Aqua Career

by Randy Place

As I mentioned in the last post on Your Career Service, your first step in a job finding campaign is to find out what it is you want to do. When you don’t know, or say to yourself, “I just want a good job,” you’ll confuse the marketplace. How will your interviewer know what you want if you don’t?

This is why you need to have a job objective which reflects your strengths. It spells the difference between finding the right position and landing just another job. You can create an objective by flushing out some of your greatest achievements.

What is an achievement? The dictionary defines it as “a thing done successfully.” You need to judge each success as something you did well and were proud of regardless of whether you were paid to do it or not. Therefore,an achievementcan be something your were proud of at work, at home, in your community.

We all accomplished things in our lives that made us proud. Some examples —

• Designed and managed new computer system
• Supervised staff of twelve accountants
• Selected to lead Y2K team
• Managed staff of six to accomplish revamping of accounting system.

Of course, these are just a few examples. Your list of achievements will be longer.

The next step is to identify your strengths by determining the results of each item on your list. Example –

Designed and managed new computer system which saved Company $100K.

In other words, tell what you did and state the result.

Now you can write a brief OBJECTIVE that states the job you seek…describes the skills you’re able to bring to that job….and mentions the result(s) you’ll achieve.

The benefits of using this method of determining your greatest strengths are twofold – You’re able to determine an objective for your resume. And you can transfer the bulleted strengths you’ve flushed out to that resume.

Click here to read a related post on Your Career Service.

by Randy Place

Your Career Service recommends you look before you leap into a job finding campaign. When you lose a job, the first tendency is to send out resumes willy-nilly and call your contacts instead of taking the time to prepare thoroughly.

It’s natural to be eager to start your job hunt. But you need to plan a search as carefully as you’d prepare any work project. Most of you spend more time planning vacations than planning job-finding campaigns. No wonder it’s taking so long to land. 

The solution — You need to be the project leader for your successful job hunt. No one else can take that responsibility; not even a career counselor. 

The first step in planning a campaign is determining what it is you want to do. This becomes your job objective, which is built on your strengths, not just what you want to do. You’ll know you have a good objective when it resonates inside and you feel great about it. If you don’t feel convinced about what it is you want to do, you will be unconvincing with contacts and interviewers alike.

Your Career Service will explain more about job objectives in our next report. In the meantime, here are the first two steps you need to take in planning your job search – 

• Determine a job objective that’s realistic. To accomplish that, list your three top strengths and write your objective around them.

• Create a campaign plan to meet your objective. Your resume and cover letters need to support the objective you’ve listed. 

An effective job finding campaignis all about finding the best opportunity to use your talents. This means you need to consider your job of finding a job as your new full time job. So commit yourself to using many of the techniques taught int this blog.  

A campaign executed well should result in more than one offer. Then you’ll have a choice of jobs. Click here to read, “How to find a job during a recession,” a related post on Your Career Service.

by Randy Place

Government figures show California’s unemployment rate has climbed to over 10 percent. While the unemployment average for the United States is a little over 8 percent, what happens in the Nation’s most populous state, usually spreads across the nation.

As unemployment soars throughout America, do job hunters need to throw their arms in the air declaring, “I’ll never find a job in this market?” Absolutely not. 

When good jobs are hard to find, more and more job candidates compete for fewer and fewer positions. However, in all economies — good and bad — there are always open positions out there. All you need to do is find one of them. 

In order to expedite your job search, understand you can’t just walk into interviews unprepared. In today’s job market, you need to know your stuff. That’s why the most important technique in job finding and selling is the information step. You must learn all you can about –

1. Your product – yourself.
2. Your prospect – the company with whom you’re about to interview. 

Because you are a product that needs to  be marketed and sold, rehearse talking about yourself in terms of your achievements – what you’ve accomplished and the results. You’ve already gathered this information. It’s on your resume in the form of bullet points. 

Along with rehearsing how you can help a prospective employer, anticipate the kind of questions an interviewer might ask about your background, along with typical interview questions such as “Tell me about yourself.”

Information you need about prospective employers includes a company’s products, position in the marketplace, information about key executives, and material gleaned from its annual report. 

To gather this information on the Internet or library is essential. Why? So you can match your skills and achievements to what you’ve learned about a particular company. 

In any job market, you need to become the expert about a company’s needs and how your product – you – can help. 

A related post on Your Career Service is “How to prepare for an interview.” 

by Randy Place

How to find a job during a recession – part two

You might be under the false impression that your search will be successful as long as your background looks good on paper. It takes more than a clean resume to find a job quickly during a recession. Job search winners observe four rules that Your Career Service will discuss in this week’s post

You’ll recall the first part of this series showed how your job campaign can be maximized by developing qualities that enable you to compete in today’s competitive job market.

Those qualities are discipline…self-organization…persistence…and effective attitude. When you add the following four rules to your repertoire, conducting a job search during a recession is made that much easier -

1. Be enthusiastic. Enthusiasm sells. Matter of fact, to be enthusiastic about what you offer is your best tool for any interview or sales call. Winning job candidates are enthusiastic about what they offer. You’ll develop the quality of enthusiasm by having an eager desire to communicate your background in relation to the needs of each job. Then you’ll find prospective employers getting caught up in your enthusiasm.

 2. Constant study of job search techniques. Most of you feel that reading a book on job finding and attending a seminar or two is all you need. The thought of continually educating yourself in the art of finding a job is foreign to you. So as your search continues, join support groups, read more, and talk to a career counselor in order to gain feedback as to how you’re doing. 

3. Understand why people hire. It’s because they need to fill a need. Before each interview discover an employer’s need by doing your homework. This means researching the company and knowing what the job in question requires. Then you can show the interviewer how you’re the best candidate to fill her needs. Think of yourself and the interviewer engaging in the same process –looking for ways to fill the requirements of a job.

4. Be resilient. Because you’ll experience more rejection than acceptance during your job hunt, the ability to have a thick skin so you can bounce back from turndowns is essential. No job hunter or salesperson is impervious to being lashed by tough interview questions. Winning candidates learn to lick their wounds and return to battle.

 We’re not done yet in developing winning qualities. This week, work on the qualities of enthusiasm, constant study, knowledge of why people hire, and being resilient. Next week. Your Career Service will feature another bunch of qualities possessed by winning candidates. 

Click here to review, “How to find a job during a recession,” the first in this series of posts.

The copyright of the article, “Job search winners observe four rules” is owned by Randy Place. Permission to republish in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.

by Randy Place

To find a job during a recession, you need to maximize your job finding campaign by building discipline into your search. Matter of fact, discipline heads the list of four qualities you need to develop in today’s highly competitive job market – 

1. Build discipline
2. Self-organization
3. Persistence
4. Effective attitude 

BUILD DISCIPLINE heads the list of qualities needed by all successful job hunters and salespeople. After all, you are a product that needs to be marketed and sold. However, the very word “discipline’ conjures up fear in most people. That’s because of the way you were raised, when being disciplined meant being punished. 

But discipline also means training to accomplish whatever goal you’re setting out to achieve. It takes practice and training to become good at any endeavor. So discipline in this sense means to take the time and make the effort to plan your work and work your plan. This is accomplished in three easy steps –

• Analyze the job market and the field you want 
• Develop a plan for your job finding campaign
  
• Execute your plan.

Other qualities you need to develop in order to find a job during a recession include – 

 ORGANIZATION. Maximum effectiveness in any endeavor, especially your search, will never be achieved without being organized. Your job hunt involves juggling many balls in the air at once. So you need to know where everything is and be able to get your hands on pieces of information immediately.  That’s why it’s imperative you organize your job search.

You’ve heard about the person with a messy desk who insists he knows where everything is. While he might be used to working in a messy environment, something will always fall through the cracks. In today’s competitive job market, you can’t afford to do let that happen 

PERSISTENCE. Job hunters who land quickly during recessions look for ways to get their job done – from creating resumes and networking lists, to making calls, responding to posted jobs, targeting companies, and getting appointments. 

When you can’t seem to get your act together, you’re probably looking for reasons to procrastinate your job search by telling yourself, “There are no jobs out there during this recession so why should I try?” That’s rationalizing failure!  And having a totally lousy mental attitude. That’s why you need to….

DEVELOP EFFECTIVE ATTITUDES. While it sounds Pollyannish when you’re told to think positive thoughts, a positive attitude is absolutely necessary to convey self-confidence at interviews. To achieve winning attitudes, suggest this to yourself:

“In any economy there are always jobs out there. And because all I need to do is to find one of them, things are going to go well.” 

There are still more qualities you need to possess for finding a job during a recession. You’re Career Service will cover those qualities in our next report. So stay tuned. 

And in the meantime, read this related article, “Your professional role in a job search,” a post from last January on Your Career Service. It’s about how to prepare for your job campaign.

The copyright of the article, “How to find a job during a recession,” is owned by Randy Place. Permission to republish in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.