Too many job seekers find themselves weeks or months past the time when they expect to be hired and started at a solid, career-level, employment position. If that description sounds anything like your circumstances, then pay attention to the following tactics that often jump-start and move ahead a job search onto the employment superhighway.
But be warned, these are strategies not for the faint-of-heart. Mental-focus, self-discipline, dispassionate drive, and a large dose of stick-to-it-ness are required to move your career forward with these methods. Too often, job seekers’ minds are captured by the hypnotic distress caused when successive letters-of-rejection or, after hours sending out scores of resumes, a string of failed call-backs for job interviews line up to assail job seeker enthusiasm. Don’t allow your focus to waver. Use the strategies herein to keep your job search on course and on time.
And by the way, these tactics are not the typical network-with-industry-friends or the visit-a-niche-job-board sort of job search advice. Keep your mind open about these suggestions. These are the same friendly, but to-the-point, approaches that many professional executive search-recruiters use to generate job hires at all levels of employment. Such methods generate job offers – year after year – and they will work for you now, if you stay focused.
Additionally, to turbo-charge this job search model, you must create meaningful employer-prospect lists that reasonably match the career you pursue, then put those lists to work as you methodically follow the steps below.
A PRIMARY STRATEGY – PAY ATTENTION, NUMBERS, RESEARCH
As you create and decide and plan which job or job title offers you choose to harvest, remember to collect, correspond and organize as many accurate facts and statistics as you can about your own job history that accurately illustrates your on-job performances relative to key workplace topics that are commonly discussed on your work-floor environment – statistics, such as, percentages of improvement or loss-control on various subjects that highlight your skills and successes; include ratios, comparisons, totals, breakdowns of production, growth margins, projections, and more, as you don’t know yet which of those prime-topic-stats will be of keen interest to any particular employer-prospect, so be prolific in this endeavor.
Next, constantly remind yourself that about seventy-percent of all job openings are not posted to any job board, nor even posted or discussed within an employer’s own business walls. Nonetheless, the US Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, confirms the aforementioned “about seventy-percent” figure, so don’t doubt it. And be sure… your doubts of it… won’t change the truth of the number, it holds fast despite your belief-system.
It is important to note that last observation, and remember it, at least during any job search using the job search strategies reported in this article. In fact, remember to check-at-the-door most previous job search beliefs, they will prove to be massive time and energy wasters; set them aside, especially those concepts that used to yield results but now prove to be impotent; like the rumor that if you send out enough copies of the same resume someone will call back. That may be work for certain entry-level jobs, but not careers. The tactics herein rely on accurate, repeating numbers. The job seeker performing certain numbers of job search tasks in a repeated, methodical manner, without fail, whose results always move things forward, towards a real job offer.
For some people, such activities may seem over-the-top — and these strategies do require some unorthodox but friendly snooping around, too, some may say – but not deemed such by any reasonable professional assessment. To secure career-level employment positions, you cannot be shy about making direct contact to business operators and employer managers who are not advertising to hire for your job specialty (and do not be too shy to communicate with their associated employees or ex-employees, too), as smart job seekers remember that many of those business operators and employer managers are also known to occasionally hire specialists with your sorts of skills – even when there are no obvious job openings available.
So first, you have to find those employer/managers then you have to pick their brains.
THE 2 TACTICS LIKELY TO GET YOU HIRED
In order to get the attention of an employer who is not advertising a job opening, don’t simply send a meek inquiry to HR requesting consideration for a job that doesn’t exist. That approach almost always fails.
Instead, (TACTIC #1) do what most job seekers are not willing to do… customize a special resume for each such potential employer; a resume that specifically addresses, in an unspoken manner, each employer’s individual workplace needs, and suggests you as the “superhero” solution to those specific and ongoing areas of business, which each employer/manager agrees could use some swift and measurable improvements – and how your resume statistics prove your ability to perform thusly. Then distribute that resume accordingly, per the steps below.
But how do you do that? How do you discover a business’ unspoken hiring needs before you even create and send your resume?
(TACTIC #2) It’s easier than you think. Prior to constructing each custom resume, perform research about each company you choose to pursue – this is serious business so organize and get on with the work ASAP and stay focused or you may lose your nerve to complete the tasks – discover the actual names of decision-makers who would approve, or contribute to a decision to, hire for the department or job-title or vocational specialty that you intend to pursue with each employer-prospect. And in your research, as you discover each business’ most urgent workplace hiring needs in your job specialty, you discover exactly which of your job skills and industry experiences to use to create a custom resume, and which related employment statistics may best impress each hiring manager.
To help identify decision-makers and other employees from specific industries and firms, consider to try the public library’s business directory sections, as they are often overlooked – but there are names in print-only industry directories that rarely appear online; yet don’t neglect the internet to find industry related contacts in social-mobi systems like Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn and the others; and don’t stop there, use industry and vocational oriented online blogs, forums or bulletin-boards or YahooGroups or other such social-net groups, where employees from the companies you have targeted may log-on to discuss related industry activities, or whose names and titles appear related to one or another business or public or private system or function which, for whatever reason, made its way online. Run search strings on major search engines to include names of your employer-prospects, any individual employee or ex-employee names that you may have uncovered already, and specific cities or states.
Often, results are easy to deliver. When examples arrive into your search-results, click through, read the various entries that best match your job search intentions. And check the history of job posts for each employer-prospect. Go back as far as possible for hiring trends and related job requirements and oft-quoted company benefits, etc.
Whatever you do, don’t be intrusive with any inquiries you may make via these channels, this is not corporate espionage, just a job search, so remain professional at all times, maybe make comments in-reply to others’ postings, re-tweet with comments, etc. – or, maybe — wait till you have a good idea of whom you may want to contact or reply to first and exactly what you want to say and ask, all the while capturing names, job titles, email addresses, fax and phone numbers and desk-extension numbers, and user names from business groups, social networks and forums you haunt. Those details often lead to obvious decision-makers and other employees within the companies you pursue; and sometimes it leads to companies unfamiliar to you, who later become employer-prospects, too.
Once you are fueled with names, departments and other details, call them. Get them on the phone, if possible, or at least speak with associated colleagues, Administrative Assistants or personal Secretaries to decision-makers, to ask important questions; inquiries that can confirm the names and titles of the persons that work and manage the areas of business where you seek employment; also, confirm status of any yet-to-be-posted job openings; and ask – hypothetically, if such a job was open, or in the past when the manager was hiring – what would most impress the hiring manager about a job candidate? It’s best to get that type of specific job information directly from the hiring-authority whenever possible, but sometimes it is difficult to reach them; so…
Don’t be shy about directly contacting actual working employees, including non-managers, in those same departments. Be friendly, not demanding or expectant, explain how much respect you have for the company (by this point you should have already researched each employer-prospect enough to state briefly, but meaningfully, about why you respect them). Tell them why you seek employment there. Ask for advice on the smartest way to navigate a path to a job offer, or tips on which areas of that department could use some help, and about any ongoing business challenges there relating to your areas of training.
Seem too intrusive? It’s not. It’s only about getting hired. Most folks who receive such phone calls, emails, chat or IM messages or those whom respond to tweets or comment on postings made previously on that or some other social-mobi system – most of us, worldwide, don’t mind to help. So don’t be afraid to ask for information.
With such business contact details in-hand, and having identified plenty of companies to research for the job you seek, begin to customize your resumes for each firm. Again – don’t be shy. Use each resume as your professional billboard, so to speak, to highlight your skills and successful experiences in solving specific work-floor issues, and have statistics to confirm it. Then utilize the email addresses, fax numbers and other hiring-agent contact data to release your customized resumes – one at a time — directly to the offices of each hiring authority (and/or to the closest contact to them), including HR; later, if things go well, let the hiring manager(s) guide you through HR processing. Prove it to yourself, when you impress the primary hiring-authority, and their associates, with know-how to repair their workplace issues – combined with a teamwork attitude — they draw their own conclusions, without the candidate speaking a word; as workplace performance statistics, confirm your success with similar issues. As you can see, whether on your resume, or cited in a phone call, or in emails, wherever – workplace statistics illustrate your results as they lend authority to any claims of anticipated performance if hired.
Relative to contacting employer-prospects… if you follow the processes reported in this article, and you talk and reach out to people in enough businesses – you will find company managers eager to talk to you about a possible job. Typically, no later than the fourth or fifth such serious employer-prospect follow-up inquiry and subsequent job interviews, or sooner, incites a job offer made by one or more employer.
So don’t give up on this approach to finding gainful, reliable employment. It is proven to generate hires – if you stick-with-it and perform every step in the process. Work this job search model as thoroughly as you will work the very job you pursue.
