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Five Ways For Job Vacancies To Find You
Here is something I have adapted From
What Color Is Your Parachute?
Three Things You Need To Know
- 1.As long as there is business and government, there are jobs.
- 2.Whether you find these jobs or not, depends on you.
3.When you market yourself for a job - you will be found.
The five top 5 Ways for you to get a job:
- Approaching contacts has a 33% Success Rate.
LinkedIn can provide you 30,000,000 contacts when you know how. - Knocking on company doors has a 47% success rate.
LinkedIn will provide the people to have coffee with. - Cold calling companies has a 69% success rate.
LinkedIn provides the contacts so it can be a warm call. - Group job hunting has an 84% success rate.
LinkedIn connects you with other Job Hunters with similar interests. - Creative job hunting has an 86% Success rate.
A great LinkedIn presence attracts Recruiters and Employers to contact you and provide you with your next job.
LinkedIn For Job Hunters
November 26, 2008
- Marketing Yourself With LinkedIn 9:30- 10:00
- How The Recruiter Uses LinkedIn To Find You. 10:00-11:00
- Creating A Profile So You Will Be Found And Called 11:00 - 12:30
Lunch 12:30 - 1:00
- How To Write For LinkedIn 1:00 - 2:00
- Using LinkedIn Answers To Create Credibility 2:00 - 3:00
- How to grow your LinkedIn network 3:00 - 4:00
CareerDoor.ZaleTabakman.ca
Regular price: $349.00
My gift to you for attending, only $299.00
Signup using code “ITakeAction”
Popularity: 1% [?]
Does Your Resume Have These Five Mistakes?
On November 19th, 2008 I was invited to help out at the HiTech job fair in Toronto run by CareerDoor. There were over 20 employers present and over 800 job seekers job hunters attended.
Attending the fair were project managers, system administrators, programmers, product managers, business analysts, etc. The job hunters attending had between eight years experience and twenty years experience. Some currently had jobs, but most did not.
I was asked to run a resume review desk for the day and must of reviewed two hundred. There were two of us at the table and we started at 10:00 and went to after 4:00. At no time were there less than 10 people lined up, many didn’t bother lining up because of the delay.
I asked the people how much they expected to make. The answers were between $40,000 and $100,000 with the majority in the $60,000 to $75,000 range.
All the job hunters had at least one degree, many had multiple degrees.
What surprised me most was that these educated professionals was that most did not have the basic skills to market themselves. I consistently saw the same mistakes in marketing in the resume over and over again. When I pointed out some of the changes required and why, they quickly understood why these mistakes needed to be fixed.
A resume and an advertisement are the same thing. They are intended to sell something by using words. The resume is selling a person to an employer, the advertisement is selling a product or service. The people who write advertisements have a whole set of techniques that have been developed over the last 80 years of modern advertising. (Click here to find copywriting articles on www.ZaleTabakman.ca. Copywriting - is what a person who writes advertisements and sales letters does.)
Remember, the person doesn’t buy because of the advertisement, they need to go out and take the purchase action. In the same way, you don’t get hired from the resume, you get a job interview from the resume.
Let’s look at the five mistakes.
The resume and cover letter package must be treated like a sales letter. The resume and cover letter package has one point and one point only. Its purpose is to get you the job hunter into a job interview. A job hunter who wants a job worth $50,000 or more, needs to have a resume that t reflect its value as a sales letter. A resume and cover letter will lead to a job that pays $200 a day for somebody earning $50,000 a year. To demonstrate how they needed to think about the value of the resume, I asked a simple question. “How much is you car worth?” I was answered between $3,000 and $21,000. I asked then asked “How much do you spend on maintaining the asset worth this much a year? The answer was about $300 a month. I then asked one last question, “Your resume will bring you $50,000 a year, how much time and money should you be spending on the resume and job hunt?”
The objective or skills summary doesn’t show how you solve a problem. Almost every resume had an objective section that read like this: “I am a highly motivated self starting team player who is looking for an exciting career where I can learn new skills and contribute to the growth of the company”. There were some variations with the most exciting one having included the number of years of work experience.
Writing an objective like this is a total waste of time.
The objective section is the headline of an advertisement. It must do two things - it must solve a problem and make a promise. The problem you must solve is the potential employer’s problem and the promise is what you can deliver in your job.
Here are a few examples of some objectives I developed during the day.
- “To provide System Administration function delivering above average uptimes in a mixed Windows and Linux server environment“. “
- To manage a customer service operation that delivers customer service satisfaction of 84%“
All these objectives were achievements made by the job hunter buried deep in the resume.
You must connect your objective to a problem that you can solve. The rest o tthe resume must then support the promise you make.
You should have lots of different resumes, with slightly different objectives and slightly different wording. Each stressing something different just like advertisers do have different advertisements for different customer needs.
Write your resume for the person employing you. When I right advertising copy the first thing I do is picture in my mind the person I am writing for. I then write down everything I can think about this person. What they are worried about, what they do to solve their problem, how they spend their day.
This is the standard process for every good copywriter. It is the first step and most important step in writing any good content.
For the job hunter, here is what you can do. Pick one of the toughest bosses you have ever had. Write the resume like you would a report or a presentation to that boss. Include in your resume the material and content that boss would be interested in.
Get rid of material that is unimportant. Who cares what you did in 1995? Do you care what I did back then? Then why should the employer? It was ten years ago and hopefully you have moved on from it. Only include content that is directly relevant to the promise or the problem in your objective.
Make entries as simple as company name, title, and years you worked at the location.If there was a substantial project that can be relevant today, then include it.
For example, if you are applying for a tech job at a bank, including projects of financial nature are important, but only the minimum amount of information for any job over five years ago. The world has changed, and the only thing relevant from five years ago, was that you were working and not in jail. There is exceptions to this rule, but make sure your situation is really an exception. Getting rid of extra stuff will make more room on the resume for material that is relevant and interesting.
Read your resume out loud line by line. Copywriters have people read their content out loud to them. They read their content out loud as a proof reading method to find simple mistakes. But even, more important, they want to hear what it “sounds like” in the readers head. If it doesn’t sound right, it won’t sell the product. Reading out loud as fast as you can, because thats how fast people read. Reading will find silly repetitions, identify vague sentences,
A bonus sixth mistake - make sure you are specific. Instead of saying “Increased substantially customer response time” you can say “Customer response time went from 1 day to 3 hours with a reduction of 17%. Find a number that quantifies the achievement. If you don’t know the number up, make an approximation and be able to explain that it was an approximation and how you came to calculate it in the interview. Don’t ever lie. The more important the number, the less you should approximate it. If it comes up in the interview, it was important.
These are some of the ideas I apply in my course “LinkedIn For Job Hunters”, a full day course helping job hunters leverage the 30,000 million people on LinkedIn to find a job. You can find out more about LinkedIn For Job Hunters by clicking here.
Popularity: 1% [?]
How To Create A Marketing Test Program
Most companies t know that 50% of their advertising is wasted, but they don’t know which 50% is being wasted.
Wouldn’t you like to know how to create an marketing campaign that doesn’t waste 50% of the budget?
Many companies want to create a full scale marketing campaign and test it for under $5,000.
Variations in marketing include the headline, the offering, the value proposition, and WHAT IS THE buyer looking for. This combination has been driving marketing people Mad for years.
And the solutions is Test, Test, and Test.
People have used different solutions over the years
- Using direct mail with a sample list
- Using split run advertising
All these are good, but they are expensive. You need to run several thousand copies to get a significant result.
That was before the Internet and Google AdWords.
I have developed a process and a system that will generate up to 5,000,000 different possible solutions. I don’ recommend that many, because you don’t need that many.
With my process you will know with certainty what campaign should work.
I use AdWords for testing.
I recommend you allow the system to run for several weeks. You will know exactly what is attracting leads.
Using the results of the AdWords campaign, you can then create an effective
- e-mail campaign
- print media campaign
- direct marketing campaign
- Billboard campaign
I create an effective AdWords campaign which includes the following:
- One or more landing pages to capture the leads generated. It can go into your lead generation software, If you don’t have one, I can set it up for you. (Additional charges apply). The landing page will be based on your content. The landing page is important, the content on the landing page helps decide if Google when Google will display your campaign. The landing page quality is used with the keywords and the copy on the AdWord.
The landing page tests the effectiveness of the copy to close business. - 50 Different Headlines - The headline is the top line of AdWords ad. (This is the copy in bold). 50 Different headlines means you don’t have to choose the most effective headline. Once your program has been in place for a while, you can then use the headlines for an e-mail campaign.
The headline tests the effectiveness of your ad. - 10 Different “Value proposition/Call To Action” Statements - The second and third lines of an AdWords campaign. This is call to action that will send the prospect to the landing page.
This copy will test which sale propositon pulls the best. - 10,000 Keywords - Keywords are what Google uses to figure out if your text ad should be displayed. I don’t actually figure out 10,000 different key words, rather, I find about 100 to 150 and then use those keywords to generate the rest of the keywords.
The keywords tell you what the client is looking for.
I recommend a AdWord budget of $750 a month and allow the test to run for a 3 months.
You can do it all yourself, or have me do it for you. Since I am excellent copywriter and understand how to right excellent copy, I understand Google Adwords, it will be faster and cheaper to have me do it.
Here is a (simplified) version of my adWords campaign for my Curves Franchise.
Click here to purchase a campaign from me.
Once you have made your order, I will contact via e-mail or phone to discuss the details of the campaign.
It takes about two weeks for me to get it up and running.
Popularity: 2% [?]
How To Be An “Ideal Candidate” On LinkedIn
Finding a job is hard, but there are jobs out there. The challenge is getting yourself found by the job vacancy.
Monster, Workapolis, and other sites is one way to start. According to What Is The Color Of Your Parachute, this only find 10% to 4% of the jobs. So while you can’t count on it, your resume should be on these sites, The resume must include a link to your LinkedIn profile.
By mailing resumes out to employers randomly, 7% of people who do this actually get jobs so its another strategy to use. Mail is better than e-mail, because its something people can touch. Sending via FedEx makes it more likely to be read, however this is an expensive approach.
Answering an ad in a professional journal related to your “Ideal Job” again generates 7% of the jobs. So make sure you are on the list of both print and online journals related to your “Ideal Job”.
Answering a newspaper ads gets 24% to 5% of the jobs filled. But, unfortunately for people earning $75,000 a year and more, the 5% is more likely.
Using a recruiter or an employment agency is better at 5% to 28% and this ratio is improving. You need to be able to be found by recruiters. The more the better the chance of finding a job.
There are even better routes than this all of which can be implemented with LinkedIn.
- 33% of people find jobs through their family and friend connections.
- 47% of people find jobs by knocking on the door of companies that interest them.
- 69% of people find jobs by contacting companies that are of specific interest to them
- 84% of people find jobs by working with others together and sharing the efforts.
- 86% of people find jobs by doing things differently in their job hunt
If you have been searching for over three weeks and haven’t had any interviews, its time to start doing things differently. Be part of the 86% who do things differently. Get the LinkedIn skills you need to market yourself on LinkedIn.
The best way to find a job is for the job vacancy to find you.
Your goal is to create a situation that every time a recruiter or an employer is looking for an “Ideal Candidate” that is your “Ideal Job” you are found by the recruiter or the employer and they contact you to discuss the job.
LinkedIn is the place where recruiters employers now go to find executives. The recruiter or employer does searches and reads profile after profile to find the “Ideal Candidate”. You need to be seen as an “Ideal Candidate”.
Thousands of employers and recruiters are searching LinkedIn every day to find the “Ideal Candidate”.
To be found, you need to learn how to make the best use of LinkedIn possible.
- You need to learn how to make a profile that can be found by a search engine. Both the LinkedIn search engine and the Google search engine. Yes, Google will find you in LinkedIn.
- You need to learn how to make a profile that will engage the employer and the recruiter and make them say “Ideal Candidate” and make them contact you.
- You need to learn how to use LinkedIn Answers to build your credibility.
- You need to build a large LinkedIn network so that the recruiters and employers can find you.
You need to really understand how LinkedIn works.
In LinkedIn for Job Hunters I teach these skills. The course teaches all the core features of LinkedIn and how step-by-step to use these features in your job hunt
Wireless access means job hunters who bring their own computers, can apply immediately the lessons they learn. The content can be discussed in the classroom.
LinkedIn For Job Hunters is priced at $349. for a simple marketing reason. The course should easily pay for its self. When you make $75,000 a year, your daily salary is $300. With the $50 discount coupon ITakeAction the price becomes $299. Less than one day’s pay. The return on investment is excellent.
You get a 100% ROI for every day that you have your new job. For executives earning more than $75,000 the ROI is even better.Calculate your own ROI by following these two steps:
- DailyRate = YearlySalary/250.
- ROI = DailyRate/299 x 100%
Ii ts important that you have a large network of people to be connected to. Recruiters are the best people to connect to on LinkedIn for several reasons. They have the absolute largest network of any group because they work VERY hard at growing their network. They need to find qualified candidates. They are also connected to each other, because they share recruiting fees. So even a small list of recruiters in your network will have a major impact on your ability to find a job.
I provide every body who attends LinkedIn For Job Hunters, a list of recruiters who will immediately provide you a LinkedIn network of several million people. This is a significant bonus. It makes you immediately available to those recruiters you connect with, and all the other recruiters they are connected with, and all the employers they are connected with.
Go to http://LinkedinForJobHuntersBy.ZaleTabakman.ca to sign up for LinkedIn For Job Hunters.
Use the code ITakeAction to get the $50 discount so that the course will only cost you $299, less than one days pay.
With an excellent profile you will be the “Ideal Candidate” for the employers and recruiters. They recruiter and employer can find you and once they read your profile and other things I will teach you, you will be contacted for the “Ideal Job” because you have presented yourself as the “Ideal Candidate”.
You need to start with a deep understanding of how LinkedIn works. Not just what the buttons and links do, but why each link and button is there and how it effects your job search. Each button and link can be leveraged in a different way.
Next you need to do a field by field analysis of what should be put in the profile fields for the job hunter. The job hunter has to address two different readers, the electronic search (including the Google Search Engine) and an employer or recruiter whom you want to contact you.
I do this on my profile and every bit of LinkedIn content I create. Everyday I am found in hundreds of searches on LinkedIn. My profile is viewed over and over again. I am contacted by people all over the world on LinkedIn. These contacts create opportunities for me each and every day. To be contacted like I am, then you need to create a profile that attracts people.
If you want to change the results for the better in your job hunt, sign up at http://LinkedinForJobHuntersBy.ZaleTabakman.ca for LinkedIn For Job Hunters.
There is much more to LinkedIn than just the simple search for an employer or recruiter to find you. And you can use more than just the profile to engage the employer and the recruiter and get them to contact you.
If you want to read about how What Color Is Your Parachute applies to LinkedIn, I have detailed article that can be found at: http://www.zaletabakman.ca/2008/11/12/book-review-what-color-is-your-parachute/
If you want some more general advice on Job Hunting with LinkedIn can be found at Using LinkedIn To Find A Job.
If you want an example of how Zale does training, click here for Seven Ways To Generate Business With LinkedIn an online Flash course that is totally without cost and you don’t have to provide information to watch it.
I teach my skills on a one to one basis in LinkedIn For Job Hunters.
SIgn up for LinkedIn For Job Hunters at http://LinkedinForJobHuntersBy.ZaleTabakman.ca to take an action to get your self a job. Use the code ITakeAction to save $50.
Popularity: 3% [?]
LinkedIn and What Color Is Your Parachute? - A Practical Guide
A Practical Manual For Job-Hunters and Career-Changers
Through my course LinkedIn for Job Hunters I am being asked frequently about how certain books and ideas apply to Job Hunters and LinkedIn. One book comes up more frequently than any other. That is What Color Is Your Parachute by Richard Nelson Bolles. And the question that gets asked most is - how does the book apply to LinkedIn? I love the book and I think its an amazing resource.
Here I would like to provide some insight in answering the question. The book claims “To Be The Best-Selling Job-Hunting Book in the World”, I am not sure of that, but it certainly should be. I have taken some of the ideas I teach in my course and connect them to the chapters of What Color Is Your Parachute? (For people who have taken the course, I have connected the course items to the sections of the book)
This review just scratches the surface of the book and is intended just to highlight how to apply many of the ideas in LinkedIn.
Chapter 1 - A Hunting We Will Go
Many job hunters at the executive level say they want a “job that they can learn”, “a job that is interesting”, “a job paying 75,000+ a year” or some other vague description. This is a process for job hunt disaster, if you don’t know what you want, you can never get it. Bolles’s main thesis in the book is helping the job hunter understand what they want and helping them get there. This is its brilliance. If you are crystal clear about what you want, you are 50% of the way to getting it, all that is left is the how. Most people start doing the how and their efforts are shot gun. Meaning that get results all over the place, rather than the specific results they want. It seems they are making progress, but in fact are not. If you know what you want every step on the way to your goal, then you will know if you are making progress. Bolles helps you to determine what you really want from your career.
It is much different is the statements “I want an accounting job” compared to “I want a mid-level accounting job in North Toronto that pays me a minimum of $82,000 a year. The company needs to have between 15 and 50 accounts. I require the company to provide life insurance benefits that includes dental and therapy”. In the first statement people won’t be able to think of anybody to help you, in the second statement, they can identify the accounting firms that can help you. You as the job-hunter will be able to focus your efforts on identifying the potential companies.
Once you have identified them the implications for LinkedIn are fantastic:
- You can approach people who work in those companies through LinkedIn, or
- You can create a LinkedIn profile that will attract the kind of companies you are interested in.
Bolles spends pages and pages helping prepare the job-hunter emotionally and mentally for the job hunt. I agree this is the most important part of the job hunt. We differ in that Boles doesn’t spend much time on using online marketing techniques. I take the approach that the job hunt as a marketing problem. The job hunt is about marketing yourself and the sale is getting the job. Your resume is an advertisement for you and therefore needs to be written that way. We both agree that the job hunt is about identifying the correct customer or employer as he calls it.
The book is a fabulous help to an executive serious about their job hunt. You are well advised to get a copy of it.
Chapter 2 - Rejection Shock
Bolles explains clearly why job hunting is a numbers game. He explains that to get the job you want, you need to receive 2-3 job offers. To receive the job offers you probably need to be interviewed by 6-9 companies with a known job vacancy. To get one job offers you will need to send out 100 - 500 resumes. Therefore to get your job, you will need 2 x 6 x 100 = 1200 resumes at a minimum or 3 x 9 x 500= 13,500 resumes. That is a lot of postage if you send out the resumes by letter.
The solution of course is the Internet. But, everybody else also knows that problem. Therefore to get a job is a lot of work. Monster and Workapolis have hundreds of thousands of resumes online. So when you add your resume their, you are competing against those hundreds of 100,000’s of people.
This is why LinkedIn works so well. For example, a connection to me adds 2,412,172 people into your network. Now only a small number of those people have jobs openings for you. But it is a start to meeting your goal of having 13,500 who have jobs be connected to you. If you identify 135 cities in North America then you need only 10 recruiters each with 10 jobs the numbers work: 135 x 10 x 10 = 13,500. It is not an unreasonable goal to connect to the 13,500 recruiters you need. ( This is covered in the session How To Grow Your LinkedIn Network and How The Recruiter Uses LinkedIn to Find You in LinkedIn For Job Hunters)
Chapter 3 - You Can Do It
In this Chapter Bolles focuses on three points that are fundamental for job hunters to understand:
- As long as there is business and government, there are jobs available.
- Whether you find these jobs or not, depends on you.
- You need to learn how to market yourself to find the correct job.
Bolles provides several recommendations which apply to LinkedIn:
- Asking for help by approaching contacts. By connecting to me, you will have over 2,000,000 people to contact. But, you can’t just ask for their help. He says this has a 33% success rate.
- Knocking on the door of companies to ask for a job of companies that you know are hiring. LinkedIn helps you find the people to speak with. But, don’t just show up. That would be too weird. This has a 47% success rate.
- Bolles recommends using the Yellow Pages and cold calling. I recommend LinkedIn since it provides a City and industry search, which is effectively the same thing and you have the name of somebody to contact. This has a 69% success rate.
- Bolles recommends of forming a group with others and using the Yellow Pages and sharing job vacancies. I recommend LinkedIn to find other job hunters and work together to find a job. (Attending my LinkedIn For Job Hunters course are great way to meet others as well.)
- Lastly Bolles speaks of being creative in your job hunt and that method has an 86% Success rate. Being creative is all about knowing who you are, knowing what you want, and finding those companies that need you and what you offer.
(Applying these skills in the sessions Marketing Yourself With LinkedIn 101 and Creating A Profile So You Will Be Found And Called and How to grow your LinkedIn network)
Chapter 4 - What, Do You Have To Offer The World?
In Chapter 4. Bolles helps you identify what kind of job you want. This directly applies to LinkedIn as it creates the kind of LinkedIn profile you need. The steps and content can be used in different places in LinkedIn.. This Chapter powerfully makes the case for the use of transferable skills. The list of skills as verbs is useful for LinkedIn. Google and other searching relies on text for results. The better you can describe yourself and your skills the more effect your job hunt will be and the quicker you will find a job.
(These topics are applied in How To Write For LinkedIn and Creating A Profile So You Will Be Found and Called)
Chapter 5 - Where Do You Want To Do It?
In Chapter 5, Bolles immediately identifies 10 different career dreams and then spends the entire chapter helping you figure out which dream fits you the best. A powerful methodology and by far the largest chapter. He guides you on the process to analyze each of the choices that you can make during your job hunt. Choices require that you contact people. Connecting on LinkedIn makes it is to find the people and contact them. LinkedIn becomes the powerful tool to research each of your dreams.
In this chapter Bolles helps you create an inventory of where you have been. This inventory provides lots of content that can be applied to LinkedIn. On LinkedIn, the size of content if written correctly can be as big as you want it to be. On a resume, its important to be concise and to the point. Longer than two pages and the information is lost. On LinkedIn a resume can be ten pages long. Nobody cares because they can ignore the extra content. A covering letter has to be simple and focused. The LinkedIn equivalent can be written multiple times in many different places.
(Sessions How To Write For LinkedIn and Marketing Yourself With LinkedIn explains how LinkedIn can be used.)
Chapter 6 How Do You Obtain Such A Job
In Chapter 6, the author identifies 12 ways to speed up your job hunt. Every one of them can use LinkedIn.
- Treat your job hunt as a 9:00-5:00 job. There are innumerable ways to use and create a presence on LinkedIn.
- Find some kind of support group. LinkedIn provides multiple ways to find people to help you.
- Enlist your contacts. LinkedIn is all about contacts.
- Expand your contacts. This is self-explanatory.
- Go after any place that interests you. With LinkedIn you can probably find the name of somebody to contact there.
- Go after organizations with twenty or less employees. A LinkedIn filter search.
- Don’t send a resume to a place that interests, visit the place. With LinkedIn you have a name to take out for lunch.
- Visit at least 2 employers each weekday, face to face. Just don’t show up at a LinkedIn contact, call and bring coffee.
- When all other approaches fail, canvass by telephone. LinkedIn provides you the contact information, 411 can provide you the telephone number.
- To speed up your job search, be willing to look at different jobs. LinkedIn can provide you lots of jobs, a large LinkedIn network will connect you to people in those companies.
- Zero in on several organizations, not just one. LinkedIn can provide you lots of companies you have never heard of.
- Even if all your attempts to speed up your job-search don’t seem to be paying off. don’t give up. Every day my network increases by 25,000 people. Therefore, so does yours. The job opportunities are there. You just need to find them,
In the remaining parts of the Chapter, Bolles helps you in the steps needed to approach employers and then about how to handle the job interview. All great material. What is important is that your LinkedIn presence be consistent with what you will do in the interview.
(We cover this in Using LinkedIn Answers To Create Credibility and How To Write For LinkedIn)
Epilogue - How To Find Your Mission In Life
This chapter is different than the rest. Its all about the higher purpose in life. The author is clear that its a Christian perspective. As an Orthodox Jew, I don’t necessarily agree with many of the details which reflect Christian doctrine. But, that doesn’t take away from the power of the importance of the chapter.It reflects a world view that is consistent with most faiths I am familiar with. If reading this kind of material offends you, I recommend that you skip it. It is excellent material for people looking for meaning in life.
If you are interested in learning more about LinkedIn For Job Hunters click here.
Popularity: 7% [?]