"Choose the life that is most useful, and habit will make it the most agreeable." Francis Bacon
If you want help in getting your next job, finding your next career, you need to be useful.
What does it mean to be useful?
Being useful means being of value to others. Regarding a job, it means being of use to your employer. Have you identified how, as specifically as possible, you are going to help your next employer? When you apply for a job, does your application and/or your resume clearly indicate, in as many of their words as possible, that you CAN do the job? Does your experience and education support your claim that you can do the job by showing you have done the job and know how to do the job?
Even if you are useful, if you do not handle problems or become a problem yourself, then your value is diminished. Being useful has a definite cost/benefit ratio. Your benefit to your co-workers, your boss, your company has to outweigh your cost. When you apply for a job, do you take the initiative to make it easier for the people reviewing your resume to see how you can be of help in that position? Do you behave in a useful, helpful manner when you make your follow up contacts? Are you involving other people in your network in the process and showing the potential employer how you work with others?
As you apply for jobs and follow up on your applications, you create opportunities to demonstrate how useful you can be in how you behave, how you handle situations, how you deal with others. If you are helpful to others, if you act in a helpful way by at least expressing your willingness to help them, you create a more positive, more appealing, impression.
Expressing in your cover letter, email, initial phone call and follow up contacts a desire to be helpful throughout the hiring process grows a more agreeable relationship. Also, respecting their time and effort by staying in touch without demanding they do the same is both agreeable and helpful.
There is a reason why every customer service contact begins "How may I help you?"
Are you helpful or are you demanding?
Who would you rather hire?
Let us at JVS help you be helpful to your next employer.
Visit us at www.jvsdet.org
And you can always reach me at wtarrow@jvsdet.org and meet me on LinkedIn.
Walt
Showing posts with label hidden job market. Show all posts
Showing posts with label hidden job market. Show all posts
Thursday, November 1, 2012
Monday, January 31, 2011
Be a Source of Good Feelings
Why would anyone want to take your phone call or read and answer your email?
If you are looking for a job and the extent of your contacts is limited to sending resumes and completing applications, then you are no different than any other job seeker.
How can you make yourself special?
You certainly have to apply for jobs, especially those that are not being advertised, the hidden job market, but what else are you doing to be memorable?
How about adding good feelings to the equation?
Success in your job search has as much to do with fostering good feelings as with being qualified for the job.
You have to be positive, professional and patiently persistent, but also consider being the bearer of good news, good thoughts, good wishes.
A counselor friend of mine built her business by creating a Good News newsletter that she mailed to several dozen CEOs of major corporations. Several of those supposedly unapproachable executives contacted her personally to thank her for bringing some good feelings to their otherwise stressful day.
How about sharing a good natured, inspirational quotation with some of the hiring managers with whom you are trying to connect? Nothing more than a gesture of good will.
No resume, no application, just good feelings.
That might make all the difference in being remembered when that hiring decision is being made.
For ideas for motivational quotations, send me an email, contact me on LinkedIn, or follow JVSDetroit on Twitter.
Walt Tarrow
wtarrow@jvsdet.org
If you are looking for a job and the extent of your contacts is limited to sending resumes and completing applications, then you are no different than any other job seeker.
How can you make yourself special?
You certainly have to apply for jobs, especially those that are not being advertised, the hidden job market, but what else are you doing to be memorable?
How about adding good feelings to the equation?
Success in your job search has as much to do with fostering good feelings as with being qualified for the job.
You have to be positive, professional and patiently persistent, but also consider being the bearer of good news, good thoughts, good wishes.
A counselor friend of mine built her business by creating a Good News newsletter that she mailed to several dozen CEOs of major corporations. Several of those supposedly unapproachable executives contacted her personally to thank her for bringing some good feelings to their otherwise stressful day.
How about sharing a good natured, inspirational quotation with some of the hiring managers with whom you are trying to connect? Nothing more than a gesture of good will.
No resume, no application, just good feelings.
That might make all the difference in being remembered when that hiring decision is being made.
For ideas for motivational quotations, send me an email, contact me on LinkedIn, or follow JVSDetroit on Twitter.
Walt Tarrow
wtarrow@jvsdet.org
Monday, November 29, 2010
The Four Basic Steps to a Successful Job Search - Step 2
As stated in Step 1 - Make Contacts, a job search is really very simple.
And this bears repeating.
No secrets, no magic, no special skills or hidden markets...just four simple steps.
BUT you do need to take action. You do need to make the effort. And you do need to keep at it, to stay the course. It is your responsibility, and your responsibility alone, to start and to stop.
Step 2 is Follow Up.
"Success comes from taking the initiative and following up..." Anthony Robbins
Once you have started, initiated contacts, then you assume the responsibility to stay in touch. It is up to you to keep the contact going.
Not only is it very unlikely that the employer, recruiter, contact, with whom you are trying to connect will have the time or be able to make the effort to respond to your application, resume, email or phone call; but when you follow up you also take the opportunity to demonstrate your interest, seriousness, commitment, persistence and many other desirable qualities.
In fact, most employers await your follow up to see how you handle yourself. And the applicants that follow up are always more likely to get the employers attention.
Add to your follow up efforts by thinking of, and doing, things that add value to your application.
Share information of interest to the employer. Email a website, an article, or news that shows your deeper interest in the company and gives something of value to them.
But, above all, stay in touch. Even if it is a 30 second phone message or a brief email message that expresses your continued interest and availability, staying in touch is a requirement.
If you need help in following up and staying in touch, do so with us at JVS.
Visit us at www.jvsdet.org
Let us help.
Walt
Walt Tarrow, wtarrow@jvsdet.org, www.LinkedIn.com/in/walttarrow
And this bears repeating.
No secrets, no magic, no special skills or hidden markets...just four simple steps.
BUT you do need to take action. You do need to make the effort. And you do need to keep at it, to stay the course. It is your responsibility, and your responsibility alone, to start and to stop.
Step 2 is Follow Up.
"Success comes from taking the initiative and following up..." Anthony Robbins
Once you have started, initiated contacts, then you assume the responsibility to stay in touch. It is up to you to keep the contact going.
Not only is it very unlikely that the employer, recruiter, contact, with whom you are trying to connect will have the time or be able to make the effort to respond to your application, resume, email or phone call; but when you follow up you also take the opportunity to demonstrate your interest, seriousness, commitment, persistence and many other desirable qualities.
In fact, most employers await your follow up to see how you handle yourself. And the applicants that follow up are always more likely to get the employers attention.
Add to your follow up efforts by thinking of, and doing, things that add value to your application.
Share information of interest to the employer. Email a website, an article, or news that shows your deeper interest in the company and gives something of value to them.
But, above all, stay in touch. Even if it is a 30 second phone message or a brief email message that expresses your continued interest and availability, staying in touch is a requirement.
If you need help in following up and staying in touch, do so with us at JVS.
Visit us at www.jvsdet.org
Let us help.
Walt
Walt Tarrow, wtarrow@jvsdet.org, www.LinkedIn.com/in/walttarrow
Monday, July 12, 2010
Is Your Job Search Out of Control? - Part 2 of 5
Yesterday I advised not looking for "anything" and having a focus in your job search.
But what if your focused job search is coming up empty, no leads, nobody hiring someone like you?
The hidden secret, known for the past several decades and probably for all time, the majority, as much as 80%, of all jobs NEVER GET ADVERTISED.
Most job openings are filled BEFORE they can ever go public.
And most employers would rather their job openings not go public because when jobs are advertised, made known to the public, then the mad rush, the spammers, the tsunami of job seekers all storm the gates.
Keep your focus, keep your eye on the prize and stop stampeding with the crowd.
Contact all those companies of interest even if they are not advertising any openings.
Use a letter of inquiry or introduction, ask for advice from key people, phone the switchboard and ask general questions like to whom should you speak to learn more about the company or how they go about hiring when they have the need, create marketing pieces and campaigns to promote your strengths, assests and value to the company.
But do not limit your job search only to those companies advertising openings.
If you need help in creating and putting into action your marketing and prospecting plan, get in touch with me at wtarrow@jvsdet.org.
Be sure to come back for Part 3.
And don't forget to check out what's happening at www.JVSDet.org.
But what if your focused job search is coming up empty, no leads, nobody hiring someone like you?
The hidden secret, known for the past several decades and probably for all time, the majority, as much as 80%, of all jobs NEVER GET ADVERTISED.
Most job openings are filled BEFORE they can ever go public.
And most employers would rather their job openings not go public because when jobs are advertised, made known to the public, then the mad rush, the spammers, the tsunami of job seekers all storm the gates.
Keep your focus, keep your eye on the prize and stop stampeding with the crowd.
Contact all those companies of interest even if they are not advertising any openings.
Use a letter of inquiry or introduction, ask for advice from key people, phone the switchboard and ask general questions like to whom should you speak to learn more about the company or how they go about hiring when they have the need, create marketing pieces and campaigns to promote your strengths, assests and value to the company.
But do not limit your job search only to those companies advertising openings.
If you need help in creating and putting into action your marketing and prospecting plan, get in touch with me at wtarrow@jvsdet.org.
Be sure to come back for Part 3.
And don't forget to check out what's happening at www.JVSDet.org.
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