GadBall Blog | GadBlog

It’s no secret; being a part of the job search process across the nation has been tough for an extended period of time. What some employment seekers may not realize is that successful individuals who find themselves out of work don’t dwell on the loss – they transition to a career field where there is growth and opportunity.
Here are the top five tips every candidate can utilize and apply to their personal situation.

1. Look for opportunities that are interesting and that can utilize your previous experience.
The job seeker should assess their “transferable skills,” all those jobs done previously, that define all their skill sets. Never consider prospective careers that do not align with an individual’s personality. Think of the transition process as a deliberate decision being made for the long-term.

2. Key career transition decisions may take time – avoid becoming hurried.
A candidate may find they come across multiple opportunities that do not fit their parameters. It’s okay to walk away from the wrong option. Every job seeker must focus on having a keen understanding of their professional goals, and then implement a strategic plan to attain them. Opportunities will present themselves, but they may not be all the right or best decisions to make. Qualify the opportunities, based on your situation.

3. Have a truthful understanding of professional abilities.
An entry-level candidate can not simply make the short-term goal of moving in to management, without meeting the education and experience requirements. An individual who’s been earning $30,000 annually in a particular field cannot expect their next employer to pay them more than the average median salary for that given position. Honesty is always the best policy when making any career transition.

4. Know current skill levels, and determine how they coincide with goals..
Regardless of what field or industry a job seeker plans to enter, one thing is always for certain: Change. It may be necessary to take a class or two at the local college or university. Obtaining particular certifications may be preferred or required by the hiring authority. Certain professionals must meet state licensing requirements to perform their job. Researching requirements for a new career is essential for a successful transition.

5. Image is everything.
Today’s job seeker is required to manage not only their personal image, but their on-line identity. Information obtained about an individual through Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, and all of the other social networks creates a “brand” for that individual. When attempting to make a career change or transition, it is critical to create a consistent and professional brand. Remember, both on-line and off-line image must match, or the transition process will not be successful.

The professional world is always changing, and this is a lesson every individual should learn from the recent recession. Candidates must continually upgrade their skills, add value to their career, and keep current on all things within their chosen field and industry.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, just over 4 million Americans lost their jobs in 2009 alone. For those millions of people, a new reality has emerged that may include stress, financial difficulties, and uncertainty about the future. Many sociologists have written about the long-term psychological effects of prolonged unemployment. One problem that’s often mentioned is the loss of identity experienced by people who are out of work.

Think about it: When you meet someone socially, one of the first five things you will probably ask them is, “So, what do you do?” or “Where do you work?” For someone who has lost his job, this question suddenly becomes difficult to answer. It’s a lot easier to say, “I’m an analyst at XYZ Bank” than to say, “I used to work as a financial analyst, but I got laid off last year.”

Because it can be difficult to retain your identity through a period of unemployment, it’s particularly important to surround yourself with people who know you as more than just an employee. Whether it be your immediate family, spouse, former coworkers, or closest friends, spending time with people who fundamentally understand, like, and respect you—regardless of where you work at the moment—is critical.

Not only does time spent with family and friends help you to retain a positive sense of yourself, but it can also provide you with ideas for promoting yourself during your job search. Talents that may seem common to you often stand out to your friends. For instance, a friend may say to you, “You’re so good at organizing events and connecting people, you should be running a nonprofit somewhere!” Or, “You’re fantastic at explaining things—have you ever considered becoming a teacher?” The strengths that friends identify in you can be helpful as you market yourself through cover letters and resumes.

As quickly as possible in your job search, it’s important to develop an answer to the question, “What do you do?” For the person mentioned above, an appropriate answer might be, “I’m looking for a financial analysis opportunity with a large bank.” Objective statements are no longer fashionable to use on resumes, but it’s great to have one ready whenever someone asks about your career! Succinctly summarizing the goal of your job search not only helps new acquaintances understand your situation but also allows your family and friends to think clearly about who might be able to help you from their network.

People who know and love you provide invaluable support during a time of unemployment. Heed what they have to say about your strengths, and focus their efforts to help by having a clear goal for your job search.

In the old days most job openings were advertised in physical sources, such as newspapers. Recruiters and hiring managers would receive a manageable number of responses to those advertisements and select the best candidates. With the spread of the internet, things have changed quite a bit. Job openings are advertised all over the place – candidates are overwhelmed with the number of openings and recruiters are overwhelmed with the number of responses they receive. Both parties have to go through tons of useless openings/applications and spend a lot of time finding good quality targets.

So clearly this calls for a change in strategy for the job seeker and here are a few tips to help you out:

Avoid the shotgun approach: Select a few job targets and focus your attention searching/applying to only those job types. This will save you a lot of time, as opposed to applying to everything under the sun. It will also get you more responses, since you can spend enough time tailoring your application material for your target jobs, rather than sending out generic applications (which typically have a lower success rate). You could still use the shotgun approach but only for back-up jobs, which are not your main targets

Grab Attention: Use areas like the subject line of your email to grab recruiter attention and to make your application stand out. Make your application POP, by showing the recruiting manager what specific benefits you can bring to the table

Use references: The internet makes it very easy to quickly find people in your network who work at the company you are applying to. Get them to put in a good work for you

Contact hiring managers directly: Don’t rely solely on advertised job openings. If you know the job you want, you can also try and find out who has the power to hire you for that job. Get in touch with them directly

Work your network: Make a list of friends, family, colleagues and acquaintances, who you can get in touch with and inform about your job search/targets. Ask them for leads and request them to get in touch if they hear of anything interesting. These leads will usually be of better quality than published sources like job boards

The days are ticking by, and you find your job search has been less than fruitful. Companies you contact have their budgets on hold until the new year, and you’re left feeling unsure of what your future holds.

If you’ve experienced the mentioned scenario in your employment hunt, it’s time to take your job search to the next level. Let’s discuss three little known strategies to get your foot in the door with a target employer – no matter what time of the year it is. We’ll also talk about creating a “reasonable” time frame for which you should expect an interview invitation, before moving on to a different opportunity. Finally, we’ll take a look at the possibility of creating your own opportunities, when your employment prospects are dropping the ball.

We’ve already mentioned that you’ve come up against a lot of rejection in the job market, simply because many employers put their hiring budgets on hold this time of year. This has absolutely nothing to do with you as a job seeker. Depending on where you live and want to work, and based on the current economy, you may be up against more rejection than you ever thought possible. The issue here comes down to supply and demand. There are more qualified workers so the supply is high; creating a decrease in demand. The goal of this article is for YOU to become in HIGH demand.

Read More »

Career assessments are unique tests that are designed to help job seekers understand how their personal attributes affect their career and satisfaction with a chosen career path. They mainly answer a simple question: “what job is right for you?”

Assessments might check multiple personal attributes such as your interests, job preference, values, motivation, and skills. There are multiple tests and flavors for each test. Most personal assessments are easy to complete because the questions are about the one thing you know best about: yourself.

GadBall offers O*NET Integrated Career Interest Assessment & Job Research tool called “Work Genius”. Job Seekers completing the Work Genius assessment on GadBall will identify personal interests; these are linked to matching occupations and matching local open jobs.

The Work Genius Career Assessment is designed to match you with the ideal occupation and job based on your interest profile. Your interest profile is determined based on selecting activities that you like to do and identifying activities you don’t like to do. It’s that simple.

Whether you are planning your future career, have a career but want a change, or just want some additional insight, try out the career assessment. You don’t need to be a GadBall registered user to use this tool but by creating a free job seeker account your answers will be saved on your profile.

Technology can be a wonderful servant … and an awful master.

To find work faster, remember that your goal with any gadgetry or software — from smart phones and email to Linkedin and Twitter — is to meet people who can hire you.

With that in mind, here are two ways to find a job — one high-tech and the other very low — from Australia. How can you adapt them to your search?

1) Tweet and Meet

Jade Craven (www.jadecraven.com), in Geelong, Australia, found work in August 2009 by doing a few smart things on Twitter.

She offered the following five tips to help you do the same.

Read More »

Employee performance is an essential ingredient in any company’s ability to achieve its goals. Therefore managing employee performance is integral to business success. A well managed performance appraisal assists managers to assess and provide feedback to increase the competency of their team members. Developing skills, knowledge, attitudes and increasing team member capability are key objective of performance appraisals. For many businesses performance appraisals results in spending ‘time on the business’ to build capability.

Performance appraisals promote business development in the following ways:

1. Drive business performance
Facilitating performance appraisals means managers making an effort to communicate with their employees. Managers who care about the performance of their people and business will recognise the importance of providing feedback and assisting their team members to grow and develop. The performance appraisal is a proactive HR solution in driving business performance.

Read More »

Taking into account requests from our readers, we started a series of articles titled ‘Resume Makeover Series.’ The objective is to take you through the complete process of writing a resume, with best practices for each stage.

In our last article we advised that you should start your resume with a Power Statement. In this piece we round-off that discussion and talk about the resume Summary Section, which includes your Power Statement plus a few more bullet points about your most relevant skills/characteristics.

We recommend starting your resume with a Summary Statement, which is like your personal advertisement. It should give the reader a concise overview of your experience, skills and achievements. When writing your summary statement make sure that you focus on the job you are applying to, its main requirements and your unique selling points. Typically, the Summary Section is about 3-5 bullet points.

Read More »

We’ve all heard of the alpha male and female. The dictionary defines them as the dominant person in a group, the one everybody emulates and follows. The term was originally coined to describe behavior in wolf and dog packs, but for most of the 20th Century, it also accurately depicted the way we interacted in our careers. One person was on top, and the rest of us brought up the rear.

While wolves and dogs are stuck with this leader-follower relationship, however, we humans have an option. We can pull ourselves out of the back of the pack—out of the pack altogether, in fact—and assume a new role. I call it the “alpha career athlete.” It recognizes our innate ability to act as individuals and to set our own unique course in the world of work.

More often than not, the alpha career athlete still finds their employment in an organization. Most aren’t free agents or independent contractors. They work in teams, on projects and for departments and they report to a boss. Their on-the-job experience is similar to that of every other person in the workplace. What changes is their view of who they are working for and why.

An alpha career athlete works on themselves for themselves. They are interested in learning just how good they can be in their profession, craft or trade. They accept a job because it challenges them to be better than they have been, and they devote all of their talent to passing the test. Moreover, that same commitment to self improvement also enhances the value of their contribution to their employer. In effect, they protect their employment and preserve their paycheck by persevering in their determination to excel.

In Search of (Personal) Excellence

In 1982, Tom Peters wrote a business classic called In Search of Excellence. The book’s popularity was largely based on the author’s research into how companies achieved superior performance. It outlined a number of practices that other organizations could implement in order to achieve their own version of excellence.

What many readers missed, however, was the underlying premise of the book: success was best achieved through a commitment to excellence. If you wanted your company to prosper, it wasn’t enough to be good or even very good and certainly not mediocre or just enough to get by. The one sure pathway to prosperity was excellence.

What was true for organizations in the 20th Century is true for individuals in the 21st Century. Success is not achieved by being loyal to one’s employer or by knowing how things get done inside an organization. It is not assured with years of experience or even with a knowledge of the current state-of-the-art. What produces sustained career advancement in today’s world of work is a commitment to personal excellence.

It is what drives the alpha career athlete. He or she is “in search of excellence.” They are on a quest to become the champion inside them. This is not some quixotic adventure, but rather an entirely rational determination to express and experience the talent with which they (and all of us) were created. Alpha career athletes believe that, just as every company can achieve superior performance, so too can they. And they’re resolved to do so.

Companies, however, have Peters’ guidelines with which to work; alpha career athletes need something else. They need a set of practices that will engage, refine and unleash the excellence within them. What follows are what I think those practices must be:
I. Pump Up Your Cardiovascular System. The heart of your career is your occupational expertise. Re-imagine yourself as a work-in-progress so that you are always adding depth and tone to your knowledge and skill set.

II. Strengthen Your Circulatory System. The wider and deeper your network of contacts, the more visible you and your capabilities will be in the workplace. Make nurturing professional relationships a part of your business day.

III. Develop All of Your Muscle Groups. The greater your versatility in contributing your expertise at work, the broader the array of situations and assignments in which you can be employed. Develop ancillary skills that will give you more ways to apply your core expertise in the workplace.

IV. Increase Your Flexibility & Range of Motion. Moving from industry-to-industry, from one daily schedule to another or even from one location to another is never easy, but your willingness to adapt will help to keep your career moving forward.

V. Work With Winners. Working with successful organizations and coworkers enables you to grow on-the-job, develop useful connections that will last a career and establish yourself as a winner in the world of work.

VI. Stretch Your Soul. A healthy career not only serves you, it serves others, as well. A personal commitment to doing some of your best work as good works for your community, your country and/or your planet is the most invigorating form of work/life balance.

VII. Pace Yourself. A fulfilling and rewarding career depends upon your getting the rest and replenishment you need in order to do your best work every day you’re on-the-job. Discipline yourself and your boss to set aside time to recharge your passion and capacity for work.

All of us have the inherent capacity to be an alpha career athlete because all of us have an inherent talent that wants to be—deserves to be—discovered. Humans are the only beings, however, who can willfully choose to ignore their gift. And happily, they are also the only beings who can choose to recognize it. So, become the alpha career athlete you were meant to be; put yourself in search of (personal) excellence.

Thanks for reading,
Peter
Visit me at Weddles.com

Peter Weddle is the author of over two dozen employment-related books, including his latest, Work Strong, Your Personal Career Fitness System.

© Copyright 2009 WEDDLE’s LLC. All Rights Reserved.

Article courtesy of the Recruiting Blogswap, a content exchange service sponsored by CollegeRecruiter.com, a leading site for college students looking for internships and recent graduates searching for entry level jobs and other career opportunities.

I got an email last week from Jim S. in New York. His job-search question may not apply exactly to you, but the mind-set I suggest to solve it should.

So, if you give me two minutes here, I’ll show you two ways to get hired faster, by playing to your strengths, and offering employers the equivalent of “found” money.

Ready?

Jim writes: “I have been a self-employed residential general contractor with some commercial supervision experience for 35 years. Last fall I had heart surgery and as a consequence, I am no longer able to meet the physical demands of the job. How do I best convey this situation to a potential employer and still get in the door?”

When Jim asks, “How do I best convey this [health] situation to a potential employer and still get in the door?” what he’s really asking is: “How can I bring up my health problems and still get an interview?”

This is common, backwards thinking.

Instead, of worrying about how to confess a negative, Jim should build a case for his strengths until they overcome any resistance in the minds of employers.

Here’s the question that Jim (and you) should ask instead: “How can I appeal so strongly to an employer’s self interest that any issues about my physical condition won’t matter — they’ll want to hire me for my brains and not my body?”

Put another way, there must be some management function Jim can perform in construction that can leverage his 35 years of industry experience and knowledge, without requiring hard physical labor. He should examine his work history until he can picture a suitable job.

Better yet, he should call past supervisors, vendors, and clients, remind them of the good things he did for them, then ask: “Given my knowledge and experience, what leadership role do you see me playing for an employer?”

This is one way to overcome obstacles of physical condition, age, etc.

Now, here’s a second way to get more job interviews …

Let’s say you find a wallet full of money and credit cards. On the driver’s license, it reads: “Warren Buffett, Omaha, Nebraska.”

Now. Do you think you might be able to meet the CEO of Berkshire Hathaway?

All you’d have to do is call Mr. Buffett and say, “I found your wallet. Can I deliver it in person?” You would enjoy making that call, having that conversation, and meeting Mr. Buffett.

Well, you can do the same thing with employers — get to meet them by offering to return their “lost” money.

How?

Research employers until you can call a hiring manager and say something like this: “Mr. Smith, I found some lost money that belongs to you. You see, I called your office twice posing as a potential client, and your staff didn’t ask me a simple question that my last employer used to increase revenues 35%. Can I meet you for 15 minutes this week and give you that information?”

You would enjoy making that call, having that conversation, and meeting Mr. Smith.

And if you brought your resume and more tips to help him in his business, a job interview would be the likely result.

Or, you can mail a letter describing your “found money” information, say you’ll call to discuss, and then call at the appointed time.

If you really want to stand out, fold up your letter and mail it inside a wallet to an employer. (Buy wallets cheap at any flea market or dollar store). The headline of your letter can read, “Is this money yours?” No resume needed.

The point is this: When you call to ask someone if they’re hiring, they’ll refer you to HR. When you call to return their “lost” money, they’ll hang on your every word.

All you have to do is research an employer’s business, industry, clients, and competitors, until you find one idea that can make or save them a sizeable amount of money.

Best part: You don’t need to create the money-making/saving ideas, just as you don’t need to create gold nuggets — you need only dig them up. Nobody cares where you found the gold (except for the I.R.S.).

If you can’t do this — if you can’t think of ways for someone in your field of work to make or save money — it means you have no idea why an employer should put you on the payroll. Instead of thinking of ways to earn a job, you are waiting for someone to give you one. And you are in for a long wait.

Kevin Donlin is co-author of Guerrilla Resumes. Since 1996, he has provided job-search help to more than 20,000 people. Author of 3 books, Kevin has been interviewed by The New York Times, USA Today, Fox News, CBS Radio and others.

Article courtesy of the Recruiting Blogswap, a content exchange service sponsored by CollegeRecruiter.com, a leading site for college students looking for internships and recent graduates searching for entry level jobs and other career opportunities.