The most common time killers in a job search (excluding procrastination) involve interviews that go nowhere, networking meetings that net nothing, and countless job applications that get no response. Here's how to manage these and other situations so that you can turn waste into haste and jump-start your job search.
When I first look at a client’s resume, I quite often see a list of bullet points that reflect only responsibilities. One of my clients, for example, an accountant, listed a bullet point that read: “Responsible for managing the monthly close.” After we discussed the impact she made through her management, we modified the text to read: “Managed the monthly close, reducing turnaround time by at least 30% while improving accuracy.” Do you feel the extra power
A prospective client once came to me for help. “In the past year I’ve applied for about 100 positions, yet have had no interviews!” she told me in frustration. I was pretty confident that I knew the crux of her problem straight away. It was the emphasis she placed on the number of jobs she had applied for. Usually, just applying for jobs is not nearly enough, especially at more senior levels.
A number of resume “professionals” say not to use formatting such as bolding or underlining because it can prevent Applicant Tracking Systems from identifying formatted keywords in your resume. ATS’s are often used by large organizations to do initial automated resume screenings for job postings, before resumes are seen by a human. My take on this claim: TOTALLY FALSE.
How do I know? Simple—you can test it yourself. Get a free Google Drive account, which includes gigabytes of cloud storage, and upload your PDF (or Word) resume there. Google Drive is known for making
If you're not, you're not a good networker-- you'll miss opportunities! Getting meetings (and then "acing" these meetings) is 50% of what you need to do. Keeping in touch following these meetings is the other 50%.
Many job-search cold emails and cover letters that ask for a meeting or an interview are not even read by the recipient. The email subject line doesn't resonate, or the content is too dense or irrelevant to the reader. Clients who have applied the following nine rules, however, have seen big improvements in their email response rates.
Rule #1: Make your letter easily "scannable"
People are usually too busy to take the time to read through a long, dense email.
What do you do if a hiring manager says you are "overqualified" for a position? First, you need to know that what they really mean is a) you’re going to want too much money, b) you’re going to be bored and will leave in six months, or c) you won’t fit into the culture. All three of these underlying issues can be addressed with these two approaches:
I once went to a seminar where the presenter was sharing some leadership development ideas with the audience. At the end of the presentation, we were all left with the same question— What do we do with this information? In fact, someone asked this very question ("what is our next step..."), and the presenter's response was “That’s a good question, I’m not sure.” BIG mistake, and it was the key reason his presentation was a fail.
The number one question any audience member has is “how does this help me?” For your presentation to have any chance of achieving greatness (or even goodness), you must answer this question.
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Surprise! Start Your Presentation Off with a Bang
by Robert Hellmann • Interviewing, On-the-job Success, Presentations
For example, I coached one client to begin his presentation (to an executive audience at a Fortune 500 company) with a slide that had one single large number on it. Then he said: