Have a Plan

Just like with most things in life, the better you plan, the better off you’ll be on your path. Looking for a good job is the same in this regard.

In today’s competitive arena most people will never get enough interviews with a hit-or-miss approach. This leaves too much to fate. Think of it this way. Chances are you’re marketing a “product” with millions of dollars of earnings capacity remaining in your career.

That much value deserves your best effort. Besides, job hunting is a numbers game. So, why take a chance at doing a lot of things haphazardly, without a well designed plan? Similar to any company who is about to market a new product, a good plan can cut job hunting time in half and save money. It also helps people produce better results, and when people generate a lot of activity in a concentrated time period, they feel better and do better. Much better.

Recapping the components of your overall marketing plan

Job hunting goals:

We surface all critical information about you and then decide on the goals that will best advance your career.

Liabilities: We identify liability issues that might restrict your success… and arrive at ways for minimizing their impact.

Assets and transferable skills: We pinpoint these and incorporate them into your resume, letters, and your personal website.

Industry alternatives: We will suggest the industry alternatives that we feel are best for you.

Action plan for getting interviews: We will lay out a step-by-step plan… a weekly agenda… that will guide your search. This is your complete track… a game plan. It will include a plan for your approach to interviewing and negotiations.

We all have seen many career fields change dramatically over the last decade. Fields that once offered great opportunity have become financially confining with limited growth possibilities. Does print advertising offer the same career possibilities as it did a decade ago?

Does selling in the steel industry? Does being a doctor and a general practitioner? Career fields change at a much faster pace than most people realize. Experience has proven that if you take a narrow view of yourself, you could be making a mistake. For example, if you see yourself as a specialist (e.g., a banker), you may believe you are locked into a given career. On the other hand, you may feel you have few options because you are too much of a generalist.

The better you plan your search, the better your results. Do your homework and find out what is best for you. What do you really want?

For more Free Job Hunting Info be sure to follow us on Twitter, check us out on Facebook, read our blog, or visit our website!

Create Your Own Job

The job you want may not be out there, not because it is not available, but because it doesn’t exist…yet. With the world of technology changing, so too are the positions being created by companies that need to be in the mix of where their industry is going. This means the creation of new jobs.

Keep in mind this simple thought. We all hire top people when we are persuaded that the benefits of having them on board will sufficiently outweigh the dollar cost.

You can get offers, even if no job openings are said to exist.

You simply need to present yourself as a solution to a problem. The “create a job” approach is for executives who want a job tailored to their best abilities. A few examples might include an executive who can develop new products for a company, a sales executive with contacts in particular markets or a general manager who can start up a division in a specific industry.

Aside from executives, the “create a job” approach can also be considered by anyone who may have difficulty winning offers through other means. This includes those who have a narrow market for their talents, people who wish to change industries, or those who have been unemployed for a while or who want to stay in a specific geographic or industry area.

In these situations, to win the job you want, you may have to create it by making an employer aware of your ability to make contributions. The following pages will give you some guiding principles as you consider this approach. You must focus on small to medium sized firms, go directly to people with the authority to create jobs, have a clear benefit proposition, take strong initiatives in your first meetings, and stir the employer’s imagination.

The first principle to understand is that to have your best chance at creating a job, your highest probability targets are likely to be small to medium sized companies. This includes firms that are growing rapidly, bringing out new products, forming new divisions, acquiring other companies or reorganizing.

These are the firms that need good people, often from other industries. They are free to move quickly. Large corporations are the least likely to respond to this approach. Budgets are usually allocated far in advance, and hiring practices tend to be relatively slow and methodical.

Of course, there are exceptions. All you need to do is assess your talents and contact the firms most likely to need you, regardless of their size. And if you know a market well or have talents in a particular function, just consider the industries where they would apply.

For more Free Job Hunting Info be sure to follow us on Twitter, check us out on Facebook, read our blog, or visit our website!

Job Hunting Goals

When looking for a job, it is better to have goals in mind then to just want a job. You will get a job, but it is important to know what you want and where you want to go. The better your goals, the better your chances at getting a good job, quicker.

It may surprise you, but many people actually pursue the wrong job titles. However, if they understood their real transferable skills, they could be repositioned for different goals, and sometimes for much more advancement than they thought possible. Regardless of your most recent position, you need to think of yourself as “one of a kind” with diverse potentials.

We all have seen many career fields change dramatically over the last decade. Fields that once offered great opportunity have become financially confining with limited growth possibilities. Does print advertising offer the same career possibilities as it did a decade ago? Does selling in the steel industry? Does being a doctor and a general practitioner? Career fields change at a much faster pace than most people realize.

Experience has proven that if you take a narrow view of yourself, you could be making a mistake. For example, if you see yourself as a specialist (e.g., a banker), you may believe you are locked into a given career. On the other hand, you may feel you have few options because you are too much of a generalist.

More and more professionals are finding that they can have several different careers over the course of a lifetime. Sometimes you can’t see them and you stumble into them. Someone could be a radio sports broadcaster, then become an actor, then a politician… and subsequently governor of a major state and president of the United States (Ronald Reagan). And, of course, we all know many other examples, many famous and millions not so famous, but successful at many levels.

It may be that you should consider positioning yourself for more than one possible goal at this time, and running what we refer to as a “dual campaign.” For example, a logical step may be seeking a new job as a VP of Marketing. But you might also have accumulated knowledge and experience that would allow you to seek a position as a General Manager, or perhaps Chief Operating Officer, or even Chief Executive Officer in the right type of organization… in the right industry. Or you may wish to run a search for a higher paying job as a sales producer, while also exploring situations to move into a sales management role.

For more Free Job Hunting Info be sure to follow us on Twitter, check us out on Facebook, read our blog, or visit our website!