Sharing Your Emotional Intelligence in the Job Search, Part 1 July 22, 2011
Posted by Cheryl Lynch Simpson, ACRW, COPNS in Emotional Intelligence, Executive Resume Design, Job Search Best Practices.add a comment
In a Wetfeet.com blog post this week, blogger Denis Wilson summarized the increasing value employers place on candidate emotional intelligence (EI). As Wilson noted, more and more employers are evaluating candidate emotional intelligence formally with assessments.
Why is this important? Personality has long been the #1 reason employers hire candidate A over candidate B – there’s nothing new in that. But as psychologists expand upon the ground-breaking research of Dr. Daniel Goleman into emotional intelligence, employers have come to recognize that there’s more to personality than how well a potential candidate fits into the team – there’s the critical issue of how well a candidate can perceive, understand, and cope with their own and other’s emotions.
What should you do?
- First, I would suggest that you learn more about emotional intelligence and take one or more of the quick, free assessments available on the Internet. You need to know what your emotional intelligence strengths and weaknesses are. Free online EI tests include TalentSmart, MySkillsProfile, and IHHP.
- Once you’ve determined what your EI assets and liabilities are, you need a plan to [a] showcase your assets in your career communications tools (resume, cover letter, thank you letter, LinkedIn profile); [b] bolster your EI liabilities; and [c] communicate your EI assets verbally in phone screenings and face-to-face interviews.
We’ll explore [b] and [c] in future blog posts; for today, let’s focus on how to spotlight your emotional intelligence in your career communications tools:
Resume:
- Weave 2-3 carefully chosen adjectives in your summary which specifically address emotional competencies such as self-confidence, self-awareness, insight, compassion, dealing with conflict, and the like. Don’t simply state that you are self-confident – use fresh language and metaphors to demonstrate that.
- In addition to including testimonials in your resume about your strongest industry-specific skills, also consider adding a testimonial which addresses your communications, leadership, or team-building capabilities. Again, don’t simply say that you are a strong communicator or great leader – find new ways to showcase these proficiencies.
- Try dividing your core competencies list into sub-sections, one of which could be dedicated your emotional competencies. Challenge yourself to get specific about your emotional management and problem-solving skills.
- Include one or more “softer” success stories in your work history section which demonstrate how effectively you build teams, resolve personality differences, and manage interpersonal conflict. Remember to use the PAR/CAR formula (problem-action-result; challenge-action-result) to share the meat of your emotional management competencies in story form.
I’ll dive into letter and LinkedIn strategies in my next post. In the meantime, if you have questions about how to do any of these things, be sure to ask.
Here’s to your emotionally-rich resume!
Cheryl Simpson
Balancing Your Job Search with the Rest of Your Life July 12, 2011
Posted by Cheryl Lynch Simpson, ACRW, COPNS in Coping with Unemployment, Job Search Best Practices, Life Balance.add a comment
The final element of Martin Seligman’s PERMA model is achievement. As described in his 2011 best-seller, Flourish, achievement is about our pursuit of our life goals. How much time do we spend daily pursuing our dreams?
From a job search perspective, achievement is the pursuit of the job – how much time daily do you spend pursuing opportunities? In my experience, it is all too easy for job seekers to spend either way too much or way too little time searching for their next role. Too much time can mean searching more than 8 hours a day or 40 hours a week. Too little time can mean checking job boards daily, then abandoning the search for the rest of the day. Neither of these options are ideal.
I recommend that full-time job seekers (those who are currently unemployed) invest 6-7 hours a day in the search or about 30-35 hours weekly. What you want here is a balance between your achievement focus on landing that next job and the rest of your life. Too much job search will actually harm the quality of your pursuit.
How so? Well, job searching more than 35 hours a week will drain you of energy, deplete you of enthusiasm, and blur your focus. You may find it difficult to sustain that pace and may not be able to get yourself psyched for each interview that comes along. My suggestion is to maintain an active job search pace 4 days per week, use 1 day per week as “me” time (self-care, recreation, creativity, or personal or professional development), and 2 days per week as family time.
Your goal, in short, is to balance the different roles you play in life. Consider the Life Career Rainbow, which offers us a visual of all of these roles:
Based on the work of psychologist Donald Super, the Rainbow demonstrates how our life roles shift as we age. It also reminds us that there is more to life than job search. While in the midst of a search, it is absolutely critical to maintain solid relationships with family, take care of your home, learn new things, sustain a social life, contribute to the community, play, and care for aging parents. Limiting your job search activities to the levels noted above helps make space for these other critical facets of life.
If you’re not job searching full-time, then you will need to scale down the search to fit into the time you have available to it – perhaps 30 minutes to an hour a day or 2-4 hours per week? And yes, you still have to balance the search with all the relevant roles in your own personal Life Career Rainbow.
If you’re spending less time job searching than the amounts recommended here, regardless of whether you are searching full-time or part-time, then your search is almost certainly flawed. In all probability you are paying less attention to one or more critical search components than you should (networking? LinkedIn?). The good news is that can change, starting right now.
Here’s to a well-balanced job search and a well-balanced life,
Cheryl Simpson
Why Do You Job Search? July 8, 2011
Posted by Cheryl Lynch Simpson, ACRW, COPNS in Coping with Unemployment, Job Search Best Practices, LinkedIn.add a comment
Meaning is the 4th element of Martin Seligman’s PERMA model, as described in his 2001 best-seller, Flourish. To optimize our flow, our creativity, our productivity, and our well-being, we need to find meaning and purpose in what we do.
As I have for each aspect of the PERMA model, I’d like to explore meaning from a job search perspective, beginning with a basic question:
What specific goals are you trying to achieve in your job search?
Don’t stop with the obvious – yes, you need a job. But what for?
You need to pay the bills, keep a roof over your family’s heads, but is that all? You probably also want to:
- Secure or protect your standard of living?
- Create a new career challenge for yourself?
- Propel your skills to another level?
- Develop your potential?
- Contribute to society? Give something back? Pass something on?
Now we’re getting somewhere: we’re approaching the real reason you’re engaged in this career search. Push yourself past easy answers until you get to the true heart of the matter – that which is fueling your need for change.
Once you identify the heart of your motivation, try crafting a statement that captures it. Perhaps something like, “For me, this search is about taking care of my family and creating a home life that helps each of us realize our potential.” Whatever yours says, write it on a piece of paper and place it where you will see it daily. Remind yourself of this “why” every time you sit down to search, answer job search email, or seek new contacts on LinkedIn.
Keep your goal firmly in mind so it can motivate you every step of the way. After all, it may be a long journey. Be prepared.
Here’s to a more meaningful search,
Cheryl
Leveraging Interpersonal Support in Your Job Search July 7, 2011
Posted by Cheryl Lynch Simpson, ACRW, COPNS in Coping with Unemployment, Job Search Best Practices, LinkedIn, Networking/Referral-Building.add a comment
The third component of Martin Seligman’s PERMA model is Positive Relationships (from his 2011 best-seller, Flourish) – another element that many job seekers overlook in the midst of their searches. Though most job seekers know by now that networking is THE key to a short, successful search, most take a transactional, what’s-in-it-for-me approach rather than building authentic, win-win relationships with contacts.
In my LinkedIn coaching with clients, clients routinely ask the best way to approach recruiters and other key contacts they do not yet know. Their own suggestion is to send an Inmail or email asking for help. While this approach appears logical, it isn’t exactly emotionally intelligent to ask a favor of a stranger before they even know – or care about – you. I suggest doing a little research before reaching out to someone you don’t know:
- Read the person’s LinkedIn profile and/or run a Google search on them. Identify 1 thing about them that you can reference in your email.
- Do you have any contacts, employers, groups, training, or education in common?
- Do they have any interesting hobbies or pastimes?
- Do you have any history with the places they’ve lived?
- Have they won any prestigious awards or honors?
- Note the links they include on their LinkedIn profile. These often point to blogs or Twitter streams. Identify one blog post or tweet you found helpful.
- Go to the person’s website and read the About Us page or client testimonials. Identify one aspect of their mission, vision, values, or strengths that resonates with you.
Once you’ve conducted your mini-background check, compose a 1-2 sentence introduction of yourself. Follow this with one of the gems you turned up in your research. Pay this person a compliment or congratulate them on their achievements or thought leadership. Let them know they are the kind of person you like to get to know. Here’s a quick example:
“Hi Beth, my name is Joe Schmoe – I’m a sales manager in the enterprise technology space who specializes in propelling existing teams to next-level performance. I came across your LinkedIn profile today and noticed that we are both graduates of XYZ University. Do you ever attend any alumni events or reunions?
I also took at look at your blog. Your recent post on relationship marketing really struck a chord in me. Your tips were most helpful; in fact, I left a comment to that effect on your blog. Keep up the great work!
Based on your insights, I wondered whether you had ever read Authentic Marketing by Jane Doe? Her perspective on relationship-building echoes yours. She offers a wonderful graphic on the relationship management process that prove helpful to you.
Have a great day and do let me know if I can ever assist you in any way.”
Notice that in this initial communication, there is no attempt to capitalize on the connection – just a genuine desire TO connect and a clear demonstration of helpfulness. If I were Beth and received such an email, I would WANT to reach out to this person in thanks.
This kind of give-to-get communication is rare, which makes it a great blessing to receive. Why not try offering it to a prospective LinkedIn contact and see what it grows into?
Here’s to deeper networking success,
Cheryl Simpson
July 6, 2011
Posted by Cheryl Lynch Simpson, ACRW, COPNS in Coping with Unemployment, Job Search Best Practices, LinkedIn.add a comment
Yesterday I took at look at how to use SWOT analysis to boost your job search results based on Martin Seligman’s PERMA model from his 2011 best-seller, Flourish, and James Manktelow’s review. Moving on to the next element of the PERMA model, today I’d like to examine how Engagement, or creative flow, can impact your job search results.
“Flow” is the term coined by positive psychologist Mihaly Csíkszentmihályi to describe the emotional state we are in when we experience a balance between the challenge level we face when we’re doing something and the perceived skill level we can apply to that challenge. This graphic from Csíkszentmihályi’s book, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, makes this connection easy to grasp.
What does this have to do with your job search? Well, consider that, if you don’t feel challenged in your search and think you don’t have the skills needed to leverage LinkedIn, say, then you will probably feel apathetic or bored. And I don’t know about you, but when I feel apathy or boredom, I have trouble getting things done.
I mentioned LinkedIn here because it’s one of those universal tasks that job seekers need to do these days, but so few know what it is they are supposed to do once they complete their profiles. In this situation, the job seeker quickly gets bored or apathetic about LinkedIn and walks away. Not good, considering that LinkedIn is the tool 90%+ recruiters and employers are using to source candidates for open positions.
Csíkszentmihály suggests first that it’s critical to have a clear goal to work toward. Without a goal, we are aimless and feel lost. I would suggest having a series of small, manageable LinkedIn goals, for example, to help keep you focused on the search:
- Reviewing your Inmail/invitations and processing your replies.
- Answering an industry-related question.
- Posting comments and resources to your groups’ discussion boards.
- Updating your status with industry-specific key words.
Next, balance your goal focus with skill building. If you don’t know anything about LinkedIn’s “Answers” component, then read a tutorial or explore LinkedIn’s help files. Don’t avoid it just because you don’t yet know what to do – learn.
Then make sure you’re optimizing your concentration level. Don’t allow yourself to get distracted by TV, job boards, or non-search activities. You might try focusing intently on your search in 90-minute increments, then taking a 15 to 30-minute break after each work period. I follow this model in my own work and it makes a phenomenal difference.
Lastly, watch for upcoming posts on other ways to boost the creativity of your search. In the meantime, let me know what is and isn’t working in yours.
Here’s to your engagement in your search,
Cheryl Simpson
Improve Your Job Search Results with SWOT Analysis July 5, 2011
Posted by Cheryl Lynch Simpson, ACRW, COPNS in Coping with Unemployment, Job Search Best Practices.1 comment so far
Positive thinking expert Martin Seligman notes the importance of well-being in his 2011 best-seller, Flourish. It occurs to me that job searching, consisting as it does of routine upon routine, may drain millions of well-being, particularly for those who have been searching a long time with limited results.
Seligman offers the PERMA model as a way to explore the 5 key elements necessary to ensure lifelong well-being: Positive Emotion, Engagement, Positive Relationships, Meaning, and Achievement. I’d like to tackle these one-by-one and apply each to the grueling process of searching for work in the most difficult economic circumstances most of us have ever seen.
Let’s start with Positive Emotion. Leadership and productivity expert James Manktelow, CEO of MindTools.com, suggests conducting a personal SWOT analysis to cultivate positive feelings in our work; this same tool can be readily applied to job searches. Try reflecting on the following questions:
Your Job Search Strengths:
- What advantages (skills, education, connections) do you bring to your search?
- What do you do better than the average seeker?
- What positive habits do you bring to your search?
- What connections do you have with influencers?
Your Job Search Weaknesses:
- Which job search tasks do you typically avoid?
- How confident are you in your ability to land your next role within your target timeframe?
- What are your negative job search habits?
- Do you have any personality traits which are holding you back?
Your Job Search Opportunities:
- What help can you access via technology in your search?
- Do you have or are you building a network of strong career contacts?
- Which parts of your target industries are growing?
- Which search strategies are others leveraging well?
Your Job Search Threats:
- What are your top job search obstacles?
- How is the job search different for you this time around?
- What is it that your competitors have that you do not?
- Which of your weaknesses can most threaten your job search results?
Too few seekers transfer the skills they’ve gained in their career to the search itself, yet these same skills represent inherent advantages. Take a few minutes to conduct your own job search SWOT analysis – then strategize how to play to your strengths, improve your weaknesses, seize your opportunities, and minimize the threats to your success.
Here’s to your success,
Cheryl Simpson
Persistence Really Does Pay Off April 6, 2011
Posted by Cheryl Lynch Simpson, ACRW, COPNS in Career Branding, Job Search Best Practices, Working with Recruiters.add a comment
A client of mine has been looking for insurance sales jobs and recently tried repeatedly to get in touch with a corporate recruiter. He knew this particular recruiter was sourcing for sales roles in his target geographic area, so he left multiple messages for her after he submitted his resume and cover letter for the job.
At each attempt, he left a pre-prepared personal commercial as a voice mail and made sure his voice was always calm, friendly, and professional – never rushed, frustrated, or desperate.
My client left no more than 2 voice mails weekly for the recruiter and kept this practice up for just over 3 weeks, with no contact from the recruiter in all that time. Then, in week 4, the recruiter finally called back. She noted that she had originally decided to pass him by due to the lack of business degree, but decided to give him an interview based on his appropriate persistence, which is a required trait for sales professionals to have. Needless to say, my client is a happy camper.
The lesson here is not just persistence, though that is certainly key – job seekers often give up way to soon in their pursuit of recruiters, HR managers, and hiring managers. Even more important lessons, though, are readiness and timeliness.
- Readiness, because he had prepared a personal commercial to leave with each voice mail. Naturally, his commercial reinforced his brand and reminded the recruiter of what he could potentially bring to the table. He advanced the relationship management process with each message by giving the recruiter something to think about and a reason to re-review his resume.
- Timeliness, because he carefully paced his calls so as not to irritate the recruiter or risk being seen as a pest. He respected her time and his own without losing sight of the goal – to land the interview.
It’s too easy to neglect the relationship management component of recruiter communications. I urge my clients to prepare multiple versions of their personal commercials and track which ones they use each time they communicate with a contact. In this way, they can rotate content while always staying on-brand and 100% prepared. Easy? Sure, if you take the time to brainstorm the commercials and make sure you always have them at hand.
So start writing yours, or engage a professional resume writer to craft them for you. But make sure it gets done. If you don’t, you’re just giving away job opportunities to other folks with similar experience and credentials. And while they will appreciate that, they probably won’t volunteer to pay your mortgage for you anytime soon.
Cheryl
6 Common Weaknesses in Mid-Career and Executive Resumes April 5, 2011
Posted by Cheryl Lynch Simpson, ACRW, COPNS in Executive Resume Design, Job Search Best Practices.add a comment
I recently partnered with 6FigureJobs.com to review member resumes, so I’ve been spending every spare moment 
lately assessing the backgrounds and work histories of mid-career professionals and executives. In and of itself this is nothing new for me, but the volume is certainly more intense. What’s remarkable about seeing so many resumes now & throughout my 30-year career is how extraordinarily similar they all are. And that is most definitely not a good thing.
The problems most of these resumes have in common:
- Overused formatting. Resume after resume seems to use the same format. Thousands of resumes I’ve seen quite literally have identical formats, often an MS Word template. While thousands of others don’t use that exact template, they do use the same fonts, lines, and text formatting. The problem? You cannot stand out in a sea of applicants by looking exactly like your fellow candidates. I would also add that a poorly formatted resume makes you look, well, not good. In one document I reviewed a couple of weeks ago, all text was centered and italicized!
- Inappropriate length. One of the changes resume writers have seen in this recession is that resume lengths have gotten shorter. While just a few years ago resumes would stretch to 3 pages for executives, that trend seems to have reversed. Some recruiters and employers still want resumes to be as long as needed to detail your entire work history, but most want to see no more than 2 pages, or about 10-15 years of your work history. The vast majority of resumes I’ve reviewed are too long or too short. The problem? If your resume is inappropriately long, you’ll look over-qualified. If it’s inappropriately short, you’ll look under-qualified – the perfect length ensures your relevant experience is showcased without inviting age discrimination.
- Weak or absent achievements. It amazes me that folks are still overemphasizing their responsibilities and omitting or including only weak achievement statements. This practice dramatically weakens the branding of your resume and limits the number of interviews you will receive. The problem? Employers and recruiters want to know not what you did, but what impact your actions had in each job. When you omit these details, your resume cannot stand out next to your competitors. It also means your resume will lack key words, which in turn means you will appear much lower in search results.
- Outdated elements. Please folks, listen up … all of the following practices went out of style 30+ years ago and are no longer used on resumes:
- Speaking about yourself in the third person (excels rather than excel – who talks about themselves this way?)
- Objective statements (rarely used in white collar resumes anymore – exceedingly rarely)
- References Available Upon Request (your readers know that; don’t waste space telling them)
- Poor career branding. Strong branding and positioning statements are hard to find on resumes, particularly executive resumes. Those I see are generally generic with tired, over-used phrases that could be true of anyone The problem? Branding helps you stand apart from other candidates – without clear branding and positioning, your resume fails to grab your readers’ attention or communicate your hireability.
- Inadequate key words. I’ve read comments by job seekers online that some think the emphasis resume writers place on key words is done just to scare potential clients into buying our services. Have they not heard about the applicant tracking systems (databases) used by most mid- to large-size employers and recruiters? Or the fact that LinkedIn, job boards, and most corporate websites are all database-driven? And that these databases screen applicants based on the number and type of key words found in your resume? The problem? If you want your resume to be read by humans, it must first pass database analysis, which includes a count of your key words. End of story.
The solutions to the above problems are simple to enumerate, but not so simple to implement:
- Create a unique look for your resume. Stand out. Get noticed.
- Tie your resume’s length to your positioning, career goals, and job search strategies. Don’t guess. Strategize.
- Limit responsibility lists and buff up your career achievements and results focus. Enumerate and detail. Leverage specifics.
- Bring your resume into the 21st century. Eliminate what doesn’t work. Prove you’re on-trend.
- Turn your branding around. Make your uniqueness shine. Be the star of your own show.
- Boost your key word count. Add the right words in the right places. Tailor your key words for each posting.
Rework your resume today. Or better yet, send me a copy for a complimentary resume review – it includes a 10% discount toward any purchase. And don’t forget to send me the link to your LinkedIn profile – I’ll be happy to evaluate it, too.
Cheryl
The Jobs Least Likely to be Outsourced February 23, 2011
Posted by Cheryl Lynch Simpson, ACRW, COPNS in Career Branding, Coping with Unemployment.add a comment
The Recruiters Lounge wrote a great post a few months ago worthy of repeat here. Author Jim Stroud tracked down the 10 jobs most and least likely to be outsourced based on the research of Nancy Folbre, a professor at the University of Massachusetts, and data from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Those jobs least likely to be outsourced are:
- Financial Managers
- Training and Development Managers
- Training and Development Specialists
- Meeting and Convention Planners
- Loan Counselors
- Health and Safety Engineers, except Mining Safety Engineers and Inspectors
- Mining and Geological Engineers, including Mining Safety Engineers
- Food Scientists and Technologists
- Sociologists
- Urban and Regional Planners
When you compare this list to the jobs most likely to be outsourced, you’ll find something interesting which bears out Professor Folbre’s research findings. She has discovered that your job is more likely to be outsourced if [1] it can be automated, [2] it can be done without physical proximity or person-specific skills, and [3] it can be performed somewhere else cheaper. The proof is in the pudding:
- Computer Programmers
- Pharmacy Technicians
- Parts Salespersons
- Telephone Operators
- Billing and posting clerks and machine operators
- Computer Operators
- Data Entry Keyers
- Word Processors and Typists
- Tax Preparers
- Medical Transcriptionists
One of the keys to recession-proofing your career, then, is to position yourself in a role which is not a good candidate for outsourcing. What would that look like?
- Gravitate toward career fields and jobs that are highly complex – too complex to be automated by a computer or other machine.
- Select career fields and roles that require a domestic location and/or benefit from your career brand – that is, jobs that can only be done by people with rare skills and abilities that very few possess.
Career and personal branding, then, is one critical antidote to outsourcing, which gives you yet another reason to make sure your brand shines through your written communications (email signature, cover letters, resumes), oral communications (voice emails, conversations, interviews), and social networking presence (LinkedIn, Facebook).
Does yours?
If it doesn’t or you’re not sure it does, consider one of 2 action steps.
- Get your resume reviewed and brand assessed today.
- Get your LinkedIn profile reviewed.
Both options are available free, by the way, at ExecutiveResumeRescue.com.
3 Ways to End Those Long-Term Job Search Blues January 4, 2011
Posted by Cheryl Lynch Simpson, ACRW, COPNS in Job Search Best Practices.add a comment
In a recent survey by executive search firm Challenger, Gray, & Christmas, 47.5 percent of respondents indicated they have been looking for work for at least 12 months. I can verify that statistic anecdotally based on the folks I talk to daily – it’s nothing for job seekers to have been searching for 18 months or more.
So how can you avoid a job search that long? I assure you there are ways, including my personal Top 3 recommendations:
[1] Stay away from job boards. There are few things that unnecessarily elongate your job search as relying too much on job boards. The problem with them is that you guarantee yourself a flood of competition by submitting your resume. Plus, most folks don’t know how to load their resume with industry-specific key words – the very words that job board systems use to screen candidates for jobs & “recommend” candidates for interviews – & this guarantees them poor results.
If you are routinely spending more than 2 hours a week on any combination of boards, then you are putting way too many eggs in that particular basket. Instead:
- Use a mix of meta-search, geographic, & industry/niche boards
- Automate searches on the boards you do use
- Select the top 3-4 jobs you find on job boards weekly & submit to those
- Then stop using them for that week
Better yet, stop using them altogether. In a recent Career Thought Leaders event I participated in within the career coaching/resume writing industry, a number of resume writers, myself included, agreed that job boards are in the process of dying a slow death. They are on their way out, folks, so you will have to learn to leave them be sooner or later. Why not sooner? Your job search will thank you.
[2] Ramp up your networking & referral-building activities. Networking is one of those strategies everything thinks they understand but few execute well. It is without question the perennial, year-in, year-out best job search strategy, yet most job seekers under-value & under-implement in the mistaken belief that networking means asking everyone you know for a job. It doesn’t & you shouldn’t.
Networking really means learning to leverage your contacts & their connections as information-gathering resources & résumé relay channels. Think of yourself as a market researcher whose job is to know who’s hiring, where. By using your networking contacts & their connections proactively, you keep an ear to the ground & are always ready to react to openings (or better yet, news of potential openings) by surveying your network to source details like the inside scoop on a job posting, the hiring manager’s name, a company’s work culture, & so on. Your best friend, networking-wise, is LinkedIn:
- LinkedIn.com is the now the #1 way that recruiters, HR leaders, & hiring managers source new candidates (note: it isn’t job boards anymore).
- More & more recruiters, hiring managers, & HR folks are checking out your LinkedIn profile before or instead of reviewing your resume. Hence, that weak profile you have now is, well, a job search killer. Time to update, my friend.
- Create a headline for your profile that captures your career brand & includes a few industry-specific key words.
- Don’t necessarily include your entire work history or your education dates in your profile – both can work against you. LinkedIn is, after all, an applicant tracking system, which means whatever details you enter can be used to screen you into or out of consideration for open positions.
- Make sure you brand your profile’s URL to shorten the digit-rich version LinkedIn will automatically assign you. Use this URL in your email signature file & all of your job search communications tools. Put it on your business card & mention in your voice mail messages.
[3] Penetrate the Hidden Job Market by approaching employers directly. Surely you’ve heard of the Hidden Job Market – that part of the labor market where job openings are known about but not yet advertised? This is where all the action is at – some say as much as 85% of all openings are hidden. The bottom line is that you cannot afford to ignore this strategy, especially given the challenges of pursuing jobs via job boards or applying for positions directly on employer websites. How do you do so?
- Use LinkedIn’s company search function or a free database like ReferenceUSA (free if accessed through member libraries) to identify a list of 10-15 companies you would like to target for employment.
- Tap your online & offline network to see who knows or is connected to someone who knows the hiring manager in the department(s) you would like to join at each company.
- Draft a concise but content-rich letter introducing your achievement history & send it to each hiring manager.
- Have 1-2 of your key contacts drop an email or make a phone call to these hiring managers to reinforce your qualifications. Follow-up with your own phone call/email doing the same thing.
Save your job search – & you – from being a statistic in 2011: scrap those job boards, revamp your LinkedIn profile, & launch your Hidden Job Market campaign. Get hired faster!
