Job Search Review
The most excellent way to find a job is through online. You can do all the necessary research to understand the position that you’re looking for and comprehend with it. Employer will be watching his trainee in the first few months, and that was the time to show your skills and that you’re fit into the company. You must know your responsibilities fully and demonstrate that you are worth having as an employee.
Of course, a profession, manual labor, hospitality and office work are obviously extremely different; however, the issues below will help you. You should also know who you will be working with and learn to get along with people without becoming too arrogant and annoying. There is no reason to stay in a job where you do not ‘fit in’ and will feel uncomfortable and where the people around you are unpleasant either. Even if you do search online in depth, remember that you will not always meet understanding people, so be prepared for that if it’s happened.
If you have an innate fear because of a new job or project assigned to you, You must realise that it is natural for everyone to experiences it until settling in. Immerse yourself in your work for your first several months, and you will find yourself growing in self-confidence.
Research is your first step in ferreting out job openings. And since almost everyone gets a daily newspaper, why not start there? But don’t spend a lot of time on the want ads.
“I take an indirect approach in looking for companies that might be hiring. For example, I skimmed today’s Wall Street Journal and found these tidbits:
* “Toyota now wants 15% of global market share, which means they’ll be expanding worldwide and perhaps hiring locally…”
* “China is buying $1.2 billion in telecom equipment from Lucent and Motorola, which points to both firms needing new personnel…”
* “Earnings for Cendant rose 19%, so they may be hiring…”
“The list goes on,” says Picha.
All is takes is a little digging to uncover these “jewels” that point you toward companies in need of new employees.
Two more ways to use the newspaper to uncover expanding businesses are:
* Monitor the business section for firms signing new commercial leases, a sure sign of a need for increased capacity.
* Look for companies receiving venture capital — since it’s so difficult to get these days, such firms are likely to have a viable business model … and a need for new employees.
2) Consider temporary employment
Temporary agencies can open the door to a wider range of jobs than you think they’re not limited to office support or light factory work.
“Many savvy employers use temporary agencies as a screening device. It’s a chance to put temp workers through a trial period. And, if the employee is talented enough, a job can be created just for him or her,” says Picha.
In Southern California, some companies draw 33-50% of their staff from the temporary work force, according to Picha. Similar figures may apply to other parts of the country.
Temporary agencies are all around you, too.
“Just visit www.google.com, search for ‘temporary employment,’ and you’ll find a huge number of temp agency listings. You can sort them by geography, industry — whatever,” says Picha, who found 59 agencies listed for his Southern California region.
3) Network smarter, not harder
I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again networking is how 70-80% of the best jobs are filled. But in today’s economy, don’t expect a plum position to fall in your lap. You must network smartly and more creatively.
“Try calling on vendors and suppliers who know of companies that might be hiring. These include your local banker, CPA, lawyer and real estate agent. These people all have a great deal of knowledge,” says Picha.
Don’t forget associations there’s one or more for every field of work. Use them to meet decision makers who can hire you. Call the reference desk at your public library for help finding associations.
When you call or meet networking contacts, ask for names of growing companies who could use someone with your experience. Ask for a contact person at the target employer(s), but avoid the HR department, since they often act as gatekeepers and may shun you.
Are you contemplating making a career change? Is this something you just decided today or is it something you’ve had on your mind for a long time but haven’t committed completely to until today? Perhaps someone else made the decision for you. Maybe your company was recently bought out by another. Perhaps you were downsized due to a corporate reorganization. Regardless of the reason for your search, it’s time to make a plan.
What is it you would like to do in this new endeavor? Are you seeking a position identical to the one you’re leaving or have just left? If this is the case and the entire industry hasn’t made changes that impact personnel adversely, it would be the easiest move to make. In this scenario you simply sit down and list all competitors and all companies affiliated with your last employer or it’s competitors. You should in most cases know exactly who the players are and know which of your competitors you would be proud to be affiliated with. Of course it’s not so simple if you’ve signed a non-compete which stands up regardless of reasons for unemployment-in this case you would have to take a copy of that non-compete with you and either have it looked at by your personal attorney or by a corporate attorney for the company you are interviewing with currently. If you’ve decided to move into another field entirely, do you have the credentials essential to that particular position? Have you seen people working in that particular position and decided you could do that job? The best way to make a true and honest determination about your ability to successfully land and work a new position is to go out onto the internet and utilize it for research purposes. Go to Monster.com, Careerbuilder.com or any other job board you may utilize and look for available positions of that type in your geographic area. Look to see exactly what credentials these companies seek for this particular position. Also look to see what other positions similar to those you have an interest in are seeking in candidates. For instance, you may wish to begin a new career in Pharmaceutical Sales. You may not have outside, business-to-business sales experience but, you may have sold retail in college. Maybe you were a product manager whose job it was to introduce new product into a market-this is a type of sales. Maybe you have a nursing background and a sales personality. These would lend themselves to a good description of what a lot of pharmaceutical companies seek in new hires. If the company ad states they wish actual pharmaceutical sales, don’t apply-it will only make you look foolish. But, if they seek people with sales experience or the equivalent, apply. When you apply, make certain your resume and portfolio show you to be a true sales professional even if your past experience does not. How you present or represent yourself will tell a lot more about your sales abilities than your resume.
As you make your plan, plan your day and then plan your week. Set goals of what you wish to accomplish for each day/week. You may be seeking a position part time if you’re currently employed. If so, know what hours you will be seriously working toward your goal and don’t allow anyone or anything to interfere with you working your plan. If unemployed, don’t fool yourself into believing you can sit back and get a new position working at it part time in a very short period of time. Make a list of potential companies once you have done your research. You may wish to begin with SIC Codes and list those companies with the same SIC Codes as the positions you seek. You can do this over the internet, at your local book store or at the library. Target your choices and then make certain your resume(s) address the skills and areas of expertise you have (that they have told you through their job-listings) that they seek. Don’t bore your audience with information about your employment history that doesn’t have anything to do with the position you are applying for. List your achievements and accomplishments in order to let them know you are the person who gets things done. Locate your decision maker and then if at all possible hand deliver your resume and cover letter. The majority of the time, your decision maker will be unable or unwilling to meet with you without an appointment. It doesn’t matter. Hand- write a note and place it on your envelope or file folder which says “Hand delivered by _____”. Wait one day and follow up with a phone call checking to make certain they received the information you hand delivered yesterday. At this point your interest level is well known. You should also have peaked their interest in you as well. If they tell you they have forwarded your resume to Human Resources, ask who in HR you may contact to follow up.
So far you have decided what type of position you are targeting. You have targeted specific companies and probably have segregated these choices into an A, B, and C list. You’ve contacted your potential employer and located the decision maker-hopefully not human resources. You’ve rewritten your resume to target the position and your decision maker’s needs and you’ve hand delivered your resume and cover letter to the jobsite. You’ve left a handwritten note stating you hand delivered your resume and you’ve called to follow up and hopefully ask for the opportunity to meet with them in person. From this point forward, you get to sell you by being you. You should have your professional portfolio to present and a copy to leave behind to make it easy to see you are the person to compete with.
Today, finding a job is a full-time job. Just like everything in life, you get out of it what you put into it. If you work part-time, it will take you longer to reach your goals. Just sending the same resume for each opportunity will not get you the interview, let alone the job.
Some careers proceed along a nice, neat path. But the 10 technologists in this year’s Dream Jobs report found their journeys full of unexpected twists, dramatic surprises, and what probably looked to others like complete about-faces.
Take Rick Armstrong. He started out as a sound engineer, but now he spends his workdays aboard small aircraft, tapping away at his laptop to create detailed 3-D maps.
Bob Marsh, too, has had a long, strange trip. Remember the Homebrew Computer Club? Marsh’s work with the group earned him a place in computing history. These days he trots the globe installing computer centers in the most isolated regions. Ernst Völlm, who began his career building a bobbin winder for a textile company, now designs the most advanced scuba computers available.
Ronald Thomas used to work on instruments to study the upper atmosphere; now he seeks out erupting volcanoes in search of lightning. José Losada didn’t grow up thinking he’d someday write code for the telescope with the largest light-collecting mirror in the world. But that’s what he does, in the sun-washed paradise of the Canary Islands. Working for a biotech firm, Brian Gallagher spent his evenings developing a truck-suspension control system. His sideline morphed into a full-time gig overseeing electrical systems for a remarkably aerodynamic electric car.
Dream jobs can come when you least expect them. Hiroko Ohmura always loved pianos, but as a computer scientist she never expected to design one—until her employer, Yamaha, surprised her with a transfer from IT to the digital musical instruments division. Henrik Sørensen had been unemployed for months when he landed his dream job designing energy systems for sustainable buildings. And Jacob Melvin’s grades were so poor he worried he wouldn’t graduate college. But then recruiters for DreamWorks Animation SKG offered him the position he had always dreamed of.
Finally, consider Catherine Mohr. At 27, she was working on some of the world’s most advanced electric vehicles—surely a dream job. But Mohr decided she’d rather help doctors and their patients. So she went to medical school, and now she’s creating cutting-edge tools for robotic surgery.
Looking for a new or better job? Maybe you should delete those old pictures from your Facebook page first. You remember, from that long-ago spring break that show you dressed in a lamp shade and little else.
A new Microsoft-funded survey of 2,500 recruiting professionals and consumers in four major developed nations found that online reputation is important — very important.
The survey, conducted in December by Cross-tab Marketing Services, found that 70 percent of human resources (HR) and recruiting professionals in the U.S. had rejected job candidates due to what they found regarding those individuals online.
A whopping 79 percent of those HR professionals said they use online reputation information as part of their hiring process, while 85 percent said that “positive online reputation influences their hiring decisions at least to some extent.”
“As people share more about their lives online through social networks, micro-blogging, photo sharing and other services, we at Microsoft see the issue of online privacy and control over personal data becoming a more important consideration,” Chief Privacy Strategist Peter Cullen said in a post to the Microsoft Privacy & Safety blog Wednesday.
“People continue to prize safety, but they also want the ability to share information in ways that allow them to maintain control over how it’s used and how it might impact their reputation,”