It is getting increasingly difficult to land a new job or contract for any number of reasons. Down time between contracts/job openings is increasing, rates/salaries are dropping, and employers are getting more and more particular as to who they are willing to bring on board. Even for the most disciplined among us, the process can be frustrating and demoralizing. Surely it was never meant to be this difficult. All the same, the working world around us is changing. Some of these new challenges are,
- New Efficiencies - Whether the economy is booming or busting, change is moving faster than it ever has. There is no telling what new academic jargon / technical marvel that will result in the "right-sizing" or your career.
- Outsourcing - Companies are outsourcing white collar and blue collar jobs overseas as fast as they can. As long as there is an incentive to do so, low wages, and no incentive to deter them, it will only happen faster. Even companies partial to a home grown work force have no choice but to consider outsourcing as they are under cut by competitors tapping into a cheaper labor pool.
- More candidates - Additionally, the trade liberalization that opened the doors for outsourcing is also bringing in highly skilled workers under a number of new visa programs. The work force is getting crowded.
- An increasingly fluid job market - The requirements being sought are increasingly demanding, yet applicants will pull up the stakes and move to where the jobs are. It is easy to feel insignificant in the face of these towering job requirements.
- New paradigms - Ten years ago, what company would have ever solicited for a job they didn't have? Today it is common place as employers and recruiters stuff their databases with 'human capital' in order to meet the fluxuating demands of our economy. The cost is nothing but a few nanometers of ferro-magnetic oxide on their harddrives of which they have virtually an infinite supply.
Your cheese is moving
Are you moving with it? Unfortunately, for the most part the individual job seeker isn't adapting to the changes taking place in the economy. While the word processor has replaced the typewriter and email has replaced the postal service, job seekers are still very much operating under the same paradigm as their parents. Find a job opening, send in your resume and hope they give you a call. Using their resume as their hook, they may as well be sitting on the pier trying to catch an employer. That leaves little control over their destiny.
Its time for a paradigm shift for the individual and JobTabs has been developed to meet this challenge. Its time to ditch the fishing pole, grab the spear gun, and jump in the water. Take a moment to read The JobTabs Paradigm below for a fresh approach to embracing the opportunities that avail themselves to you.
The JobTabs Paradigm
Be an Excellent Candidate
If you aren't in the 95th percentile of a publicly posted opportunity - forget it. Specifically, if you do not rank higher than 95 out of 100 applicants, don't even bother to apply. That is how competitive it is. Have you ever wondered why companies with full time human resource departments employ the services of recruiting firms? The primary reason is to defray the extra costs associated with processing the deluge of applicants. (Recruiters serve as powerful filters in the employment process and companies tap into them to separate the wheat from the chaff. Whether you are a contractor or seeking a full time job you can expect to work with them.)
It's not a numbers game and never was. You have to be the candidate they are looking for without exception. In the early stages of the employment process, the key to being an excellent candidate is having the right resume. This is one area where JobTabs can help you move to the top of the resume stack. JobTabs makes it very easy to qualify yourself as an ideal candidate for a broad array of opportunities. Moreover, the more you qualify yourself for varying opportunities the easier it will be to continue qualifying yourself as an excellent candidate for subsequent opportunities. The importance of this consideration cannot be over stated. As your job search progresses, it has the uncanny quality of getting harder instead of easier. If you are still looking for a job three months from now, then you have been subjected to three months of rejection and dead ends. You can't expect yourself to be as resilient then as your were in the beginning. More about that later. For the moment, take faith that we have mitigated those aspects of the job search that impinge on your capacity to be the candidate they are looking for.
And We Mean An Excellent Candidate
You have learned so much in the course of your career. Whether you have been in the work force for four years or forty, you have gathered valuable experience. Yet, like an old phone number that you used to have, it is amazing how quickly we can forget so much of it. Regardless of how quickly you could 'pick it up' on your next assignment, if you don't appear to know it as well as your current phone number the prospective employer will likely dump you like a hot potato. You need to ace the phone interview and the job interview.
If you acquired the experience at some point in your career, instead of delivering the percentage you know now, you need to deliver the 100% of that experience at the interview - regardless of how long ago you mastered it. JobTabs facilitates this process by organizing resources related to your job search whether they are central or peripheral to your goal. Whether the material is a refresher on your primary skill set, a manual on some antiquated programming language, or answers to 100 tough interview questions you will have it readily available. JobTabs organizes information in almost every format for easy access. You can even save entire web pages into JobTabs as you never know when a particular web site will be gone.
Gather Information
Increasingly when you are contacted by a recruiter or a prospective employer you can hear the keyboard clicking away as they record your answers to their questions. They understand the value of information - even if its value isn't immediately apparent. What is missing from this picture? The sound of your keyboard.
During a job search, job seekers are bombarded with a plethora of valuable information about companies, managers, and whatever system to which they are being qualified. Even if the opportunity described does not match the job seekers skill set, they have just garnered key information about that company. What kind of accounting system do they have? What kind of ERP system are they using? Who is the manager and what is he/she like? Even if they do not qualify for the position being solicited for any reason, they have just gathered key information that will make themselves a valuable resource in the future or to a networking contact now. And if they don't ever need this particular information again, certainly someone in their network may. The importance of using information effectively is a cornerstone of the JobTabs paradigm and will be expanded upon as your familiarity with JobTabs evolves.
Exchange Information
As long as you're grabbing the spear gun, grab the net also. Networking isn't easy for everyone. Even people who are ever ready to help others are uneasy about picking up the phone or sending out an email. Networking is very powerful, yet few people do it well. Techies can be particularly uneasy with professional networking as they tend to be task oriented and disinterested in grooming relationships that may be transient. Yet, the information you garner in your career makes your network infinitely more tangible. This is sure to elevate a meaningful network as an indispensable tool in your job seeking arsenal. If you find networking difficult, change your take on networking. You're no longer asking for something, but are now a valuable node on the network. It is give and take and everybody wins.
Think and Grow Rich
The job search is a peculiar beast. It plays tricks on your mind. Like a seductive serpent it whispers into your ear, "You have all day. One more episode of the Simpsons isn't going to hurt you." Yet at the end of the day, you have done nothing and are consumed by a sense of guilt and futility. Then there are those days when you have worked very hard. You have been fine tuning this resume and that resume. You have been reviewing loads of potential opportunities and massaging your network. Yet how many resumes have you actually sent out all week? One? Two?
JobTabs allows you to review what you have accomplished objectively and draw conclusions based on facts. You can review what you have accomplished week by week and month by month.
Conclusion
The world around us is changing and we all need to do our best to adapt to it. Whether or not we want to play the high stakes game of "Hire Me" is immaterial; if you need a job you are at the table. To suggest that you will not get a job without using a tool to facilitate the process would be self ingratiating and we are above that. In fact, we are of the opinion that you will eventually get a job with or without a software tool. But at what cost? Will you have to relocate? Will you have to take a cut in pay? Will you have to add 30 minutes to your commute? While we will wager that you will get a job eventually, we will not wager that you will be better off. We have wagered all of the time, money, energy and opportunity cost into the development of JobTabs that we can make a huge difference in your options. Like it or not, your next job will have an impact on your career and your life. There is simply too much at stake to fool with senseless bravado.
JobTabs has been developed to move with the ever changing face of the employment process. Our success is measured by your success and we have endeavored to making the journey in front of you as easy as we can. By using JobTabs, you can eliminate the tedium that has become the thankless job search and elevate the job search to what it can really be; an exciting new opportunity for you to be a member of a team, contribute to a common goal, grow professionally, and attain the financial rewards that will provide for your immediate and long term security.
Sincerely,
-The JobTabs Development Team