Career Marketplace Blog

In her blog for U.S. News & World Report, Alison Green explains How Parents Can Help Their Kids Look for a Job.

Advice from this article include:

• Don’t fill out or send in job applications for your child.
• Never, ever contact an employer on your child’s behalf.
• Teach your job-seeking child about professional demeanor.

In her blog for U.S. News & World Report, Miriam Salpeter counts down 5 Things You Need to Do do Get a Job.

Tips from this article include:

• Position yourself as an expert
• Communicate your value
• Optimize your resume

In his article for lifehacker.com, Alan Henry introduces readers to a new professional network called Identified. Henry explains, “Identified Is a Professional Network Built on Facebook, Shows You How Your Facebook Profile Looks to Recruiters“.

Read an excerpt of Henry’s article below. Read full article

Finding a job is difficult, but Identified is a new service that wants to help you build a professional network on the back of the social network you likely already use: Facebook. The recently launched professional search service uses your Facebook information to build a professional profile for you, give you a numerical score (that can be improved by providing more data,) and connect you with businesses that your friends and personal network already work for.

There’s a lot to like about Identified: it uses your actual personal network to build a professional profile that’s indicative of the people you actually know. Sign in with Facebook, and the service pulls down your work history, your education, and the depth and breadth of your personal network to assign you a numerical score. You can improve that score by adding more information about yourself that will make you more attractive to recruiters and companies already using the service to find prospects or inviting your friends.

Read On

Forbes.com article, Get a Job Using the Hidden Job Market, Susan Adams explains how to connect with employers in your chosen industry.

Read an excerpt of Adams’ article.

The technology executive had been out of work for more than a year, but he didn’t tell any of his friends he was unemployed. Instead, he made up a story about how he was consulting on some confidential projects, the details of which he would reveal when it was time to go public. Meantime, he applied for dozens of posted job openings he saw online, with zero success. He also spent time golfing at the country club, where his locker was next to a CEO in his field. Still, he guarded his secret carefully, staying mum with his golf buddies about his job hunt. Finally, his distraught wife set up some sessions with Donald Asher, an executive career coach and author of 11 books, including Cracking the Hidden Job Market: How to Find Opportunity in any Economy. Asher, who splits his time between San Francisco and northern Nevada, convinced his new client to open up about his job hunt, and start talking to everyone he knew about how he was on the market. Sure enough, one of his golfing friends gave him a tip that led to a job at a startup. “He never ever would have gotten that job the way he was looking for work before,” writes Asher.

As I’ve written in earlier articles, despite the explosion of employment listings online, job seekers should spend no more than 20% of their time answering ads (some coaches recommend only 10%). Instead, says Asher, and a number of other coaches I’ve interviewed, the best way to find a job is through a combination of networking and direct contact. That way you tap into the so-called hidden job market. That is, you get to the head of the line of job candidates before a job is listed anywhere, and sometimes, before the hiring manager has even decided she is going to hire for a particular position.

Read On

In her article for About.com, Alison Doyle defines the Social Job Search.

Read an excerpt of Doyle’s article.

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.

Read On

In her article for U.S. News and World Report, Alison Green reports 8 Things You Should Know About Job References.

Green explains details about reference checks including:

• Employers don’t always stick to the references on the list you gave them.
• References are often highly subjective and opinionated.
• You can find out what kind of reference someone is giving you.

Read on to read to complete list and how your references can influence a potential job offer.

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.

Read On

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

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

Read Full Article