Posted by ResumeHelp on January 20, 2010
By Claudine Benmar, PayScale.com
When every day brings new headlines about layoffs and economic disaster, your job hunt may start to feel like searching for a four-leaf clover. In Death Valley. In August.
But many companies are stable and still looking for talent. Some are even expanding. In fact, when asked which of the big companies are still hiring despite the recession, BountyJobs CEO Jeremy Lappin had this encouraging answer: “All of them.”
“Even companies in the most pain are hiring,” he says. “They’re just doing it more selectively. Really, truly talented people are always in demand.” If your resume isn’t in the best of shapes give some very serious thought to having it professionally written before you apply. This is your one moment to shine — don’t blow it to save a few bucks.
BountyJobs, which connects employers to recruiters, currently lists 2,000 companies that need to hire right now. Here is another great source for a professionally written resume. Many people think the same old resume they have used before is good enough. That’s not so in these difficult times. Don’t cut corners, a resume is a tool. Have you ever bought a cheap tool and been satisfied? Don’t do it!
7 Examples of Companies Hiring: Looking for Employees:
Places that are Hiring: Google
http://www.google.com/intl/en/jobs/
For the second year in a row, Google was named Fortune magazine’s top company to work for in 2008. “Googlers” enjoy stock options, gourmet cafeteria food and on-site massages. The company has hundreds of jobs listed for its 27 locations in the United States, including Google headquarters in Mountain View, California.
Places that are Hiring: Big Fish Games
http://www.bigfishgames.com/company/careers.html
This Seattle-based company, which develops, publishes and distributes online games, has multiple open positions. Peter Anderson, vice president of human resources, credits changing consumer behavior for the company’s current growth. Online games are much less expensive than going out to the movies, for example. “If you do your research, you will find these funny, hidden little gems that expand rather than contract in bad economic times,” he said. “It’s a growth industry — and a lot of fun.”
Places that are Hiring: Microsoft
http://members.microsoft.com/careers/default.mspx
It takes an army of software developers, product managers, editors and lawyers to keep Microsoft going. While the recession has prompted a review of hiring plans, according to a Microsoft spokesperson, the company still anticipates adding thousands of new jobs in 2009. “We will continue hiring the talent we need to ensure our ongoing success,” the spokesperson said.
Places that are Hiring: Alpine Access
http://www.alpineaccess.com/external/careers/
This company, which provides phone-based customer service, tech support, and collections calls for clients like J.Crew and Office Depot, is headquartered in Denver, Colorado, but its 7,500 employees all work from home. Alpine Access plans to hire over 1,200 people in 2009.
Places that are Hiring: Novartis
http://www.novartis.com/careers/index.shtml
Thanks to the success of its new vaccine against human papillomavirus, this Swiss company is expanding operations in the Boston area, adding 150 people to a vaccine research facility in Cambridge in 2009. All told, the drug company has more than 600 jobs open at locations in the United States.
Places that are Hiring: Facebook
http://www.facebook.com/jobs/?ref=pf
If you’ve recently been “friended” by people you haven’t seen in decades, it should come as no surprise that this social networking company is thriving. Based in Palo Alto, Calif., Facebook has six other U.S. offices and dozens of job openings. As the company explains on its site: “We’re looking for dynamic people that get excited by big questions and unsolved problems.” Is that you? Confirm or ignore.
Places that are Hiring: Meetup
http://www.meetup.com/jobs/
Online social networking is great, but sometimes you just want to meet face-to-face. The web site Meetup.com, based in New York, helps more than 2,000 groups of people get together in real life in their own communities. Meetup has dozens of jobs available for software engineers, testers and bilingual customer service agents. (Parlez-vous Francais? Then apply tout de suite.)
Posted by ResumeHelp on October 2, 2009
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?
Article by Kevin Donlin, Co-Creator of the Guerrilla Job Search System.
Kevin Donlin is contributing co-author of “Guerrilla Marketing for Job Hunters 2.0.” Since 1996, he has provided job-search help to more than 20,000 people.
Posted by ResumeHelp on September 9, 2009
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. If you need training one of the best industries is in the field of nursing.
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. Click here for one of the best job transition sites anywhere. They can help you get started again.
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.
BIO: As a recruiter, Joe Turner has spent the past 15 years finding and placing top candidates in some of the best jobs of their careers.
