Job Search Advice

Stepping Up to a Better Career was created to help job seekers nationwide find fulfilling employment by providing advice on resume writing, interviewing, job searching and more.  For the past year, I have upheld that goal by creating topics that I felt would be interesting to the 100 loyal readers I have each day.

Now I feel it is time to turn over the reigns.  I want to hear your specific questions and concerns and provide you with advice that will aid you in finding fulfilling employment and fast.

Have a question about transitioning careers? Looking for employment while keeping your old job? Networking to find employment? Moving from nonprofit work to the business sector?

Explaining laid-off or fired status? Job searching on the internet? Keeping a job after your company has been bought out or your department is being phased out?

Creating a resume? Formatting a resume? Specific resume samples? Types of resumes?

Following up on an interview? Negotiating your salary? Creating a cover letter?

If you have any questions about your job search…

Contact me!  You can choose to comment directly on this blog or you can e-mail me your questions at Resumes@AyeshaWrites4u.com and see your question appear in my next post.

All I ask is that along with your question(s), you send your first name and an e-mail address where I can contact you to let you know that your answer is being posted on the blog.

As always, good luck on your job search.

Ayesha Long

www.AyeshaWrites4u.com

Online Scammers are still at it…

On Tuesday, I wrote the blog post “You’ve found a job…or not?”. In this post, I wrote about clear cut signs to tell if a prospective company is legitimate or if it is a scam.  Due to the number of employment scams that have increased in the past year, I felt it was necessary to let my readers know of these predatory practices.  It’s no longer investment scams that people must fear.

Now people are benefiting from the media’s constant display of unemployment rates, job seekers restlessness at not finding employment, and the lack of positive responses employees are getting after sending out hundreds of resumes.  Even worse, there are thousands of employees fearful of being laid-off or fired in the near future and they too are adding to the droves of people now seeking new employment.  With that said, there is a multitude of people that predatory companies can target to profit from other people’s suffering and desperation.

Yesterday, the New York Times discovered the same predatory phenomenon occurring throughout the internet.  I decided to share this article with you because while the tips are helpful, the most shocking aspect is the profile of Claude Vera, a employment scam victim who now owes Chase $6,700.

What makes this scam so profound is that Claude was actually paid by the company.  They sent him money orders to purchase the laptops and other materials he would need in order to begin working for the company.  Yet, after requesting these items and conducting wire transfers,  he never received the materials because the money orders were COUNTERFEIT  or had been USED  prior to being received by Claude!

Apparently, the number of on-line scams have increased exponentially and even sites like scam.com or Phishbucket.org cannot discover a scam until someone has complained of being scammed.   My hopes is that by reading this blog and the linked article, you can avoid being a victim of a fraudulent company.

For the second time this week, I am asking all my readers to trust your instincts.  Finding a job is hard work.  Even more difficult is bouncing back from the financial setback of falling into an employment scheme that can wreak havoc on your savings, credit, and dealings with banks and reputable companies in the future.  Avoid being like Claude Vera, whose Chase account is now in collections because he failed to see beyond his current economic situation and allowed his emotions to put him in an even worse situation.

I highly recommend reading the New York Times Article, “Online Scammers Prey on the Jobless“  because it offers some great information, including the names of companies that have been identified as scams and additional tips on how to neutralize the effects of being contacted by a scam company.

As always, good luck with your job search and be careful.

Ayesha Long

www.AyeshaWrites4u.com

Step Up to a Better Career with Professional Resume Services
*** Also be sure to go to Ayesha Writes 4 You’s website and schedule your Free Resume Consultation. From now until August 15th, you can take advantage of our Summer Discount and get 15% off any resume package. So go to www.AyeshaWrites4u.com to get started now!

Personal Branding

When conducting a job search, it’s easy to get caught up in all the little details of your job search materials without actually looking for a job. I like to compare it to a new business owner that focuses on getting business supplies, buying commercial property, creating a business plan, and building a website without ever testing her market.

Any capable business owner would say that the aforementioned business owner had it all wrong. BEFORE buying a single piece of merchandise or property, the business owner should have tested the market first. This way the business owner is opening his business knowledgeably and is well aware of what the consumer wants.

This same principle applies to job searching. BEFORE creating a resume, doing interview preparation, or quitting your job, you should test the market.

Go to the websites of companies of interest and see if they are hiring. Check to see what qualifications they are looking for when it comes to qualified candidates. Create a profile of the prototype candidate the employers are seeking in your industry and then determine how you can be that prototype.

Once you have this information, network. Don’t just tell people you are job seeking – explain to them the kind of candidate you are. Make them eager to sell you to the employers they know.

Create your marketing materials, i.e. your resume, cover letter, and follow up letters around that prototype. This way you are running a capable and efficient job search.

As always, good luck with your job search.

Ayesha Long

www.AyeshaWrites4u.com

Step Up to a Better Career with Professional Resume Services
*** Also be sure to go to Ayesha Writes 4 You’s website and schedule your Free Resume Consultation. From now until August 15th, you can take advantage of our Summer Discount and get 15% off any resume package. So go to www.AyeshaWrites4u.com to get started now!

California Man Cuts the Crap, Gets Hired

Last Thursday, I posted the article Get Interviewed about tactics you can use when your resume  fails to get you the results you deserve.   The following Friday, I saw a video created by Kevin Donlin, co-creator of The Guerrilla Job Search.  I was so impressed with Kevin’s innovative ideas of using the same tactics as guerrilla marketing for your own job hunt that I asked him to share some advice as a guest blogger.  He agreed and below is his first post.

Be sure that after you read his post, you click on the link below to view his FREE video.  This video plays out step by step some of the ways you can begin your own Guerrilla Job Search.

As always, good luck on your job search.

Ayesha Long

www.AyeshaWrites4u.com

California Man Cuts the Crap, Gets Hired

By guest blogger, Kevin Donlin

The shortest distance between two points is a straight line, right?

And the shortest distance between you and your next job may lie in your making straight for the hiring manager.

In other words, if you decide to cut the crap, stop jumping through hoops and just go meet your next boss, you may get … hired.

That’s what happened to one “Guerrilla Job Hunter” who shares his story below.

Matthew Ringue, a Career Services Advisor for Heald College in Concord, Calif., got hired by his current employer after doing something unexpected.

“I saw an ad online for a position as an admissions advisor. I submitted my resume but I normally didn’t get a response from doing that, so I decided to walk my resume in. I found the college, went up to the receptionist, and said: ‘I applied for a position online and I was hoping there was someone I could talk to about it.’”

The receptionist’s reaction?

“She said, ‘Oh. Let me see if someone is available,’” says Ringue.

It turned out that nobody was available.

But the receptionist suggested Ringue come back the following Tuesday. Upon his return, he was again unable to meet anyone. So he politely asked for and received an appointment. On his third visit, Ringue got the meeting he wanted with a decision maker.

How did it go?

“Very well. The hiring manager said, ‘I really appreciate your being persistent. I think it’s great that you came in a couple of times and pushed for an interview,’” recalls Ringue.

He was eventually hired, but not for the job he first applied for. It turns out that the college no longer had an opening for an Admissions Advisor. But executives were impressed enough by Ringue to hire him for another position, the one he now holds, Career Services Advisor.

Your takeaway lesson: Always try to apply in person at an employer, even if they don’t expect you.

You can take the direct approach by walking up to a receptionist and asking for a meeting, or you can get referred by an employee first. In either case, persist until you get a meeting.

However you do it, know that every time you meet with an employer, you’ll have no competition from ordinary job seekers, who are content to sit behind a computer keyboard and fire off resumes electronically.

Also, know this — asking to meet an employer is not pushy or aggressive, unless you are.

Remember why an employer buys online job postings in the first place: To hire the right people. And before anyone can hire you, they have to meet you. So, by meeting with employers — whether they expect you or not — you demonstrate initiative, persistence, and a bias for action. Who wouldn’t want those traits in a new hire?

Put another way, it’s perfectly reasonable to take the ordinary approach and not apply in person for a job posted online. But how has “ordinary” been working for you?

More “extraordinary” job search tips like this in our free Guerrilla Job Search audio.

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Get Interviewed!

Okay, we’ve all been there!  You have a great resume.  You have an even better cover letter.  You have the qualifications.  But your phone just keeps on failing to ring.  Oh, you’re getting phone calls from friends and family – but the phone call you’ve been waiting for, the one that comes from the employer of your dreams, is just not happening.

Day in and day out you resend your resume to another company thinking this one MUST be the company that will call you and get you out of your rut of a job.  But what if that doesn’t happen?  How do you ensure that your resume will be viewed and will result in an interview?

Attack! Consider yourself a marketable good and think of creative ways to present yourself to an employee as an exclusive commodity.  Don’t just send out your resume or worse yet, click send an application on your monster account and wait for the phone calls to start ringing.  You have to really put yourself out there.

What does that mean for your job search?  Well for starters, you can forget about applying to every job that catches your eye.  This is a waste of your valuable time.  Instead, what you are going to do is choose nine companies, nine positions and stick with them for the next two weeks.  During that time, you are going to do the following:

• Make initial contact – If there is a company you are interested in, whether they are hiring or not, you are going to make a friend.  This does not mean you are going to be shopping buddies.  No, you are going to contact someone who is in a similar position or who is in the same department as the one to which you are going to apply.  You are going to call them and schedule an informational interview (see Importance of Networking).  During the interview, learn as much as you can about the prospective company and be sure to ask the person if it is okay to mention them during an interview or on your cover letter.
• Go straight to the head – Call the company and see if they are hiring.  If you’ve already seen a posting advertising a position, then you are going to respond to that posting.  But first, you are going to find out who is responsible for the hiring process and send your resume and cover letter directly to that person.  This first resume will be sent in TWO formats – the ASCII format which is an non-formatted resume that can be pasted directly into an e-mail and will be able to undergo an employer’s keyword scan.  The second resume will be formatted and sent through snail mail.
• Follow Up! Follow Up! Follow Up! – Here is where things get tricky.  Depending on how badly you want the position, your follow up can take a number of different formats – sending a follow up letter, making a follow up call, having your inside contact recommend you, or finding out a secret indulgence the HR manager has and feeding into it.  For example, if you know the HR manager loves chocolate, you can send a box of chocolates every day with your business card demonstrating to the HR person that you are eager, a go-getter, and know exactly what you want.  Now this strategy may not work for everyone.  Only you know what your limits are to being determined versus being pesky.  Either way, you must take some form of follow up measures to let the employer know you are a serious candidate and not arbitrarily sending out your resume to everyone (See Most Common Resume Mistake).

If you utilize these strategies, along with maintaining a professional image through your paper choice, resume and cover letter formatting and words, finding a job should be a quick, painless process.  Remember the key to finding a job is casting a wide net through networking, but being selective about which fish you actually want to bring home with you.

As always, good luck with your job search.

Sincerely,

Ayesha Long

www.AyeshaWrites4u.com

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