If you're looking for a job there's great power and upside leverage in understanding how the game gets played: how recruiters think and look for talent.  Here's a great article you must read from Dave Mendoza.  "Recruiters are challenged on many fronts, from narrow job specs to the reality of a decreasing labor pool. It’s now commonplace for recruiters to seek alternatives to their tired resume database. One way to enhance your talent pipeline is by broadening your outreach efforts. A warm referral is good, but an even better

Compliments of David E Perry and Kevin Donlin. For more creative job search tactics, go to the Guerrilla Marketing for job hunters blog and download the free audio CD.

I’ve been watching the news and listening to the debate since the Occupy Wall Street protests started.

For all the press and commotion — things haven’t changed much .

Today’s job market is still a living nightmare.

The average time to find a job is now 40 weeks – that’s 10 MONTHS — according to data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

And if it takes you 40 weeks to find work, you won’t be cashing 40 weekly paychecks.

That money is gone forever.

Can you afford that?

… Add in a mortgage, car payments, health care, and it only gets worse.

That’s the real cost of unemployment.

Now, suppose you could wave a magic wand — and make employers call you. [Note: I’m being sarcastic about the Magic Wand bit … this isn’t possible in the real world…]

Imagine … getting the job you want, doing work you love … bringing home the salary you deserve … taking your family out to dinner to celebrate at your favorite restaurant … telling your friends and neighbors, “I got a great new job!”

Wouldn’t it be nice to get your life back?

Well, you can in 30-45 days – many other people are. But you can only do it if you’re willing to pay the Price for Success .

What do I mean by paying the price of success?

I am talking about you investing time and real effort in finding a career you love and a job you’ll excel at!

NOT by accident but ON PURPOSE!

Despite everything you or your friends may have read or heard about the “Secret” and the “law of attraction”.

HOPE AND DESIRE ARE NOT A STRATEGY!!!!!!!!!!!

In the real world no one is going to pull-up in front of your home.  Send you on vacation and fix your life while you’re at Disneyland.  That just doesn’t happen.

The labor market has changed.  We’re not going back to the “good old Days”.  Job search success only comes with hard work!

You need a plan.  A detailed plan!

Now look out your front window.  If there’s a bus and a camera crew on your front lawn I apologize.  You just got lucky!!!  Disregard everything I just said..

No bus?

Hunker down… make your own luck with.

Paying the price of success really only requires you to

shift your thinking.

unleash your creativity

maximize all your personal assets

transform from just another job seeker into one who stands-out.

In essence become a Special Forces Guerrilla who’s ready to experience victory.

Career Combat has 5- steps you need to take to get a job and get your career on track.  you must take each step in order if you want to turn your job search into – a job found.  Skip a step and you fail.  

Ready – Set – Go!

1. know what to do;
2. have the desire to do it;
3. are willing to do it;
4. are able to do it; and
5. Finally, you get out and do it.

Sounds simple enough – Right

It’s not!

Life is conspiring against you.  On that note the Occupy Wall Street Protestors are correct. 

You’re actually not paranoid — the system is designed to keep you right where you are – to smash your hopes and dreams AND make you think that’s normal.

You have a right to be angry and frustrated.  Society has begun to accept, and expect, under performance.  And that’s killing your job search.

Let me explain exactly what I mean.  

Today we live in an era of “participation awards”

Sports. Schools. Your work place — they all reward participation versus real achievement.  Trophies are handed out to every member of the team instead of honoring top performers – that sucks.

Everyone gets the same minimal raise every year whether they deserve it or not.  And most don’t.

Society rewards mediocrity.   In the real world just showing up isn’t a cause for celebration.  It’s a crock.  In the real world you only get a super bowl ring for winning.   

With job hunting  either you get the job OR you don’t.  It’s all about wining and the preparation and practice that goes into that 45 minutes of game time called the interview.  There’s nothing for the second place candidate.  Nothing.  They go home and wait for their “next chance”.

Wait?  Who has time to wait!!!    You need to take action.

Reading Guerrilla Marketing for Job Hunters 3.0  isn’t a panacea for job-hunting.  Don’t misunderstand what I’m saying.  The book is great – the experts who share their advice are the best in the business BUT….

And it’s a big BUT

You actually have to do the work.

Unfortunately this is where most people fail.   I know just a ton of people who’ve read the book and still don’t have a job AND it’s always because they read it AND DiDn’t apply any of it.

Still interested in the truth?   Willing to risk a little sweat equity in yourself?

Yes?

Then follow along

1. know what to do

You can’t win the game if you don’t know the rules. To be successful you’ve got to know what you’re doing.   Well the rules have changed.  In spite of the fact that baby-boomers are retiring in record numbers, employers are even pickier about who they hire and are taking even longer to make hiring decisions.  If you don’t understand how to make an effective networking call, develop your marketing materials, or incent a hiring manager to make a decision — you’d better find out.

On our end, we’re going to show you how to: pick a career and a job that’s right for you;  write a great cover letter; craft a stop them in their tracks resume; harness the power of the force-multiplier effect;  unleash a personal marketing tsunami; interview with confidence; and close a great offer.  We spell out exactly what you need to do.

2.  have the desire to do it.

Here’s where the train comes off the tracks for most people.  You have to actually want to do the work.  Many people know exactly what to do, and exactly how to do it. Yet they simply choose not to.  It’s easier to do nothing and whine about it.   People get stuck in that state until doing nothing because it becomes more painful than fixing it.  It’s like having a broken window in your house – it’s not really a problem until winter comes along — then it’s less painful to fix it than ignore it.

It always surprises me to see how many job hunters start their day with NO plan… except perhaps a vague notion of what’s for lunch.  I guess that’s why we admire superstars.  Because they are in the minority… they always get the job done, no matter what. The average person knows very well they should plan for the next day before leaving for the day.  But there’s always a reason it’s more important to walk out the door at 5 p.m. today than to plan to be successful for the next.

The diet industry knows this and makes billions every year…  people say they want to be healthy YET many still eat junk and sit around playing video games instead of going to the gym — unwilling to execute what we know to be true  by eating healthy and working out.

Many want to believe you can take a pill and get thin. It’s like surfing web sites and emailing your resume… the results are predictable…  But it’s easier to do that than make a networking call or customize a letter.    And their bottom grows larger by the day

Indeed, fat people stay fat until they change their behavior  — but only when staying fat is more painful than dieting.

There’s no quick fix

for

career success.

Unfortunately, the cost of failure in life is much bigger than whether or not you look fit in your suit. When you fail to achieve career success, it affects not only you, but your kids, your spouse, and your friends. If you choose not to pay the price of success, you fail, and it can quickly become a habit.  Repeated over and over, dreams become distant prayers and your true potential never materializes. A lot of things can happen along with habitual failure, none of it good.

3. are willing to do it.

The book,   The Secret      has turned millions of people into do nothings.  I’m telling you now it isn’t enough to just say you want to succeed. You need to learn everything there is to know.  You need to be a student of success and learn everything you can about job hunting so you can be more successful.  And then you have to actually do it.  And this starts by defining success, setting goals and getting leverage.

Before you can succeed, you need to define exactly what that means to you. At the beginning of your job search you need to write your personal goal cards.

• What are you going to get out of this new job?
• What’s in it for you?
• Money, power, prestige?
• Why are you doing this?

Failing to write down what the goal is and why you want to achieve it will doom you from the get-go.  Remember, success cannot be defined by a manager, your wife, or your buddies. That is up to you, and you alone.

Personal leverage is powerful.

It’s a public admission that you’re going to do something, knowing that if you fail you’ll be humiliated.    Leverage may be the best way to overcome psychological barriers that prevent you from staying focused. There are many different ways you can create leverage. Start by defining your motivation for achieving your goals: if you can define the reason to achieve a goal, you will be much more committed to it. You need to know what’s driving you to make it happen.

4. are able to do it.

When you have the right guidance.  The right insider knowledge.  The right tools.  The power is in your court.    You have no excuse for failure but your own lack of ambition.

1. pick a career and a job that’s right for you;
2. write a great cover letter;
3. craft a stop them in their tracks resume;
4. harness the power of the force-multiplier effect;
5. unleash a personal marketing tsunami;
6. interview with confidence; and
7. close a great offer.

5.  finally, you get out and do it. 

When you don’t accept failure as a possibility, you can’t lose.

This is a powerful rule to live by. Napoleon Bonaparte used this to his advantage. When sending his soldiers into war, he instructed them to burn their ships on shore.  There was only one way home — straight through the enemy lines. Apply this to your life and you will be amazed. When failure is not an option, people will do whatever it takes to succeed.

The difference between a life well lived and a life half lived is as simple as a decision. Whether or not you choose to pay the price of success can determine whether at the end of the day you look back on your life with joy or regret.

*******************

Compliments of David E Perry and Kevin Donlin. For more creative job search tactics, go to the Guerrilla Marketing for job hunters blog and download the free audio CD.

Top 10 Reasons Occupy Wall Street Protestors Can’t Find a Job

# 10 – You’re Gullible

# 9 – You’re Invisible

# 8 – You’re Irrelevant

# 7 – You Network Like a Girl!

# 6 – Your Resume is Ugly

# 5 – Your Cover Letter is Boring…

#4 – You Don’t Know What to do When a Recruiter Calls

Reason # 3 You Inc. – Top 10 Reasons Occupy Wall Street Protestors Can’t Find a Job

Reason # 2 You’re NOT leveraging the Internet – Top 10 Reasons Occupy Wall Street Protestors Can’t Find a Job

Job Seeker or Cannon Fodder?

The things that we do that involve the justifiable and systematic destruction of life and property, the wholesale creation of widows and orphans, and which showcase the ghastly aspects of human ingenuity, make great metaphors for recruiting.

The so called “War for Talent” has pitched employer against employer for the better part of the 21st century. As each one struggles to attract the best qualified people an assortment of vendors, service providers, consultants and know-it-alls have fueled an arms race of sorts.

Multi-million dollar investments in recruiting technology, performance management and HR information systems are no more a luxury for organizations whose greatest asset is in its people than missile defense systems are a luxury for any self-respecting western democracy.

“Employer of Choice” rankings, “Best Places to Live and Work” surveys and “Top Ten Jobs to Die For” lists are typical of the propaganda pumped out in the battle to win the hearts and minds of candidates.  The bombardment of employer branding has been relentless.

At the same time, employers have been deploying sophisticated weapons to target with pinpoint accuracy the most desirable “passive candidates.” Complicated screening, assessment and selection tools ensure collateral damage is kept to a minimum.  Succession planning ensures continuity in the chain of command.

As always, the true horrors of war are reserved for those who do their business in the trenches.

Resumes for Dummies stacked five editions deep provide no defense for job seekers who, like refugees dashing for cover, must first run the gauntlet of a front line recruiter. Once removed from the best practices of their “talent acquisition” handlers, recruiters are mixed lot when it comes to processes, people and technologies.

Whether the mercenary top-guns who have a silver bullet for every tough assignment or the enlisted rank-and-file who are best when shooting at point-blank range, the job seeker is likely to encounter a recruiter who has left many more dead and wounded in their wake than decorated heroes to their credit.

Bottle of vodka or Molotov cocktail?

Somewhere beyond the routinely unanswered phone calls, bounced emails, and postcard replies to handwritten vellum, candidates who want to take control of their job search really do have a battle on their hands.

Asymmetrical warfare favors you, the job seeker. Finding the readily available tools and resources that give you a disproportionate advantage is critically important when engaging a bigger and stronger adversary.  Because most recruiters cannot use, or will not use, the kinds of improvised approach embodied in Guerrilla Googling, you can expect they will be defenseless against it.  You should at least hope so.

Guerrilla Googling: What is it?

Google’s search engine has become an indispensable tool for everyone who spends any amount of time online. In the hands of a highly motivated operative Google can be a job seekers most powerful weapon.

When Google’s various products and services are integrated for the single purpose of landing a job, that’s “Googling.” Using Gmail for sending off resumes; Google Docs for writing cover letters; Google Calendar for rescheduling the latest “sorry-something-just-came-up-can-we-reschedule-the-interview-for-next-week-speaking-too-fast-to-catch-my-number-click” is at best, ho-hum.

But when those same tools are applied for the sole purpose of gaining a competitive advantage to ensure your job search goals are attained, that’s Guerrilla Googling. What’s more, while potentially quite dangerous, it’s also a lot of fun.

Your Job Hunter’s Dashboard

Guerrilla Googling is about replicating the enemies’ process and systems to gathering and monitor actionable intelligence so they can be engaged on the battleground of your choosing.  All that is needed is a computer with internet access and resolute determination.

A carefully chosen alias and password will give you access to your Job Hunter’s Dashboard, a command and control center if you will. And because Google is providing the platform, conceivably you could conduct your job search in places as far-flung as the Smokin’ Sadhu Cyber Café, Katmandu or closer to home in the Kansas City Library.

Here are the first steps for getting your dashboard up and running:

1.  Create a Google account. As we will be using this account for “covert operations” choose an innocuous user name that cannot be traced back to you.
2. Register for the following services: iGoogle, Gmail, Google Reader, Google Docs, Notebook, Talk, and Google Sites. Other products and services will be added later.
3. If you’ll be using a personal computer you should also download the Google Toolbar and Google Desktop.
4.  While you’re at it, if you are not already using the Firefox browser you should be. Firefox has a number of very useful extensions that will enhance your experience. Gmail Space, GMarks, Integrated Gmail, Google Date Keeper and other add-ons will give you significantly improved results.

Next, sign into iGoogle where you’ll see that everything you’ll need to create a customizable homepage has been provided.

By configuring the various “gadgets” that are publicly available with some of our own creation, an innocuous iGoogle page can be transformed from something that’s “cool” to something that is a mission-critical technology — your Job Hunters Dashboard!

Jump online and visit Guerrilla Googling for Job Hunters when you have a few minutes to spare. There you’ll find a number of easy to follow tutorials that will guide you through the set-up and configuration of your dashboard. You’ll also find shortcuts and off-the-shelf gadgets that will save you time and effort as you get started.

Soon you’ll be capable of this type of asymmetrical warfare:

Replicating the Enemies’ Process and Systems

“So it is said that if you know your enemies and know yourself, you will fight without danger in battles.

If you only know yourself, but not your opponent, you may win or may lose.

If you know neither yourself nor your enemy, you will always endanger yourself.”

So says Sun Tzu, the ancient military strategist who happened to write a best selling book on modern business: The Art of War.  For job seekers exploring this approach this is a particularly poignant passage.

Without giving too much credit where it may not be deserved, let’s pretend that the recruiters you encounter are one of the rugged veterans of the “War for Talent.” In the sourcing step of the recruitment process they will have used a number of methods to identify potential candidates. Among those will be searching online for people who are not to be found on job boards.

These people’s resumes, bios and homepages are buried among the billions of indexed pages that the Google’s search engine crawls. They go undiscovered until an expert researcher comes along. They are found using advanced search syntax which gives Google very specific instructions about which types of document to return.

A well-practiced hacker can find a handful of good resumes for Utah-based, bi-lingual, left-handed brain surgeons who specialize in anesthesia-free pediatric trepanation as easily as a ho-hum sourcer can  find an endless supply of photocopier salesmen with profiles on LinkedIn, and who have long since been forgotten about.

Configured properly the Job Hunters Dashboard is indispensable for helping you find, manage and repurpose the hacks that recruiters use. There are ample examples given at Guerilla Googling for Job Hunters.

Armed with the same expertise as a top-notch recruiter you can now wreak havoc by doing things like inserting yourself in the recruiting process before the recruiter even knows there is an opening coming down the pike.

But if for you “whatever it takes” means, “whatever it takes up to a point” you might consider something less extreme than helping your predecessor be recruited away ahead of your “I know you’re not hiring, but keep me in mind if something opens up” call to the hiring manager.

Instead you might apply the techniques that recruiters use to find talent in the exact same way they do, using the resulting resumes you find as a means for showcasing your own.

For example, if the position is based in New York where you happen to live, you might contact the recruiter with some referrals – yes, believe or not, most recruiters will thank you for doing their work for them – except the otherwise qualified candidates are in Chicago, Los Angeles and Timbuktu.

If you can’t figure out what to do next, do not try this approach either! Remember, the corridors of power are littered with the bodies of well-intentioned job seekers who blew themselves up even before greeting the gatekeeper.  Asymmetrical warfare is not for the fainthearted or weak-willed. And it’s certainly not for the ill-prepared either.

Your Job Hunters Dashboard can be set up to feed you with an endless supply of referrals and opportunities along with information that would otherwise be considered too dangerous to share with a job seeker.  This might include employment histories of department heads, organizational charts, which past employees have sued the employer and for what, and even reveal secrets about the nice lady who interviewed you that he would rather you didn’t know.

Yes, replicating the enemies’ process and systems includes everything from sourcing to background checks. Having advanced searches, up-dated automatically in real time on your Job Hunters Dashboard is something Sun Tzu would surely approve of.

Gathering and Monitoring Actionable Intelligence

One of the disadvantages of doing a Google search is that your results cannot be saved as an RSS feed. In other words, you cannot set the search up to be viewed at a later date to reflect any updates that may have happened since your last visit.

A quick search on YouTube for “RSS” will produce plenty of short tutorials that explain how RSS subscription works and the different types of “reader” that are available to keep your feeds [or subscriptions] organized and accessible.

Do the same YouTube search on “Google Reader” and you’ll soon realize why this functionality is an important part of the Job Hunters Dashboard. With some strategic thinking of your own you will find ways to apply this tool to your campaign in ways the augment the simple applications that follow this explanation of how to get your search results converted to an RSS feed.

Sites like IceRocket.com and others will convert your Google search strings so that you can subscribe to the latest updates in Google Reader. Google Alerts work too. The process is not widely used outside of geeky circles and yet it is incredibly simple to do. It is also very helpful in your monitoring the actionable intelligence which is vital for your success.

Actionable intelligence is one of the primary outputs from your Job Hunters Dashboard. Data that is feed constantly to your command and control center is of little use unless it has some application in the development of your competitive advantage. So, read on…

The types of data that you might convert to feeds could include specific searches on employers and/or recruiters. This may have limited use until such time as a window of opportunity appears. News of a large contract being won, a sourpuss recruiter moving on, or the appointment of a new hiring manager are the kinds of intelligence that you will want to anticipate when defining your search criteria.

On the other hand, information as pedestrian as weather reports can become actionable intelligence in a heartbeat.  News of an impending snow storm is actionable when it makes a recruiter housebound while the hiring manager makes the extra effort to get it in, if for nothing else, then to take your call.

Engaging Recruiters on the Battleground of your Choosing

Recruiters are careful to choose battlegrounds that put job seekers at a distinct disadvantage. I don’t know of many recruiters that concede to meet on neutral ground, at Starbucks for coffee perhaps, let alone have the job seeker pick a time and place of their choosing. Ironically, when given the choice most job seekers default to convention, leaving themselves exposed to ambush and rejection.

Using some of the advanced search techniques discussed earlier, and programmed to the Job Hunters Dashboard for real-time updates, it is possible to choose the exact time and place of engagement. In so doing the goal is to catch your opponent off guard.

Of course, off guard does not mean entirely defenseless. In the same way as you carry the image in your head of fallen comrades littering the corridors of power, so too must you remember the unfortunate job seekers left to die of thirst and hunger at the end of a disconnected phone call.

While you might think it’s reasonable to telephone a recruiter at home in the same way the “Big-Billers Playbook” describes as a best practice, without the proper preparation you may not get very far. As easy at it is to get the personal email and home address of most recruiters, as before, replicating the enemies’ process and systems, it is just as easy to forget your target is not a recruiter 24/7.

Imagine a mother of three trying to separate one of the twins from a choke hold while extricating the third from the jaws of an over playful Chihuahua and it is easy to understand why your unsolicited call may result in your permanent excommunication.

There are a number of techniques that can be used to avoid this happening to you. One of the easiest is to disarm your opponent before engaging them. You might do this by applying one of the searches described on Guerilla Googling for Job Hunters to discover for example, your target’s Amazon wish list.

Sending The War for Talent by Ed Michaels directly from Amazon [$0.51 for a used copy!] with a note that reads:  “Hey, I was doing some research online and saw we shared an interest in recruiting. I thought you might like this book” will certainly be remembered for both its thoughtful kindness and unexpected arrival.

As stressed earlier, if you are not sure what happens next, or are given to hyperventilating in a socially engineered situation,  you may want think of some other way to leverage this approach to your advantage.  You may find it easier to do use this tactic with a hiring manager and go for a friendly referral instead.

Whatever, you don’t want to have come this far to find out the game is over.

All of the things described here can be achieved using Google products and services combined with a determination to get the job you really want.

Of course, we haven’t discussed how to use Google Sites or Google Base to make your resume online easier for recruiters to find, or how to text a recruiter who rarely, if ever, gets a resume delivered to their mobile.

We haven’t discussed how to use Google for a soup-to-nuts direct marketing campaign or how to back up your most important files using your Gmail account. And we haven’t mentioned yet that, with the exception of $0.51 paperback, all of this can be done without spending a dime.

That all this and more can be achieved using a single Google account, and a well managed command and control center, I hope you’ll find some reason to explore these possibilities further.

To those who answer the call of Guerrilla Googling, I salute you! But be careful now, there’s a war going on, don’t you know.

Happy googling!

About the Author…
Amitai Givertz

Ami has over 25 years experience in business. The majority of that time has been spent in the talent management space where Ami has held a number of leadership positions.

For close to ten years Ami was a driving force behind the sales and marketing efforts for RCI Recruitment Solutions. In his role as Senior VP for Business Development Ami’s responsibilities included leading the recruitment communications and media sales efforts as well as championing a number of product innovations for print and digital media, and recruitment technology and practice.

During that time Ami was involved in a number of strategic initiatives. Those ranged from alliance-building to running the RCI Center of Excellence, developing recruiter training programs, and delivering RPO projects.

Since 2007 Ami has returned to his roots in sales force development, training and recruiting. His boutique firm AMG Management Advisors supports a handful of clients who rely on his unique of brand “disruption” to help them develop their businesses. Ami continues to pursue his integrated interests in product development, recruiter training and things 2.0.

Ami writes daily for a number of online publications that examine recruiting, business and innovation. He is the Editor of RecruitingBlogs.com and the publisher of several blogs.

As an advisor, Ami was a founding member of the Advisory Board for Kennedy Information’s Recruiting Trends, a member of the Human Capital Institute’s Expert Advisor Panel [Internet Recruiting 2.0] and co-founder of the Cloud Recruiting Think Tank.

A native of the UK, Ami now lives in Jupiter, Florida with his wife and two youngest daughters.

To contact Ami, click here and to connect on LinkedIn click here.

All around you the people who have the character and courage you admire most in life have gone through pivotal moments in their lives. Times where they’ve pushed forward and won against all odds.

Whether it was a job loss, a death in the family, a health problem, or something as “simple” as getting through university, you admire them for it.

That experience gave them resiliency and transformed them into winners. From that moment forward winning becomes habitual for them – and their resiliency permeates everything they do.

Compliments of David E Perry and Kevin Donlin. For more creative job search tactics, go to the Guerrilla Marketing for job hunters blog and download the free audio CD.

With reference to the definition of success, how successful have you been so far?

Relate your answers to your career accomplishments. Be prepared to define success and where you believe you are in relation to your career plan. 

Map your successes to their requirements for the job.  Re-read the job posting before you go in the interview.  Remember, they want to hire you because they think you've got the experience they need and they made that assessment form the information they pulled form your resume. 

If the employer can't put 2&2 together you better make sure you can.

Compliments of David E Perry and Kevin Donlin. For more creative job search tactics, go to the Guerrilla Marketing for job hunters blog and download the free audio CD.

If the last few years have taught me anything it’s this: the one thing you will need more than anything else – more than even proper research and interview preparation – is resiliency. Resiliency is the winner’s edge in this, or any market.

“Winning is not a sometime thing; it’s an all the time thing. You don’t win once in a while; you don’t do things right once in a while; you do them right all the time. Winning is a habit”, so says Vincent Lombardi, football’s winningest coach.

Resiliency – the Winner’s Edge

Winners share one special quality – resiliency. As defined by The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language:

re·sil·ien·cy –The act of resiling, springing back, or rebounding; as, the resilience of a ball.

For our purposes, resiliency quite simply is the ability to take disappointment or “take a hit” as Vince Lombardi would say, and get up, and keep going.

You know full well that if you were at work and you ran into an obstacle that prevented you from launching a new product or reaching a key client for information that was going to help you be more successful on the job, you’d find a way around it or through it.

Put another way, if you found out you had the winning lottery ticket in your hand with fifteen minutes left to claim the $2 million you’d find a way to do it – even if you had to walk up hill in a snow storm – both ways – with a leg cast on!

Your job search is no different and no less lucrative (40 yrs x 50K = $2 million). This is your life. Take complete charge of it. Develop your plan and then start implementing it with resiliency. Parlay your series of jobs into a purposeful career.

Compliments of David E Perry and Kevin Donlin. For more creative job search tactics, go to the Guerrilla Marketing for job hunters blog and download the free audio CD.

The interviewer probably needs to know if you're introverted or extraverted with this kind of question You're best off answering " It depends on the circumstances."  Let them explain more and put your answer in context with the position.  Are you being interviewed for a sales position or executive secretary…. it matters.

Compliments of David E Perry and Kevin Donlin. For more creative job search tactics, go to the Guerrilla Marketing for job hunters blog and download the free audio CD.

In grade school we learned the 3 Rs of Reading, wRriting and aRithmetic. Those were our most important lessons [ok so I’m dating myself here]. For job-hunters it is Research, Relevancy, and Resiliency that will deliver an A+ interview.

Relevancy

Your offer [skills] have to fit their needs. It has to solve the employer’s issues, not yours. It’s not about you. At the core employers only want to know three things about you:

♦ Can you make me money?

♦ Can you save me money? and/or

♦ Can you increase our efficiencies?

As global competitiveness increases, employers will be looking for all three. In the book we will show you how to express your relevancy – Value – to an employer.

Compliments of David E Perry and Kevin Donlin. For more creative job search tactics, go to the Guerrilla Marketing for job hunters blog and download the free audio CD.

If I spoke with your previous boss, what would he or she say are your greatest strengths and weaknesses? First of all.. you better have expected this question. If you didn't shame on you. If you did I hope you asked your previous boss this question — after you left the job so they'll tell the truth — that way there will not be any mistakes or inconsistencies. So you forgot or your ex boss was the moron brother of the owner. Now what? Be consistent with what you think they would say as a reference. Always turn a negative into a positive. Cite an example of a minor weakness and how you have overcome it or are currently working on it. This is no time to be honest about your compulsive pencil stealing habit.

Compliments of David E Perry and Kevin Donlin. For more creative job search tactics, go to the Guerrilla Marketing for job hunters blog and download the free audio CD.

In grade school we learned the 3 Rs of Reading, wRriting and aRithmetic. Those were our most important lessons [ok so I’m dating myself here]. For job-hunters it is Research, Relevancy, and Resiliency that will deliver an A+ interview.

Research

As a job-hunter you need to research and determine:

♦ which are your marketable skills;

♦ which industries/companies you should target that use those skills;

♦ what are the specific needs of each company in your target market;

♦ who’s in a position to hire you in those companies; and

♦ what’s the best way to approach them?

The way you approach people will be determined by your research. We’ll talk a great deal more about research specifically in the book. 

For now understand that your research will help you determine what your going to sell to whom – with YOU as the product.  It may sound silly or even daughnting if you don't have any  formal slaes trainging but really it's very straight forward.   I can do this and so can you!

Compliments of David E Perry and Kevin Donlin. For more creative job search tactics, go to the Guerrilla Marketing for job hunters blog and download the free audio CD.