JobTabs Job Search & Resume

March 5, 2009

The Job Search Game Plan

Filed under: Job Searching,Motivation,Networking — Tags: , , , — admin @ 12:36 am

Image of a football huddle.If your job search isn’t going anywhere, how can you change it if you never had a game plan in the first place?

Show me someone who advocates looking for a job by the seat of your pants and I will show you someone who is unemployed.  Gentle reader, a game plan doesn’t have to be a complicated flow chart or something constraining.  A simple agenda is all we are talking about.  The means which people use to find their next job will be as varied as the people themselves. What works for Bob may not work for Ann, however anything that helps both Bob and Ann keep their head on straight and objectively plan and implement their job search will work for both of them.

I work with a lot of job seekers and I often advise them to work with  job listings and recruiters first.  Most people are not used to writing or even looking for a job for that matter. This is the reason that I advise them to, initially, work the job boards. They have to get in the groove of selling themselves and that like many things this will take practice. While networking is touted as the best means of getting a job, it is better to make a mistake/faux pas on your job search in the anonymity of cyberspace than it is to make a mistake networking with your next door neighbor.

The recruiters will serve as pseudo-career coaches because when you meet with a recruiter, that recruiter can give you a lot of advice on honing your resume and helping you sell yourself. Granted, a cannot recruiter provide the comprehensive feedback that a career coach can provide. However, when you work with a recruiter you are, so to speak, their product, and they have a vested interest in helping you convince employers that you are the candidate of choice. Recruiters are battle hardened professionals and they have much to gain by helping you get a job offer.

After job seekers prep their skills with job boards and recruiters, I encourage them to start working their network. They will be much better at selling their qualifications after getting some exposure to recruiters and job boards. Planning/implementing your job search is important.  Write down, how many jobs you will apply to on the job boards.  Commit to sitting down face to face with recruiters in an effort to get their feedback on your marketability.  Beg them to shoot straight with you  if you have to – just get the facts. Come up with a plan that allows flexibility to create more resumes and tweak each one depending on the requirements solicited.  Schedule time to meet with your networking groups.  Finally – and this is so important – review the plan and change it.  You know, like wash, rinse, repeat.

Show me someone who advocates looking for a job by the seat of your pants and I will show you someone who is unemployed.

As job seekers work with different channels, their job search skills need to evolve and get stronger. They need to build upon a foundation and pay dividends. The job search for most job seekers is a crap shoot where you put your chips on the table and roll the dice. As the job search progresses they think they are becoming better job seekers, but in actuality they are just becoming better gamblers. It is still a losing game and is leading job seekers down a path of dejection and despondency. They can’t see that because they have no plan nor a record of a an implementation to give themselves or a mentor/career coach an objective view as to what they have been doing.   Write down your goals, write down your agenda, and stick to it until it is time to reevaluate it.

John Coffey is the President of JobTabs, LLC.  Through JobTabs Job Search & Resume, thousands of job seekers have taken control of their destiny in finding new and fulfilling careers.  JobTabs Job Search & Resume motivates job seekers by making the job search easier by a huge order of magnitude.  John Coffey can be reached via his website at JobTabs Job Search & Resume, by email via jpcoffey at jobtabs.com, as well as by phone at 404-255-0248.

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March 3, 2009

Job Searching – Employ A Tool

Filed under: Job Searching,JobTabs,Motivation — Tags: , , , , , — admin @ 12:32 am

Employ a tool when job searching.The job search can be a maddening experience for many reasons, but one of the biggest reasons is the organizational burden it imposes.  Consider all of the jobs you will eventually apply to.  Whether they are sourced from your professional network, the web, or the newspaper you are going to have to have to keep track of exactly which job you applied to.  Then we have the research that applies to each and every employer.  That needs to be collected, catalogued, and readily available should they decide to interview you.  Which resume did you send them?  And all of those cover letters that you crafted with pain staking detail.  Keeping those at the ready is just as important as managing your resumes.  With all of the paper work it can be extremely taxing for even very organized people to keep track of.  If it is tough for organized people to manage it all, what are normal people supposed to do?

Employ a tool when job searching. You can google “job search software” or go to download.com and type in “job search” to evaluate packages as there are lots of them out there.  We suggest keeping the following key points in mind when weighing the value of different packages.

MS Word. A first rate tool will be seamlessly integrated with MS Word or employ a word processor that will create MS Word documents.  In addition to making you look more professional, many employers prefer resumes in MS Word format.  You should make this a consideration a priority when looking for a tool.

Manage Resumes. As you pursue different opportunities, there will invariably be some shade of gray of the job requirements that you will need to include in your resume.  The likelihood of finding a job that mirrors your experience exactly will be few and far between.  A professional caliber tool will be able to manage all of the different resumes you have created to qualify yourself for different positions.  A tool that will keep a history of each resume as it changes over time will be an added plus.

Employ Templates. We firmly believe cover letters should be tailored to each and every job.  However, do you really want to type your salutation, address and closing paragraph every time?  The repetitive nature of the job search can sap job seekers of their motivation and you should consider a tool that will allow you to side step any work that smacks of repetition.

Jobs. Whether you find the job on the web or through your professional network you will need to capture every detail you possibly can – permanently.  If the employer gets enough resumes and they pull the job posting off of monster.com will you be able to remember the details of the listing?  Consider a tool that can capture listings and save them permanently.

Details. If you are serious about your job search, you will want to have a copy of every email you send anybody during the course of your job search.  This should include notes of every conversation you have as well.  You should be able to catalog all of your research on each employer and have it at the ready as well.

Automatic. This final consideration, we cannot emphasize enough.  Employ a tool that automates the job search as much as possible.  In other words, if you have to log every job search activity you do, aren’t you just working with a glorified spreadsheet?  Isn’t that what you were doing before?  If you send an email and you have to make a note of it aren’t you just adding to your burden?  If you change your resume and have to make a note of it aren’t you encumbering yourself unnecessarily?  We emphasize this, because most people are not prepared for the considerable amount of effort they are going to have to put forth to find the job that is going to bring them the happiness they are looking for.  Repetitive, mind numbing work is what so many people dread when looking for a job.  Employ a tool that can do it for you.  Unless you can nullify much of the administrative burden, you are going to be belaboring yourself unnecessarily.  To summarize,

  • When you find a job you want to pursue, there should be no cutting and pasting.  You should be able to save it automatically.
  • When you create a new resume from an existing resume, it should be added to your arsenal of resumes automatically.  When you change a resume, you should be able to continue your job search without having to record any changes you made to that resume.  Yet you should still have all of the details of the prior versions in case a prior recipient wants to review it with you.
  • When you want to edit your resume, it should open up in MS Word or a word processor of that caliber automatically and keep a record of the changes so you don’t have to.
  • Every time you send an email it should be logged automatically.  This will allow you to focus on your job search.
  • You should have a bird’s eye view of your status of every one of your job applications – based not on your ability to log events – but based on what you have accomplished in  your job search.

Above all else, you should not have to log a single thing, because to do so would be to tax yourself even more.  No doubt this is a tall order to fill, but these tools are out there and they can be had for less than $50.  Our favorite is JobTabs Job Search & Resume.  JobTabs fulfils all of these requirements and then some.  Alternatively, you can google “job search software” or go to download.com to search for options.   Liberate yourself from the administrative conundrum of the job search.  You will be able to apply to jobs more easily, gain more confidence, and ultimately get better job offers.

John Coffey is the President of JobTabs, LLC.  Through JobTabs Job Search & Resume, thousands of job seekers have taken control of their destiny in finding new and fulfilling careers.  JobTabs Job Search & Resume motivates job seekers by making the job search easier by a huge order of magnitude.  John Coffey can be reached via his website at JobTabs Job Search & Resume, by email via jpcoffey at jobtabs.com, as well as by phone at 404-255-0248.

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January 16, 2009

Get a Job Offer and Lose $50,000?!

Filed under: Job Searching,Motivation,Sell Yourself — Tags: , , — admin @ 12:44 am

You need choices to control you destiny during the job search.As we often tell our clients, it is very likely that you will eventually get a job in your field.  That is rarely the challenge.  The challenge is getting a job in your field in the place that you want to live and with a salary that would make you happy.  If you love living in Tallahassee, Florida then how are you going to feel if the only job offer you can get is in Waxahachie, Texas?  Would a move across the country cause a disruption in the lives of your spouse and your children?  Of course it would.  Would accepting a 35% cut in pay to stay in Tallahassee make you feel any better?  Maybe, but it certainly wouldn’t make you feel good.

Take a moment to consider the true cost of a move in this economy.  If you make $80K in Tallahassee, Florida and you get a job offer in Waxahachie, Texas for $80K, you may be looking at a $50K capital gains loss.  What?!  How so? If you bought your house for $250K and are trying to sell it in the worst housing market since the Great Depression what do you think you will be able to get for it?  Wow, and to think that house could have sold for over $300K just a few years ago!  You may have to sell your home for $50K less than you paid for it if you have only been living in it for a short time.

Our message is that you will want to have choices when considering a job.  To have choices you need to have offers.  To have offers you need to work on your job search with unbridled discipline.  It is too expensive not to. The job search can be a real downer.  Staying motivated and productive every day is absolutely essential to having an outcome you can be happy with.  Sometimes just starting your job search is all you need to do to be productive all day and this is what we are encouraging you to do.  Committing to working at it every day, at a certain hour and for a certain duration is extremely important.  Share your regimen with your spouse and your children and let them know how important it is that you be allowed to work hard at your job search.  If the prospect of writing one more resume or one more cold call makes you nauseous, commit to a smaller work window than you normally would.  Commit to as little as two hours if you have to, if that is what it will take you to just start your job search.  If you are still nauseous after two hours, you met your goal and can stop for the day.  However, refrain from committing to a duration that you cannot fulfill or will discourage you from just starting your job search the next day.  You will be amazed at how long you will stick with your job search if you can just bring yourself to the table.  Again, it is not easy, but this works because so many have succeeded in overcoming this dilemma so often.

We also encourage you to invest in a solution that will minimize any aspect of the job search that you find so distasteful.  Job search tools can do a lot to eliminate the tedious, repetitive work that drains the energy from so many job seekers.  They can also serve as a means to set goals every day and stay focused, ultimately leading you to becoming an energetic, motivated job seeker.

The cost of not having any choices is too expensive to ignore and you do not want to have to pull up your stakes to move to another part of the country.  This is what we are talking about when we encourage you to control your destiny.  This economy has put a lot of people in an extraordinary circumstance that will call for some extraordinary discipline to weather.  Simply starting your job search everyday can be the linchpin event that will lead to the job that will provide the security and happiness we are all looking for.  Stay regimented in your commitment to land a job and you will truly find yourself in a position to control your destiny.

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January 13, 2009

3 Mind Boggling Ironies of the Job Search

Filed under: Job Searching,Motivation — Tags: , , — admin @ 12:21 am

Think you’re ready for the job search?  I’ll bet you’re not.  The job search is laden with upside down, mind numbing, ego jolting ironies.  Allow me to apprise you of a few.

The job search is fraught with ironies.  Buy a software tool to get you through it.#1.  The more you  search the tougher it gets
“Huh?  Don’t you mean, ‘The more you do it the easier it gets?'” Nope.  That’s why its called an irony.  The longer the job search takes, the longer you have been scrutinized, probed on very private matters (annual salary, reason for departure, who are you, etc.), rejected, let down, dead ended, passed over, etc.  Ouch.  You can’t possibly expect yourself to be as resilient after six months of this as you are in the beginning.  Invest in the right tools and resources that will make the journey easier.

#2.  Just when you get good at it you have to stop
When you finally get good at identifying opportunities, researching the employers, tailoring your resume, and interviewing – when you have finally mastered all of this – you have to stop.  This is because you finally got the job offer you want.  Wouldn’t it be great if once we got good at it, we could keep on doing it for a couple more months in case there are hard times ahead?  Yes, that would be great but that is not how it works.  When you get that job offer, you close the books on any other irons you may have in the fire.  You are now among the employed and unless you can work two full time jobs you will have to let other employers know you have accepted a job offer.

#3.  Work all day.  Get no reward
The job search is a 0% commission proposition.  You do not get paid to look for a job.  In fact, all of the work expended in the job search is just to have the opportunity to walk into a company for the purpose of reestablishing the work to reward process.  Yet, most people will tell you that they work harder at their job search than they do at the job they get paid for.  An irony indeed.

What is really creepy is that this is the irony where the head games begin to seep in.  Who would otherwise be hard working men and women have trouble getting out of bed.  The job search begins to give way to those cob webs in the corner of the room that have for the first time in the past four years become really annoying.  And look at the dust in the back of this filing cabinet!  The aversion to your computer will be particularly acute, but you won’t know why.  And then you won’t care.

The job search is an emotionally taxing endeavor.  It is riddled with too many ironies to mention (Did I forget that you have to smile and exude confidence even though you don’t even have a job?) It doesn’t matter.  What does matter is that you use all of the resources you can so that the transition will never be difficult again.

All of this served as the foundation upon which JobTabs was built.  Allow us to show how JobTabs flips some of these ironies.

The more you search the easier it gets
Every time you apply to a job with a perfectly tailored cover letter and resume, you at least have that cover letter and resume to serve you for the next position.  I am not talking somewhere on your hard drive, in the newest email application, zipped up files stored on the web or anything like that.  I am talking right there in JobTabs in a hierarchical tree so that you can identify exactly how that resume puts your best foot forward for each kind of job.  The more jobs you apply to the larger your arsenal of perfectly, tailored resumes becomes.  Moreover, the more jobs you apply to the less work you have to do to perfect each resume to the specifics of any new job posting.

When you get good you will be able to begin right where you left off
We believe that if you want to stand on the shoulders of giants, the best shoulders to stand on are your own.  Simply put, JobTabs has powerful facilities to create your own personal job search knowledge base.  This includes file attachments, hyperlinks and even entire web pages.  What’s more every contact and every single conversation you had with everyone along the way is chronologically ordered for your review.  You will never forget a child’s name or a contacts favorite vacation destination ever again.

Work all day and get no reward
I would love to tell you that we can pay you while you are looking for a job – I can’t.  However, I can assure you that you will get more benefit for the work you expend than you could have ever imagined.  I know because I imagined and derived the benefit of that labor for fifteen years.  Its your turn now.

Are there any ironies we overlooked?  We would love to hear what they are, so please share any ironies we over looked in the comment section below.  Thank you!

John Coffey is the President of JobTabs, LLC.  Through JobTabs Job Search & Resume Builder, thousands of job seekers have taken control of their destiny in finding new and fulfilling careers. JobTabs Job Search & Resume Builder motivates job seekers by making the job search easier by a huge order of magnitude.  John Coffey can be reached via his website at JobTabs Job Search & Resume Builder, by email via jpcoffey at jobtabs.com, and by phone at 404-255-0248.

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