Student summer jobs build confidence and life skills. {UPDATE}

On February 14, 2013, in job hunting, by David Perry aka The Rogue Recruiter

I was refreshingly reminded yesterday why a house rule Anita and I made 15 years ago was the correct one.

I was speaking to students at a high school about how to get a great summer job that would help them make money and set themselves up for success when they decided they wanted a ‘career’.

You see, in our house you had to get a job when you where 8 years old.

Now I don’t mean a full time gig obviously, but rather they need to do something which puts at least a little money in their pockets which doesn’t come from mom and dad. Why because it’s good to raise children who know the value of money and were trying to instill self-confidence and self-reliance in all four of ours.

Why 8?

Because that’s how old I was when I opened my first business.

So what’s this got to do with job hunting? And how can it help me today? Plenty. Read on.

Flashing back to 2007 – my youngest daughter decided in the summer of 2007 that she wanted to open a lemonade stand to make some money so she could buy her mother a birthday present. So I was enlisted to help gather the materials and to front the working capital to start a lemonade stand. Well, it didn’t work. There wasn’t even one visitor [besides me and 'mom']. Undeterred Shannon [she was 8] decided that we were selling the wrong thing. [Now in fairness to her there are only maybe 20 people that could actually drive by our house because were at the end of a long culde sac [that's French for dead-end]].

But Shannon rightly figured that what people really wanted at 0600 hrs on the way to work in the morning wasn’t lemonade it was coffee.

Pretty smart kid.

She comes buy it honestly [her mother].

1^st job hunting lesson: sell the skills that employers want to buy. Its not about you, its about them and if you want to get them to stop long enough to listen to you or read your resume you have to first get their attention by focusing on their needs.

Tuesday: We set up a coffee stand at 0630 hrs. Again, other than family she sold to no one. People just roared by in their cars on their way to work – without stopping. There were however quite a few puzzled looks. I guess its not every day you see a 3^rd grader selling coffee at a roadside stand.

Now rather than give up and call it a day Shannon decides that the coffee idea is right but the location is wrong. So she figures the best place for us is at the baseball park at the end of our street because there is a traffic jam there every morning [usually a hundred cars deep] as people drive to work.

2nd job hunting lesson: if something doesn’t work. Try something else. Instead of sitting at the end of the driveway getting discouraged Shannon figured out what else might work. Are you relying on the Sunday paper for leads or just trying one kind of networking? Perhaps you need to expand your possibilities.

Wednesday: We set up at the ballpark. It has a nice parking lot next to it and plenty of room for people to pull their vehicle over
to the side if they wish to. The first car that goes buy stops and buys. Well that’s all she needed to get her adrenaline running. We were there 2 hours and made about $5 at 50 cents per coffee. Ten customers out of perhaps 400 cars. Not bad, I thought. Shannon on the other hand was commenting on the faces of the people who drove by who looked shocked or who smiled. She thought they might stop the next day.

3rd^d Job hunting lesson: location location location if you want to sell your skills not only do you need to figure out what people will pay for BUT also where those skills are most in demand. For example selling your techie skills in a 3 horse town in Northern Vermont probably wont get a lot of attention BUT shoehorning skills might.

Thursday: many more people stopped. Many said they had seen her the day before but they didn’t have any money or they had just bought one or they didn’t have enough time to stop. We made $9. Nearly double the day before. She decide to go home make a few more signs and really decorate them so people couldn’t miss them.

4^th job hunting lesson: does your resume look the same as everyone else? Black & White text on white or beige paper. How creative! Do you think there’s room for improvement? Perhaps something you could/should do to attract a little more attention from that harried hiring manager show opening up a stack of similar looking resumes? Don’t tell people you’re different or a go-getter or creative etc. — show them from the start. OR how many times do think someone has just hired somebody and you’re too late?

Friday: people where waiting for us to set up. She had to call mom [on my cell phone] for refills – 3 times. People complimented her on her beautiful signs and her ingenuity. She made $24.

5^th job hunting lesson: Sometimes No just means not today. Job hunting can be a demoralizing and stressful event if you take every No personally AND if you actually believe it. It may take you several approaches to an employer to get them to even talk to you let alone an
interview and an offer. You just need to keep reminding yourself why they need you and find creative new ways to approach them with your value proposition this is especially true when the employer you’ve targeted has not run an ad looking for someone.

Bonus job hunting lesson: I often hear people quote a familiar phrase to job hunters to keep them motivated: all things come to those who wait. But that’s not the whole phrase. That’s incorrect and taken oout of context it can actually hurt people and prolong their job hunt needlessly.

The quote is actually: “All things come to those who wait, but only those things left by those who hustle.” – Abraham Lincoln.

Guerrilla job hunters: Do the hustle!!!

Shannon certainly has over the last 6 years because yesterday she was my ‘tech-guy’ on a video production for a lot more then 50 cents a cup. All my children can get a job at the drop of a hat and have done so know on 3 different continents … and the oldest is just 22.

Job Search Strategy # 1 – Targeted Research

On December 31, 2012, in cover letters, guerrilla job hunting, Guerrilla Resumes, Hidden job market, job hunting, job interviews, networking, resumes, by David Perry aka The Rogue Recruiter

One quick way to discover new opportunities is by doing structured search engine queries. And it’s fairly easy to do. The video above gives you a good overview of how to do it for yourself:

Step #1

Develop a target list of companies you want to work for. That list of companies is your baseline query for your search. Now, here’s how you get the list. The video above is an example using Google.com in which the job hunter want sto work in advertising in New York City. {You just do what I'm doing BUT substitute your industry parameters.}

1. When you do targeted research, generally you concentrate on an industry or a geographic preference (in this case, New York City). Substitute your city for your search.

2. You need to find the names of all the advertising companies in New York. There are easy ways to do this using the Net. Go to Google. www.google.com and type the following words in the “advanced” option box in Google. The search string shown below instructs Google to search for a directory of advertising firms in New York or a conference on advertising held in New York. We want this list to garner leads for companies.

Your text needs to be filled in exactly the way I did in the video.

My search returned many hits including one for AD:TECH “The Event for Interactive Marketing”. This is a conference held in New York for the Advertising industry. There where also hits for directories of advertising companies in New York, complete with web site addresses, phone numbers, and profiles of the owners.

Step #2 Find People Who Can Hire You:

Once you have a target list of companies to work with, you need to find out who the people are in those companies that can actually hire you. A good headhunter would pick up the telephone. You might not be so inclined, so here’s another way to accomplish your objective.

Go to each company’s web site and gather the names of the people who can say yes. Those people are the executives not the human resource people – they can only say NO! unless you’re a human resources professional. If you’re lucky, every web site will identify their senior executives, including names, titles, phone numbers, career summaries and sometimes email and photos! Web information should be up-to-the-minute accurate, but I would call the receptionist and confirm it.

For this example I’m looking for a sales position. Therefore I’ll seek to locate or research the VP of Sales, VP Sales & Marketing, VP Marketing or General Manager. You would focus your research on the functional areas of interest for your search.

If you’re experiencing difficulty finding names on the site, then go back to Google’s advanced search box and type in the company name in the first box and (Vice President Sales Marketing Director)in the third box. By-the-way, you don’t need to place the words in brackets and don’t put in any commas or punctuation.

That search string will bring you:
All the people who are, or have ever been, VPs OR President OR Directors of Sales and/or Marketing for that company.
The resumes of a whole pile of people from that company whom you may be able to phone to coax information from them.

OR

You can skip all that and use LinkedIn, Spoke, or ZoomInfo

Once you have the name of the individual who is one rung up the ladder from the job you want, you need to process their name through Google again. This time you put their first and last name in the first box and the company name in the third box.

This will produce a list of press releases, and news articles in which they are mentioned, as well as conferences they’ve attended. Read an article or two and clip something memorable to use in a NarrowCast letter.

When you send them the letter, you’ll be able to say. “I read your article in… about… which prompted me to write.” Very powerful.

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.

Tagged with: for • guerrilla • hunters • job • marketing

The 12 Days of Christmas Job Hunting 2010: Day 2

On December 24, 2012, in 12 Days of Christmas Job Hunting, cover letters, guerrilla job hunting, Guerrilla Resumes, Hidden job market, job hunting, job interviews, networking, resumes, by David Perry aka The Rogue Recruiter

On the second day of Christmas – Guerrilla Marketing for Job Hunters 2.0 revealed to me – "Two strategies to crack the hidden job market.."

Click HERE for FREE DVD that gets you hired – “New Job Search Secrets"

You know, most people put more time into writing down a shopping list for the grocery store than a list of employers they want to work for. Totally illogical, isn’t it? I mean, why be happy working just anywhere? Why not work for a company that excites you?

Instead of blindly sending out résumés to companies you’ve never heard of before, it’s far better to first select potential employers that meet YOUR criteria and then contact them with an offer to help.

Which is what you’re going to learn to do today. And one of the ways to do that is with Google.

To get the best results focus all your time and effort on the companies you’ve identified as being the Tier 1 buyers of your product – you. Anything else is a waste of your time, energy and money. Target your campaign at those companies where you know you can help solve a problem. Nothing beats a direct approach for speed and accuracy.

Because of the current recession caused by the sub-prime meltdown, employers have different hiring expectations. The direct approach has replaced networking as the best way to break into the hidden job market.

The hidden job-market isn’t really hidden. It’s just not in plain sight. It’s referred to as the hidden job-market because of the way jobs are created and filled. Most jobs are created in a company in one of three ways.
1.     The company is growing;
2.     Someone quits, leaving a vacancy; or
3.     Someone is being replaced and the employer doesn’t want the employees to know about it.

When the company is growing, the owner, president, or someone else may know they need to hire but haven’t initiated the process. They may not have had the time. They may not quite have the budget. They may not want to go through the hassle of advertising and interviewing. So while the need is real, the job itself remains hidden inside the hiring manager’s head.

When someone quits, managers will first decide if they can eliminate the job, or combine it with another position. Needing a new person, they will look inside their organization to see whom they can promote into the role. If they can’t find anyone they’ll likely ask their co-workers for referrals. If that doesn’t work, depending on the size of the company they may opt to run an ad through HR, or hire a head-hunter.

Companies will contact a head-hunter when secrecy is required because “loose-lips-sink-ships” and the recruiter can conduct a search without anyone ever knowing.
In all of these cases, the job remains hidden to the outside world for weeks if not months. Hence the term “hidden” job-market.

And TODAY the ability for job hunters to “click and apply” for every job they see on the internet has given employers good reason to NOT let it be known n they have an opening. The onslaught of emails, phone calls and resumes that result from an advertised position is enough to CRUSH an HR department.

The only way for you to access the hidden job-market successfully is to reach out to the hiring managers directly before they opt to go the advertising or HR route OR ask their buddies for referrals. The hidden job-market is your private laboratory to test out the best methods for finding your dream job. Now let’s look at two of the Top 10 Strategies Guerrilla Marketing for Job Hunters use to access the hidden job market.