Baffled by the latest U.S. Labor stats about jobless claims?
Two-sided confusion; cautious optimism and wolf-criers. No need
to spin your wheels wondering. There’s a no-hassle solution to
the unemployment news blues. You’ll have to run your search
fundamentally different than your pals to find the next great
career. Don’t do it solo.
Job searching alone is like hitchhiking a scary ride with an
unknown stranger on a 180-mile long deserted, no-exit road with
hopes you’ll make your destination. When you lack time or
expertise to plan career moves carefully, sometimes the loss of
ground is not apparent until years later. You can get trapped in
a black hole and frustrated that your career is not advancing to
full potential. Ever feel imprisoned in positions that lacked
adequate reward, satisfaction, challenge or a future? There
are many reasons for these job jails:
• You’ve become too specialized. • You’ve become too
generalized. • You failed to look ahead and plan for the future.
• You held out too long hoping for the “right break.” • You
accepted jobs that never made use of your best talents. • You
remain too long in positions that offered no challenge or
mobility.
Use these seven job search marketing hacks and you’ll get in
front of decision makers faster. What’s a “hack?” A “hack”
is a clever solution to an interesting problem, so says the
experts at O’Reilly Media, Inc., a leading-edge book publisher
that offers cool technology workarounds on everything from
navigating Google and eBay to digital photography and gaming.
Hacks are the “down and dirty” of getting a task done. Your
mission here is to get a great job, high on adventure, low on
headache.
Hack #1: Know the job market. Locate and identify geographic
employment hot spots. Search out emerging industries. Grow
up and ditch the pabulum of pursuing comfortable industries that
are on their way to obsolescence.
Hack #2: Know your functional and industry options and
employers’ needs in these areas. Pinpoint your top three
positioning (career focus) alternatives to what you’re now
doing. Find the chief five employers that serve that market
segment.
Hack #3: Know your most marketable skills, competency, and
relevant background. Create a personal branding; the things
that make your “package” distinct. Blaze past your competition
and neutralize the yawn factor in candidate- selection boredom
by linking your portfolio of contribution to employer need.
Hack #4: Know how to win multiple, simultaneous
interviews. Spot the core three strategies to gain exposure
that penetrates both the advertised and unadvertised job
markets. Isolate which one is used the least but rewards the
most, in terms of results.
Hack#5: Know how to create effective resumes and letters that
sell solutions. Build a campaign action plan that sends your
tombstone resume to an early grave. Leverage your knowledge to
solve employer problems through tailored special-ops marketing
tactics that creates “you” stickiness in decision makers’ minds.
Hack#6: Know how to multiply your access to those who have
the power to hire. Networking is out. Building strategic
relationships is in. Be there…where. Informational meetings with
those who have knowledge you need puts you in the driver’s seat
when hiring patterns emerge.
Hack #7: Know how to give your inner critic a name and tell
it to be quiet. Visualize the results you want, not the ones
you fear. Trigger the right reactions in your targeted prospects
by looking for ways you might be sabotaging yourself, then
adapt, improvise, overcome.
A professionally-run job search gets you there faster. It
gives you defined direction and leverage to compare, negotiate,
and deal from strength. Try to imagine the alternative;
hitchhiking to nowhere at the mercy of blind luck. Can you think
of one rational reason why you’d want to take this trip alone?
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