Whether your goal is to sell, inform, or land a job offer, telling engaging, relevant stories can turn even a so-so presentation into a great one. Illustrating your points with the right stories will have a far stronger impact than many other things you can do, including slide design, body language, eye contact, and so forth.More
You can create an effective LinkedIn profile by following many of the same principles that I would recommend for your resume. For example, focus on accomplishments, have a summary section, use keywords that resonate with your audience, etc. etc. (see this blog post and this one for other guidelines). Key differences in the way that resumes and profiles are shared, however, could have a big impact on how you choose to modify your resume for your profile. Below I’ve shared an excerpt from my book Advanced LinkedIn to highlight four of these differences.More
In Part 1, I covered the top two mistakes that I see clients make on their resumes. In this post you’ll learn how to avoid six more resume pitfalls. Topping off this list:
Your resume places too much focus on responsibilities, not enough on accomplishments
Which phrase do you think is more powerful?
(Update: Part 2 is here) When a potential employer reviews your resume, s/he thinks: a) Can this person help me to do my job? and b) I have about10-30 seconds to scan this resume. Hence, the Golden Rule of resume writing: Your “how I can help you” message needs to jump off the page in the 10-30 seconds it’s being reviewed. You’ll hear many rules (like this one) tossed around by experts. My suggestion from experience and training is to forget all those other rules, and just follow this one rule. Anything that serves this Golden Rule is good, anything that doesn’t is bad– which brings us to the top two resume mistakes:More
LinkedIn’s “Advanced People Search” feature is a fantastic tool for finding people in your extended network or shared groups who can help you to reach your career goals. As I discuss in my book Your Social Media Job Search, including boolean logic in your search terms such as AND, OR, NOT, parenthesis and quotes around phrases can greatly expand its power. To demonstrate, here’s an example of a client who was interested in obtaining a marketing manager or director position at Pfizer. More
Note: This post originally appeared on the MENG website
Having an effective contact management system can save you a lot of time and missed opportunities, whether you are in business for yourself, in a job search, or on the job. It’s just too easy to let your inbox grow to unmanageable proportions, miss an important follow-up, waste time with things like “filing” or looking for that one email, or lose touch with potential clients. The key to solving all these problems and more, for me and for my clients, is to have a desktop-based or cloud-based system where all communication elements for a contact are associated with the contact, together in one place. These elements include:More
It can be tempting to attribute a long job search to factors beyond your control. The factors that I hear jobseekers mention include age, experience (i.e. over- or under-qualified), resume gaps, weight, ethnic background, gender, or some other physical feature. While, at times, these factors and biases do cause problems for job-seekers, nine times out of ten I see that the problem is actually in their job-search strategy or execution.
So, here’s a checklist of 10 questions to ask yourself first, before attributing a long search to factors beyond your control. Your answers will help to put you back in the driver’s seat and on the road to the job you want.More
The latest BLS report showed the unemployment rate stuck at a dismal 9.1%. BUT, more positive news for many jobseekers can be found within the data. In particular, the unemployment rate for those with a bachelors degree or higher remained much lower than the overall rate, at 4.3%, More
Want to Fast-forward Your Job Search? Target More Positions
by Rob Hellmann • Getting Interviews, Job-Search Strategy •
Even if your resume, pitch, skill set, and emails are all stellar, at the end of the day your job search is still a numbers game. To improve your odds of landing a position quickly, you’ve got to actively go for a large number of potential positions. That is, don’t just passively wait for the search firm to call or the ad to show up (and then compete with potentially thousands of other applicants). Instead, take the active approach: 1) create a plan that casts a wide enough net to include enough suitable positions (open or currently filled), andMore