You don’t need to be a rocket scientist to recognize that job seekers face obstacles today that they never imagined in the past. A lot has changed in the last few years, and you’ll need to adjust if you want to succeed. Competition is intense and more and more companies are turning to temporary, or contingent, workers in place of full-time employees. Since the pace of change is unlikely to slow, if you want to be successful, it’s up to you to keep up.
Related:How To Build An Effective ‘Marketing Yourself’ Plan
Make sure you are prepared to compete successfully. Find out how to market yourself in today's economy:
Evaluate And Identify Career Trends In Your Field
Open your eyes and ears and keep abreast of what’s hot in your industry. You need to know what skills and experiences employers seek for the jobs you want. How can you uncover this information?
Review job descriptions; what keywords show up again and again?
What topics are keynote speakers including in their presentations at your professional conferences? (You can discover this online, even if you don’t attend.)
What topics are thought leaders in your field writing about and discussing? (Read their blogs, newsletters and social media updates to find out.)
When you have informational interviews with people in your field, what do they identify as their biggest obstacles, pain points and concerns?
What do online tools (websites and social media sites) tell you about your industry?
Choose A Career Specialty
Even though employers are doing more with fewer people, the trend is to hire candidates with niche expertise. If you are a Jack (or Jill) of all trades and can do a lot of things, but don’t have a specialty area, it’s time to decide what you’re really good at and focus your energies on being the best in the business.
Need some help deciding what you should market as your go-to skill? Use the research you did to evaluate trends in your field to discover the most salient issues in your industry. If necessary, enroll in continuing education courses to fine tune your unique talents. Then, highlight those niche abilities.
You will stand out in a crowd of applicants when you market your specialty expertise. Then, you will be able to make your targeted case via strong application and marketing materials.
Demonstrate Your Career Expertise And Expand Your Network
Don’t just say you’re an expert in your field – show people that you have your finger on the pulse of your industry by using social networking tools to highlight exactly what you know. When you post frequent, smart updates on Twitter, Google+, and LinkedIn and engage in conversations with colleagues and thought leaders, you prove you have useful ideas and opinions.
The result? You’ll grow the number of potential allies in your network who are willing to refer you for job opportunities. Statistically, referrals are the best way to land jobs, so you’ll be well on your way to getting a position.
Learn How To Market Yourself
Using social media to demonstrate your expertise is a great first step, but it’s not enough to just engage in topical online conversations. You need to think about how to market yourself as if you were a company. Even if you aren’t seeing it in your field yet, studies suggest freelancers will eventually make up about 50% of the workforce, up from 35-40% currently.
If you can’t describe what you know and why someone should hire you, expect long periods of unemployment in your future.
Review your online bios; do they tell a compelling story about you? Does your LinkedIn headline include keywords and a pitch to inspire someone to want to learn more about you? Are you taking advantage of all the opportunities to make sure people who want to hire someone like you can find you online?
Do you have a professional avatar that makes you appear friendly, yet intelligent? All of these are key elements to help you maintain a competitive presence in your field and have a chance to land jobs – and gigs.
The leaves are changing, the kids are back in school, and that familiar chill is in the air. You think it's the perfect time to look for a job, and it is! But are your job search fears preventing you from making that leap?
It's not uncommon to feel lost when embarking on your job search journey. After all, school teaches us everything except how to get a job. What should you put on your resume? What questions should you ask in an interview? How can you stand out in the hiring process when there's so much competition?
Are you feeling spooked yet?
Believe it or not, there's no need to be afraid of the job search process! You can land your dream job with the right tools and strategy. You can find a job that won't give you nightmares. Here are three spooky secrets every job seeker should know as they look for a job this fall.
1. An Effective Job Search Starts With An Interview Bucket List
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Despite your fears, you've decided to take the plunge and look for a new job. You might be asking yourself, "Where do I start?" The answer is simple: start by creating an interview bucket list.
An interview bucket list is a list of 10-20 companies you'd love to work for. Are you passionate about a company's products or services? Do you feel connected to its mission? Can you relate to its values and beliefs as an organization? If you answer "yes" to any of these questions, that company probably belongs on your interview bucket list.
Once you create an interview bucket list, you'll be able to conduct a targeted job search, one with direction and a foundation upon which everything else will be built. An interview bucket list helps you focus your job search and networking strategies on the right opportunities, making it easier to get your foot in the door at one of your dream companies.
2. Your Job Application Needs To Disrupt Hiring Managers
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In order to stand out in the hiring process, you need to disrupt recruiters and hiring managers. You accomplish this by doing two things: optimizing your resume and writing a disruptive cover letter.
A well-optimized resume includes keywords from the job description. This ensures your resume gets past the ATS and into the hands of the hiring manager. Once it's in front of the hiring manager, it needs to grab and keep their attention. Quantifying your work experience—adding numbers to your bullet points—will make you stand out from other applicants. Hiring managers will want to know more about you and your accomplishments, and that's how you land a phone interview.
Before that, though, a hiring manager will read your cover letter. To disrupt them, you need to write a disruptive cover letter (obviously!). A disruptive cover letter gives you the opportunity to tell a story about why you feel connected to the company you're applying for. It's that storytelling aspect that will stand out to hiring managers and compel them to pick up the phone and give you a call.
3. Employers Hire You Based On 3 Things
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You can't get hired unless you know what employers are assessing you on in the interview process. While your skills and expertise matter, companies actually hire for three things: personality, aptitude, and experience (in that order).
Most job seekers don't realize how important it is to demonstrate their personality, aptitude, and experience in an interview. You could have the right experience for a job, but if the hiring manager doesn't think your personality is a good fit for the company culture, you probably won't get a job offer.
Make sure you demonstrate your soft skills and learn how to answer behavioral interview questions to prove you're the best candidate for the job you're applying for, not just the most qualified.
Want To Learn More Job Search Secrets?
As you look for a job this fall, it might be helpful to know some more spooky secrets so you can get over your job search fears and finally take control of your career.
We know the job search process can be scary. However, it's important to get clear on what you want to do next and focus on conducting a strategic job search, or what we refer to at Work It DAILY as job shopping. This is the only way to effectively market yourself to employers. If they can't see exactly where and how you add value, then that's going to decrease your chances of landing the job.
The competition is fierce, and there are a lot of factors that are out of your control. But the one factor you can control is your job search strategy, the tools and tactics you use to land a job.
If you want to learn the secrets to conducting a strategic job search, sign up for our Job Search Bootcamp, a two-hour, on-demand video workshop that comes with a free workbook.
In this video workshop, you'll learn:
How to use backchanneling to get directly to hiring managers.
The secret to using a connection story to stand out against the competition.
How social media can be your secret weapon to get job interviews.
The resume format that is getting job seekers more job interviews.
