Indeed.com, an online job-search engine that aggregates job postings from across the web, released an analysis of employment trends by industry and geography. Their findings could be helpful to those of you who are looking to develop job targets– I recommend checking it out. My observations from their data:
Many (or most) of you are probably on LinkedIn to some extent (if you’re not you should be– www.linkedin.com). LinkedIn is an awesome tool for getting results in your job search. But are you really getting the value out of it that you could be? Use LinkedIn to advance your search in three ways:
When you answer an online ad, you are competing with hundreds, or often thousands, of other applicants. In fact, I was recently talking to an HR Executive at a Fortune 500 company who shared with me that they received 6,000 resumes for one Customer Service Manager opening! Because of this situation, the filtering process (either human or computer) looks for as close to an exact match as possible. So, you could have a great resume and cover letter, but statistically speaking the odds are still against you making the cut.
This post first appeared on the Five O’Clock Club’s website
In Part 1, I summarized how performance reviews can help individuals and the organization as a whole. In this blog entry, I’ll share with you some of the key details that can help you to conduct the actual review and get the most out of the process.
In LinkedIn’s blog and a recent Wall Street Journal article, a new LinkedIn capability was described. Career Explorer is designed to help college students use LinkedIn’s network to make career decisions; it’s now being tested in 60 schools.
While there are many nuances to a successful compensation negotiation, keeping these five principles in mind will increase the odds of your making tens of thousands of dollars in minutes.
Difficult interview questions fall into a few different categories, including stress questions (“I don’t think you’re good enough…”), seemingly off-the wall questions (“how do you find a needle in a haystack”), behavioral questions, including those that assume a negative (give me an example of a time when you had a difficult employee…”) and “greatest weaknesses” types of questions. In answering these questions, the key thing to remember is, as we say at the Five O’Clock Club, to play the interview “game”.
Below are four of the areas that I focus on with clients when helping them to prepare for a job interview.
1) Be a consultant (take a strategic approach to the interview)
This is a whole mindset that can change the dynamic of the interview. You do this by figuratively sitting on the same side of the table as the interviewer, helping the interviewer solve her or his business problems. It’s NOT about just memorizing the answers to their questions and then asking three of your own (this is the way many job-seekers approach the interview). It IS about preparing extensively through research (like any consultant would), anticipating what issues they face, and gaining the understanding needed to demonstrate how you can help them.
2) Seek to tell two or three “stories” about your experience that are relevant to the interviewer, and that you’ve practiced beforehand.
Make it your goal to get these stories out in the interview. Use them in answering most of the interview questions you receive. Telling a story, or illustrating your expertise (i.e. saying “I have strong analytic skills, for example…”), can make all the difference between a lackluster interview and a powerful, compelling presentation. I tell clients to use a storytelling format, such as “problem, action, result” (or PAR), and make it interesting!
3) Surface objections to your candidacy by asking these two questions at the end of the interview…
1) How do I stack up against the other candidates? 2) Any reason you couldn’t see me in this position? These questions are essential to conducting an effective followup (see below). There’s a saying that the sale doesn’t begin until you find out what their objections are.
4) Follow up effectively (like any consultant would)– don’t write a thank you letter– write an influence letter.
Use the answers you receive from the questions above, and other questions you asked about their needs/issues, to write that powerful followup. Address their objections to your candidacy, if any, and show how you can help them solve their problems. The follow-up is often more important than the interview itself– I’ve seen numerous cases where candidates have turned a “no” into a “yes” from an effective followup.
Letting People Know about your Job Search
by Robert Hellmann • Getting Interviews
The people who would receive this message are perhaps those you think are less likely to come through for you, or those who you don’t know well enough to put on the spot with an email request sent just to them. Often, family, friends, your dentist, acquaintances, or those outside of your profession or industry might fall into this category.
Details of the email:
This email works because 1) you don’t attach your resume – doing so screams “please hire me,” while your strategy with this email is to get meetings with the “right” people – those who can hire you or may know of hiring leaders – regardless of whether there’s an opening now, 2) you make it clear you won’t put your network’s contacts on the spot by asking for a job, 3) you include a powerful pitch that can substitute for a resume, and 4) you show appreciation, and even offer to help them
A client of mine took this approach when including her neighbor, who she didn’t know well but whose email address she happened to have, in a similar mass email. It turns out that this neighbor’s husband’s brother’s wife worked for the CFO of a large global media company where she was looking to land finance executive role. She ended up getting an interview with the CFO.
I have many similar stories. In fact, there’s a whole science around the power of “weak ties” (Google it) that says the people you least expect are the ones who often come through for you.