Resume Help Blog

Posts Tagged ‘career counseling’

I’ve written before that, if you want to find a job in today’s Great Recession, it makes sense to study what got people hired in the Great Depression, when times were even tougher.

So I dug out a job-search book published in 1938.

Titled, “We Are Forty And We Did Get Jobs,” it’s by C.B. Thompson and M.L. Wise, two forty-year-old women who spent 10 weeks perfecting a job-search system by looking for work — and getting hired — in cities across America.

If you’d like to know three actions you can take to get hired today, tested and proven in the worst job market of yesteryear, read on …

1) Root out the defeatist attitude.

Here’s how the authors describe their painful situation, prior to starting their job search:

“One of us had suffered a loss so devastating that the rest of life stretched out as something less than twilight. The other had had, in the midst of an illness almost unto death, the shock of such serious financial reverses that for a time both physical and monetary recovery seemed impossible.”

In other words, they were beaten down, broke, and worried. Sound familiar?

They go on to say “we knew this much: Jobs and a sense of despair do not go together. The defeatist attitude is death to opportunity, and had to be gotten rid of at all costs.”

They reasoned — correctly — that it’s impossible for an employer to believe in your abilities if you are so dispirited you don’t believe in them yourself.

So, how do you regain your self-confidence?

By facing your fears and doing something about them, according to the authors.

Example: Let’s say the worst that could happen if you don’t find a job is you lose your home and have no money for food.

But you can do something about that, because you’ll have to.

Maybe you’ll have to move in with family, pawn your jewelry, or apply for food stamps. Whatever your worst-case scenario may be, if you make a plan to deal with it, that will calm your mind and steady your confidence.

After that, you can …
2) Use all your thoughts to plan and execute your job search.

The authors offer three questions and answers to guide your planning and execution:

Q. Who wants you to work for them?

A. Nobody.

Q. Who wants more business or better service?

A. Everybody.

Q. If you could show that you can provide more business or better service, who will want you?

A. Almost everybody.

You’ll find no qualifying language here. It’s not almost every employer with advertised job openings or almost every employer looking for someone young. It’s almost every employer. Period.

Instead of waiting for your ideal job to appear online, think now about how you can show employers — in clear, convincing detail — that you can give them more business or better service. The job will follow.

To get at those details, ask yourself these Wh- questions about the top three achievements for every job you’ve had in the last 15 years:
·    Whom did you do it for?
·    When?
·    Why?
·    What happened?
·    How much time/money was saved or earned?

Here’s my favorite “before” and “after” example from an IT resume that worked like a charm.

BEFORE
Cleaned up Microsoft Access database.

AFTER
Helped retain $20-million contract with top client after working 16-hour days for four months to clean up Access database and repair reporting problem using Excel and Crystal Reports.
See the difference?
The world pays for value received. Show your value and you can start getting paid again.
3) Stay on track with two questions.
According to Thompson and Wise, they wrote letters and made phone calls to employers that produced job interviews consistently, once they kept the following two questions continually in mind:

1. What does he or she need?
This question forces you to always put an employer’s needs before your own. “This may sound like the golden rule, but it was certainly to prove the golden key that could open the door to employment,” write the authors.
2. How can I supply that need?
Once you know an employer’s needs, you can quickly examine every resume you send and every word you say, to ensure you communicate only what employers want to hear.

Example: If the employer needs a manager to negotiate contracts with suppliers, you will either revise or delete irrelevant information in your resume, like that bartending job you had last year.
The title, “We Are Forty And We Did Get Jobs,” reflects the fact that ageism was even more rampant in the 1930s than now. And I won’t even touch on the sexism the authors must have faced, apart from noting that attitudes have certainly improved.
So, these two women overcame economic, “ageist,” and sexist obstacles to get hired — repeatedly — for jobs in the Great Depression, and they did it without Google, Linkedin, email, cell phones, or FedEx (I omitted their advice on telegrams).
Why not adopt one of their tactics today, and see if you don’t get noticed by more employers tomorrow?

Today’s economic news may be gloom and doom but it needn’t derail your job hunt.   You can still win a great job, even in a lousy economy. You WILL have to get smarter in your job search strategy, though.

Here are 5 tips to incorporate into your job search approach during the recession:

1. Research Your Options

Does your industry or line of work offer little promise of employment in the coming months? If so, now is a good time to step back to identify the projected top performing industries and jobs. The best place to find this info is on the web through Google or Yahoo. Start with “best industries work recession” or “recession jobs 2008″ to uncover articles describing some of the more recession-proof sectors to target.

2. Change Your Focus

Start asking yourself the question, “What’s in it for them?” as opposed to, “What’s in it for me?” Especially in an economic downturn, you’ll want to stay focused on what you can accomplish for your next employer. Show them that you understand the macroeconomic “bigger picture” of the role you play in moving the company forward.

3. Sell Results, Not Skills

Leave behind that old mindset that your job-related skills or length of service are selling factors. The new mindset is to think of yourself as a mini profit-and-loss center rather than just an employee. Employers today buy results and are less impressed with candidates promoting a long laundry list of skills. You’ll want to define the many ways your past and present job performance are assets to your next employer.

4. Start Talking Money

The recession has made the private sector economy even more bottom-line oriented than ever. Hiring managers categorize employees into one of two distinct groups:

a.) those who help make money

b.) those who help save money.

Which one are you?

For example, Barry worked as the human resources manager of a mid-sized company. While much of his work focused on compliance issues, he noticed that the company was paying many thousands of dollars to locate and hire good employees. As a result, Barry developed and implemented an in-house employee referral program that netted three quality hires in a six-month period. This saved the company almost $70,000 that the company would have paid for recruiters and advertising costs.

Barry saves money for his company and this is an accomplishment future employers will want to hear about.

Rethink your current or past job to understand your position in the bigger corporate P&L picture. Here are some questions to ask yourself:

• How did my work improve the performance of my department or company?
• How many roles did I perform that saved the company the expense of added employees or contractors?
• How has my work made the work of others (employees and managers) easier, faster and more effective?

Collect specific examples of the benefits that your company gained from the work you’ve already performed. Clarify the specific benefit your company received by making money or saving money, and write them down.

5. Add Achievements to Your Resume

Employers don’t hire employees, they hire problem-solvers. Your new resume should be a hard-hitting sales tool designed to accomplish one goal: get the interview. To demonstrate this, add a specific achievements list to your resume. Take the list that you developed in the previous section and hone it down to your biggest and most notable accomplishments. Now, describe the benefit that your employer gained from each example. This will put you several steps ahead of your job-seeking competitors. Plus, you’ll now have some talking points ready for that next phone interview.

Out of work for months? Don’t allow your professional skills to atrophy. Here are some things to do to keep that from happening.

In July, five million people in the U.S. were considered long-term unemployed—meaning they had been jobless for 27 weeks or more. Career counselors say that as weeks turn into months, job-hunters need to polish and update their skills to stay current. They should look for ways to network while they do so, and avoid spending lots of money. That’s not news to anyone in this position.  “You want to get the biggest bang for your buck,” says J.T. O’Donnell, a career coach in North Hampton, N.H.

Here are some strategies:

• Stay connected to industry associations. Check out your membership rights with trade groups or unions. Many times, you can continue your membership for free or at a reduced rate if you’re out of work. “That means you get booklets, magazines, all the information that will help keep you up to date with what’s going on,” says Gerry Crispin, co-founder CareerXroads, a Kendall Park, N.J., consulting firm that helps companies recruit.  There are excellent Executive Search companies on the Internet.
• Hit conferences. Attend industry or professional conferences by checking out association Web sites and groups on social media sites like Facebook and Twitter.
• Join local interest groups. Local organizations like the chamber of commerce provide good networking opportunities and sometimes offer skills classes. Offer to help run the program committee, which sets the agenda for speakers and events. You’ll get a say in who is invited and network with guests. This keeps your face in front of people.
• Take classes—in person. Taking an online class is easy, but it eliminates that face-to-face networking that often lands jobs and opens doors, says Ms. O’Donnell. “You need something where you physically show up,” she says.
• Consider entry-level coursework. One of Ms. O’Donnell’s clients was laid off from a project management job in banking. He wanted to become a project manager at a software company, but didn’t know the lingo. He took a basic Web design class; his younger classmates taught him industry terminology. “He came back so excited about learning a new industry and was much better prepared for interviews,” she says.
• Add advanced skills. Getting a certification can boost your resume. Auditing a high-level class at a local college can improve skills and help you keep up with new developments. Check colleges to see if they offer free or discounted rates for unemployed people.
• See what training programs your state offers to the unemployed. New Jersey offers grants for non-degree business classes at Rutgers University as well as free community college classes if there are open seats.
• In Michigan, the state’s “No Worker Left Behind” program offers up to two years’ worth of free tuition in the state university system for unemployed and underemployed workers.
• Write about your industry and connect more online. Start a blog about your industry. Or find five people you always wanted to interview and write an article for a local publication or industry blog. That way you keep your name out there, make new connections and continue to learn, Ms. O’Donnell says.