"THE JOB-HUNTER’S SURVIVAL GUIDE" – PART 3

This is the final installment of the excellent book by Richard N. Bolles, "The Job Hunter’s Survival Guide." What have we learned so far?

• There are always jobs out there.
• How to keep hope alive.
• There eighteen ways to search for a job.
• The five worst ways to look for work.
• The five BEST ways to look for work.

You are comforted by all the tools at your disposal (internet, ads, agencies, résumés, networking) yet the most effective method of finding meaningful work depends not on the tools you have. It depends upon your Vision. Your vision of yourself and what you want to do with your life.

A 10% SOLUTION The Internet works 10% of the time to help us find work. If it works for you, great. But realize; only one out of ten people will find work from the Internet. So it deserves 10% of your time, just in case.

What will you find on the Internet? You will find some jobs placed by employers (but not all). It is a place you can list your availability, just in case an employer is looking. It is also a place for advice, career counseling, testing, researching various careers, industries, salaries, companies and individuals who have the power to hire you; and for making contact (networking) with people who may be able to help you.

There are free guides online for the entire job hunt process. Here are six that are comprehensive and very helpful.

• http://www.jobhuntersbible.com (Mr. Bolles site. Extremely helpful)
• http://www.job-hunt.org (links to a wide variety of helpful resources)
• http://jobstar.org (from the library system through grants, many resources)
• http://www.rileyguide.com (lots of web resources)
• http://www.quintcareers.com (career tools and advice)
• http://www.cacareerzone.org/graphic (self assessments and much else)

All of these will work, once you have your target. You network to find your target, not to socialize. A target is a destination, the job you want at the end of your job search. Here are some questions to help you define and refine your target.

1. What kind of work are you looking for? What are the job titles specifically?
2. What industry or field do you want to do this in?
3. Where (location in the country/planet) do you want to do this job?
4. What is the salary you want?

Write your answers down. If you can’t find the words, visualize this job. If you find a picture, post it where you will see it every day.

Be efficient is your 10% solution as you look for jobs on the Internet. Use a site that searches other job listings (such as www.simplyhired.com or www.Indeed.com). Use the obvious ones too (such as careerbuilder.com, monster.com, hotjobs.yahoo.com, craigslist.org). Find the niche sites for your specific field or industry (such as Dice.com for IT or tech jobs).

If you don’t know the industry your job is in, but you do know some of the elements, Google (or use your favorite search engine) it. You do this by entering in your skills (2 or 3) and field of interest (2 or 3 words). Specificity counts! An example would be: writing renewable energy researching.

Use the social networking sites. Networking is "hot" right now. It may or may not lead to a job. It will lead you to people who are in your chosen industry or company. People who may know of vacancies at their company or elsewhere. Some choices are LinkedIn.com or Plaxo.com. For a comprehensive list in Wikipedia, go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_social_networking_websites. The newest on the scene is Twitter.com for short bursts of information. Twitterjobsearch.com is a job search feature for Twitter. Exectweets.com follows top business leaders and wefollow.com drills down into Twitter and lets you see who’s Tweeting from that category or industry. Let’s not forget TwitDir.com for a directory and TweetDeck.com to organize your social contacts.

Why is the Internet only a 10% solution? Because the way job hunters and employers look for each other are different. Employers prefer to fill vacancies like this:

1. Hire from within. Promoting someone they already know. Someone who’s work they know. This is low-risk for the employer. (For the job seeker: get hired as a temp, contract worker or a consultant and aim for your preferred job later on)
2. Using proof. Hiring someone (anyone) who brings proof they can do the job regarding the skills needed. (For the job seeker: if you’re a programmer, bring a program you have done, with its code; if you’re a photographer, bring a portfolio of pictures; if a counselor, bring a case study with the names redacted, etc.)
3. Using a friend or business colleague. Hiring someone whose work has been seen by a trusted friend or business colleague. (For the job seeker: contact everyone who has seen or knows your work and who knows the person who can hire you at your chosen company and can introduce you. This is the point of networking to find these particular people.)
4. Using an agency they trust. This may be a recruiter, search firm or employment agency. The agency will have tested you or checked you out on behalf of the employer. (For the job seeker: get into the ‘stable’ of some agencies. Keep in mind this only works 5% to 28% of the time-see the first article in the series.)
5. Using an ad they have placed. Online, newspaper, sign in the window or other.
6. Using a résumé. If the employer is desperate, even an unsolicited résumé will look good.

Ironic isn’t it? Your preferred methods are at the bottom of the employer’s list. Consider this too: when an employer is on the Internet looking at résumés, they are looking at job titles. This is also called job-matching. This is great if you’ve held the exact job title they are trying to match or it is a common job title. The challenge comes when you aren’t sure of the exact job title or guessed wrongly about what it might be or your previous employer called it something else. Then you are like ships passing in the night. Then there is the problem of job boards limiting you to a few dozen job titles from which you must choose. This may bring back a false "no matches found," when in fact there are matches out there.

All in all, that is why the Internet is the 10% solution. So only give it 10% of your time.

YOUR NEW RÉSUMÉ In the twenty-first century your résumé is not just the pieces of paper you hand to the hiring manager. No, it is everything that can be found out about you on the Internet. What does your web presence say about you? Do you still have your party pictures from college on your MySpace or FaceBook pages? What have you posted on YouTube? What do you Tweet about? If I (or your future employer) were to Google your name, what would pop up?

What can you do? Think about how you want to come across to an employer when you go in for a job interview. What are the adjectives you want them to think of when they think of you? Make a list (professional, creative, hard working, disciplined, honest, trustworthy, knowledgeable, etc.).

Now Google yourself and pull up all the links. And EDIT. If you frequently Tweet, "Is it 5 yet?" That doesn’t connect with the ‘hard working’ adjective you came up with before. Go to all your social networking sites and look with a critical eye at your entries and your friends’ entries about you. Look at these sites from the perspective of an employer. Is there anything that would make them say, "Hmmm, let’s not call them in for an interview after all?" Look at pictures and any language they may find objectionable. If you can adjust privacy settings – do so. A "friends only" choice will limit what they will be able to see if you don’t want to block some friends from posting or take down pictures. Remember to NOT "friend" employers, if they ask, until you scrub your sites.

Create or edit your LinkedIn account so that it reflects the image you want to project to employers or would be employers. Put a link to your LinkedIn profile as part of your email signature.

Post your résumé (the old style one). This is still useful. If I’m an employer, I can see your casual side from your FaceBook site and your professional side from your LinkedIn site. If you blog, I can see your writing (content, style, quality). But to get your job history and a skills listing, I still need to see your résumé. To write a good résumé, go to previous editions of my blog or use one of the sites I listed above or Google "résumés". You will have a plethora of information. No matter you resource or style for writing your résumé, ask yourself "so what?" And "will this get me invited in for an interview?" This is the purpose of a résumé. The ‘so what’ question is to see if you have adequately explained what you are listing.

For example, if you say, "Responsible for closing at the end of the business day." If I ask you "so what?" You’d reply that it meant that you had actually:

"Totaled the cash register for the day’s receipts, counting and balancing the cash, checks and credit card payments. Created the bank deposit, locked up the register contents, set the alarms and locked the doors." This is so much better. This is much more likely to get you invited for an interview.

Résumés are not the place for saying that you had to leave that job because you forgot to lock the doors. Save that for the interview. Along with what you learned and how you now prevent that mistake from repeating.

Expand your online presence by completing every bio as if it is an executive summary of your life. Cross every T, dot every I. Join forums or groups on the professional sites. Go to Groups on LinkedIn and join a group relevant to your industry or interests. Start a blog related to the job you are looking for and update it regularly. Post a video (to your blog, your website, YouTube, etc.). Thus a plumber looking for work can demonstrate how to install a faucet. This is much more eye-catching to an employer than simple text.

WHY JOB TITLES DON’T WORK It isn’t just duties that change over time. The titles do too. And then, fashion and business theories change have their impact. Let’s take Personnel Director. That was just payroll and benefits, with a little rules-enforcement. Then business theorists began calling employees the company’s best resource and the job became more complicated with resources for the employees too. Now the title is Human Resources. Again the title is shifting as the responsibilities shift. I have seen a shift towards Human Assets Manager posted. Remember when everyone was an "engineer"? Things change.

How do you dig beneath the job title? Analyze the job in terms of its component parts. Jobs have seven parts:

1. Your functional or transferrable skills
2. The field (or knowledge-base) in which you use those skills
3. The working environment (or working conditions) at that job
4. The people you work with or serve at that job
5. Your goals as you do that work
6. Geography: what part of the country/world that you work in that job
7. Salary and other compensation at that job

Mr. Bolles likens this analysis to a flower. The flower has six-petals with your transferable skills in the center. He thoughtfully provides a three-page listing (in four columns) of transferrable skills and two pages of fields. You breakdown your prior jobs into these components. That’s it. This self-inventory is important to write down. As you write it down you will realize how YOU have also changed over time.

"What you do should flow directly from who you are. That is the key to living a life that makes a difference." (page 76)

You then determine which parts you want to do or use again. Using these parts, you build up your dream job. Or your next job on the way to your dream job. A "dream job" is defined as the job that combines doing and being into a something that fits YOU like a glove.

WHO ARE YOU? To go out and find the job that fits you like a glove, Mr. Bolles suggests you have four options.

1. Write a résumé (for your eyes only) that details out everything you have done in life and work. Use this as a basis for self-examination. The challenge is this is your history, not your future. It tends to focus you on the marketplace and what will make you marketable, not on what will make you fulfilled.
2. On one piece of paper (not more) write down everything that you can think of about yourself. Summer camp at six. The color of your eyes. Your dreams at twenty. This can take several days. Then you look it over and circle the ten most important things about yourself. The challenge is that your brain may let you down and it doesn’t allow for the input of ‘your community’ into the process.
3. Take an online ‘test’ or ‘assessment.’ The challenge with these is they all try to fit you into their categories. Two respected assessments are Myers-Briggs (for personality "Do What You Are") and there are several based on John Holland’s Code. Myers-Briggs has four letter categories and the Holland Code use three. Remember, all tests will take you, and trim and push you into their categories.
4. The most effective, by far, is for you and two trusted friends do the flower exercise to build a version of your dream job. The challenge with this method is "only" the time and dedication it takes to do it.

Ready? Set, draw! On a single piece of paper, draw a large circle (about 6" in diameter) in the middle. Surrounding this circle, draw six smaller circles (about 2" diameter). Voilá, the flower. In the center circle write "using these transferrable skills." In the outer petals label them thusly: 1. where, 2. Special knowledges, 3. People environments, 4. Goals/purposes/values, 5. Working conditions, and 6. Level of responsibility and salary. In each petal or circle answer, in descending order, what is most important for you at work? That is a snapshot of your dream job.

As Confucius said, "Choose a job you love and you’ll never work a day in your life."

There is so much more in the book. Tools and techniques I don’t have space to write about that will help you. Mr. Bolles closes the book with a chapter on having a plan of action. It is a tremendously helpful book. "The Job-Hunters’ Survival Guide: How to Find Hope and Rewarding Work, Even When ‘There Are No Jobs'," just the thing you need. Now.

by Richard N. Bolles $9.99

ISBN: 978-1-58008-026-2

For Borders books or For Amazon.com

If you want help to sort through your skills, experiences and your dreams to get your dream job. Don’t wait, contact me now.

A dream with a plan is a goal. A goal without a plan is just a dream.

Warmly,

Elisabeth

Elisabeth Adler-Lund Executive And Life Coaching Telephone: 916 • 803•1494 E-mail: eal@EALCoaching.com