Posts Tagged ‘job search strategy’

I met @RockTheHunt on Twitter.  She impressed me right away as someone who has a great message.

The brand of YOU

The job goes to the best qualified applicant, right? Well, not quite. When it comes to filling vacancies the job most often goes to the person who markets themselves effectively for that specific position.

In this economy it’s an employer’s market and they have more than enough qualified candidates. It’s gone beyond qualifications into corporate culture, personality, potential of long-term loyalty, and other subjective factors that can’t be accurately and objectively assessed. The only way to get an employer’s attention in this market is to move beyond the mindset of qualifications.

1. Talk to the robot

There’s this nice software that scans resumes for keywords, analyzes them for years of experience, and pulls out hard qualifications. Optimizing your resume for those databases is key to getting your foot in the door. “Robots” don’t like charts or columns. They don’t like text. Your name and contact info has to be at the top, and the resume needs to be in reverse chronological format.

1. Answer the Question “Why you?”

Use your cover letter to illustrate what sets you apart from the other hundreds of applicants. Address the concerns someone might have when they look at your resume – are you overqualified? Back from a career sabbatical? Switching industries? Or are you targeting a specific company because you’re passionate about what they do? Resist the urge to send a one-size-fits-all cover letter.

1. Avoid multiple personalities

Your cover letter should ‘match’ your resume. And that should match your thank you letter, your list of references, your portfolio. Wording, syntax, style. Your entire packet should present like a well planned sales presentation. Don’t forget to print business cards with your contact info, industry/title, blog or website address, LinkedIn address, Twitter handle, and anything else appropriate to your personal brand. Plan your job-search brand and personality as analytically as you would plan a product launch. Your strategy speaks volumes.

1. Use appropriate etiquette

Whether you’re contacting people on Twitter, LinkedIn, the phone, email, or in your resume and cover letter, remember to use appropriate language. Mind your please and thank you’s, avoid slang, and by all means avoid profanity like the plague. Show professionalism through the way you communicate and relate to other people. Let your personality shine through, but remember that manners go a long way.

1. Get offline

In today’s digital market it’s tempting to spend hours on job search sites, LinkedIn, blogs, and Twitter and forget that there’s a great big world out there with people to look in the eye and shake hands with. Go to industry events, career networking events. Volunteer. Give back. Be three-dimesional. And everywhere you go hand out your business cards and use a 15-second pitch to tell people what you’re looking for.

Do you have a brand? If not, it’s time to create one. Analyze the vacancies in your field to identify what employers are looking for. Highlight the ways your resume fills those needs, and begin creating your brand at that intersect.

Katie Germain is a Senior Resume Writer with Rock the Hunt. After an enjoyable tenure in corporate marketing, she’s turned her wiles to the more rewarding field of helping jobseekers escalate their careers.  You can find her on Twitter @RockTheHunt or email her directly at Katie (at) Rock the Hunt (dot) com.

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Power posturing during an interview: should you do it? That all depends where you are in the recruitment process. Most applicant systems, and telephone screeners want to know if you are in the salary ballpark. Does that mean you should blurt out a number when a recruiter asks you what’s your salary range? Just say: nothing. A moment of silence say it all, often it prompts the telephone screener to give you a range first. The safe answer is: I expect that your organization pays a fair wage commensurate the the duties the position require. Some still choose to say: I’m negotiable, and leave it at that.

Chances are the person on the other end of the phone wants you to speak first. Sometimes answering a question with a question can work in your favor, such as, “how about if we wait until the second or third interview until be begin discussing salary? I’d much rather be assured that we have established that we are a mutual fit for one another.” Isn’t it smarter to be sure you are a fit for the position, and have an offer on the table before launching into salary discussions? Let’s not let our phone screeners put the cart before the horse. Remember, it’s up to you to hold your salary cards close to your chest.

What about recruiters who disagree with my strategy? To them I suggest that it is in the candidates best interest to allow the recruiter for the position be the first to discuss salary ranges. If it’s that important of a screening tool recruiters, put your cards on the table first. The candidate will decide if the range is acceptable or not. The strategy I’m suggesting works. I used it all the time during my own transition.

What about applicant tracking systems where companies make a salary range mandatory, or fields that require you to input your current salary? This is a conundrum that confounds, and frustrates career development professionals. There’s no easy answer. This requirement can hurt if you had to take a cut in pay due to the recent downturn in the economy. I suggest finding someone in your linkedin network immediately, and asking for an introduction to the hiring manager or recruiter. You can either input what you made input negotiable. If it requires a number you can take a risk and put in $1.00. That will surely flag someone’s attention and make them smile. It might make them mad, but either way you are making a point. Applicant tracking systems are looking for buzz words, key words that match the industry.

The best way to identify the tag cloud for the given job is to go to google, bing and search key word, search industry, job title, and see what pops up. An excellent tool is visit tagcrowd.com. Chandlee Bryan wrote an excellent blog post about how to make your resume shoot to the top of applicant tracking systems. Read her post here.

Once you’ve identified the key words prevalent in your industry, pepper them in your linkedin profile and resume. It is also important to search several different companies for job descriptions to discover what your job title, cluster, and job family is called in different organizations. This way you can strengthen you positioning in applicant tracking systems, and with recruiters.

I want to leave you with one last thought: make sure the photo on your twitter and linkedin profile is appropriate for your career search. Read this article posted on recruitingblogs today for great suggestions by recruiter, Hung Lee.

I now offer today’s theme song: Don’t Stop Believing-Keep Believing In Yourself, and Others Will Believe In You. Know this, I will keep believing in you until you believe in yourself!

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