- Thomas Edison
Career lesson: Not everyone gets it right 100 percent of the time, and the ability to rebound from career mistakes is just as important as getting it right the first time around. Companies are most interested in workers who can work through problems instead of giving up.
"Logic will get you from A to Z; imagination will get you everywhere."
-- Albert Einstein
Career lesson: These days, innovation is a buzzword, and knowing how to think outside the box is a valuable skill. Companies aren't simply looking to hire clones, so understanding how to differentiate yourself in a corporate environment is a plus.
"Finish every day and be done with it. You have done what you could; some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; you shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense."
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Career lesson: There's never a perfect day at work, and dwelling on past mistakes or having a negative attitude can prevent you from making progress. Remember that most of your superiors and managers have erred in the past but somehow managed to score that promotion.
More Lessons and Complete Article
Job Hunting Secrets From A Top Recruiter
Jessica Stillman, BNET
As BNET’s sister site MoneyWatch pointed out recently, in a climate where it takes the average job hunter more than seven months to find their next position, big job boards like Monster and CareerBuilder are of only limited use.
The post’s author Eilene Zimmerman writes:
Forget CareerBuilder, HotJobs, and all the other mass job sites. While these boards seem like a good place to start, how many people do you know who actually found a job that way? Even hiring managers don’t want to sort through the hundreds and hundreds of resumes they get for each position they list on these sites, so they’re increasingly turning to industry-specific job portals, saysDebra Yergen, author of Creating Job Security.And Zimmerman isn’t the only person pointing out that job boards are often a waste of time. Everyone from the WSJ to Ask the Headhunter’s Nick Corcodolis has written posts advising that there are probably more productive ways to spend most of your job search hours. But if job boards are on the wane, how are companies and recruiters finding people to hire? And how can you best position yourself to be found?
Writing on recruiting blog Fistful of Talent recently, Kelly Dingee, a “professional stalker” with Staffing Advisors, lets the cat out of the bag and offers up seven things employers should tell job seekers about how to get considered. Dingee isn’t convinced job boards are totally over saying, “there will be people looking for you on there.
At least for a little while longer.” But overall Dingee agrees with consensus opinion that too much time on job boards isn’t productive and offers tips to help you get hired in a post-job board world, including old standbys like networking — “Find someone who works at your targeted company who can pass your resume along” — as well as less well known advice:
Make yourself findable first. Google yourself right now. Did your LinkedIn profile come up? No? Build one, make it public. If you have a preferred method of contact, note it. Use inmails. Use a separate email.
Make yourself even more findable. Post your resume, or your bio, or whatever you want to call it. Use Posterous, use WordPress, use a .me site, use doctoc or slideshare… use something.
10 Secrets To Getting A Job At Apple, Google Or Microsoft
Written by Gayle Laakmann McDowell
Some might say that I got incredibly lucky. At eighteen years old, I was perhaps the youngest intern in Microsoft’s thousand person intern class. Most of my fellow interns had three times as much experience as me, and I couldn’t help but wonder, “What am I doing here?”
Indeed, there’s no denying that I got very, very lucky to land such a prestigious internship at such an early age. But there’s more to it than just that.
The tricks below enabled me to get the right experience, flaunt it on my resume, get the attention of recruiters, and eventually land positions with Microsoft, Apple and Google.
Here’s a list of 10 things you can do to improve your chances to do the same:
Some might say that I got incredibly lucky. At eighteen years old, I was perhaps the youngest intern in Microsoft’s thousand person intern class. Most of my fellow interns had three times as much experience as me, and I couldn’t help but wonder, “What am I doing here?”
Indeed, there’s no denying that I got very, very lucky to land such a prestigious internship at such an early age. But there’s more to it than just that.
The tricks below enabled me to get the right experience, flaunt it on my resume, get the attention of recruiters, and eventually land positions with Microsoft, Apple and Google.
Here’s a list of 10 things you can do to improve your chances to do the same:
- Start Something: Launching a small tech company, or just a project, can demonstrate virtually everything a tech firm wants to see: field expertise, passion for technology, initiative, leadership and creativity. Don’t have software development experience? Not to worry – you can hire an outsourced development team from sites like odesk and elance
- Create an Online Portfolio: Almost everyone can benefit from a portfolio. A simple web site with a description of your major accomplishments (both inside and outside of work) can provide more context than what your resume can provide. Recruiters may reference this after seeing your resume, but they might stumble across your portfolio online and give you a call.
- Get Out There (And Online): Online job boards are tough, and the best way around them is a personal referral. Attending tech events will help to build your network, but don’t forget about the online channels. Recruiters search for potential candidates on blogs comments, industry forums and Twitter. Being active on online – while providing a trail back to your portfolio – can be an excellent way to catch a recruiter’s attention.
- Make a Short and Sweet Resume: Let me tell you a little secret: recruiters don’t really read resumes. They glance at them, often for as little as fifteen seconds, before putting it in the ‘yes’ pile or the ‘no’ pile. For this reason, a short (usually one-page) resume is advantageous. This will ensure that the resume screener notices your most impressive accomplishments, without the mediocre items getting in the way.
- Focus on Accomplishments: Kill the fluff; no one buys into vague statements like “excellent problem solver.” A resume should focus on your accomplishments: concrete ways that you’ve made an impact, quantified if possible. Remember that your list of accomplishments goes beyond the “official” work that you’ve done. Any project that is reasonably substantial can be listed on your resume.
- Rehearse Your Stories: One of the best ways to improve your overall interview performance is to practice your “stories.” For each major accomplishment, brainstorm ways that you showed leadership, demonstrated influence, or overcame challenges. Rehearsing these responses aloud will help you to more effectively discuss what you did and why it mattered.
Gayle Laakmann McDowell, a former Google engineer, who interned at both Apple and Microsoft, is CEO of CareeCup.com. She’s the author of “The Google Resume” and “Cracking the Coding Interview.”
Top 10 Tips For Building A Strong LinkedIn Profile
Author Jay Markunas
Top ten tips for building a strong profile from LinkedIn:
1. Don’t cut-and-paste your resume. You wouldn’t hand out your resume before introducing yourself. Describe your experience and abilities as you would to someone you just met.
2. Borrow from the best marketers. Use specific adjectives, colorful verbs, active construction (ie..”managed project team” instead of “responsible for project team”).
3. Write a personal tagline. It’s the first thing people see in your profile. It follows your name in search hit lists.
4. Put your elevator pitch to work. The more meaningful your summary is, the more time visitors will spend on your profile.
5. Point out your skills. The Specialties field is your personal search engine optimizer when Recruiters are looking for candidates.
Tips 6 - 10 + Graphic + Complete Article
Top ten tips for building a strong profile from LinkedIn:
1. Don’t cut-and-paste your resume. You wouldn’t hand out your resume before introducing yourself. Describe your experience and abilities as you would to someone you just met.
2. Borrow from the best marketers. Use specific adjectives, colorful verbs, active construction (ie..”managed project team” instead of “responsible for project team”).
3. Write a personal tagline. It’s the first thing people see in your profile. It follows your name in search hit lists.
4. Put your elevator pitch to work. The more meaningful your summary is, the more time visitors will spend on your profile.
5. Point out your skills. The Specialties field is your personal search engine optimizer when Recruiters are looking for candidates.
Tips 6 - 10 + Graphic + Complete Article
Six Job Search Myths that Can Hurt Your Search
- Myth #1: The Internet will do the trick
- Myth #2: I’m doomed in this market/I’m damaged goods
- Myth #3: It’s not a good time to job search
- Myth #4: I can do this myself
Job Search 4.0 - 11 New Websites for Your Job Search
By Heather Huhman
If you’re entering the job market for the first time or haven’t searched for a new job in the last three years, you’re in for a shock over how the process works—and how it has changed in a relatively short period of time.
Job search 1.0 = help wanted ads in newspapers
Job search 2.0 = online job boards
Job search 3.0 = social talent communities
What’s next?
"Job search 4.0 will be less about finding talent and finding jobs and more about applying skills to the problems existing in any marketplace,” says Joel Capperella, vice president for Yoh, a Philadelphia-based technology staffing firm.
[See 10 Ways to Use Social Media in Your Job Search.]
To get up to speed, here are some new job search tools you should consider using:
1. ClearFit’s Career Finder: Figuring Out What Job Best Suits You
Career Finder by ClearFit, which is free for job seekers, differs from other personality and motivation surveys for a number of reasons. They use a “normative” survey, which compares people to people (for example, an average range of top performer attribute scores to an applicant’s attribute scores). In other words, you can validly and defensibly compare people with jobs to help predict performance.
2. MyWebCareer: Understanding How Employers Perceive Your Online Presence
MyWebCareer provides a free online service that evaluates your social and business networking profiles, your overall network, and your search engine footprint to generate a personalized Career Score. Your Career Score provides insight into how colleagues and employers perceive and evaluate your professional competencies and achievements. Your Career Score is refreshed each month, and you are notified of any changes and actions you should take.
[See The Most Effective Ways to Look for a Job.]
3. Vizibility: Creating an Accurate Google Search About You
More than 85 percent of executive recruiters report Googling candidates as part of the search process today, and almost half of executive recruiters have eliminated candidates based on what appears (or does not appear) about them online. Vizibility allows you to manage what people find about you in Google. You can create your own perfect search and choose a personalized URL to share with others. Additionally, personalized QR codes are now available for Vizibility SearchMe™ links, which can be added to résumés, presentations, business cards, and any other printed or online materials.
4. JobSTART101: Learning How to Find a Job
JobSTART101: Smart Tips and Real-World Training is a free online course for college students and recent graduates—but it’s a great tool for all job seekers—that introduces the professional skills necessary to succeed in the workplace. JobSTART101 addresses the gap between employers’ needs and workers’ skills by helping job seekers understand the real-life challenges and expectations of the workplace.
5. Gist: Bringing All Your Connections into One Location
Gist, a free web and mobile application, brings your contacts into one place to give you a full view of your network. Automatically get a dossier of the latest news, blog posts, and tweets for anyone in your professional network delivered where you want it, when you want it. Gist is available on the web, Gmail (Chrome and Firefox), Outlook, iPhone, Android, and inside Salesforce.com.
Sites 6 - 11 and Complete US News Article
If you’re entering the job market for the first time or haven’t searched for a new job in the last three years, you’re in for a shock over how the process works—and how it has changed in a relatively short period of time.
Job search 1.0 = help wanted ads in newspapers
Job search 2.0 = online job boards
Job search 3.0 = social talent communities
What’s next?
"Job search 4.0 will be less about finding talent and finding jobs and more about applying skills to the problems existing in any marketplace,” says Joel Capperella, vice president for Yoh, a Philadelphia-based technology staffing firm.
[See 10 Ways to Use Social Media in Your Job Search.]
To get up to speed, here are some new job search tools you should consider using:
1. ClearFit’s Career Finder: Figuring Out What Job Best Suits You
Career Finder by ClearFit, which is free for job seekers, differs from other personality and motivation surveys for a number of reasons. They use a “normative” survey, which compares people to people (for example, an average range of top performer attribute scores to an applicant’s attribute scores). In other words, you can validly and defensibly compare people with jobs to help predict performance.
2. MyWebCareer: Understanding How Employers Perceive Your Online Presence
MyWebCareer provides a free online service that evaluates your social and business networking profiles, your overall network, and your search engine footprint to generate a personalized Career Score. Your Career Score provides insight into how colleagues and employers perceive and evaluate your professional competencies and achievements. Your Career Score is refreshed each month, and you are notified of any changes and actions you should take.
[See The Most Effective Ways to Look for a Job.]
3. Vizibility: Creating an Accurate Google Search About You
More than 85 percent of executive recruiters report Googling candidates as part of the search process today, and almost half of executive recruiters have eliminated candidates based on what appears (or does not appear) about them online. Vizibility allows you to manage what people find about you in Google. You can create your own perfect search and choose a personalized URL to share with others. Additionally, personalized QR codes are now available for Vizibility SearchMe™ links, which can be added to résumés, presentations, business cards, and any other printed or online materials.
4. JobSTART101: Learning How to Find a Job
JobSTART101: Smart Tips and Real-World Training is a free online course for college students and recent graduates—but it’s a great tool for all job seekers—that introduces the professional skills necessary to succeed in the workplace. JobSTART101 addresses the gap between employers’ needs and workers’ skills by helping job seekers understand the real-life challenges and expectations of the workplace.
5. Gist: Bringing All Your Connections into One Location
Gist, a free web and mobile application, brings your contacts into one place to give you a full view of your network. Automatically get a dossier of the latest news, blog posts, and tweets for anyone in your professional network delivered where you want it, when you want it. Gist is available on the web, Gmail (Chrome and Firefox), Outlook, iPhone, Android, and inside Salesforce.com.
Sites 6 - 11 and Complete US News Article
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