Resume Help Blog

Posts Tagged ‘companies that are hiring’

Let’s take a look at eight common job search myths…and the reality behind them:

The best qualified individual gets the job.

Actually, it’s the best candidate who gets the job. That person may or may not be the best qualified. Understand the difference.

Job boards are the best source of leads.

Your network is the best source of leads. It’s fine to check online and to peruse the want ads…but don’t spend too much time there. Most jobs are never posted.

It’s nearly impossible to find those hidden jobs.

Not if you put some work into it, and if you’re purposeful about how you go about it. Make sure people know about your search. They can’t help you if they don’t know you’re looking. Keep working to expand your network. Every meeting with another person is a potential networking opportunity. Think about who might be able to help you – even if it’s someone you don’t know yet – and figure out how you can go about meeting that person.

Thank you letters are passé.

If you don’t really want the job, skip the thank you letter. Otherwise, you’d better write one. It’s your last chance to sell yourself – to underscore why you’re the person who can help solve whatever problem it is the hiring manager is facing.

Your recruiter works for you.

No, no, no. He works for the hiring company. His job is to fill the open position with the best candidate – as defined by the hiring company. If you’re a good match, it’s in the headhunter’s best interest to try to close the deal and get you placed. But you’re not paying him, and he’s not an employment agent.

Offering to take a cut in salary will boost your chances of landing the job.

That depends – on how much of a cut we’re talking about, and how you bring it up. Flexibility is important – even in this market, you’d be surprised how many candidates draw a line in the sand regarding what they will and will not accept. Still, it’s important that you broach the subject at the right time, especially if it’s a significant decrease from what you were previously earning (say, 20%). You don’t want to come off as desperate, and neither do you want to be perceived as someone who will bolt the minute the employment situation improves.

The hiring company will contact you if they’re interested.

Maybe. Maybe not. Don’t sit back and wait for the phone call, especially in this tight job market. Submit your resume, wait a week, and then follow up.

University employment resources are only for kids.

Career assistance isn’t limited solely to recent graduates. Whether or not your alma mater offers a robust slate of services is another story – but you won’t know if you don’t check it out. You might find things like career coaching or counseling, networking events, and recruitment firm referrals. Go to your school’s website and see if there’s some sort of Career Center, online community, or yellow pages.

About the author: Rebecca Metschke helps professionals seeking a competitive advantage in today’s global economy.

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.