Career Archives - Page 6 of 7 - Palladian Career Resources

Organizing Your Job Search: HappyJob Search

I ran into a tool today that could be helpful in a job search. The tool, HappyJobSearch, allows a job seeker to create an online account to track their job search activity. What I like about this tool is how it organizes your job search. It is very easy in a job search to forget where you have sent resumes.

I ran into a tool today that could be helpful in a job search. The tool, HappyJobSearch, allows a job seeker to create an online account to track their job search activity.

What I like about this tool is how it organizes your job search. It is very easy in a job search to forget where you have sent resumes. In my job searches earlier in my career, I organized organized everything with lots of paper. I printed each job description, information from the company’s website and news on the company, and kept it all in a file folder with notes. This was effective, but tedious.

Using an online database should make the process more efficient. Additionally, the tracking system at Happy Job Search allows you to set the next action for each opportunity. The display of the opportunity is sorted by the next action, so it’s very easy to go to your top priorities.

The website does have some limitations. For example, it doesn’t allow any type of scheduling. Knowing your next action is helpful, it’s also important to know when to complete this action. Additionally, the database stores the link to the job description – not the actual posting. Many job descriptions are only posted for a specific time – typically 30 days. After this, the link won’t work. Printing or saving the description is important if you want to ensure you can go back to it.

I’m interested in how useful this is for an active job seeker. If you decide to try this out, let me know your experience with it.

What Have You Created?

For many job seekers encounter, developing a good list of accomplishments to include on their resume and to discuss in an interview is a challenge. Listing accomplishments sounds like an easy task – just write about your successes. Despite this, it often proves to be very difficult.

The result, nearly half of all resume list no accomplishments.

There are several causes of this. Many people forget details from prior positions. Some job seekers find it difficult to focus on their successes after a job loss. Their reduced confidence affects their resume, interviews, and job search success. The most common cause I see is an a failure to recognize an experience as an accomplishment that will impress a hiring manager. This stems from a lack of understanding of what a hiring manager wants.

You can find accomplishments that will demonstrate your potential in a wide variety of work activities. One particular focus I find uncovers a lot of impressive accomplishments is to look for things the job seeker has created.

There are a few questions you can ask yourself to get the process started:

What systems have your created and implemented?
What processes have you created and implemented?
What tools, including forms, spreadsheets and databases, have your designed?
What products or services have you designed?

These questions will help identify potential accomplishments. From there, you need to look at your specific actions and the results that were achieved. Designing a great system that never gets implemented or a product that never makes it to market is difficult to sell as an accomplishment. Provide specific results. Did the project you completed increase sales, reduce costs, improve quality, increase customer service, or provide another benefit.

It is the benefit, the tangible value you provided an employer, that will impress a hiring manager.

The Importance of Self-Confidence in Your Job Search

I’ve worked with many job seekers that lost a job and all their confidence with it. They take a job loss as a definitive statement of their value as a professional. Somehow, they feel that getting fired once more than cancels out every success and achievement they have had in their career.

It should be clear to anyone that being fired does not reverse every success a person has achieved in their career. In speaking with job seekers, virtually all of them will say they understand that a job loss is not the end of their career. Despite this, many act as if they truly believe it.

A loss of self-confidence may be the biggest obstacle to finding a job. Candidates that have little confidence fail to talk about their accomplishments. They also tend to present their limitations much more than other candidates. As you can expect, a candidate that focuses on their limitations and not their accomplishments will rarely win out.

If you can’t get excited about your work experience, you won’t be able to get a hiring manager excited about it. For most people, this is a temporary reaction to losing their job. The key is working through these self-doubts before you interview.

Review your past successes. Focus on the times when you were successful. Work on getting comfortable talking about your successes. This may sound easy, but for many people it can be very difficult. Often, talking with past co-workers can be a huge benefit. They will remember and recognize the successes you have achieved. Getting fired can make a person feel embarrassed and withdraw from their professional relationships. Don’t make this mistake.

Networking is the most effective search strategy. Withdrawing from relationships makes it impossible to network and will drag out your search.

Some individuals will experience more than just reduced self-confidence. Depression can set in after losing a job. A job loss can be one of the most stressful life events. If you have feel paralyzed with anxiety or despair, talk with a medical professional.

Relocation: Cost of Living

When relocating, it is extremely important to know the difference in cost of living between one area and another. What is a good salary in one location might be a low salary somewhere else.

There are a lot of great tools to research the differences. Salary.com is probably the best know. You can check what an equivalent salary anywhere in the country is compared to where you currently live.

Once you have a general idea of the cost differences, it is important to look at the specific expenses that will be different. The numbers that salary comparison sites give are based on averages. Your situation could deviate wildly from the average.

Housing is one of the biggest factors. If you buy or rent can substantially change the cost you experience. Some areas are affordable for renters while home ownership is very costly. As real estate values decline, this difference should narrow. Property taxes can also vary. Even on low to moderately priced homes, the property taxes in another location can be thousands of dollars higher or lower from your current costs.

Some regions have costs that are unique. When I moved to Florida and started looking at homes, I didn't think about flood insurance. I ended up buying a townhouse within a couple hundred feet of the water in Tampa Bay and my townhouse was less than ten feet above sea level. Flood insurance was a significant cost. It should have been obvious to me that this would be a major cost, but I had never lived in a flood area.

Another factor to consider is the cost of utilities. Electricity, natural gas, water, trash pickup and cable can vary greatly. I watched my cable bill double on one relo when I moved from an area with two competing cable companies to an area that had a monopoly. Weather can also affect some costs. The cost to heat and cool may change due to a move from a temperate area to hot or cold area.

There are a huge number of factors that affect the lifestyle you will be able to afford in a new area. Research the costs and get an idea of how your purchasing power will change.

One thing to remember is that employers don't have to maintain your lifestyle when you relocate. A company will want to make an offer that will be attractive, but they don't have to pay you at your current level. Salaries typically do not vary by as much as costs around the country. This may cause you to lose buying power if you move to a higher cost of living area. You will need to decide if the reasons why the position is attractive make up for this loss in buying power. Many people find that the opportunity more than makes up for the change, especially when looking to the long term potential. There isn't a right answer to this – it's a personal preference.

When to Work With a Recruiter

The recruiters at Palladian are seeing a consistent pattern with job seekers. Individuals are worried about the economy and are unwilling to consider changing jobs. They don't want to talk about new positions and are not interested in speaking with a recruiter. Then, a few weeks or months later, the job seekers call back and explain that they have just been laid off.

In a strong economy, this pattern is rare. Today, it's becoming common. As the economy continues to slow, this will become more prevalent.

Managing your career is not a part-time activity, and yet, most people treat it this way. They job hunt when they need a job and avoid all job search activities when they don't. This is a mistake. You never know when your career situation is going to change. We're seeing companies go from stable to bankrupt in weeks. There is little warning and no one knows who is going to be next.

The only solution to this is to develop a “plan B.” You should update your resume, work on your interview skills and network in your industry. Be ready to start a job search if needed. Hopefully, you won't get surprised with a layoff. If you do, you will be ready when your peers will be scrambling.

When you talk with a recruiter, don't just hang up. A recruiter is a person that works full time to identify opportunities and match them to job seekers. A recruiter can be a great resource for you. The key is to build a relationship. You might talk with a recruiter for years before they find the right job for you. The key is that they are always looking.

If you wait to speak with recruiters until you're out of work, you will have much less success. This is due to several factors. The first is that the recruiter doesn't know you and it will take time for them to learn what you want and what your potential is. Building a relationship in advance can eliminate this learning curve when you decide to make a change.

Second, if you wait until you need a job, the recruiter is going to know that you are very active. The recruiter will assume that you are talking with a lot of other recruiters and that you have posted your resume on the job boards. This makes the job seeker much less attractive. A good recruiter finds candidates that a hiring manager can't find. If the job seeker is broadcasting their resume everywhere, there is no need for the hiring manager to rely on the recruiter to find the job seeker.

Third, by waiting until you need help, you do not build trust with the recruiter. Picture a recruiter getting a call from their best client. They need to hire someone with a background similar to yours right now. The recruiter probably has a number of candidates that could fit the position and will want to submit the top three. Although your skills, experience and education will be important, the recruiter is more likely to present a candidate they know well than one they don't, if the two candidates have a similar background. This isn't a result of favoritism – it's a result of the trust that has been built.

A recruiter wants to make a good impression on their client each time they submit candidates. Knowing a candidate – how they communicate and what their values are – can help a job seeker get exposure to a recruiter's clients.

To capitalize on this, you need to start working with recruiters (and network with other professionals) long before you decide to make a change. Update your resume periodically and keep your interview skills fresh. If you do these things, you will be in much better shape if you career takes an unexpected turn.

More About Fake Degrees

I’ve written before about lying on a resume in the past, but today was reminded how some companies aggressively try to tempt job seekers to the dark side.

There are companies that sell “degrees” to anyone that will write a check. Most of these organizations try to stay under the radar. What they do is fraudulent. A number of states have prosecuted diploma mills and some are prosecuting job seekers that use fake degrees to get a job.

Today, I received a spam message that offered me a degree without classes, tests, exams, or books. Additionally, no qualifications are required. Below is the spam. I left misspelled words and typos as they appeared in the original message, but I removed the phone numbers.

No Exams/Books/Tests/Interview/classes
100% No Pre-School qualification required!

——————————
Inside USA:
0utsidee USA:
——————————

Bacheelor, Degree, M???steerMB/-\, Ph[)D (non accredited) availablee in the Field of yourr choice so you can
even become a doctoor and receive All the benefits That comes with it!

Ple???se leave be|???w 3 Info in Voic???mail:

1) Your name
2) Your co???ntry
3) Your phone no. [please include Country code]

Call Now!! 24-hours a day, 7-Days a Weekk waiting For your call

——————————
Inside USA:
0utside USA:
——————————

Our Staff wilI get back to You in 1-3 working days

As the economy slows and more people are unemployed for longer time periods, it may become tempting to buy a degree. This is fraud. Companies continue to get better at identifying job seekers that are deceptive. It’s very easy to check this stuff out. Go to the Council for Higher Education Accreditation and search their database. This is the organization in the US that accredits the accrediting bodies in the US.

If a school isn’t in this database, you should research it much closer. There are states that have criminalized the use of degrees from schools that are not properly accredited. Remember to check the accrediting body. Many of the fake schools say that they are accredited by fake accrediting bodies.

Fortunately, identifying fake degrees is getting easier. None of us want to go put our lives in the hands of a doctor that received a mail order degree without ever taking a class.

Job Fair Advice

Yesterday, I attended the Military Job Fair of Virginia. This job fair caters to transitioning and former military personnel. My firm does a lot of recruiting for defense contractors and we wanted to expand our network of candidates. It was a great event and we met a lot of good people.

Interestingly, the most common first question I was asked was “What jobs do you have?” This may seem like an acceptable question – it is a job fair with companies trying to fill jobs, after all. The problem is that it demonstrates that the job seeker is focused solely on their needs. This goes to the heart of the biggest mistake you can make in your job search.

Who is the Customer?

In a job search, who is the customer and who is the sales person? Companies advertise jobs, market themselves to generate interest and traffic and need to persuade job seekers to work for them. Based on this, most people consider the company as the party that is selling and the job seeker is the buyer.

This is wrong. The company is the one with the money, and the job seeker is the one that has the “product” to sell. The “product” the job seeker is offering is the contribution they will provide the company. How can you make a good impression and get a hiring manager excited about you if you are focused on “what’s in it for you.”

The other problem with asking about jobs is that it is almost impossible to answer. A company that goes to a job fair usually has multiple needs. For large companies, this could be hundreds, or even thousands of jobs. The company representative then has to pick what job they think is most appropriate for the job seeker based only on what they see. Do you want to be categorized and stereotyped based on your appearance? Leading off with this question is asking to be stereotyped.

For some people, how they look will not create the right impression.

Job Seeker Example

Although the job fair was designed for transitioning military personnel, it covered a much broader range. In fact, there were a number of entry level job seekers, particularly in administrative roles. Because the event had a military focus, there were less women than men.

There was a point midway during the day, when I had talked with a series of young women that were all looking for administrative positions. Then, a woman I remember walked up that looked especially young and had a similar image to the others I met.

If she had led off with “What jobs do you have,” I would then have to guess what career field and the level of the position would interest her. Essentially, by asking about jobs first, she would be requesting that I stereotype her based on the other job seekers I had met that day.

Instead, this woman started off by saying, “Hi, I’m <name>. I have been working in the <industry> for the last eight years and just completed my MBA. I’m interested in learning about your firm.”

By framing her background, she ensured that I got the right impression of her from the start.

What Should You Do at a Job Fair

Your goal at a job fair should be to build a relationship with a number of companies. Talk to as many people as you can. Learn a little about each company. Make sure you take away information that will allow you to follow up with the person you met.

I talked with well over one hundred people. I can only a recall a few. The ones that I will end up working with are the ones that are proactive and follow up with me. This demonstrates both initiative and organization.

If you have attended job fairs in the past and didn’t get the results you wanted from them, change your approach. Focus on building a relationship with the recruiters that are there (both corporate and agency), and follow up after the event.

Additional Resources

I’m going to start working on a guide to help job seekers get better results from job fairs. On the way home yesterday, I mapped out the organization for the guide and some of the tools I’m going to include. It should help you make job fairs much more effective for you in the future.

I’m hoping to make this available in the next few weeks and will announce its availability here on the blog. Check back for more information.

How to Start Building an Industry Presence

Yesterday, I wrote 10 Ways to Get Employers to Find You. Today, I want to give you a simple, easy to follow plan to get started utilizing a few of these techniques.

You’re probably thinking that this isn’t going to be easy, no matter what I say. The truth is, it can be easy if you make it easy. Despite this, very few people will do what is necessary. This isn’t because the techniques are difficult to implement. The reason that few people will do these things is that they are slow to work.

Most people want a quick solution. A slow, methodical plan, no matter how effective, just isn’t appealing. If you want employers to seek you out, you need to do two things, and neither can be achieved overnight. You need to become a recognized expert in your field and you need to build a huge network of professionals that know and respect you.

The Step-by-Step Plan

Step 1: Setup a LinkedIn account and build a profile. This will give people a place to learn about you and your career.
Step 2: On LinkedIn each week, invite one or two people in your industry that you don’t know to connect to you on LinkedIn. To do this, consider getting a premium account on LinkedIn. It will make the process much easier.
Step 3: Start following the LinkedIn Answers or Yahoo Answers for topics in your field. Participate by answering a few questions a week.
Step 4: Search for blogs and forums related to your industry and pick one or more to follow. Participate in the discussions by posting comments.
Step 5: Write one or two articles per month and post them on an article marketing site.
Step 6: As you build a library of articles you have written, begin referencing these in you Answers, blog and forum postings. This will reinforce with your network that you are an expert and that you actively contribute to the field.

Time Commitment

Building a network is not something that will happen over night. It will take work and time. Fortunately, the time commitment isn’t huge.

LinkedIn Profile Setup – 5 Hours – One-Time: Setting up a profile can be done very quickly, but to do this right, it will take a few hours. The more time you put in writing about your background the more effective the profile will be.
Invitations – 10 min/wk: Sending one or two invites per week will only take a minute or two. What may take time is conversing with your new connections. Some will accept your invites without a response. Others will send a personal email and start a discussion to get to know you.
Answers – 30 min/wk: The time commitment here is up to you. 30 minutes a week to read and answer questions can be very effective.
Blog Comments – 30 min/wk: Reading and participating in blogs and discussions can be effective with 30 minutes a week.
Articles – 1-2 Articles per month – Time Varies: The time commitment here will vary with your writing skill. Some people can knock out really good articles very quickly. Others may require 10 or more hours per article. The key isn’t writing a lot, it’s being consistent over time. One article per month will develop a significant portfolio over next couple years. Expect the first few articles to take some time, but you will get faster and it will get easier with time.

If you follow these steps, you will build relationships and propel your career forward. Because this is a slow process, few people will take the time to do this. If you do this, you will differentiate yourself from your competition. Don’t give up if you can’t devote this much time – just scale back to what you can do.

The Results

Now, fast forward a couple years. You decide you want to make a career change, and start the process by contacting people in your network and ask them for help. Some of the individuals you have developed a relationship with will be happy to recommend you to their companies. Their referral will be more than just passing your resume to HR. They will be able (and probably very willing) to share with key managers that you are an expert in the field, have published a number of industry articles and are a resource others in the industry turn to with questions. In most cases, you’re going to get a very close look and have a great chance of getting hired.

10 Ways to Get Employers to Find You

In life, it is not what you know or who you know that counts — it is both!
Anthony J. D'Angelo, The College Blue Book

Becoming a recognized expert in your industry and developing a large network are two steps that can propel your career. Very few people devote much if any time to either of these tasks. The ones that do, are often sought out by employers.

Both of these goals may seem extremely difficult to achieve. The truth is that they are much easier to reach than they appear. I'm going share 10 ways to improve your industry standing and build your network. These techniques will help employers find you when they need to fill a key position.

The benefits are simple:

You will learn more and develop faster as a professional
You will build relationships that will expose you to opportunities, often before you decide to make a career change
You will have a network to tap into for opportunities if you find you need to make a career move
You will meet potential employees you can hire

Most of these steps require very little time on a weekly basis. What they do require is a commitment to consistently work on them. If you do this, a few minutes each day, you can make a huge impact on your career.

The Plan

To become an industry expert, recognized by your peers, it is important to study your industry. Find resources that publish good content in your field and follow them. Google Reader, RSS Feeds and other free services make this easy. If you are not familiar with these, check them out – they're really easy to use and can save a lot of time.

Once you are comfortable that you understand your field (you are probably already at this point), start contributing. Share your expertise, either by writing articles and white papers, or by participating in online discussions. In either case, you will begin interacting with people in you field you would not otherwise know.

As your presence in the field grows, your expertise will continue to increase and you will build your network.

10 Ways to Build Your Presence

LinkedIn – Create a profile on LinkedIn and link to people in your industry. Try to add one or two new contacts every week. In a couple years, you will have 200 people in your field that you know and can help you. Remember, networking is always most effective when you look for ways to help others, not just yourself.
Personal Website – Create a personal website outlining your background and professional interests. This gives people a chance to find you and understand your career.
Facebook – Create a Facebook page (or Myspace or one of the other Social Networking sites) and share you career background and interests. The social networking pages are designed to be places for social interaction, but this doesn't mean they can't be used to help your career. Obama and McCain both have Facebook pages. In fact, Obama has over 40 different Facebook accounts (Virignia for Obama, NY for Obama, etc.). Janis Joplin, the singer who died in 1970, has a Facebook page. There's a book store in the UK with a page, a number of charities and a bunch of Arts festivals with Facebook pages.
Industry Forums – Most fields have industry associations that sponsor online forums where people can post questions or participate in discussions. Join one or more of these and contribution to the group. In the IT field, searching forums has been a very effective way for recruiters to find talented candidates. If you are in an industry without an effective forum, you can start one, although this is much more time consuming.
Article Marketing – Write articles and post them on article databases. EzineArticles.com is the biggest. By posting an article you authorize publishers to reprint your article on their websites or in print as long as they credit you as the author.
Answers – LinkedIn Answers and Yahoo Answers both have very active communities. You can post a question on any topic if you need information. By answering questions, you can develop a reputation as an expert.
Blog Comments – Visit blogs in your industry and post comments. Add additional information to a post or pose a question for the author.
Hub Pages/Lens – Set up an account on Squidoo or Hubpages and create a resource page for your industry.
Knol – This is a new article posting site on Google. Post some articles in your field.
Blog – Start writing a blog about your industry. One or two posts a week will grow and become a significant online presence. This a bigger commitment, both in time and effort, but can be very effective. If you can't write consistently, look to the article databases like EzineArticles and publish articles from other authors to supplement what you write.

If you commit to a few of these activities on a routine, consistent basis, you will build a very effective network that will provide significant benefits to your career.

Where is the Job Market Going?

With the current financial crisis, there is tremendous uncertainty in our economy. This is most obvious in the financial markets after Monday’s decline. The markets are worried and investors react to increasing risk by selling.

Now the decline in stocks doesn’t directly affect the job market. In some respects, it’s more of a symptom than a driving force. Unfortunately, because it is a symptom of the risk in our economy, we have to recognize the risk to the job market.

The Credit Crisis

For most people, the credit crisis has had no direct impact on them. The people are feeling this are the people that need to borrow money, and in reality, these people are not individuals, but corporations. The auto industry just received $25 billion in loan guarantees from the government. In a normal economic climate, it’s unlikely this would have been necessary. They could have borrowed from private entities, but today, that money isn’t available. Banks are very reluctant to loan money.

The biggest problem with the credit crisis is how it is stopping the expansion that should be occurring. With the decline in the dollar, manufacturing firms are finding it much easier to export, and much easier to replace imports. We continue to see the job market in manufacturing hold steady (outside of areas with heavy auto industry concentrations). What we’re not seeing is a boom in expansion. Manufacturing has been at capacity for a while, but new plants are not being built on a wide scale.

The cause of this is two-fold. First, companies can’t borrow because of the credit crisis. Second, there’s a fear that the economy will get worse and an expansion won’t be needed. The effect of these factors is to limit the growth in the parts of our economy that are doing well.

The Job Market

The New York Times had an article Monday about how the job market could be affected in a significantly different way as compared to past downturns. The article, “Does the Financial Crisis Threaten Your Job,” discusses how in past recessions, companies cut back unskilled positions most. Skilled positions tended to be retained as highly skilled workers were too valuable in the long term and too difficult to replace.

The article predicts that this downturn will be exactly the opposite. Individuals with Bachelor’s degrees and more advanced degrees will be hurt much more than the lower levels of our economy. This poses a significant challenge for college seniors, as the job market in December and May could be bleak.

How to Adapt

Dealing with a tight job market requires a lot more work. Start by networking very aggressively. Try to find a contact in the companies you are targeting that will refer you for a position. This can greatly improve your chances.

One of the most important aspects of your search is to have a strong positioning statement. This is the core statement of value that you bring to the table. Many job seekers state that they are good at a particular job or skill. In a tight job market, being qualified and capable aren’t enough. Companies focus on hiring the best talent. This requires standing out from your competition.

With our interview coaching, we focus on uncovering the accomplishments and experiences that demonstrate how an individual has been successful and has added unique value to their employers. If you’re having trouble doing this, get help.

In interviews, you need to expand upon your positioning statement. You can do this in the answer to the Tell Me About Yourself Question. You should also reinforce the value you offer throughout the interview. Job seekers that can’t do this well often interview once and have the process stall. They don’t get another interview and they don’t get an outright rejection. The process just grinds to a halt.

The reason for this is that the hiring manager doesn’t have a great reason to hire or reject the candidate. They can see the individual could do the job, but they can’t get excited about hiring them. Instead, they say they will think about the person more but nothing changes. Eventually, the company finds someone that gives a compelling reason to be hired – and they get the job.

Bottom Line: Work on developing your positioning statement with a compelling reason why you should be hired, focused on the value you will provide the company.