What Not to Expect From a Job Search

At its core, the job search is a communication process.  It begins with a candidate asking themselves a simple question like, "Where can I find a job that will allow me to make the best use of my present skills while accomodating my desire to grow professionally?" From there they begin having numerous conversations with people in and out of their network until one day they find their answer.  At the end, the opportunity they take may or may not match what they originally hoped for.  What determines that is the accuracy ...

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Imagine that you have been going through job postings all day looking for what you feel is the perfect opportunity. After being on the market for months, you've learned a lot about what it is you want and don't want out of your next position. Plus you've been on enough interviews to know that you don't like the feeling of pretending to be someone you're not just to get the interviewers to accept you. You know what you have to offer and you're ready to get to work doing what you do best. All ...

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I remember when I was a kid and times were hard.  In order to save money, my mom used to supplement our food supply with the generic store brand stuff. I especially remember the "treats" that came in the black and white packaging.  The peanut butter, cookies, and the cheesy poofs were usually the worst, but a lot of the other stuff wasn't really that bad.  If I closed my eyes I could hardly tell the difference.  But despite that fact, when I went to my friends' house and saw Rice Crispies^TM and I had Rice Puff Cereal ...

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Thanks to Twitter I had the opportunity to chat with Eric Peterson, Manager of Diversity and Inclusion (D&I) for the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM). For those of you who may be hesitant to join social networks like Twitter, this is a perfect example of how you are denying yourself the opportunity to engage in meaningful dialogue with people that you may not have otherwise engaged. 

I happened to catch Mr. Peterson while he was on his way to give a talk at The Alliance for Full Acceptance (AFFA).  Below is our entire tweet stream on the topic ...

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For most candidates on the job market, getting to the hiring manager is like getting to the the Great Oz.  Everyone wants to see him, but in order to get to him or her you have to go through a great journey.  Also like in the Wizard of Oz, the hiring manager will likely remain a mystery until the end.  And once you meet them, you wind up seeing that they are person just like the candidate that has been searching for them.  Understanding this is where your opportunities lie.

In the job search, there is an overwhelming tendency toward ...

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In a  University of Pittsburgh College of General Studies posting (http://digg.com/u179cy), Carol Stanton, a CGS Career Counselor, compared the person on a job search to the role of a hero in a movie.  Her description was complete with the 10 major components to a hero's tale.  In brief they are:

• The Dream-What do you want to accomplish? What is the ideal you're working towards?
• The Hero-You, as the jobseeker, are the hero in your tale.
• Challenges-Every hero has to overcome challenges even if they are mostly internal.
• Allies and Helpers-Batman has Robin, Frodo had Samwise ...

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They say you can't judge a book by its cover, but in the case of your resume, you are giving the reader permission to do just that.  Consider for a moment that for any given position, there could be tens or even hundreds of resumes for a recruiter or hiring authority to look through.  Faced with these numbers, a person with a hunter's nature will surrender to instinct and begin the process of elimination. And what are most recruiters, if they're not hunters?

Imagine you're a lion or lioness in the wild seeking food for your ...

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« Making Every Interview A Success (Part 2)

Ask anyone who was on the job market ten years ago or more and they will tell you that it's not what it use to be.  But then again, nothing is the way it was 10 years ago.  Ten years ago there was no LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, or Google and the only "Green" most people were thinking about was money.  But as the world became more connected and inevitably more social, changes became more transparent and we gained the ability to watch evolution occur in real time.

Instant feedback is now the ...

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