Job-Search Strategy

How to Find & Use Keywords for Your Job Search

by • Career Change, Getting Interviews, Interviewing, Job-Search Strategy, Resume, LinkedIn, self-promo, Social Media •

Keywords in your resume, LinkedIn profile, emails and ‘pitch’ help to communicate your value. To job prospects, your use of the right keywords tells them you are an “insider” (everyone wants to hire insiders) and that you understand the problems they face. Organizations use keyword filters for candidate searches, so your use of strategically placed keywords will improve your likelihood of being spotted.

When someone is searching on LinkedIn for a candidate with your skills (increasingly LinkedIn is the first stop for candidate searches), keywords in certain parts of your profile  matter more than others. More

Acing the Interview: What’s Your Greatest Weakness?

by • Interviewing, Job-Search Strategy •

weakness canstockphoto10210474Every so often you will get an interview question like this from HR or a senior level executive. “Greatest weakness” types of interview questions also include “tell me about a criticism your boss once gave you,” or “give me an example of a situation where you didn’t get the outcome you wanted.” They use these questions to a) find people who are genuinely self-reflective and open to improvement, and b) screen out people who say something problematic. When forming your answer, keep these three guidelines in mind: More

LinkedIn “Recommendations” vs. “Endorsements”

by • Building a Business, Getting Interviews, Job-Search Strategy, Resume, LinkedIn, self-promo •

Getting a recommendation on LinkedIn can help your career. LinkedIn recommendations are valued by hiring managers. Why? 1. The first-degree connection giving the recommendation is visible, hence “researchable” on LinkedIn, 2. significant effort is involved in writing a recommendation, adding to the authenticity, and 3. the content’s often descriptive nature helps the hiring manager to understand your value. I would suggest getting at least three LinkedIn recommendations. LinkedIn considers three-plus recommendations to be a factor in “profile completeness,” which figures in it’s search rankings. More

Want to Fast-forward Your Job Search? Target More Positions

by • 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), and More

Improve Productivity with Effective Contact Management

by • Building a Business, Career Centers, Job-Search Strategy, On-the-job Success, Org. Effectiveness •

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

10 Ways to Take Control of Your Job Search

by • Career Centers, Career Change, Getting Interviews, Interviewing, Job-Search Strategy, Resume, LinkedIn, self-promo •

businesswoman flying take control shutterstock_195916973It 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

Employment Data Shows Pockets of Opportunity

by • Career Change, Job-Search Strategy •

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

Four Ideas for Getting Interviews via the Hidden Job Market

by • Getting Interviews, Job-Search Strategy, Social Media •

Most of my job-search clients get interviews by tapping into the hidden job market; they are both reaching out to their network and cold-emailing/calling people they don’t know.  You, too, want to prioritize efforts that will allow you to bypass the glut of applicants going through job postings or recruiting firms.  Spend only 20% of your valuable job search time on postings and recruiting firms, and the remainder on the hidden job market.  Here are four ideas to get you started. More

In a Job Search? You Should Be On LinkedIn

by • Getting Interviews, Job-Search Strategy, Resume, LinkedIn, self-promo, Social Media •

LinkedIn, accessed for free at www.linkedin.com, enables users to keep in touch with and expand their professional network, get introductions to others outside their network, and join groups of professionals organized around industries, professions, and associations.  Recruiters routinely use LinkedIn to scan profiles for viable candidates.

LinkedIn has become essential to conducting an effective, productive job search! I hear from clients almost every day about how they got an interview or informational meeting via LinkedIn.  Below I’ve included a few success stories culled from my clients’ experiences, to help generate ideas on how you can use LinkedIn.  Read More

Employment Trends: Health Care Hot, Real Estate Not

by • Career Change, Getting Interviews, Job-Search Strategy •

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:

  • The health care sector shows the largest opportunity by far, with a total of 813,000 job-postings, followed by Retail More
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