Day: October 18, 2016

Two Ways to Use Twitter in Your Job Search

by

Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter discusses two ways to use Twitter has part of your job search.

 

[spp-transcript]

I want to talk with you today about using Twitter as part of your job search. I’m not going to explain what Twitter is; if you don’t know anything about it, you’re going to have to research it elsewhere.

I want to suggest two things for you:

1. Follow recruiters, headhunters, employment agencies and hiring managers at firms that you target. If they say something that is interesting to you, try to engage them in conversation. Especially with hiring managers, it becomes a way to create a favorable impression with them.

2. Use Twitter search to follow conversations that relate to your particular area of expertise. Let’s say, you are a Java developer, #java becomes a way that you can find conversations to follow.#javajobs or #java-jobs might be a way that you can find Java positions that you might fit.

Twitter is vastly underutilized for job hunting. There is a lot less competition on sweeter to get the attention of hiring managers and recruiters if you are trying to reach out to them through Twitter.

If you want to reach out to me by the way, my handle is @TheBigGameHuntr.

Follow me on Twitter. Follow me around the web.

[/spp-transcript];

 

Do you think employers are trying to help you? You already know you can’t trust recruiters—they tell you as much as they think you need to know to take the job they after representing so they collect their payday.

The skills needed to find a job are different yet complement the skills needed to do a job.

Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter has been a career coach and recruiter for what seems like one hundred years.

JobSearchCoachingHQ.com changes that with great advice for job hunters—videos, my books and guides to job hunting, podcasts, articles, PLUS a community for you to ask questions of PLUS the ability to ask me questions where I function as your ally with no conflict of interest answering your questions.

Connect with me on LinkedIn

You can order a copy of “Diagnosing Your Job Search Problems” for Kindle for $.99 and receive free Kindle versions of “No BS Resume Advice” and “Interview Preparation.”

Don’t forget to give the show 5 stars and a good review in iTunes

How Fatal Is This Cover Letter Mistake? – Job Search Radio

by

A person continues by writing, “Last week I sent out 8 cover letters, and today I realized instead of “I am writing to apply”, I wrote “I am applying to write”. Eek! How embarrassing. Would this be make or break for you? I haven’t heard back from them yet, but it’s only been a week so I wasn’t worried”

[spp-transcript]

This is a question I read from someone; I think it’s a useful question because it speaks to the heart of mistakes people make with cover letters.

How fatal is this mistake?

Last week, I sent out 8 cover letters; today, I realized that instead of writing, “I am writing to apply,” I wrote, “I am applying to write.” How embarassing!

Would this be “make or break for you? I haven’t heard back from them but it has only been a week.

So the question is “how fatal is this mistake? As always, the answer is, “It depends.”

Depends on the nature of the job involved. Depends on whether anyone actually read your cover letter. For example, if you set it as an attachment, no one read it. It depends on the nature of the role; if you are applying for a writing job and you wrote that, it can be fatal. If you wrote for most positions, no one really cares.

They might gloss over it because people read resumes and cover letters in 6 seconds or less. In cover letters, it’s often less. If this was your “typical innocuous cover letter” sent as an attachment, no one read it. If this was a “typical innocuous letter” put into the body of an email, someone might have skimmed it quickly to see if there was something relevant in it (if it is like most cover letters, there is nothing relevant in it).

Frankly, I wouldn’t worry about it. What seems more damning is that it has been a week since you applied and no one has contacted you.You said, “only a week;” if you’re an experienced professional, that is usually the “kiss of death.” It would seem that your resume was the bigger problem, not your cover letter. If resumes don’t make the case for your candidacy, you’re not hearing from an employer. Employers only care about whether a resume “vaguely fits” what they are looking for.

So, I’m less concerned with the cover letter; I am more concerned that you haven’t gotten a response. The likelihood is you’re not going hear from them. Not having read your resume or seen the position description, I have no basis to judge why. They may have seen stronger people with tighter matches . . . many different reasons. Don’t worry about the mistake; it’s unlikely anyone noticed.

[/spp-transcript]

Do you think employers are trying to help you? You already know you can’t trust recruiters—they tell as they think you need to know to take the job they after representing so they collect their payday.

The skills needed to find a job are different yet complement the skills needed to do a job.

Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter has been a career coach and recruiter for what seems like one hundred years.

JobSearchCoachingHQ.com is there to change that with great advice for job hunters—videos, my books and guides to job hunting, podcasts, articles, PLUS a community for you to ask questions of PLUS the ability to ask me questions where I function as your ally with no conflict of interest answering your questions.

Connect with me on LinkedIn

What Are You Selling?

by

peddler1

My father and mother were born in Poland, met in Siberia and emigrated to the United States after World War II. My Dad was a bookkeeper for a firm that he eventually bought from the founder’s son who was in the process of running it into the ground.

I worked for him as a teenager doing filing and proofing columns. I was not made for such work. It bored me into having blisters in my brain (metaphorical blisters).

One day as we got into his car to drive home, he looked at me and said, “Jeffrey (he always called me “Jeffrey), you can work with your hands or with your head.” I interpreted this father-son moment as meaning, you know nothing about working with your hands. Start focusing on my head.

The term, “knowledge worker” describes a lot of what my father meant. Many of you, like me, sell our knowledge of how something is done, should be done or can be done to employers who pay is for that work. But what happens in an age where such knowledge is readily available and the cost of obtaining that knowledge is declining because of its ready availability?

Using the example of manufacturing, it seems like when certain knowledge or experience is “commoditized,” technology has made it easy for the work to be sent abroad. Even adding the cost of shipping to the manufacturing cost allows firms to earn more than if the job remains in a higher cost market. We have seen the same occurring in what were once called “white collar jobs,” but can be thought of as “knowledge work.”

For most of us who are selling knowledge and experience, what are you actually selling to an employer that they should buy?

Continued

Do you think employers are trying to help you? You already know you can’t trust recruiters—they tell you as much as they think you need to know to take the job they after representing so they collect their payday.

The skills needed to find a job are different yet complement the skills needed to do a job.

Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter has been a career coach and recruiter for what seems like one hundred years.

JobSearchCoachingHQ.com changes that with great advice for job hunters—videos, my books and guides to job hunting, podcasts, articles, PLUS a community for you to ask questions of PLUS the ability to ask me questions where I function as your ally with no conflict of interest answering your questions.

Connect with me on LinkedIn

You can order a copy of “Diagnosing Your Job Search Problems” for Kindle for $.99 and receive free Kindle versions of “No BS Resume Advice” and “Interview Preparation.” Connect with me on LinkedIn and message me if you want to buy a PDF.