Often these days resumes are sent exclusively by email. I advise against this – whenever possible, send a paper copy by snail mail as well. But I realize that often, it’s only email.
Which means that you need to get your emails opened and read, even when they’re one of a thousand new emails received by the person you’re sending to.
So how do you stand out?
Well, this is a problem that marketers and copy writers have been dealing with for a long time, and there are three main ingredients to wr…
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Added by Danny Iny on August 1, 2009 at 12:00pm —
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I sent an email to the readers of my free “Where are the JOBS?” special report, explaining how to use Google Alerts in their job search. Here’s what I wrote:
Let’s pretend that I’m a potential employer, and I did hear some bad stuff about you… that would be pretty bad, right? Hence my job search tip for you today: Google Alerts.
Google has a service that will automatically notify you when something is posted online with the terms that you ask for (like your name).
…
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Added by Danny Iny on July 28, 2009 at 12:00pm —
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A friend of mine shared a great prospecting trick with me. The problem he was looking to solve is that it’s very hard to talk to the actual hiring manager when calling a large company; the gatekeepers are trained to divert you to HR (where your resume will be buried under a sea of paperwork).
Here’s my friend’s solution to this problem. He calls the company, and dials a random extension. Whoever picks up, he asks them “is this Mr. Jones?” (assuming Mr. Jones is the manager that he wants to talk…
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Added by Danny Iny on July 24, 2009 at 12:00pm —
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Here is a great job search trick offered by a reader of the free
“Where are the JOBS?” special report:
When I answer an ad I create a matrix with 2 columns: left side = the list of the job's requirements (or Job Description, etc.), the second column shows how I fit each requirement. I have used this in the body of my e-mail cover letter so the recipient doesn't even have to open any attachment.
Aside from making it e
…
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Added by Danny Iny on July 20, 2009 at 12:00pm —
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It’s the fourth of July, and I’ve been thinking a lot about how freedom ties into job searching. In a lot of ways, being out of work can feel like a total
lack of freedom. You feel constricted from every corner, and nothing feels like enough – there is always a burden to do a little more to change the situation.
You feel a little bit like Sisyphus, the character from Greek mythology that was cursed by the gods to spend all eternity rolling a giant boulder up a hill. The boulder would nev…
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Added by Danny Iny on July 4, 2009 at 12:00pm —
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A friend asked me the other day what I thought of
Craigslist as a job searching venue.
Actually,
Craigslist can be a pretty good place to look. People who are comfortable with the site tend to use it when they want to meet a need right away, so the job postings there tend to be available on a fairly first-come first-served basis.
If you’re looking for work, it’s a good idea to go onto…
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Added by Danny Iny on June 29, 2009 at 12:00pm —
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That’s right. It’s a little-known fact that in the midst of the current economic crisis and rampant unemployment, there is a labor shortage. This paragraph is taken from an article titled
“3 Million Unfilled Jobs in the US” on TimesUnion.com, by Wally Altes:
“One of the great under-reported/unreported stories about the economy is that American employers have 3 million jobs they ca
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Added by Danny Iny on June 23, 2009 at 12:00pm —
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As promised in my last post about saving time with
job search systems, here is a cover letter template that you can modify and use. Blue text needs to be customized, and red text is conditional and may need to be removed (of course, after you’re done modifying it for the position you’re applying to, make all the text the same color).
Dear [THE PERSON’S NAME,
…
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Added by Danny Iny on May 31, 2009 at 12:00pm —
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Looking for work can be an exhausting and time consuming process, but there are a few things that you can do to significantly reduce the amount of time that it takes you to apply to the same amount of jobs.
The first technique is called batching. What this means is that when you bunch each set of activities together, to save time. For each job that you apply, you need to find opportunities, customize your resume, write cover letters, apply to the jobs, and follow up. Rather than doing each of t…
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Added by Danny Iny on May 27, 2009 at 12:00pm —
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There are 162 games in major league baseball season and the players have a saying "Every team's going to win 54 games, every team's going to lose 54, it's what you do with the other 54 games that counts."
The above quote is taken from an episode of NBC’s the West Wing. What it basically means is that there are three types of situations: those where you’re
definitely going to succeed, those where you’re
definitely not going to succeed, and those where you
might and might…
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Added by Danny Iny on May 23, 2009 at 12:00pm —
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In the last post, I discussed
using LinkedIn to get referred into a target company. This is a great technique, and already sets you ahead of the game. The problem is that it is incomplete, for two reasons:
- These referrals will usually be through friends of friends of friends, so by the time it makes its way through the chain to th
…
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Added by Danny Iny on May 19, 2009 at 12:00am —
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We’ve all heard about the
hidden job market – the idea that many available positions never make it to the job boards because they’re filled by internal referrals. We’ve all been told that once those jobs do reach the job boards, they will be hit by so many applicants that it will be very hard to stand out.
What does this mean for a job seeker? That to increase your odds of landing a good job, you should get yourself ref…
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Added by Danny Iny on May 16, 2009 at 12:00pm —
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You’re sitting at home on your couch, wondering how you’re going to pay your bills. To pay your bills, you need to find work. The job search isn’t going well. You’re feeling frustrated, and the urgency increases. Your heart starts beating faster...
Does this sound familiar?
It’s normal to feel stressed while job searching, but it isn’t productive or healthy. When we feel scared or threatened, our bodies are flooded with adrenaline and cortisol, and higher cognitive function shuts down. It crea…
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Added by Danny Iny on May 5, 2009 at 12:00pm —
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I get a fair share of job search questions from clients, contacts, and friends. I’m wondering, though, if the questions in my little corner of the world and the internet are the same ones that most job seekers are asking. So I’m writing an open question to job-seekers and job search bloggers:
What are the biggest job search questions that you are asking, or are being asked?
Please take the time to leave a comment with your question – I’ll do my level best to answer them in upcoming post…
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Added by Danny Iny on May 1, 2009 at 12:00pm —
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Remember my post last week about the
“Hire Me” video that I helped my friend put together? Well, we put together the video and put it online, cleaned up her CV, mapped out a strategy, and she was all set and ready to go. That was a Thursday. Then, on Tuesday, I ask her how it’s going. She tells me “Nobody called yet.”
I asked her, “You mean for a job? That’s great, I’m…
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Added by Danny Iny on May 1, 2009 at 12:00pm —
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A friend approached me a couple of weeks ago, asking for help looking for work. Her story was the same as most people these days – needs to find a new job, and not having much faith in the likelihood of landing a “dream job” in today’s economy.
I suggested we try something a little bit different – a video PowerPoint-style presentation of her introducing herself and explaining why she is a strong solution to problems that her target companies are facing.
The video is hosted on a website (hireJa…
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Added by Danny Iny on April 27, 2009 at 12:00pm —
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A little while ago, Bonnie Lowe of Best Career Strategies asked me to contribute to an eBook titled
“Best Career Strategies of 2009 - How to Get Hired or Get Ahead, Even When the Economy is Getting Worse”.
The eBook is now available online, and I encourage you all to download it – dozens of career experts contributed to it, and there’s bound to be stuff in there that will be useful for you.
Note: This post i…
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Added by Danny Iny on February 28, 2009 at 1:00pm —
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Here are the last three elements of sales communication that you need to consider when preparing your CV (for a
list of all five, read the previous post):
Identify a Problem
Ok, so we’ve established a context for the communication, and demonstrated that you understand their professional reality. At this point, you’ve got their attention enough to start pushing buttons – that’s when you star…
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Added by Danny Iny on February 25, 2009 at 1:00pm —
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So picking up where we left off with the last post, let’s talk about the first two elements of sales communication (for a
list of all five, read the previous post).
Establish Context and Relevance
The first step in creating sales communication is establishing context; basically, that means answering the question “who are you, why are you contacting me, and why should I listen?”. To a certai…
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Added by Danny Iny on February 22, 2009 at 1:00pm —
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Everything you send an employer – whether it’s a cover letter, an email or your CV – is a piece of sales communication. Don’t freak out – some people have a strange aversion to the concept of selling, so I’ll clarify. I define sales communication as any piece of communication that is meant to trigger a specific outcome. So, for example, if you’re sending an email because you want someone to call you in for an interview, that’s sales communication.
Before we get too deep into the specific pieces…
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Added by Danny Iny on February 19, 2009 at 1:00pm —
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