Job Search Tips

Have you ever seen a coworker resign his position only to suddenly change their mind? You know that the company counter offered and bumped his salary in order to keep him. This happens and it is infuriating to loyal employees that don’t make waves. When is the company going to reward loyalty?

The answer is never. If you are waiting around for someone to tap you on the shoulder to reward your hard work and loyalty you will be waiting a very long time. It just doesn’t work that way in what I like to call reality.  In reality you must create a little tension to get your just rewards. You must cause a little friction. You must be willing to lay your cards on the table and clearly communicate what additional composition you are looking for.

Now before we continue let me point out the obvious fact that in order to be successful at requesting more money, you must be a valuable employee. If you have the feeling that no one would miss you if you left, then don’t bother. Just continue to sit back collecting paychecks until that inevitable day when your boss calls you into his office for a chat.

For those of you that remain congratulations! You are a valuable employee and your employer would not want to lose you. But how do you leverage this into an increased salary? This is a very tricky question with many different possibilities. Here is what I recommend.

First off you should quietly begin a job search looking for other career opportunities. You don’t want to start salary negotiations without having other options lined up. You also want to know with confidence what the current market salary for you skill set would be.

This kind of job search should be private. Don’t reveal your name, email address, phone number, address, or current employer. Contact a quality job search company to make this easy. Once you have a feel for the market place its time to formulate the message that you’ll be bringing to your current employer.

The first thing you want to do is get clear about what you want. Are you looking for a salary increase? If you are looking for a salary bump then how much do you want? You must never be vague when requesting a salary increase. Vague requests get vague responses.  Think in terms of percentage increases. For example your goal could be a 10% pay increase.

Don’t forget that you could also negotiate other items including time off.  I once used up all my time off due to the birth of my son and negotiated an extra paid week off.  Employers will often give you extra time off a lot easier then they will give you a pay increase because time off is a soft cost.

Once you have a goal in mind you must set a formal meeting with your supervisor and lay your cards on the table. I recommend that you prepare an update to date resume and list what you bring to the table. This is not the time to be modest. Lay out your accomplishments out and remind your employer why you are so valuable. Then make your request and provide back up information.  “I’m looking for a 10% salary increase which would put my salary in line with the current market for my skill set and productivity level.”  Put it out there and shut your mouth. Let you boss digest your request and come back with a response. You might be surprised his response.

One thing that you should never do is to use a job offer to club your current employer. This is bad protocol and has a high likelihood of getting you escorted out the door next to Johnny the security guard with a box full of cubical crap including a squeeze toy and red stapler.

This whole exercise involves leaving your comfort zone, but if you are willing to put yourself out there you might be pleasantly surprised at the results.

Energy Job

If you have been keeping you hat out of the job search ring because of the sluggish economy then read this article by Beth Gilfeather.  Now might be the perfect time to look for your next assignment.

I attended a Brian Tracy event in Fort Lauderdale last night. The event was amazing and as usual Brian Tracy offered great insights into personal success and achievement.

One of the topics covered at the event related to employment and job searching.  According to Mr. Tracy (and I believe this to be true) the average person learns how to perform their job in about 12 months.  Most people tend to coast after this. They don’t bother to develop themselves further. They do the minimum to get by,  they go on long coffee breaks, and they spend significant time engaging in idol chit chat with coworkers. In fact studies have shown that on average employees spend 50% of their work time in time wasting activities.

This becomes a problem when difficult economic times force  companies must implement layoffs. If you haven’t  steadily increased the value you offer your employer, you are in danger be being shown the door.

Coasting at work is still a problem if you company goes out of business. While it is true that you would have been let go regardless of the number of coffee breaks taken. The problem remains that because of those wasted hours you have less to offer the employment market. You have less doors open to you.

Don’t let this happen to you. One of the things that I coach my clients to do is to take on a self improvement project. Pick the one area of your professional life that is your greatest weakness. Then lay out a series of actions steps that you will undertake in order to turn this weakness into strength.

This project could be anything from mastering prospecting to becoming an excellent public speaker. There really are no limits to what skills you can improve if you set a goal and take immediate and consistent actions towards accomplishing that goal.

If you do this there will be much less chance that the world will pass you by.

Here is an important piece of information about success in your job search. If you have your resume posted on some of the online job boards you must make frequent updates.

The reason for this is simple. Job boards rank resumes by how old the resume is. This means that someone who posted their resume today would appear on top of the search results over someone who posted their resume a year ago.

Job boards rank resumes this way because someone who posted their resume today is more likely to sill be looking for a job vs. someone who posted their resume last year.

The bottom line is that if you are using online job boards (and you should be) then update your resume once a week. This will reset your resume and move you to the top of the search rankings.

By the way you don’t have to make radical changes. Simply change around a word or two.

Cheers

When looking for a job how much consideration do you give the company? The truth is people looking for a job often don’t consider the company very much. In my experience most job candidates that show up for interviews take at most five minutes to review the company’s website. This is the extent of their company research.

This is not a good game plan. When you choose to accept a position you are making one of the most significant decisions of your life. Think about it, with whom you spend more time with, your spouse or Joe in the next cube over. Usually you spend more waking hours around Joe then the person who you made vows with.

What kind of company is it? Do people tend to work 9 – 5 (at some company’s everyone works until 7:00 PM). How is the commute from where you live? Is the company in a growth field? Do you believe in their core product or service? What kind of charities is the company involved with? How are their employees treated? How do ex-employees speak about their experience with the company?

These are all important questions that you should have answered before agree to work for anyone. If you don’t know the answer then you will find out the hard way.

Check out this great article on searching for a job in tough times. I agree with everything in this article except for the part about spending four hours on your resume for each job you apply for.

I believe that it’s best to spend a lot of time upfront on a targeted resume, but you should only need 15 to 20 minutes to tweak your resume for a specific job.

However, if you are applying for jobs in different fields, you should spend the time  to create a tailored resume for each career you are interested.  By the way you might want to consider a professional resume writer.

Check out this free webinar.  Those who seek the answer always find it.

Free Webinar

I have a quick tip for anyone going through a difficult job search. Turn off the news for a week. Don’t watch news on TV, don’t read the newspaper, and don’t ready news sites on the world wide web.

The news feed you a steady stream of doom and gloom. Studies have show that people get depressed after consuming large quantities of news programming. So take a break.

Take that time and do something that you love. Talk a walk or go golfing. Whatever it is just don’t turn on CNN. I’ll bet after a week you will have a better outlook.

I’ve been talking about networking with respect to a job search. The best advice I can give is to just get out there and do it. Find an active local organization to join and get involved with. Become the kind of member who gets stuff done and is always looking for ways to help others. In addition to being an indirect source of job leads, this is also a great way to improve your resume.

Join some social networking sites (I recommend linkedin.com) and start participating. Find former classmates and coworkers and reconnect with them. If your choose linkedin I recommend that you participate in their answer’s module. You can build significant credibility by getting into the habit participating in the community.

This all comes down to developing the habit of networking. Spend one hour a day for 30 days on networking activities,  and I promise the second 30 days will be much easier to network.

If you are in the middle of a job search, you should consider utilizing social networking sites. The problem is that there are thousands of social networking sites so how should you proceed?

One thing I see people do and I don’t recommend is to create hundreds of accounts on every site you can get your little cyber fingers on. This is kind of like blasting your resume to thousands of employers on an online job board. Shotgun approaches like this tend to not work. I suggest you pick one (maybe two) social networking sites and focus your time and energy there.

I know of no better site, from a job search perspective, then linkedin.com. This site has a focus on professional networking, to that end it excels. Linkedin combines the elements of a job board with the tools of  a social networking site.

Getting started is simple. Point your web browser over to www.linkedin.com and create an account. Creating a linkedin account is almost the same as creating a resume. You will list your work and education history. Put as much information as possible as you will be using your work and education to find past classmates and coworkers.

The next step is to find people to link with. Linkedin will help you out by suggesting people based on your profile. For example if you worked at Company X five years ago, linkedin will suggest people who worked at the same company. Once you find people who you know simply send them an invitation t link with you.

Once they accept you can communicate with them and catch up. This is a great way to reconnect with people from your past and is one of the primary reasons I love linked in so much. You are able to reconnect with people from your past and build a network in almost no time.

Linked also offers some other features which you can discover yourself. I’ll write about them in future posts, but for know go out and start learning how to use linkedin. It’s a great tool for finding career leads.