Wednesday, March 10, 2010

Are you job seeker paparazzi?

You keep applying for jobs. You keep chasing the employer, the job, the photo opportunity. You are ruthless in your pursuit.

You apply online. You apply through Indeed.com and Monster and CareerBuilder and Dice.com and the Michigan Talent Bank and company websites and your school/community college/college/university/alumni association and other associations and LinkedIn and Facebook and many, many more cyberspaces.

You show up everywhere...at job fairs, open houses, career fairs, pink slip parties, networking events and association meetings.

Resumes and application stuff jammed in your pockets, you seek out and pursue wherever and whenever employers appear in public. You push past the other job seeker paparazzi and the bodyguards to get to the employer celebrity.

You have sent out dozens, hundreds, even thousands of resumes and applied everywhere.

But then you wait. You wait for them to review your application, your resume, your cover letter, your portfolio, your references, your LinkedIn profile and all of your documentation, your stuff. And you wait for them to deem you worthy. You wait for them to decide if you are good enough.

Why would someone call you in for an interview? What makes you special or at least different from all the others clammering for the job?

Your resume, your application is identical to, or very much like, every other resume and application. Maybe the words are a little bit different, but all that documentation looks pretty much the same.

How can you separate yourself from the crowd? How can you stand out from everyone else? How can you get their attention, interest, appreciation and respect?

The answer is in what you do next, what you do AFTER you apply.

What are you doing AFTER you apply? Are you acting like the ideal candidate who is active, patiently persistent, taking initiative, creative, interested and enthusiastic?

Or are you passive, annoying, impatient, a problem not a solution, tedious and boring, angry and hostile, demanding and a time waster?

What are you doing AFTER you apply?

For help in learning and putting into practice ways to speed up your job search success, visit JVS at www.jvsdet.org, join our LinkedIn group NextJobs~JVS Detroit, follow JVS Detroit on Twitter and/or email me at wtarrow@jvsdet.org.