Monday, October 3, 2011

Leave No Stone Unturned In Your Job Search

This man treats the job hunt like a full-time occupation. He prepares marketing materials to sell himself, gets on the phone and makes cold calls to set up appointments with prospective clients. Then he goes into the appointment to close the sale. Learn his practical but successful strategy.

My last professional position was a technical sales business development representative. I did the job the outside sales representatives did not want to do which was cold call for new business. I found the job through a combination of local job listing websites, Monster and my networking contacts. Some of my professional contacts told me a particular company was hiring, so I checked it out on a local job hunting site which directed me to the full job listing on Monster. It took me about six months of searching to find the job.

Over the years, my capacity as a hiring manager in previous positions had helped me to develop a professional job hunt process that was thorough and successful. One of the most important things I learned about hunting for a job is to use as many resources as you possibly can.

When I was job hunting I went to job fairs, talked to professional recruiters, used a variety of websites and kept working on developing my professional network. All of that work finally came together in finding the job I wanted, but it was definitely a collaborative effort.

The first piece of advice I would give about job hunting is you should not discount any possible leads. The professional networking contact I knew that helped me to find my job was not even in the hiring company's industry. He was part of a completely different kind of sales organization, but he had a couple of friends inside the hiring company that helped me to find my job.

Another good piece of advice is always be ready to sell yourself to anyone. When I was job searching, I made up business cards with my name and contact information on the front, and a quick summary of my qualifications on the back. I always had copies of my resume in my car ready to give to anyone. This came in extremely handy when I arrived at my first interview with the company that eventually hired me only to realize that I had forgotten to bring copies of my resume with me. Luckily, my preparations during my job search had me well-stocked on resumes in my glove compartment.

A final piece of advice I would give to people hunting for professional work is to be pleasant to every single person you come into contact with at the hiring company. I remember going through the interview process and being told by my eventual departmental manager that it was the receptionist's opinion that helped get me the job. I was being considered for the job along with two other very qualified people, but since I was very courteous to the receptionist she said that I had the most professional demeanor and that got me the job.

When you are job hunting, it is almost as if you are committed to your own company 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. You are always looking for that one break that will get you hired. It takes an incredible amount of work just to find that one opportunity that turns into a job. The one drawback to this aggressive approach to job searching is it is expensive. Between sending out standard mail resume packages (which you should still do even in the e-mail age), constantly dry cleaning my suits and gas to attend interviews and job hunting events, I was going through my savings at a frightening clip. You may want to add a budget to your job hunting process, which is something I had completely forgotten to do.

JustJobs.com is a job search engine that finds job listings from company career pages, other job boards, newspapers and associations. With one search, they help you find the job with your name on it.

Thanks to Just Job / Careerealism
http://www.careerealism.com/job-search-stone-unturned/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+careerealism+%28CAREEREALISM%29

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