You can be spotted a mile away. Job-seeking dinosaurs. And you come in all generations, genders and cultures. Now, I’m sure none of you reading this are dinosaurs but if any of your friends say the following phrases, then break the news to them gently:
- “If you hear of a job that I’d be a fit for, then call me.”
- “Let’s do coffee sometime. I’m looking for a new gig.”
- “What do you think I should do next?”
- “I’m looking for a challenging position that leverages my skills in…”
- “I don’t know anybody, so can you introduce me to your network?”
- “I’ll send you my résumé. Will you look at it and recommend jobs you might know of?”
- “After I get my MBA, I’m going to go get a bigger job.”
- “There aren’t any good jobs posted. I’ll know it when I see it.”
- “I’ve applied three times to <company> and they never get back to me. How inconsiderate.”
- “I don’t get that social media stuff for job searching. It’s a waste of time so I’ll just focus on strong face-to-face connecting.”
- “I’ll reconnect with some headhunters I used to know.”
Welcome to the new era of job search. Regardless if you are looking within your current company or in other companies, today’s competitive field for executive positions requires new techniques. The calculators moved to Excel, typewriters to WORD, mailed résumés and cover letters are now submitted through online tools, and the game has changing massively in the past two years! You need to get current and stay current since the hiring practices will change even more rapidly in the next 5 years. Amazingly, there are so many online articles and tools to help you that it may be overwhelming. But how many hours have you invested in yourself by reading some? Basic reading should be the LinkedIn tutorials and multiple résumé websites who can help get your résumé up to date. But go beyond and re-tool yourself now. From your attitude to your preparation and all the way through applying and interviewing.
While my upcoming book “Cut the Crap, Get a Job! A New Job Search Process for a New Era” will coach you through every step, here is one immediate action for you:
Build a high quality, 100% complete LinkedIn profile. I recently coached Robert, a job seeker, and asked him if his profile was at 100%, which he promptly replied “yes”. And it was by LinkedIn’s measurement but it was terrible! It had a goofy picture, his full résumé was not detailed within each section, no powerful introduction, and only one endorsement. On most LinkedIn profiles, I learn about their prior job description or see industry acronyms, but don’t get an at-a-glance understanding of their skills they can bring to me, a hiring manager!
Rule #1: If you’re not on LinkedIn, you don’t exist to recruiters and hiring managers. And when I say “recruiter”, many companies have in-house recruiters who do the primary searches and screens of candidates. They are fluent in LinkedIn.
Rule #2: If your LinkedIn profile is poor or inaccurate OR embellishes the truth, you could be knocked out of the running.
There is so much more you need to learn as job seekers and it’s all at your fingertips (and quite fun, too!). I have been working for Fortune 500’s for 30+ years and have had to work hard to keep up with the current and important job search approaches. As a result, I have invented some new, proprietary best practices and tools. Invest in yourself! Hire a coach, read, mirror great examples that are free on the web (résumés and cover letters) and much more. Best of luck!
