Career Marketplace Blog

In this article for U.S. News and World Report, Miriam Salpeter explains The Best Way to Take Control of Your Job Hunt.

Below is an excerpt of Salpeter article. Read Full Article

Wouldn’t it be nice to have a little more control over your job search? It’s frustrating applying over and over again for jobs and never hearing back.

When you apply online, the odds are against you unless your qualifications exactly match what the employer wants. (In other words, unless you are applying for the job you already have.) It’s not impossible to land an opportunity via an online application; many people do find jobs that way, but it doesn’t change the fact that you’re not likely to get hired from a resume drop.

What should you do instead? Stop looking for a job. Start looking for a company.

You may be surprised, but it may be the best career move you never considered. Instead of spending all of your time searching for appropriate job descriptions and targeting your resume to apply for them, you should consider shifting some of your efforts to identifying organizations whose goals are in line with your interests and whose problems you know you can solve.

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Want to know how to sell your job skills to employers? Learn how with Curt Rosengren’s U.S. News and World Report article, How to Market Your Skills in Your Job Search.

Read an excerpt of Rosengren’s article below. Read Full Article

If you‘ve ever looked for a job, you’ve probably seen skills checklists, ones that ask you to tick off every skill on the page that sounds like you. The trouble with that is, when it comes to telling your story to a prospective employer, it’s still pretty one-dimensional. There’s nothing to back it up.

If you want to talk about your skills in a compelling way, you have to go deeper than that. One way to do this is to give the checklist the heave-ho and take a longer and more fruitful approach to identifying your skills.

Don’t forget that potential employers aren’t actually interested in your skills—they’re interested in how those skills can help them meet their needs. This process will help you make your story more compelling by letting you demonstrate that.

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Yahoo! Contributor Aly Adair shares, First Person: How a New Approach Helped Me Land a Job in This Economy.

Below is an excerpt from Adair’s article. Read Full Article

I spent five years searching for a career job that would last until I retire. Like millions of other Americans in the bad economy from 2006-2010, finding a job was nearly impossible. Despite following all the advice of headhunters, human resource consultants, friends or family members, it was what I term “The AND Factor” job search strategy that finally landed me a job. I am over 50, had a failed business, and an MBA from 1981, when most of my interviewers were not even born! Most human resource professionals looked at me and said, “AND why should I hire you?” Or, “AND what makes you better than these 2,000 other young applicants?”

Many older job seekers share similar backgrounds: we all have some level of college degree; we all have years of supervisory/management experience with a major Fortune 500 company; we have families to feed, we have not had to look for a job in 20 years; we are old-school thinkers when we prepare resumes, go on job interviews, and network. After watching a television show that profiled other older professionals trying to find a job, I realized that we all do a couple of things wrong in our job search.

I decided to try some different strategies to see if I had better results. I call these new job search strategies “The AND Factor” job search strategies. My supervisor told me they received 105 resumes for the management job I applied for at the state agency. How is it they hired me for the job? It is critical to give the hiring manager your “AND factor” – they want to know why you are the best person for the job! “AND what makes you so special?” “AND why should I hire you?” Here are the “AND Factor” job search tips that helped me land a career job against all odds.

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In her U.S. News and World Report On Careers article, How to Tailor Your Resume for an Employer, Miriam Salpeter shows job seekers how they can “appeal to your targeted employer“.

Great tips from Salpeter’s article include (Read Full Article):

• Review LinkedIn profiles with your target job title
• Study Job Descriptions
• Talk to people

Read on for more tips

Wall Street Journal blog, Hire Education, Deloitte CEO, Barry Salzberg shares his thoughts on how students should begin career preparation as early as high school.

Below is a excerpt of Salzberg’s blog. Read Full Blog

Even in a good economy, the transition from college to the workplace can be tricky. Some people sail through academia to work without a hitch. Others have a harder time finding the right fit; they’ll need to adjust their expectations and/or improve their skills before they begin their careers.

So where’s the disconnect? Why isn’t everyone coming out of college career- and future-ready?

For many students, it may be because they had to spend time getting up to speed on college-level work. That leaves them less time to reap the benefits of higher education and grow into the kinds of young professionals employers expect to hire.

As colleges prepare for final exams this month, millions of first-year students will get concrete data on how well they’ve been prepared for higher education. More than two-thirds of high-school students in Deloitte’s 2010 Education Survey told us they felt well-prepared for college, while more than two-thirds of high school teachers fear their students are not prepared to handle college course work.

Which view is correct? The sad truth of the matter is no one really knows.

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U.S. News and World Report article, How to Beat 8 Job-Search Time-Wasters, Tim Tyrell-Smith shows you ways to get past common job-search mistakes.

Tips to look for in Tyrell-Smith’ s article are:

• Applying to Everything
• Bugging Recruiters
• Networking Blind
• And more

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In her article for U.S. News and World Report, Karen Burns shows readers 20 Ways to Stay Motivated During Your Job Search.

Below is an excerpt from Burn’s article. Read Full Article

The longer you look for a job, the tougher it becomes. Who could blame you for feeling despondent, discouraged, depressed—even bitter? Some days you may not even feel like getting out of bed.

Unfortunately, not only is depression, well, depressing, it also makes it harder to get out there and look. And the less you get out and look, the less likely a job offer will come your way. Even worse, prospective employers tend to be turned off by negativity. It’s the most dastardly kind of Catch-22.

What all this means is that a major part of anyone’s job hunt is staying motivated. We all have our ways of keeping on keeping on, but here are some time-tested suggestions to prevent your search from getting you down:

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U.S. News and World Report article, Great Interview But No Offer: Why You Didn’t Get the Job, Lindsay Olson explores possible reasons you didn’t get the job.

Reasons to look for in Olson’s article:

• You didn’t sell yourself
• The job specifications changed
• You sounded desperate

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In his story for ABC News, Zachary Sniderman shows readers 5 Ways to Get a Job Through YouTube.

Sniderman’s tips include success stories from people who have found job opportunities using YouTube. Read Full Article

Have you found success in your job search using YouTube or other Social Media sites? Tell us your story in the comments section.

In her article for Mashable, Stephanie Marcus shows job seekers HOW TO: Score a Job Through Facebook.

Tips to look for in Marcus’ article:

• Read Your News Feed
• “Like” or “Friend” Companies You Want to Work For
• Start a Dialogue

Read Full Article