No BS Job Search Advice

Three Job Search Questions to Ask Yourself (VIDEO)

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It is a lot easier to drive from Dallas to Montreal with a map, design a system with with written specifications, or play a game knowing its rules, right?

NOTE: instead of visiting the site. I mentioned in the podcast, visit JobSearchCoachingHQ.com

[spp-tweet tweet=”When I ask people, “what’s your plan,” invariably everything breaks down for them.””]

[spp-transcript]

 

Do you really 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

Who’s Managing Your Job Search?

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“He (A lawyer) who represents himself has a fool for a client.”

~Abraham Lincoln

In my many years of doing recruiting, there have been a ridiculously few number of people who have ably represented themselves in their job search. Even the ones who claim victory and found positions have made mistakes that have proven costly.

 

Continued

 

© The Big Game Hunter, Inc. Asheville, NC 2016

 

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 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

Start You Daily Job Search With Some Cardio

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Listen to this last then two minute audio

 

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

People Have Long Memories

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[spp-transcript]

SUMMARY

I was contacted by someone in my role as a headhunter who wanted me to represent them in their search. I wouldn’t. I think it was several years ago, maybe even 10 years ago, they contacted me. We had a had had a good conversation and then I called with interviews and never received a called back. Six times I called. Not a callback. That is already found something I could handle just say hey contacted you late in the process but you can’t to the job the problem but instead calls life is too short for this stuff when is the last time is the job of I called and doesn’t really was and never got a call what’s different this time so so bold he treated me like I will top the job is you are overwhelmed agency calls just to apologize is back to you

I would have understood if they called and said they already found something.  I could handled if they just said, “Hey, I contacted you late in the process and I found something.”  but you can’t to the job the problem but instead calls life is too short for this stuff when is the last time is the job of I called and doesn’t really was and never got a call what’s different this time so so bold he treated me like I will top the job is you are overwhelmed agency calls just to apologize is back to 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

Would You Go Into Court WIthout A Lawyer?

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Seriously. Would you go into court without a lawyer? Or diagnose a serious illness without a doctor?

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.

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

How Honest Should You Be?

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You’ve had a first interview with the corporate recruiter, the head of HR, and the hiring manager. The recruiter says call me tomorrow and tell me what you think. How honest should you be?

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.

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

Promoting Yourself Into a Job Even If You’re Socially Shy or an Introvert

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Promoting

 

Even if you don’t think of yourself as an introvert, you may think of yourself as being shy in social or professional situations.

As a result, you may believe that doing the self-promotion is not something you are good at.

After all, you’ve never written a press release to call attention to a success you’ve had . . . and rightly so.

But some of you should be sending out press releases or encouraging your company to promote things that you and your group are doing because they are significant.

However, even if what you are doing is not changing the world or would be considered worthy of a feature article in a national publication, you can still be doing things to promote yourself.

An old friend of mine would mail a note to all of her friends to bring them up-to-date on the things that were going on in her life including her professional successes, accomplishments and, occasionally, the frustrations. It allowed her to stay in contact with lot of people who would offer her advice, suggestions and jobs.

Today, with e-mail, it is much easier than before.

Every six months, send an e-mail to all of your friends, acquaintances and former colleagues to bring them up-to-date. Skip the complaints about your boss. Former colleagues may be in contact with them and you don’t want to generate problems.

It’s easy to add people to Outlook, Gmail, LinkedIn and other products like them.

You can also write a blog posts on LinkedIn regularly sharing your ideas on subjects related to your expertise. Then share the link on Facebook, twitter, medium and others.

This doesn’t require that you actually speak to someone; you are actually speaking to the wind and knowing that your words will be carried somewhere.

In addition, writing comments to people lauding what they have written or done can also bring notice to your knowledge and expertise.

If you run into people and they ask about what you are doing, forget about delivering an elevator pitch; after all, for you, in particular, talking in that way feel so phony. Instead, as I tell everyone, just speak as one human being to another. That’s something you excel at.

Share the occasional meaningful quote or article.

All of this involves very little one-on-one personal interaction that might make you feel uncomfortable. You are communicating in ways that show that you are thoughtful and perceptive.

 

Any way you look at it, since only 22% of positions are filled by recruiters and fewer than 6% via job boards, your connections, friends and acquaintances and their ability to think of you will go a long way to helping jobs land in your lap, instead of having to aggressively pursue opportunities.

 

© The Big Game Hunter, Inc. Asheville, NC  2016

 

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.

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

How Can I Upgrade My Resume to Get Better Results

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I’ve coalesced this here into a single answer.

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.

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

Have a question you want me to answer? Contact me through PrestoExperts

What Pace Are You Trying to Set For Your Job Search?

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verrazanonarrowsbridge500_1

 

In 1990, I ran the New York Marathon on a sunny day in November with the temperature at 78 degrees. It was my first marathon and, I suspect, it will be my last one.

My friend, Frank, with whom I trained for more than a year, and I lined up toward the back of the pack of more than 20,000 runners on the Staten Island side of the Verrazano Bridge.

Our goal was to finish and, on a day as warm as that, we were confident that we could finish but not sure we could accomplish our goal of under six hours.

As the cannon to start the race was fired, we really couldn’t move at all because so many people were ahead of us. As a matter of fact, we couldn’t move for ten minutes and at that point we were barely walking.

Eventually, we started to jog and established a pace for ourselves that allowed us both to finish. I had heat exhaustion and missed a wedding I was to attend that night.

Along the way, we saw many people who, as soon as they could jog started to sprint wildly and, we could see, had not trained to run the 26 miles 385 yards of this marathon let alone run it on such a warm day. Sprinting when they should have been walking, they wasted an enormous amount of energy unnecessarily.

Job hunting is rarely a sprint. Especially, for mid and senior level professionals, it is more like a marathon. Too often, people hear the cannon go off and the race begin and they thrash around wildly, wasting energy like the people did in my marathon and then struggle for way too long.

They are ill-prepared, have failed to train adequately and, as a result, are forced to settle for a job that is “less than” what they could have achieved had they taken some time to prepare for a longer race.

It is not enough to have “a positive attitude”  …  although a positive attitude is good to have. After five or six times when you aren’t called back for second interviews, being positive in the face of conflicting information (lots of rejections) is deluding oneself. You need help!


Be honest with yourself. Do you need help?

A job search coach can make a world of difference by correcting your mistakes and focusing you on productive things to do. When I launched JobSearchCoachingHQ.com (web only for now), I saw how many people were acting like amateurs in their search but thinking they were pros.

After all, as I pointed out in “Job Hunting and The 10,000 Hour Rule,” how many hours of experience do you have writing resumes?

Networking?

Promoting yourself on LinkedIn?

Interviewing?

 

The list is enormous of skills needed to find a job AND they are different than the skills needed to do a job.

As a friend learned recently when he was suddenly laid off without notice, he knew how to execute his job but didn’t know how to create a job search campaign other than answer ads online.

Does that sound familiar?

Can you use encouragement?

Join me at www.JobSearchCoachingHQ.com for great advice and personal attention from me that will help you avoid making costly rookie mistakes.

 

© The Big Game Hunter, Inc. Asheville, NC  2016

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.

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

Have a question you want me to answer? Contact me through PrestoExperts

7 reasons why you need personal business cards, and 7 facts to include on them

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By Bob McIntosh, CPRW, MBTI

This post garners the most views of any of my others. I’ve included a link to Jeff Altman’s video on personal business cards. Watch it.

A funny story I tell my workshop attendees is about how I ordered 250 personal business cards on www.vistaprint.com, only to find when I opened them that I’d spelled my occupation wrong: “worksop facilitator.”

There went 250 personal business cards into the trash.

I’m ashamed to put this in print, but I’m making a point; make sure you spell-check your order before submitting it. This is hardly the point of this blog post, though.

The overlying message is that, as a job seeker, there are seven reasons why you need  personal business cards and seven facts you must include on them.

 

 

Continued