10 Tips for a Successful Job SearchWritten by Cathy Severson, MS
Create a support system for yourself emotionally and for your job search. Identify allies that you can count on. Know some will have strengths in one area, but weaknesses in another. Recognize different people will play different roles in your job search.Maintain a positive attitude. Inevitably, negative feelings can sabotage your job search. If you have anger about your former employer, work through it. Negative emotions will undermine your best efforts. Keep yourself renewed and enthusiastic throughout process. Network. The number one way of getting a job is through networking. Even if you are involved in computer industry, less than 10% of jobs are obtained through Internet. Devote energy to making real, valuable connections with people. Develop a schedule and goals. Getting a job is of course ultimate goal, but it is impossible to predict when you will achieve it. Develop daily and weekly schedules of job search activities you can control. For example, send out 10 resumes, research 5 companies and call 10 people in your network. This will keep you on track, and focused. Know what you want. People need to work for money and benefits. But remember other components are necessary for you to feel satisfied in workplace. Know what motivates and satisfies you. Know which environment you're most productive in. Know what you can compromise on and what you won't.
| | Networking - Relax!Written by Gill Fernley and Justin Baker
Anyone who has been to a networking event has met business card thruster guy. Won’t leave you alone, thrust their card in your face, every attempt at conversation gets quickly turned into a sales pitch. These people aren’t networking, they’re selling. Badly. Let me share with you some of my thoughts on what puts ‘work’ in networking. Networking is a form of marketing, and any form of marketing is most effective when you don’t come straight out and say “buy this!” The best marketing techniques work on building relationships – courting trust, showing your intentions to be honourable in what you are offering. And there are certain market characteristics too: People buy people. People work with (and refer) people they like. People don’t like being sold to. That’s why best networkers aren’t great sales gurus, they’re archetypal ‘people person’. They are interested in other people and what they do. They want to help as well as be helped, not just because it will see them get business in future, but because they like helping others. And most importantly, they don’t talk – they listen. Many networking events involve a ‘round robin’ of everyone there, which certainly has its uses – you get to tell everyone who you are and what you do, and if there is someone there who is looking for service you provide, they will very likely come up to you for a chat. But that’s not networking, that’s hit and miss, and it’s very important to understand difference. What I call hit and miss is what I just described above. You tell as many people in one go what you do in hope that one of them is looking for it – social equivalent of a mailshot, and just about as effective.
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