Job Search Advice Archives - Page 14 of 14

How To Organise Your Job Search Records

I have been talking to various people who are in the process of securing a new role, whether that be because of compulsory redundancy (like me at the time of writing) or for other reasons. One of the challenges that I hear about quite frequently is job search record keeping. Whether it’s for your own benefit or you need to maintain records for your insurance company or for the Job Centre having an organised approach is essential. I thought that I would share how I have approached it and hopefully you will be able to adapt it to suit your needs.

Today, a mid-level manager or professionals can often spend six months or more searching for a job. Needless to say it is a more complicated business than sending out CVs. The individual actions may be simple, but the job searcher faces an extraordinary volume of information and must manage multiple applications simultaneously. It is therefore critical to keep all this data organised in order to avoid getting bogged down. This is where good job search record keeping comes in. A good record keeping system allows you to stay motivated and focused on your ultimate goal, while avoiding mistakes and confusion.

The Job Search Record Keeping System

It is possible to keep job search records in many different ways. You can do it on the computer as I do, in traditional filing systems, or with a large binder. As the binder method is simple to implement and easily portable, that is what we will cover here. Nevertheless these suggestions can easily be adapted to other methods and in fact replicate what I do on the computer.

Section: Your Job Target and Career Aims

Your filing system should start off with a clear statement of your current target job. It is a good idea to have a separate section in the binder for this, marked off with a tab divider sheet.

Also include in this section any personal branding statements, recent assessments you have completed, and reference articles on your target career.

Section: Personal Marketing Documents

This section, again delineated by a tabbed divider, should hold master copies of your biography, CV/Resume, job search correspondence, references list, personal salary history, and other documents you use in your job search. Also include in this section any letters of reference which you have, educational certificates, awards, or other documents which demonstrate your qualifications.

Section: Industry and Company Research

Here you can keep research articles and other information on the companies which you would be interested in working for or that you are planning to target. If you have collected data on industry trends and the like which is relevant to these firms, include it here also.

Section: Job Listings

Though you will want to keep a more detailed log of activity elsewhere, this section should hold copies of each ad you’ve answered. With each ad, include notes on the date you responded to the ad as well as documents which you sent over.

Section: Internet Job Search Data

Internet job searches often involve juggling many different websites. Keep records here of which sites you are using, where you’ve posted your CVs, as well as the logins and passwords to the sites.

Section: Referrals and Networking

In this section, keep hard-copy printouts of your personal “networking address book” for easy reference. You can and should note down any information about the individuals in question which is worth remembering.

Section: Agencies and Recruiters

If you are like many professionals, you will have some contact with job search agencies and headhunters. Keep notes about the ones you contact here.

Section: Interview Preparation

As you prepare for interviews, you’ll accumulate notes on what to say and do, as well as questions you’d like to ask employers. Collect them in this section. You can also include notes about past interviews, so you have all your interview-related data in one place for easy later review.

Section: Salary Research

This section holds the research and data you collect in order to determine your own “fair market value” as a job candidate, such as salary surveys in your industry. The data here will be very important when it comes to salary negotiations after you have a job offer.

Conclusion

Your job search record keeping binder or folders on your computer let you have one central place to store all the data pertaining to your job search in a single place. By keeping an up-to-date and accurate records of your activities and contacts, you’ll find your job search goes faster and produces better results. You always know where your attention should be focused and what your next task should be.

The other side of all this is that you must avoid getting bogged down in excessive record keeping. It’s important to take an organised and systematic approach to your job search, but it’s even more important to get started on it. You should never let the lack of a “perfect system” stop you from beginning the search. If you find establishing your system takes more than a few days, leave it and start looking for work. Your system will establish itself as you do so, based on the actual needs of your search at the time.

Dealing With The Silence During Your Job Search

Reading the title to this post those that know me may be wondering whether I am letting Doctor Who seep into my job search advice! But don’t worry I am not going to reflect on the fictional religious order or movement that Steven Moffatt created with the aim of them being the scariest of the Doctor Who villains!

No in this case “The Silence” is that radio silence which has been the biggest shock to me since re-entering the market for a job. It’s the silence which I think you really have to prepare for when you are searching for a job. Having identified a role you feel you have the skills, knowledge and will to do, you will find yourself spending many hours crafting a cover letter. You will tweak your CV to place appropriate emphasis on aspects of your career to date which marry up with the requirements the employer or recruiter has identified in the job advertisement. You may even go through the process of creating an account on the employer’s website and completing various steps in the process. Having done all that you know that, based on the information they have given you, you meet the requirements and then you submit your application.

You then wait in eager anticipation of the response…..and you wait, and wait. It’s then I am afraid that you will start to wonder whether your application even reached them because The Silence descends. Yes, it has been quite a shock to me that it now seems that HR/Recruitment is the only function in a business where ignoring your clients/potential clients is deemed to be acceptable behaviour. You will find that household names will go silent, large companies with tens of thousands of employees will go silent; companies that you have dealt with in the past when you were in employment will go silent. That’s not to say every company or organisation is the same because there have been some excellent companies that I have dealt with that have kept me informed of the progress of my application via email, their website, text messages and telephone calls.

However, as I am providing job search advice I feel obliged to warn you what you are almost certain to experience. Now, I have commented elsewhere that I am not going to focus on the negative aspects of job search on this blog and nor am I going to deviate from that. The reason I decided to write about this area of the whole process is that I have fairly rapidly come to some conclusions as to how you can deal with what can be quite a challenging situation.

As I reflected on it I came to the conclusion that in reality there are probably two approaches you can take to dealing with the silence during your job search:

Vent about it and get annoyed. But what good is that really going to do you? Is it going to get you the job you applied for? Is the employer or recruiter going to feel suitably chastised by you wasting your time and energy on getting annoyed? I am sure that if you spend a little time reflecting on those questions you will come to the same conclusions as me.
Learn from it. Yes, as you might expect from a Learning & Development Professional I see it as a learning opportunity. You are learning things about organisations and how they deal with people which will serve you well in the future. Once you are back in employment and you have recruitment decisions to make you can do your best to ensure that candidates are dealt with in a way which you would have liked to be dealt with. You will also know firsthand what it is like have been a user of potential suppliers to your organisation and be able to make informed decisions based on those which gave the best service.

Any situation we find ourselves in is packed with learning opportunities and that applies equally to our positive and our not so positive experiences. As I have said many times before being open to the learning experiences that we encounter is a good thing.

Yes, I know it can be challenging when you are keen to secure new employment and you feel as if “The Silence” is yet another brickwall. However, learn from it and keep ploughing on.

Creating Your Personal Branding for Job Search

Following my article earlier I had a number of people ask me how to go about developing your Personal Brand. So in this article I will try to address some of the basics of building your Personal Branding for Job Search.

With the increase in the use of social media and social networking, people are using the internet to help them to create a personal brand. At the simplest level branding yourself is simply highlighting all of the features of a person that put them in the best position possible to secure a new job. While branding has been around for a while, marketing your identity on the internet is just a new twist. Here are some techniques to consider when developing your personal branding for job search.

Should Your Create Your Personal Brand?

Personal branding is all about how you want others to see you. While everyone already has their own unique identities, the idea of branding allows you to focus more on your strengths, showing potential employers your unique qualities that set you apart from the crowd. By marketing those unique qualities, you help to direct people to focus on areas that you want them to identify with.

If you have excellent people skills and are looking to work in the service industry, promoting your brand as a person everyone loves to be around can put you in a better position to get the job. Your personal branding for job search identity will communicate your resume in a way that highlights all the positive attributes you have. By having a much clearer understanding of who you are, you also gain more confidence at the job interview because you are simply focusing on the most positive features of your personality.

How Do I Build My Personal Branding for Job Search?

Personal branding allows you to simply focus on everything you feel makes you stand out from your competition. These attributes are a true reflection of who you are and could make the difference when the job interviewer is considering applicants.

To start working on your brand you have to focus on what you bring to the table, what values you have, and the goals you want to accomplish. This creates a memorable brand that will really connect with other people. They will be able to identify quickly if you bring what they are looking for in a new employee. Your personal brand should answer these questions:

What are my core values?
What is my reputation?
What am I truly passionate about?
How am I perceived by others?
What is the potential audience of my personal brand?

Social media has really transformed the ability to promote your personal branding online. You can easily create a brand on several different popular social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn and others. Many employers routinely use social media websites to check on potential employees to get an understanding of how they act when they are not in a business environment.

This is why it is so important that your branding be uniform across multiple channels because you never know which might be the one your potential employer is using to do research. When you create a profile on a platform like LinkedIn, you have to be consistent with your values and your passion, or you water down the value of your branding. Your actions online speak much more than simple words, and if you promote yourself as having particular values but consistently do and say the opposite on Twitter, no one is going to believe you.

When creating your brand, you have to realise that both your online and offline efforts need to be consistent. Branding is all about letting other people see you for who you really are. if your profiles are in conflict, you send mixed signals to potential employers and eliminate all that power in branding. Therefore having determined what your personal brand is you need to ensure that you keep it consistent across all those channels.

Lis McGuire On The 10 Major CV Crimes

I have known Lis McGuire of Giraffe CVs for some little while now and have always been impressed by the quality of her advice and work. I was therefore delighted when she agreed to do a post for this Job Search Advice Blog looking at some of the issues she has seen with CVs. She has also provided a wonderful infographic which brings the topic to life in a very visual way.

Summing up of 10 Major CV Crimes

All rise. The CV court is now in session.

Members of the Jury, my job is to explain the CV law to you and to sum up the evidence you are about to hear. It is your job to weigh up all the evidence you read and decide whether you believe yourself to be guilty or not guilty of these CV crimes. After all, a recruiter will judge your employability and potential on the basis of your CV.

You, as a jobseeker, are accused of the following CV crimes. I present the evidence.

EXHIBIT 1: Your CV is too long.

Your CV should be a maximum of two pages

EXHIBIT 2: Your CV lacks clarity and focus.

Your direction should be clear from your CV.

EXHIBIT 3: Your CV isn’t aimed to your target role.

Ideally you should identify your target job, then take aim. Fire!

EXHIBIT 4: Your CV is poorly presented.

Your CV’s design and format are assaulting the recruiter’s senses. An eye-catching, uncluttered CV will be more appealing to the recruiter.

EXHIBIT 5: Your CV is full of irrelevant information.

Appeal to the recruiter’s judgement by showcasing pertinent evidence.

EXHIBIT 6: Your CV lacks structure

The recruiter reading your CV has to play detective to find out what they need to know. Using defined headings will help the recruiter to quickly identify the information they need.

EXHIBIT 7: Your defence is weak

Arm yourself with an arresting CV profile to set out your case. The penalty of not securing an interview will outweigh the effort required to present a sound case.

EXHIBIT 8: Circumstantial vs real evidence

Back up your claims with quantifiable achievements. Call witnesses to defend your character (LinkedIn recommendations can support this).

EXHIBIT 9: Your testimony has holes in it

Don’t try to cover up holes in your case. If your dates don’t stack up, the recruiter may suspect fraudulent activity – make sure you have an airtight alibi.

EXHIBIT 10: You’re CV is full of speling misteaks and gramaticale erors

Check, check and check again to make sure your CV does you justice.

Would you now retire and consider your verdict to establish if you are guilty as charged. If you’ve been banged to rights, then consider this a caution and revisit your CV to show the recruiter it would be criminal not to hire you.

If you require some professional representation, Giraffe CVs’ professional CV writing service would be considered a ‘steal’.

Case dismissed.

Personal Branding – How Do People See You?

I have written quite a bit over the years about Personal Branding and I wanted to share my experience when I first realised that I needed to think about it in terms of my search for a new role.

But first, for those who may not be that familiar with the idea let’s remind ourselves what Personal Branding and your “Personal Brand” is all about. Essentially it’s you! The things that make up your personal brand are your values, the beliefs and attitudes that drive you, how you behave and of course your knowledge, skills and abilities. It’s your online and offline image. The tried and tested way of understanding what your personal brand is is to find out what your reputation amongst those you work with, those you engage and interact with is.

That last point was my starting point when I started to take a look at how I was perceived by others especially those I interact with online through Social Media sites, membership sites and the like. I asked people what words they would use to describe me, how they perceived that I come across and what they thought I did for work. Whilst I was flattered by the positive comments I received I was very surprised when it came to the question of what I did professionally!

Having spent many years working in Learning and Development it wasn’t something that people generally associated with me. That was really useful feedback and ensured that I started to focus a little more on talking about an area I am truly passionate about. Indeed it was the inspiration/push I needed to create my Learning & Development Insights blog where I write on the topic and my passion for making learning accessible to all.

Even though we may have done no conscious work on developing a personal brand we do already have one. Your personal brand is what people think of when they see or hear your name. How do they react? What knowledge, skills and abilities do they think you have, how do they think of you as an individual.

All of those things are what make up your personal brand. When people hear or see your name do they see you as a positive person to be around who always has something interesting to say or share? Or, do they see you as someone who is always negative and looking for the worst in things and others? It can be challenging when you have lost your job to appear positive and focused but the reality is that you need to think about how you are perceived by others.

We all know that potential employers now have much more access to information about us than our CVs give them. They can see how we interact with others and our general attitude. Whilst some will say that social media sites are a snapshot of who we are and don’t necessarily show the full extent of our personality they do have the potential to create an impression and we want that impression to be the right one don’t we? So my recommendation would be that you keep the negative, critical moments away from the online world and in the comfort of your own home and with your nearest and dearest.

If you were to ask those people you interact with online or offline how they would describe you would their views match with how you want to be seen?