Jobs

The Easiest Way to Apply Isn’t Usually the Best Way – No BS Job Search Advice Radio

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Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter discourages you from applying to jobs using convenient buttons on job listings.

[spp-transcript]

today, I’m going to talk with you about a mistake the job hunters are making our convenience. Often, at the end of the job description, there are a group of buttons that allow you to apply with LinkedIn, apply with indeed, or apply with monster. These are not ideal ways of applying for jobs.

They are easy and convenient ways but they are not ideal. Let me give you an example.

You see a job description and say to yourself, “this is easy. All I have to do is click the apply with LinkedIn gotten.” Here the problems:

  1. LinkedIn usually doesn’t give you a great resume. Most of you right your profiles as a synopsis of your experience. So it’s kind of thin.
  2. For all of these, whether you use LinkedIn, indeed, or monster, you haven’t tailored the submittal to what the client is looking for. You are sending a generic response.

Before you actually apply using one of these buttons, think to yourself, “what am I sending? How does it demonstrate that I actually fit the job that’s involved?”

Without that, you’re actually flipping a bad resume like a burger at a fast food restaurant to the job at.

With many of these, certainly with the LinkedIn profile, many of you don’t put a phone number in your profile or open up your email address to the receiver. How was someone supposed to contact you? An email exchange? No! We are there to interview you. We want to talk to you.

Replying by email saying, “send me your phone number please. I would like to call you.” Garbage! It’s a waste of time!

If you think were making that phone call first when we have people who actually gave us their phone number to call them and made it easy for us to reach out to them, you’re mistaken.

[/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

A Creative Way to Use Facebook for Job Hunting

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Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter discusses a creative way to use Facebook for job hunting.

[spp-transcript]

This is a creative tip and I say it’s a creative tip because it is an underutilized one. I know with Google, you are used to seeing advertising around the page and I’m sure you’ve noticed that Facebook does the same thing.

Facebook is remarkably inexpensive and terrific way to promote yourself. For you people in a creative field, why not do a campaign on Facebook. It’s very inexpensive; you can choose the demographics of who the ad is displayed to. You can run campaigns for a few dollars per day and put your impressions in front of people, perhaps link it back to a website or page on Facebook where you can promote yourself and your capabilities.

Creative ideas like this for creative professionals go a long way toward helping you stand out from your competition. Don’t just go for the conventional route. Look for ways that you can reach out to individuals who might be a position to go, “how. That’s a great idea!” Click through to you and then be interested in meeting with you.

[/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

Stop Hitting Your Head Against the Wall

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Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter speaks to those who are finding it impossible to find work and offers them a suggestion that will help.

[spp-transcript]

For some of you, you been hitting your head against the wall in your job search now for what seemed like an eternity. Your getting no results. And by the way, an eternity is not a week. But this can apply to you as well during the time that you are searching. But this is really a tip for the long-term unemployed. For folks who are just hitting their head against the wall. And this could be true of veteran individuals and it’s certainly true of people who try to launch – – graduated school – – and just not getting anywhere.

What can you do? What can you do in the face of all this mounting pressure that you’re feeling to find work? All the the lack of results that you’re getting. What can you do? The answer is create your own job.

Creating your own job can be as simple as, if you’re a writer, you start doing freelancing. You market yourself as a freelancer. You blog. You do a variety of different things that help other individuals through your efforts. Through that, you are going to publicize yourself. People will find your the web. You will mobilize yourself to get out and about in completely different ways so that, when all is said and done, people are going to learn about you.

I found with one person I was speaking with yesterday, she wound up with offers based upon her writing and her blogging and a variety of other things that she was doing. The same can happen for you.

You may be a marketing person. You may be a salesperson. You can still teach others to sell and market. You can still write about some of your ideas along these lines. You can pick up freelance work in your local community or around the country… or for that matter around the world.

Do you have to get the highest rate imaginable? No. You just need to work and, through the working, to build relationships and develop the skills and efforts that are going to be very helpful to you. So don’t just simply look for big companies to hire you. Don’t just simply try and knock on doors of small companies and say things like, ” Hi! I am a fast learner. I can learn anything you give me to do.” No one cares.

What they care about is can you give the results that helps them based upon what they need. Starting your own firm, creating your own job, starting your own small business, marketing your skills and talent – – I’ve seen it help so many people land work during this “great recession/depression” everyone referred to it as.

So don’t just settle. Promote yourself. Create effort. Pick up freelance work. There are online sites like Upwork, for example, to help you find work. Get out there.

[/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

Start at the Top

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Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter encourages you to do what headhunters are trained to do — start at the top.

[spp-transcript]

This is one of those classic tips. It’s absolutely timeless. I’ll talk with you about how I’ve been trained as a recruiter to give you a sense of why I’m suggesting this.

I’ve been a recruiter for more than 40 years and, again, no disrespect to HR, I was always trained to circumvent HR– to try and go directly to hiring managers, to go the top of the organization and work my way down from there, to have the management of that organization, the management of that function, tell HR that they want to work with me, rather than have HR decide that they wanted to work with me.

Why was that important? Because HR is …the term as a gatekeeper, but it’s a really a misnomer. Human resources is designed to to shield hiring managers from decisions and to save them time. Some are exceptional, but they tend to be the exceptions. Most are average, they are overworked, overwhelmed and have too much on their plate and very rules driven. Discernment is not their strong suit; again, no disrespect to HR, but recognize that the typical day for HR professionals may involve interviewing X number of people, returning phone calls, trying to get a clearer picture of what a particular hiring manager’s doing, writing reports on the interviews that he or she did the previous day… on and on and on with a lot of drudgery.

It’s hard to maintain the sense of life and not become a bureaucrat. In contrast, the hiring manager has a vested interest in bringing on the best talent, not that HR doesn’t, but they are measured in different ways. They’re critiqued in different ways versus the hiring manager who was exceptional talent.

My encouragement to you is to do like what I was taught – – start at the top work and your way down. If you are a marketing professional, contact the CMO over the organization. If you are a salesperson, contact the head of sales of that organization. If you work in IT, contact the chief technology officer or the CIO of the organization.

Start at the top and work your way down. Make sure that you understand what it is that you’re asking for when you contact them and don’t just simply wander in your like a jerk, completely unprepared because all that you do is waste then is waste your time and theirs. A simple thing to say when contacting them is, ” I understand that your organization might benefit from. I’m an individual who’s been doing this for X number of years with so and so. I’d like to speak with you about what I’m capable of. Can we schedule time to do that? What would work best for you?” It’s that simple.

It was three, maybe four sentences in total. You want to rehearse this so it sounds natural and NOT rehearsed. Natural but not rehearsed.

[/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

Stop Spamming Your Resume!!!

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Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter speaks bluntly about resume spam.

[spp-transcript]

I believe lots of resumes today I got to a point where I have stared at so many resumes that in no way shape or form fit what my clients are looking for.

Let me give you an example. I post a position for a global data center manager. The spec I posted was very clear about what I was looking for and what the expectations are. A person is going to run data centers. Even if you know nothing about that, you know that you are expected to have experience running a data center. #.

Why?

What did you see that in any way shape or form see the major qualified for that job?

Do you see the word, “qualifications,” in the job description? That is what the firm is looking for. That’s what the recruiter is looking for in order to identify someone that fits the job.

A CVS store manager. Give me a break. You are a spammer. You are no different than the Viagra people except your stuff isn’t blocked; yours actually gets through… But not anymore. I’m blocking you.

[/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

Giving Your Resume To Someone

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Jeff Altman The Big Game Hunter explains why giving your resume to someone who works for a company you want to target may not be the best way to get an interview.

[spp-transcript]

Let’s talk today about approaching the furniture interested in working for. Conventional wisdom says to give your resume to someone who works there and have them bring it to the hiring manager as though this is the magic bullet that can get you the interview and advantage you are getting hired.

It can, but the thing that most people don’t do is find out how close this person is to the hiring manager. I give you an example. Someone contact me and says, “I know this terrific individual. They are phenomenal. They are swell. They are terrific.” The person approaches me as someone I barely had contact with if. As a matter of fact, the last time I heard from them was only asked to connect with me on LinkedIn. How much do I really trust this individual? The same might also be true with the people you’re giving your resume to.

The goal is and just to give it to someone who works for the firm, but to find someone within the firm who is well connected with the hiring manager.

Barring that, you are sending your resume to the black hole because the hiring manager has no reason to trust this individual anymore then I have to trust that person who says, “this person going to refer to you is terrific, colossal and swell,” and they had nothing to do with anything I do recruiting for plus I don’t know this person who was telling me how wonderful their friendliness.

There are times where it is better to work with a friend to send a cover letter that addresses that addresses some of the pain points a firm has in hiring someone for this job. It can also be better to use a third-party recruiter who has had a good relationship with his hiring manager to introduce you. Otherwise, you are giving your resume to a different version of the black hole.

[/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

Why Are You Putting Up With It?

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Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter draws from his own experience to talk about the decision to change jobs.

[spp-transcript]

I want to talk with you about the decision to change jobs and draw upon my own experience. On two occasions in my career, I was working for organizations for 10 years or more. I was clearly entrenched in these organizations, very comfortable despite some of the nonsense that existed there.

We all know every organization has nonsense – – people of personalities, they have moods. You live with them for a long period of time and some of those times of frustrating.

In the most recent instance, I was associated with the firm for more than a dozen years and no matter what I did, the matter what I said, there was a lengthy period of time I was hitting my head against the wall in frustration. Still the idea of changing jobs didn’t come to mind.

It one more instance (the details aren’t important) for my wife to interrupt me one day and ask, “Have you thought about changing jobs at all?” Ultimately, I decided to start my own firm

Sometimes, you just have to listen to what someone else tells you or ask you and pause and ask yourself a question, “Why not?” What’s keeping you there? What’s so good about this situation that you want to go through all the frustration you go through?

I’ve been in sales for a long time and much of my income comes from commission. For those of you were not in sales, is it worth the salary that you are getting to experience all the frustration that you’re going through?

Why are you accepting this? Who are you trying to please in all of this?

When all is said and done, ultimately, let them make the right decision for yourself. However, if you are noticing that there are more days than not when you are referring to things that can best be described as “nonsense,” when no matter how are in Africa making success is not available to you, sometimes that’s because the market that you’re serving, sometimes that’s because the systems that your operating (i.e. the company rules and regulations that get in the way of you obtaining the success that you want), why are you putting up with it?

My encouragement to you is to stop for a second and think or have an ally available because (like in my case, my wife) who, in a very simple way, asked “Have you thought about changing jobs yet?”

Then, think about it. Why not? Why not change jobs? Why tolerate the mediocrity of your current situation, your lack of contentment and happiness that comes with your current role?

[/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

They Told Me I Did Well But I Haven’t Heard Back From Them

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[svp]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C7h477km3CY[/svp]
Someone asked my opinion on what I thought was going on and I thought I would share it with you.

 

[spp-transcript]

I got a question from someone about a scenario they are involved with. She thought she had a gre

She thought she had a great interview and got good feedback live. Even after the interview, recruiter told her she did well. Now, she hasn’t heard anything; it’s been two weeks. What does it mean? What’s going on here?

What I’ve said to people for years, when you haven’t heard back from someone for weeks after getting positive feedback from them is that they are still interviewing. They’re not ready to close the doors on the dreamboat walking in the door. The result is that you’re left in limbo.

You’re sitting there saying, “When will they call? I hope I hear from them?” I know it’s frustrating, but, if you sit there waiting by the phone, waiting for the call from the employer, you are making a strategic mistake.

What you always want to be doing is taking what they say at face value and keep on interviewing. Keep on marketing yourself. Keep on working to have opportunities come up to you and knock you over.

Create competition for this situation.

You see, most of the time when things are put on the “back burner,” they fall off the stove. You don’t want to be so dependent on this one employer to be the one that you are waiting by the phone for in unrequited love. What you want to always be doing is to keep going out on dates (interviews). You want to be marketing yourself.

Keep promoting yourself. Keep networking. Keep on keeping on.

Until they are ready to move, all that happens is that you have a situation that is tantalizing but not the reality. They haven’t invited you back. They talk about how you did well. So what? There could be five more people they see after you that they might tell the same thing too.

Sometimes the employer calls the month, two months later and announces, “okay! We are ready to hire you!” You shouldn’t be waiting for them. After all, they weren’t in love with you sufficiently to drop down on one knee propose marriage to you.

So always be out there promoting, always be out there selling, always be out there building your network, online and in person.

That’s the simplest way to describe what’s going on. They are not ready to move. It doesn’t mean that you’re going to get this job.

Don’t fall for the seduction of the few words that you did well, whether that’s coming from the employer directly or from a third-party recruiter.That third-party recruiter may be your advocate or have four other people interviewing with this firm. They don’t care which one of them gets the job; they just want to collect the fee.

So just keep on keeping on and don’t fall for the bull being thrown at you. They are ready to move on you and you shouldn’t be ready to commit to sitting by the phone waiting for them to do so.

[/spp-transcript]

 

Do you really think employers are trying to help you? You already know you can’t trust recruiters—they tell as much as they think you need to know to take the job they are 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 http://bit.ly/thebiggamehunter

Job Search Lessons from the Broadway Show “Cats”

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Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter invokes a memory of the Broadway show, “Cats” to remind you of making your answers to interview questions seem fresh.

 

[spp-transcript]

I want to talk with you about one of the mistakes the job hunters make way too often. It is the me a mistake but very experienced job hunters make. It’s the mistake of letting their interviewing get stale.

What often happens is that the job hunter has been on so many interviews and they were asked the same questions repeatedly.

Why are you looking for a job?
Tell me about yourself?
Do you have any questions for us?

Even if you’re in the area with very specialized skills, the question start to get very predictable. The result is that people start to get bored with the interview and get stale.

Understand that from the employer’s perspective, they are only hearing your answer for the first time even if you answered the same question for others 20 times.

Someone remind you of something that I learned many years ago. I used to live in New York. Do you remember the play, “Cats?” The one with the song, “Memories?”

I thought about it one day that in this long-running show (a, yes, the cast changed many times over the years) and that normally cast members and apart for at least a year or so. This performer is saying the same lines, seeing the same songs, night after night. They are performing six days a week, eight shows a week. Their commitment is to make it seem as fresh as it was on opening night. After all, the audience may only be watching the show for the first time and they are paying full price.

You can’t imagine that the actors and actresses have gotten bored by now is saying the same things and singing the same songs over and over and over again.

Remember, your job is to be like performer in a Broadway show on opening night, delivering your lines like it is on opening night, making each performance seem fresh, just like this performer stating, “Cats” so that the audience can see you in your magnificence and applaud ferociously at the end of the performance.

[/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. JOIN NOW BEFORE THE PRICE INCREASE ON SEPTEMBER 5TH

Connect with me on LinkedIn

Remember to Show This on Job Interviews

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[svp]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMvPDclzvsE[/svp]
There is an extremely large variable that most job hunters forget when they are interviewing for a position. In this video, I use presidential elections to illustrate it.

 

[spp-transcript]

So why should they choose you when they interview you?

Why should you be the one that, when they are finished evaluating all the different people, you’re the one that they scream for?

For now, I want to lay the stage for you and say there are a lot of very competent people who you are competing with. You’re not the only one who can do this job. But the question is, “are you the only one who can do this job in their environment?” Wt hat’s going to make you the chosen one?

I want to look at one of the examples that we can look at successfully competed through a lengthy interview cycle and that’s called presidential politics. No, I’m not going to be talking about the current election. I want to go back in time and look at the election of Barack Obama.

Sen. Obama ran for office, not as the most experienced possible candidate; clearly, Sarah McCain was. But Sen. Obama ostensibly had a year in the Senate but most of that time he was out campaigning. So, he didn’t have any nati experience he. He didn’t have any foreign policy experience or economic experience. He was a state senator in Illinois who often times voted, “Present.” He had a background as a Harvard-trained attorney who practiced for a while. You’ve heard the story of him being a community organizer.

What qualified him to be President of the United States?

Perhaps qualifications are not the key ingredient when Americans elect candidates. Since that is true, we can still look at why he was the one that was chosen over someone who is clearly more experienced than he was.

What some people will say is, “I like his politics and policy ideas better than the other.” I don’t buy that. Borrowing that an unjust point to the fact that statistics throughout the first five or six years of his presidency said so many Americans disagree with his politics. How does this work?

The answer is a good instruction for you as someone who is interviewing and that they like them personally, even if they disagreed with him and they voted for because they liked him. Even as we look at the current election, the way that campaigning is being done is, ” Vote for me. You hate that guy and you should dislike that guy a lot.” Not mentioning names. It’s irrelevant to the equation because the key missing ingredient for most of you is that you are only selling yourself for your competence . . . and competence is only one variable in the equation. There is still likability (sometimes firms refer to that is chemistry I’ll call it likability because that’s the marketing term, the advertiser term used for it).

You want to appear likable to the audience. That sometimes can get tricky because fit, chemistry things like that are rife with the opportunity for bias.

I work on employers about that all the time but, for you as the job hunter, you cannot come across as adversarial. You cannot come across as being “professional,” unless that’s the quality you believe that they’re going to like. Most of the time, a smile, some personality, some off-the-cuff remarks that don’t sound scripted, where you can connect with the interviewer, goes so far in getting hired.

So you can learn this lesson from presidential politics. Likability is a huge variable and why people are chosen. By the way, if we look back in time, Gov. Clinton became President Clinton because people liked him more than the incumbent President. Ronald Reagan, at the time he ran for office, he was not the Ronald Reagan that became the symbol of the Republican Party. He was someone the people liked that made himself likable in the debates with certain off-the-cuff remarks that he made that Americans related to

Look for ways that people will enjoy you, like you and then want you to be around them more every day

[/spp-transcript]

 

Do you really 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