Posts Tagged ‘job hunt’

Be The Life Of The Party, Not The "Talk" Of The Party

It’s December.  You are looking for a job.  Are you thinking about the most creative, and interesting ways to find one?  Have you considered jump starting your job search by launching a high profile professional presence on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn?  Listen job seekers, if you are a member of our HireFriday Community, participate in HFChat, this is no time to be shy.  It’s ok to toot your horn. In fact, I implore you to toot it so loud that everyone hears you…you can do this without being noisy. In fact you can be quite slick in how you present yourself at holiday parties, networking events, coffee shops, informational interviews, meetings, and professional association events.  You can, and should participate in Twitter chats. This is an excellent way to get noticed, and found by recruiters, and companies.    You don’t have to be an extrovert to be creative your job search campaign. Introverts are very successful with their online presence because they have the safety of the computer screen to shield them from over stimulation.  You have to ask yourself one critical question: How and where do you recharge your inner battery, and where can you make the biggest splash.

Here’s my top 5 tips for staying on top of your game:

1. Secure speaking engagements for the coming year with the organizations to which you belong: This is a cool way to get your name out there in your industry, and get some personal brand recognition. Public speaking is a brilliant way to position yourself in the market place, and can be a great way to receive the recognition you deserve.
2. Create a list of questions in advance targeted toward the people you want to meet. Make these questions industry specific, and relevant to the person you want to meet. People like to talk about themselves.
3. Ask questions: come prepared with a few conversation starters in case you find yourself suddenly scared, or feeling insecure: It happens to the best of us, we are in a crowd of people we don’t know at a holiday party, and suddenly we are overcome with the jitters.  You can overcome this by finding out in advance who is going to be at the party.  Run a Google search on the people you want to meet. Find out about their background, interests and accomplishments.
4. Don’t drink too much at holiday parties, or events: You never know who has a camera, or whether or not an unflattering picture will wind up on Facebook, or Twitter. Beware of people who can be “brand killers.”
5. Be the smart one at the party, not the life of the party. There’s a time and place for everything.  If you love working the room, by all means do so, particularly if that’s one of your skills.  However, don’t be the goon who dances like a fool, or worse who thinks s/he looks good while dancing.  If you don’t know how you look when you dance, be sure to check it out before it winds up on YouTube without you even knowing it.  There’s good publicity and bad publicity.

You are not Brett Michaels, Sorry. He Can Get Away With It, You Can't.

When you are looking for a job, you have to be the guardian of your image, and online reputation. No one will take better care of you than you.  So be sure you are the smart one at the party.  Make sure that don’t do or say anything that will offend or embarrass your boss.  If you are passively looking for a job while employed, that’s incredibly important.  The last thing you want is to find yourself fired before you are ready to leave.  If you are unemployed, and in an active pursuit of a job, the holidays are a monumental opportunity to find and secure a position…or at the very least get on the short list for the position you want when it comes open.

Tomorrow, I will continue the series with more secret sauce…job search tips…and encouragement.  Encouragement, is perhaps what we need most when job hunting, so hang in there.

Your job search pal,

@HRMargo

Margo Rose

Hey are we connected on LinkedIn?  Mention HireFriday in your invitation, and I will gladly accept http://linkedin.com/in/margorose

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Randy Newman wrote a wonderful song: You’ve got a friend in me.  The HireFriday Community extends its hand to you.  Each and every day we are on the firing line listening to your concerns, and offering support and guidance.  Job search is a morale buster.  As a career professional, people ask me all the time, “what is the hardest part job seeking?”  Morale.  It’s just one word, but it is a powerful one.  When morale is low the desire, the energy, and the pure drive to keep up the momentum of a job hunt is beyond difficult.  In some cases, it shuts people down, and then the longer you’re down, the harder it is to get back up.  Confucious says, “A man is great not because he hasn’t failed, but because failure hasn’t stopped him ~Confucius”

The feeling of failure plagues the best of job seekers.  Regardless if you are a CEO, or a janitor, every great person has moments where they stumble.  The fact is just because that job didn’t work out doesn’t mean you’re a failure.  The position may not have been a fit, that’s all.  When positions don’t fit, people don’t do their best work.  When you hear the words, “you’re fired,” or “your position has been eliminated,” or “the company has experienced a reduction in force, our budgets have been cut…” it doesn’t mean you are a failure. Do not let the loss of a job define you.  Sometimes it’s just not about you.  Sometimes it is.  Regardless, it’s difficult even under the best of circumstances.

Where can you get help?  You’ve got a friend in me, as Randy sings. HireFriday can help.  Not only do you have a friend in me, you have a community of thousands. Our community includes job seekers, passive candidates, casual job hunters, and most importantly recruiters, candidate sourcers, resume writers, executive coaches, professional authors, human resource professionals, companies, job boards, networking groups, professional associations.

The best thing about HireFriday is that you can be surrounded by a community of people who will surround you with help, support, friendship, and substantive guidance.  Why do I care about this?  Because I care about you.  That’s a fact.  Nobody pays me to say that.  My true passion is helping as many people as I can rise up from the mire of job loss, and lift them up to higher ground.  It’s always been my goal to use HireFriday for higher good.  Together we can do this.  

You never have to go through your job hunt alone again.  Join us on Twitter during #HFChat. Join our group on Linkedin. Please “like” our page on Facebook.  Consider writing a blog post for our website. If you go to our HireFriday website you can subscribe to our newsletter which is chock filled with great job search tips, and tools.  We always welcome fresh ideas.  Will you please take a moment and leave me a comment?  It would really make my day.  Thanks.

Your job search pal,

Margo Rose
@HRMargo on Twitter
Founder of HireFriday and HFChat
http://linkedin.com/in/margorose Let’s get LinkedIn today

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Don't be a snooze

The road of social networks is littered with updates.  How do you make yours stand out job seeker? Don’t be boring.  Sometimes you have to say, or do something that really makes you stand out. Listen up, there’s dozens of social networks.  For each of them there’s millions of messages. How do you get noticed so that a recruiter, or an employer will pluck you from the stream? Be INTERESTING.  I mean interesting as in smart, not hmmm, interesting as in weird, or creepy.

Find hip new ways to turn a phrase, you have 140 ch on Twitter to make a splash.  It winds up being about 128 if you had a short link.  So, think before you tweet, “how can I make a point?, what can I say to make people want to read the article I’m sharing and re-tweet it?”  Well, you have to understand your audience, and speak directly to them.  Now granted, on Twitter, virtually anyone can follow you.  By and large, those who do are those who share common interests.  Do you know what they want to read?  If you are an expert in your field, you know what other experts want to know about.  Share that information.  Be compelling.

For me, it’s easy because I am not shy to say what’s on my mind.  I have a sense of humor, and I love to clown around, and so do most of the people I tweet with, so it’s fun. I’m not boring.  I’m a lot of things, but boring is not one of them. You have to temper fun with fact on Twitter, as with most social networks.

Now, to establish thought leadership, I stick with what I really understand. If you step outside your window of knowledge an expert will figure it out, and there goes your credibility.  I don’t know about your occupation, but HR and Recruiting are a very small world.  People talk.  People really talk in social media.  Never say something on a social network that you wouldn’t want to read on a billboard the next day.  This is particularly true when you are job hunting.  So, in summary don’t be boring, talk smart, tweet interesting information, post cool stuff that’s relevant to your industry, have fun, and connect with everyone that interests you.

Don’t think that just because you are hiding behind a computer screen that people aren’t listening…they are.  Just when you think, “nobody cares is I let an F-bomb rip,” off that status update goes via text, email, and copy and pasted all over Facebook, Google +, and any other social network.  Sure, job seeker, you want to be noticed.  Sure, you want attention.  Just make sure it’s the kind of attention you really want.  Any good recruiter, or candidate sourcer can, and will find anything you post.

Be interesting, just be smart.

Your job search pal,

@HRMargo

Margo Rose, Founder of HireFriday and HFChat

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This week on HFChat we ask: Are job boards dead or alive? Only job candidates can answer this question. Every touch point with job search candidates should be a source of positive attraction. If not your candidate attrition, and online application abandonment rate will be high (25-40% according to Afton Funk of HRMDirect.) Afton opened my eyes.

In order for job boards to remain viable, the system must interact, and engage with the candidates in a meaningful way. Every step of the process should make the candidate feel comfortable, and welcome. The days of post and pray recruiting should end. The days of job boards emailing jobs without relevancy should end. Are job boards dead or alive? This is a rhetorical question. The question is, what do candidates think? That is what matters most. What is relevant, and resonates with job search candidates? Are we listening? Are we paying attention to the candidate experience? Gerry Crispin, and other leaders in the recruitment industry have published important, and note worthy stories on this topic.

Now, how will we as a candidate community facilitate this topic? From the job search candidate perspective of course. Margo Rose will host, our weekly moderators Tom Bolt, Steve Levy, and Cyndy Trivella will have great content to share. YOU will have great content to share, because everyone wants to know your level of satisfaction, and your opinions. Please job seekers, chime in, and don’t lurk this week. We need your active participation, and we are here to add value to your job search process. Jobs are important, but your experience in the job process is critical. The candidate experience doesn’t begin at the job board, it begins when you anticipate you are ready to make a change. It doesn’t end when you get a job, it continues throughout your tenure with the company.

What are this week’s questions?

What does the candidate experience mean to you?

Are job boards friendly to your job search experience? (candidate perspective)

What do think happens to you when you input your resume into a job board? Is it going into a black hole?

Are you afraid of fake job postings, or loss leaders posted by unethical people?

How do you feel about connecting your linkedin & facebook contacts into your job board network?

How often do you refresh, and update your resume on a job board? How about Linkedin?

Are you paying a premium to have your resume sent to recruiters?

Are you a paying to be a premium member of a job board to receive priority visibility?

If you aren’t refreshing your resume (regularly) it loses it’s ranking, this particularly in legacy job boards. Are you targeting effectively? If not why? Add your comments to this list. We will address this and much, much more tomorrow.

I’m a lot of positive feedback from people that you are reading and enjoying our HFChat transcripts. I’m so happy to hear that. Please keep communicating with us. We want to hear from you. If you’d like to receive our newsletter, please click on contact us. Thanks community.

Margo Rose, Founder of HireFriday and HFChat

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What are the benefits of blogging? How can you derive the maximum return on your time investment? The purpose of this blog is to connect you with opportunities to enhance your career. This is also an identity blog, not an “industry” blog. I editorialize about that which takes place in the human resources, and recruitment community. I am also the champion for the underdog, the job seeker, and all candidates everywhere who seek a job. Job hunting can be a daunting task in today’s economy. Job seeking can be a herculean effort.  Should job hunting be a full-time endeavor, or a part-time endeavor?  This is a rhetorical question.

Think about it. I contend there must be a balance between job hunting, and evaluating work-life balance. This is a controversial view point. Yes, one has to cultivate the seeds to accelerate their employment.  Yes, one must always be on the lookout for a good job.  Even when you are sitting securely in your present position, always keep your eyes open at opportunities when they pop up on your desk, or email box.  Next, on HFChat Steve Davis will guest host. We will tackle the topic of the challenges that currently face the temporary services industry.  We will grapple with the gnawing question, are all jobs temporary in today’s economy?  What about outsourcing?  Will we one day be outsourced?  Look at the outplacement community.  That is a clue.

Our economy is driven by supply and demand. Jobs are being off-shored to India, China, and Europe?  Why? Is it because the cost of labor is so high?  Is it because we are in a recession?  I don’t have the answers to these questions, rather what I want to do is to lead you to the place where you can decide for yourself.  Job seekers are intelligent.  Job hunters are savvier than they have ever been before.  Invention is the mother of survival, and today job seekers are reinventing themselves to make a living.

Don’t ever underestimate a candidate’s ability to look for a job.  Even if you are employed, I encourage you to attend this week’s HFChat.  You might just learn something that will ensure your employment now, and in the future.  Don’t ever discount your personal job search, your effort as a job seeker is invaluable.  Our goal for HireFriday’s HFChat is to accelerate your re-employment.   Everyone who wants a job, should have a job.  Even if our government is shutting down, that doesn’t mean that you have to-so keep your eyes open.  Listen and learn.  Watch and wait.  The right answers will come if your mind is open.

Here is a report from the AP Press.  So you say, “I can’t get no satisfaction?”  The Rolling Stones song is emblematic of our times.

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