Friday 18 June 2010

How to Stand Out in Your Job Search

Stop Chasing Jobs and Start Attracting Them

Found this on LinkedIn - Kevin Kermes's company. Please click link and sign up for his free webinars. Great advice. Different compared to others I have heard.
http://www.careerattraction.com/free-webinar/


Tuesday 15 June 2010

Keep Positive and Keep Striving




Keep positive, be systematic with your daily job search. Network hard on LinkedIn and get telephone and face to face interviews. Aim and target a 2-4 quality interviews a week if you can. Go through the JobBoards and sign up with agencies as well as contacting companies direct.

Net Work Xing

XING (named openBC/Open Business Club until November 17, 2006) is a social software platform for enabling a small-world network for professionals. The company claims that it is used by people from over 200 countries. Available languages include English, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, French, Dutch, Chinese, Finnish, Swedish, Korean, Japanese, Russian, Polish, Turkish and Hungarian. By displaying how each member is connected to any other member, it visualizes the small-world phenomenon.

The platform offers personal profiles, groups, discussion forums, event coordination, and other common social community features. Basic membership is free. But many core functions, like searching for people with specific qualifications or messaging people to whom one is not already connected, can only be accessed by the premium members. Premium membership comes at a monthly fee of 5 € (around 9 USD). The platform uses https and has a rigid privacy and no-spam policy. Unlike many other networking websites, XING provides its paying members very easy email access to any members.

XING has a special Ambassador program for each city or region around the world with a substantial constituency. The Ambassadors hold local events that promote the use of social networking as a business tool, letting members introduce business ideas to one and other, and get to know each other on a personal level. XING competes with the American platform LinkedIn and the European Viadeo for social networking among businesses. XING also offers the system for closed communities, called Enterprise groups with their own access paths and interface designs. The platform serves as the infrastructure for corporate groups, including IBM, McKinsey, Accenture and others.

Friday 4 June 2010

LinkedIn Branding Tips for Unemployed


"You need to remember that everything that you do and do not include in your LinkedIn profile becomes your brand = how people perceive you. Is “unemployed” something that you want to include as part of your brand?"

"My answer is “NO!” You want positive qualities associated with your brand. And whenever I see someone with a Status Update that says they are looking for a job, I want to tell them what I am about to tell you."

To read more, please click on the link to the  Windmill Networking Social Media Strategy website http://windmillnetworking.com/  & Buy the award-winning book on LinkedIn by Neal Schaffer.

Recruitment World Update

Here is a selection of news from the recruitment world this month by "All Executive Jobs"

Executive Search Firms Predict Revenues to Rise
More than two thirds of executive search firms (67%) expect to see revenues grow in the second half of the year, according to research by the Association of Executive Search Consultants.The healthcare/life sciences and energy/natural resources sectors expect to see the most growth in the second half of 2010, followed by the industrial and financial services sectors.

Work-Life Balance is the Most Desired Employee Benefit
Research from PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) reveals that 47% of the country’s workforce place a good work-life balance as their most desired employee benefit. The research, labelled “Managing Tomorrow’s People” shows that bonuses were the second most important benefit to staff, with only 19% considering them to be their number one priority.

Public Sector Executives Will Struggle
As public sector executive vacancies plunge, senior executives will struggle to find similar positions in the private sector, according to executive search firm InterExec. The firm says that it has seen senior executive vacancies in the public sector drop by more than two thirds in the three months from February to May. Kit Scott Brown, chief executive of InterExec, says: “Many senior executives who have had a lifetime in the public-funded sector are not going to have access to private sector positions which are the exclusive domain of headhunters.” Scott Brown continues: “These positions are almost never advertised and it is highly unlikely that an executive who is currently employed in the public sector will ever get to hear about them.”

Connect Directly With Top Executive Recruiters
Recruiters are the gatekeepers to both the advertised and unadvertised job markets. You can connect directly with top recruiters from the UK's largest executive recruiter network, CVtrumpet. As the UK's first executive and management CV sending service, CVtrumpet places your CV in front of pre-screened executive recruiters by salary, job function, job level, location, industry, and employment type. This enables you to reach multiple, targeted recruiters in just 3 minutes, rather than months, and ensures that you tap into the unadvertised job market immediately.

Click Here to Connect Directly with Targeted £50k to £300k Recruiters

Wednesday 2 June 2010

The Brutal Truth on How CVs Get Eliminated

Did you ever wonder how job-seekers get screened out or eliminated based on someone looking at their resumes? When a job-seeker is being considered for an open opportunity, the first person who will read their resume is generally either a recruiter or an HR person. If it's a recruiter, it could be either a 3rd-party, agency-based head-hunter type, or an internal, company-based corporate recruiter. If it's someone in HR, it could be anyone from an entry-level screener to a Director of HR - depending on the size of the company.

This screening and elimination process also applies to proactive searches for candidates done on resume depositories like Careerbuilder, Monster, etc., or on Social Networks like LinkedIn. Basically, anyone who is looking for and screening potential candidates for an open job opportunity goes through this process.

Now I'm sure that you slaved over your resume for hours and hours, writing and re-writing it, revising, refining and retooling it's language until it’s as "perfect" as it can be. If you are like most serious job-seekers, you are hoping that the person who first screens your masterpiece will take their time and read it over very carefully absorbing every detail of your background, analyzing your qualifications and experience, and making a carefully considered and informed decision about your fit for the position they are trying to fill. Unfortunately, you would be wrong. I hate to break this to you but the average resume-reader will give your resume between 20 and 30 seconds of eyeball time on the first pass. They'll scan the first page of your resume diagonally, top to bottom, left to right - rarely progressing on to the second or third pages. If they don't quickly see exactly what they think they want or need right up front bye bye - delete button for you!

In my many years as a recruiter, I've certainly read my share of resumes. There were times when I went through over a hundred a day. I certainly know how this elimination process works! This process is even more brutal now in the current candidate-flooded market. So ... what follows is a peek behind the curtain. I make no apologies for how this process works, or how fair or unfair it is - like it or not, this is simply the way it is. I feel it's best for job-seekers to be informed about this to be able to better navigate the process and avoid obvious pitfalls as they move forward. Read the details at "Recruiter Musings"
http://michaelspiro.wordpress.com/

Tuesday 1 June 2010

7 Secrets to Getting a Job Using Social Media

Do you know of anyone who has been successful? Currently LinkedIn is the main Key Tool.

15 Job Search Tips

15 Job Search Tips from a Guy Who Just Got a Job

Executive Job Search

Executive Job Search - Leveraging Twitter for Online Career Management

Tough Times for Executive Jobs

‘Tough Times for Executive Jobs’ - Time to Consult?

Invest Well in Smart Suits

"Seventy six per cent of British bosses would decide against a job candidate because of their clothes. Sixty seven per cent of bosses surveyed say that a good interview outfit should cost in excess of £300, with 94% saying an obviously cheap suit would have the candidate walking out of the door as quickly as they walked in. The team found that traditional formal interview attire says “hire” irrespective of market sector or industry"

"• For men, a tailored navy single breasted suit (51% hire), white or blue long sleeved shirt (48% hire), black leather shoes (56% hire) and black socks (77% hire), low key tie (35% hire) and cufflinks (37% hire) and no handkerchief (35% hire) will send you on your way to your second interview in minutes."

"• For women, a mid-length black skirt or dress (64% hire) with long sleeved and collared shirt or blouse (42% hire), tights (94% hire), high heels (69% hire) and pearls (56% hire) will leave a very positive impression on your future employer."  Written by Careersite Advisor @ http://www.careersiteadvisor.com/,